007 » can’t i find love without it being so sensational

[receptacles]

fanart by ta_mozuki.
for luocha at casketeer.

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[receptacles]

[ Just don't get yourself into trouble, Welt said, all those days ago.

What stings the most about the whole situation, Caelus thinks, is that he couldn't even do that.

He should have known that he wouldn't be able to have a bit of fun without it coming back to bite him in the end. He should have known not to do things that he knew were bad, too, but then he's really only been alive for so long, and he swears to the best of his knowledge that he hasn't done any other bad things. There's a way in which he feels that it's slightly unfair — that toeing the line of impropriety shouldn't have come crashing down around his ears in such spectacularly damning fashion. It's not fair. It's really not fair.

The problem with that is that the obvious counterpoint is that life's just not very fair, and the universe is particularly unfair, in that bad things happen to good people all the time — and Caelus can't honestly say that he was a good person in his time on the Xianzhou Luofu, anyway.

It breaks down like this:

One day, he wakes up to find that everyone has gathered in the parlor car because a judge of the Ten-Lords Commission has called the Astral Express.

Oh, cool, Caelus thinks, because he figures it's Huohuo or Xueyi or Hanya or someone else he knows, but then it turns out that it isn't any of them on the line. The woman whose hologram is being projected into the parlor car wears a mask like a Wraith Warden's with red hair down to her shoulders, and what he doesn't like, instinctively, is that she smiles when she sees him.

"Caelus," she purrs, which is a bad sign, really bad sign. Hot women aren't ever this excited to see him for any good reason. "Just the man I was hoping to see."

"...Caelus," Welt says in greeting, but there's a slight pause before he says it that makes Caelus understand that he's in trouble, and the unfortunate thing is that he already thinks he knows what he's in trouble for.

The explanation comes in bits and pieces, and then all at once. We have arrested the traveling merchant, Luocha... on account of identity fraud and smuggling... the Stellaron into the Ambrosial Ardor... with reason to believe that the Trailblazer Caelus of the Astral Express acted as his accomplice...

"Now you wait just a second!" March interrupts, hands on her hips in the way that she does when she feels a need to defend the members of her 'family.' "There's no way that Caelus had anything to do with smuggling the Stellaron into the Luofu. We found out about the Stellaron after it started wreaking havoc! You can check the logs to see when we docked in the harbor!"

We have already checked the records in question and discovered that you received help from the Stellaron Hunters in falsifying your acceptance documents.

"But that's because the spaceport was closed at the time! We requested permission to dock normally and we couldn't get in —"

So you don't deny it?

March claps a hand over her mouth. Dan Heng shoots her an unimpressed glare.

It's better to let Himeko handle these things, because it's always better to let Himeko handle these things. "What proof do you have that Caelus was involved with Luocha, Madam Judge?"

I think Caelus can answer that question. Can't he?

Caelus remains silent.

The woman pressures him, with a slight edge of impatience in her tone. Officers with the Realm-Keeping Commission have already identified you as an associate of our suspect's and supplemented their testimony with the footage we have from our security systems.

There's no point in trying to deny it, then. Caelus rips the bandage off, even though he hates the idea of saying it out loud.

"We had sex," he says quietly, with a trace of guilt at the back of his throat. "But it was just sex. Then he said he wouldn't be able to see me anymore. I didn't have anything to do with Luocha after that."

He can't help but feel like Dan Heng is staring at him with a strange mixture of horror and disbelief and betrayal. He's not sure he wants to turn to see the look on March's face.

Just sex, both times?

Did she really have to say both times? "Like Himeko said," Caelus replies, still quietly, with guilt curdling in the pit of his stomach, "General Jing Yuan and Lieutenant Yanqing can attest to my character."

The character of a man who associates intimately with interastrally renowned criminals.

"Whatever Caelus may have done, Madam Judge," Himeko intervenes, "I don't believe it is relevant to the Stellaron case."

The woman smiles again beneath her eerie mask. We will see.



For now, at least, Caelus doesn't have a choice. Not unless he wants to put the Express's status within the Xianzhou in jeopardy. He has to report back to the Xianzhou Luofu, first and foremost. He has to make sure that the charges against him are completely dropped before they move on.

(He can't help but feel like Welt and Dan Heng don't seem to want to look at him in the aftermath, like he's dirty, like they didn't know he could be that kind of person. Maybe he's wrong, though. Maybe it's all in his head.

March sends him a text, one that half makes him laugh and half makes him feel like the worst person on the planet, in the way that only she ever makes him feel. Um, so on the bright side... I would have said he was totally out of your league! Handsome guy like that? Congratulations?)

For a while, people that aren't him argue over what to do with him, which is the way of things, when it comes to criminal justice. Always better to have a lawyer than try to win the case yourself. Himeko and Jing Yuan lobby together to have the suspicion on him cleared, or at least twisted around. His friends in the Ten-Lords Commission help him out too, at least as much as they are able.

His life's a blur for a little. Go there, say this, do that, come back. For a while, it's like he's a prisoner, too. Himeko tells him that he mustn't talk to anyone not relevant to the case, which means he can't even text Qingque to ask her how her Celestial Jade rounds are going. He doesn't talk to the other members of the Express because he doesn't know what to say, or how to apologize for putting them in this predicament — and all because he was thinking with his dick for a hot minute.

So much trouble, for something so stupid, and all because he thought the mysterious merchant was pretty.

Finally, at last, Huohuo texts him with the coordinates to where he has to go, and says:

Sorry to bother you, Caelus... you'll want to head here. An officer will pick you up and show you to the Shackling Prison. To make a long story short, you're almost there, it's been a pretty hard-fought legal battle... General Jing Yuan managed to get you appointed as an interrogator in the case against Luocha instead of charged as his accomplice. Um, I know that sounds weird. It's this thing with a long-standing history on the Luofu — we used to call it "judgment by the judged"... It might sound like you're in the clear, but the truth is, your behavior is being watched and analyzed. Think of this as a trial.

Your goal isn't really to get information out of Luocha. Better interrogators than you have already tried and failed. What you have to do is prove that you aren't his accomplice. It might sound barbaric, but if you can... please be as cruel to Luocha as possible. If you can't bring yourself to do that... we'll do our best to protect you, but please don't give the judgemasters reason to think that you two know each other beyond the story you gave us.

This isn't the kind of message that he ever expected to receive from Huohuo. As cruel as possible?

Xueyi said that. But... Hanya said it too.

I don't know if I can.

You have to try.

He heads to a tavern and orders a tall shot of baijiu that smells absolutely disgusting and goes down even worse. It burns down his throat and through his system and makes him feel a little stupid, which is exactly what he needs right now. He goes to the Shackling Prison; a Wraith Warden escorts him inward. They check him for implements; he doesn't have any, not even his bat, but he's not sure why it matters if they expect him to torture Luocha. They let him in.

They move through the dark. Doors open and close.

Caelus doesn't step forward. Not at first. He hangs by the door, pressing his weight against it, as if to test if it will move with his own power. But the doors don't open. He's locked in. ]

...Hey, Luocha.

[ Such a bizarrely incongruous greeting. Not one that's doing the job of proving that he doesn't have anything to do with Luocha.

Caelus lifts his eyes to gaze at the man with golden hair, bound in his seat in his cell. ]

You know, despite everything, you still look good.

[casketeer]

[The Shackling Prison is a facility of some infamy throughout countless star systems for a reason, which means that there's plenty of information to freely peruse about what a prisoner is likely to experience in it. ...Luocha has done his reading, as meticulously as he tends to research any place he plans to go.

So, it's not as if he didn't know what to expect, upon generously turning himself in alongside Jingliu to the Luofu's authorities. No, if anything, the handling here has fallen exactly within the anticipated bounds thus far...maybe a little better than anticipated, even, considering the lengths towards which the Xianzhou has gone to punish criminals past. Things could be worse--things could be a great deal worse--he hasn't been suspended off the ground indefinitely, as those considered dangerous in every limb might; hasn't been confined to a cell continuously depleting his life force, as the Flint Emperor is; hasn't been permanently sentenced to the Forest of Swords, as the borisin Warmuhtar is; hasn't been encased in a straightjacket designed to trap him in a perpetual hallucination, as that Baviru called "Mirage" is. A strong factor, Luocha's sure, is the uncertainty that still currently reigns where his own motives are concerned, leaving a proper sentence yet undetermined. To say nothing of General Jing Yuan's input as well, perhaps, loath as the man has probably been to resort to harsher methods quite so immediately. ...And so there has only been this, for now: a simple cell, and a simple bench with its shackles. The holding for most, less egregious criminals, where the solitude of the wait for judgment is often already punishment enough...especially after the first few rounds of interrogations.

Interrogations--yes, Huohuo hadn't exaggerated. By now the wardens have already brought out some of the more persuasive people and devices at the Luofu's immediate disposal, but all for very little actually yet gleaned. Luocha has sparse of use to say in conversation and questioning alike, mockingly amiable in the face of both gentle queries and harsh demands; painful implements and positions move him strangely little, a resilience only further couched in the Abundance's perpetual attendance in his body. He's had little opportunity for proper sleep in awhile now, yet it's only another drop to add to an exhaustion that has already been perpetual long before this anyway.

Again, all as expected. Best laid plans often need waiting, and this is simply another one of those waits. Luocha knows that Jingliu will hold similarly icily steadfast...and that his coffin will yield nothing either, even confiscated as it is currently, so long as its lid remains impossible to lift and its contents remain inscrutable even to the more advanced probing devices likely on hand here. There will be no choice, eventually, but for the wardens to bring them all to the Yuque's Deca-Light Reflection Barrier first--in the hopes of prying out information that way--and then, inevitably, to a joint trail before the Ten-Lords and the Seven Arbiter-Generals themselves, aboard the Xuling. Where all else will unfold...

Yes. All expected. Except...

...this. Hm. This is not quite expected, no.

No mention has actually yet been made to him of Caelus's suspected involvement in any of this, after all, no questions leveled his way earlier or warnings made beforehand. Instead simply this, a development Luocha had not quite foreseen: muffled steps breaking the cell's heavy silence at an unusual time, and the sound of the doors opening. Closing. Another's breath filling the dim silence...and the ever-so-familiar thrumming pulse, from that cosmic time-bomb of a heart.

Luocha lifts his head from the slight meditative slump of his otherwise deceptively immaculate posture upon the seat; the golden hair in question, bereft of the ornamental clasp that would normally draw it back, now falls loosely and slightly messy about his shoulders. Over his eyes, too, until he shifts his head just enough to clear them. The finer layers of his preferred clothes long since stripped down to just the black undershirt and pants. ...He can evidently shift only a little, against the bindings. (Jade ingenium, the bindings; the chain links clink more like glass than steel. Another of those little Xianzhou technological marvels: other hands can adjust the length and angle of the chains attached to the seat anytime as pleased, but the one bound cannot shift them at all once they're set. One cuff for each wrist and ankle. They've been adjusted to more uncomfortable or painful angles on recently-past occasions already, but for now it's neutral positioning, Luocha's arms bound behind his back and his legs to the seat's base...)

All around, it's not like it isn't rather obvious that he's been in this trying position for some time now--and yet one still wouldn't know it, from the perfectly placid set of Luocha's expression, and the way he warmly smiles at Caelus across the way. Even here, even like this.]

Hello, Caelus. [Calm and pleasant, as if this were a mildly surprising encounter on a street; an incongruous greeting to match. The eyes on this footage of the room sure are probably very unimpressed by the lack of overall hostility in here so far...] ...Hm. You really do have quite a knack for flattery. This is a rather interesting occasion for it, though...

[Which is one way to understate the current situation all around. Surprise never quite makes itself visible on Luocha's face, but there is something like a measured curiosity, in the way he studies the Trailblazer's features in the gloom--the glance of those green eyes not yet dull, still quite sharp, despite the wardens' best efforts of late.]

Quite out of your way for a visit, isn't this? I'd have thought the Astral Express would be moving on to its next destination by now.

[receptacles]

[ There aren't that many people in the universe who can suss out the Stellaron's song inside of Caelus's body, but Luocha remains one of them, even at this distance. The Cancer of All Worlds is strangely quiet, though, in the silence of the cell. No hum, no bass to the pulse. Its sound evokes a predator's held breath before rushing at prey.

Something ominous in it. A panther in the grass, making its way past the reeds.

After a pause, Caelus pushes his weight from the door back to his feet, and approaches Luocha where he's seated.

Again, the easy slope to his shoulders, one hand in his pocket, the long-legged graceful stride. He could be just any other young man in the moment, come to visit a friend. His eyes adjust to the darkness of the room, scan the sides and corners. There's nothing else in the cell to remark upon save for Luocha's chair, though deeper in the shadows, there's a table with some deceptively shapeless implements politely resting beneath a blanket. Caelus is not interested in lifting it to examine what, exactly, the Ten-Lords Commission considers standard-issue for an interrogator's toolset. Humorously, a plain teapot with a solitary matching cup has also been set beside the blanket; the Trailblazer supposes that he cannot fault the Ten-Lords for their hospitality in this matter. It's more likely for his comfort than Luocha's.

Tellingly, he doesn't immediately answer Luocha's question. He steps forward, gently grasps the man's jaw, prompting him to look up.

Luocha's face is as flawless as ever, framed by his loose blond hair, his long-lashed green eyes sharp and alert. With impeccable comedic rhythm, Caelus lets out a low, appreciative whistle. ]

Wow, you weren't kidding. No eye bags at all.

[ An innocent conversation from what now seems like a lifetime ago.

The Trailblazer lets go of Luocha's chin, walking over to the side of the chair to inspect its mechanisms. The chains and cuffs, yes, he can get the idea without having to touch them. There's a panel on one side that looks like it will let him adjust the position of the chair, and do a few other interesting things with it, besides.

Caelus crouches to his knees, half to take a closer look at the panel, and half to keep up the charade of casual congeniality. ]

Well. [ His voice is low and husky, but clear. He doesn't want any part of what he's saying to not be picked up by the microphones in the room. ] That was the plan. But I guess spending time with you got me in a bit of trouble, so we're still here.

[ He reaches out, touches the ingenium band around Luocha's ankle.

Then he loosens it, in a move that will undoubtedly give some of the attending officers some cause for alarm. ]

Kind of unfair, huh?

why is the teapot detail killin me most in here omg. ten-lords pls be normal abt anything challenge,

[casketeer]

[Caelus's expression and bearing give away little, in his deceptively casual approach, but the unusually subdued state of the Stellaron he carries tells a rather prompt sort of tale. It's a novel instance, this new variation here--it's not a frequency he's encountered before--it's a sort of thing that would be promptly piquing Luocha's intrigue, at any other time, and...oh, it still is. But the change isn't exactly occurring in a vacuum, either, and what this shift might portend...remains to be seen. Even if a few guesses could be readily made.

After all, Caelus and Luocha have never really met in a circumstance such as this. --Oh, setting the glaring prison factor aside, even. All meetings and chats before now have been conducted as mutually amiable acquaintances at the least, if not...with more intimate hangings at the most. There's been no cause for hostility, all told, but now...well. There are certainly plenty of new factors at hand, now that things have been set in motion. Now that a few "truths" that have emerged.

Is this the sound of a Stellaron in an angry host? The shape of a new bitterness, shared between a cancer and its vessel? Quite reminiscent of a quiet before a storm indeed. One wonders...

Luocha hasn't really been privy to what exactly the table behind him looks like, though he can hazard a bit of a guess as to what Caelus is peering at for a moment back there; he wouldn't be the first to make use of those implements in here lately, after all. Though he doesn't seem immediately inclined to try, even if he's surely been shown to this cell for a reason. ...It's not so surprising that Luocha's question initially goes unanswered, but it is slightly more of a surprise when Caelus opts to step close before anything else. When he reaches for Luocha's chin, gently, despite all ringing signs that this grasp really shouldn't be.

(It probably says...something, that Luocha already finds this gesture far more off-putting than nearly everything else the wardens of the Ten-Lords have tried plying him with so far. The tells are subtle, a slight stiffening in his frame, a bit of resistance against his head being tipped up. Oh, in the end he's meeting Caelus's gaze directly enough, and his smile doesn't fade. Perhaps sharpens just a bit, though. Alert, bags-less eyes critically searching the inscrutable gold of the Trailblazer's.)]

...Well, after all, not all my answers in our conversations have been lies.

[A brief flicker of lilting humor, in contrast. Or perhaps in spite, to match that irreverent whistle there. (It's not even a lie in itself, either, rather ironically. ...Really, Luocha hasn't been much for outright lies all around, besides the obvious ones--his merchant status, and plans for the future. Those aside, there have been more questions simply never directly answered, or thoughts simply left entirely unspoken, and now here they are. Here they are...)

Caelus releases his jaw soon enough. The brevity isn't a relief, not really. Luocha turns his head, watching as Caelus kneels by the base of the seat, examines the likely mechanisms there. ...And now the proper answer comes, couched in that sort of tone, framed in that sort of way. It's not that it's difficult to put together the puzzle pieces here, but the way Caelus is going to be conducting himself in the completed picture...well, that's oddly more difficult to pin down this moment, now isn't it?]

It is unfortunate, to be sure. Here I had thought your standing in the Luofu would be rather more secure, after the contributions yourself and your fellow Nameless have made to quelling the recent disaster. Still, I suppose associations of any kind with a criminal of this magnitude simply cannot be ignored...quite typical of the Ten-Lords, too. Gratitude is not a strong suit for them, when vindication is so much easier. [Dryly remarked, with a similar full awareness of the microphones tuned to this cell presently. --But the pause that follows is a bit longer than intended, and colored with another note of surprise, as Caelus reaches for his ankle and the ingenium bind there is loosened. The jade material glows a bit, in response to the authorized contact; accordingly, the tension restricting Luocha's leg against the base of the seat there eases, but his heel flattens properly against the floor somewhat gingerly. Yes, the attending officers are probably already having a fuss about this, but Luocha is hardly about to delude himself into thinking that Caelus might be trying to break him free from here. No, for all the trouble he's probably beset upon the Trailblazer and his companions by now, that seems vanishingly likely. (And the plan is not to be broken out so early, besides. Either way...)] A pity. Let's see, then...you must be here to interrogate me. If it's satisfactory, then you'll be cleared?

gotta stay hydrated when you're interrogating the prisoner

[receptacles]

Something like that, I guess. Gonna be real, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

[ It's kind of nice. It's kind of funny to think about it, honestly. They were cordial before this, met each other precious few times before this — but each got to know the other much too intimately, and if everything had gone the way that Caelus thought it would, they would have never seen each other again. The memory of Luocha's soft laughter could have been just one of many pleasant firsts in his short life, and maybe, at the end of his journey, Caelus wouldn't have had to regret his choices.

Instead, he finds himself thinking in the most bitter sort of way that it's all really funny: he knows Luocha well enough to realize that the man is tense, right now. A lot of people wouldn't notice it past his outward veneer of calm cordiality, but Caelus knows him well enough, from their encounters, to read those faint signs of uncertainty. Oh, maybe he's not nervous, not quite yet. But it's clear that the Ten-Lords has succeeded in one sort of thing, which is tilting Luocha a bit off-kilter thanks to Caelus's presence in his cell today.

It might just be that he doesn't know what to expect from the Trailblazer. That's a common sort of response; Caelus is a little used to it. Sometimes he doesn't know what to expect from himself, either.

He reaches out, loosens the other ingenium band. Even goes so far as to pull the chains out from where they've sort of loosely piled up beneath Luocha's chair, so they don't tangle with each other. The "merchant" can move his legs freely now, cross one knee over the other, even kick at Caelus if he'd like. He still can't stand, though, given that his wrists are still bound behind his back to the chair.

The Trailblazer isn't worried. It's obvious that Luocha doesn't mean to escape by the sheer obvious fact that he also turned himself in. ]

I mean, what is "satisfactory," anyway? Will they be convinced I didn't help you if I hurt you? If I maim you? If I make you scream? [ An unimpressed sigh. ] ...If we were actually co-conspirators, that wouldn't even be a hard thing to fake.

[ Caelus slaps both of his thighs before rising back to his feet, like a small-town fisherman satisfied with the day's catch. He rolls his neck again as he makes his way behind Luocha's back.

He doesn't undo Luocha's handcuffs.

The Stellaron is still too quiet. Caelus reaches out and runs his hands through Luocha's hair, using his fingers like a comb to tame some of the stray flyaways, which are worse than usual due to the lack of his usual golden clasp, and the fact that Luocha's probably been manhandled more than a few times in the past few days.

Again, his touch is impossibly gentle. A lover's infinite mercy. He brushes Luocha's bangs out of his eyes, too — even carefully tucks some of that beautiful flaxen hair behind his ear. Rests both hands on Luocha's shoulders, like a parent patiently placating a child's anxieties. ]

I am curious, though. Why'd you do it?

there may as well be snack cakes too smh (they're under the blanket) (next to the torture tools--)

[casketeer]

[This isn't the first time Luocha's ever had to do some rapid mental calculus in an actively shifting situation. Usually it's...easier than it is right this particular moment, though, when the impending consequences are more clearly cut. Truthfully he doesn't quite know what to expect from Caelus in this precise situation, no. He hadn't anticipated that the Trailblazer would be called in here, had not factored it as part of a certain array of outcomes. (Because certain developments had unfolded a bit too spontaneously; because their previous meeting really should have been the last one; because...his focus lapsed, as Luocha can acknowledge to himself now with some resignation. He did know better. Put a little too much stock, it seems, in the Astral Expess's aid being enough to supersede some likely suspect footage. Not that there's much use in lingering on any of that now--)

The extra difficulty here, though, lies in the starkly contrasting signals on Caelus's part. How very jarringly the Stellaron's intent quiet is, next to the complete loosening of the bindings on his legs, and the benevolent care of the fingertips that comb through his hair. The sensation is pleasant, of course--there's no choice but for it to be--when nerve endings unable to distinguish the purpose of any greater plan can only find relief in contact like this, after several days of painful things. Lets the deceptive soothing of Caelus's hands trickle a warmth down his spine.

The tension between Luocha's shoulders only stiffens further in turn. --Dreadful. Truly dreadful. A part of him can't help but be a little impressed, honestly, if Caelus is being fully deliberate in the way he can rather guess...because it means that the boy has already caught onto something that the wardens of earlier days hadn't yet grasped.

It'd be infinitely preferable, after all, to be hurt. Maimed. Forced to scream. Base and predictable methods, very linear results; things easily braced against well in advance. Gentle gestures, though, unprompted and unwarranted...while pinned in place in such a way that he cannot even choose to reject them, not without cracking the outward calm...oh, it's unpleasant already. Especially with Caelus standing behind him, as he does, out of sight and leaving only the tone of his voice to weigh. ...There's not enough information on hand to tell whether all this is being done with earnest sentiment or not, and that--yes--is the most unsettling part of all this.

He does so very loathe uncertainty.

Why'd you do it? So Caelus asks, as if the answer could be anything else.]

In order to reach a destination, sometimes one must take rather drastic steps. I think a follower of the Trailblaze should understand that well. [Luocha's tone remains serene, at least. Until it's not, anyway--until another lilt falls upon his words, a humor bordering on mocking, curving upon his smile. It's a very versed sort of cadence, especially after the last few days.] No one will glean more detail than that, I'm afraid. But surely you weren't really expecting more anyhow. ...I can't imagine you're too pleased, about having to be here.

[His shoulders shift under the weight of Caelus's hands, almost imperceptibly.]

Hurting me would be rather uninspired, but I still wouldn't blame you if you'd like to. This all must be terribly frustrating. [An obvious sort of goading, and they both know it. Still...] Speaking of curiosity, though...did you enjoy the drink, at the very least?

[If the delivery had even managed to make it to Caelus, in the end. The cordial letter, and the five-grain jade elixir attached...]

[receptacles]

[ Caelus pauses, a little tellingly, before he answers. There's something in his voice that almost sounds a little regretful over the way things turned out. ]

We didn't drink it. The others didn't want to. So they let me have it, and then... I put it in my room. Thought it would be a nice thing to remember you by.

[ Remember you by, he says, like he expected Luocha to be dead.

With a slight laugh that is more of a single exhaled breath, the Trailblazer claps Luocha's shoulder, as if in friendly reassurance, and then doesn't move his hands.

He thinks he likes this position. Luocha doesn't have the benefit of reading other cues from his body language, his expression. He can't do anything, can't predict what might come next. Can't do anything but listen to the warm and slightly deep rumble of Caelus's voice in the silent room, so soft and friendly and deceptively casual. Like he's just a friend, after so many days of enemies come to besiege him for the truth. ]

Yeah. Wasn't really expecting you to tell me anything. [ He shakes his head, with another slightly rueful smile in his voice. ] You're like that, anyway. Even if we weren't in an interrogation chamber, you'd be the same as you are now. You're really good at answering questions in a way where you don't have to say anything at all.

[ Something closer to animosity is rising to the surface of his voice now, compared to the eager obedience of days past, but Caelus has never been one to not wear his heart on his sleeve. If it were outright conflict he wanted, this wouldn't be the way he'd lead up to it. The gentle goading doesn't seem to have found its mark; he doesn't seem all that upset, or even all that bothered. He goes on talking in the same light tone, as if they're back in the lobby of the Petrichor again, chatting over drinks in the way that they never did.

He squeezes Luocha's shoulders. And then, impossibly, surely for no rational purpose at all — Caelus's thumbs start to work at the nape of Luocha's neck, rubbing at the inevitable knot of tension there, massaging him hard enough for it to hurt but to feel amazingly loose in the aftermath. ]

Actually, I'm not that mad about having to be here. I'm in trouble, yeah, with the Express and everyone else — but that's my own fault, not yours.

[ He leans forward, his voice low in the shell of Luocha's ear. ]

'Cause I really, really knew — really knew it was a bad idea to fuck you.

[ It's not entirely grammatical; he doesn't care. It's the best way to express that he knew full well what he was doing. ]

Liked it anyway, though. But I knew it was a horrible idea.

[casketeer]

[...So the drink turned into a little memorial, in the end. Not the intended result in the least, really, and there's a brief but very odd feeling in hearing that answer--maybe in the way Caelus phrases it, that little pause there, like there's something genuine in the vague regret of it. Luocha will not examine this further, even if in a way it does feel like a microcosm that's a bit too representative...of how things have panned out, at this point. Caelus's earnest inclinations always had been a point of fascination to observe, rare as the quality is to come by. But that same honest tendency is even more of a double-edged blade now, in the way it colors his words and actions here. The way ulterior motives can no longer be readily assumed, which means that what remains...is sentiment. That Luocha cannot afford to get entangled in, not even one-sidedly.

By comparison, the undertone of animosity that finally starts emerging as Caelus continues is almost reassuring to pick up. Even if it does not bode well--even if none of this bodes well at all, really--the Stellaron's muted hum so close behind his head, the casual bent that persists in Caelus's words despite the goading. The hands that won't stop touching--

Thumbs press against the back of his neck, playing on the tension there, a little painful and not the right kind of pain. The knee-jerk response that wants to form, independent of thought, sits somewhere between wincing and pushing back into the harsh but relieving pressure; Luocha manages to resist exhibiting either, tightly as he still holds to his self-control, sitting up a little straighter in the seat and nothing more. ...But then Caelus is leaning in, the warmth of his body over Luocha's shoulder a sharp contrast to the coolness of the cell this close, the Stellaron's predatory purr all the clearer. Hot breath in his ear, an inevitable prickle of sensation. Luocha reflexively leans away slightly, from Caelus's deceptively sweet mouth and the coarser words spoken from it. A breath leaves him a little more sharply than it should have, half a scoff, half something else. Cracks, at last, in the placid facade.]

I did tell you that the choice was yours. [Just as it had been Luocha's choice in turn, to indulge him in the end. Really, the blame distributes about equally here--if any of this were about blame to begin with. Which it isn't. That much is clear...but the question is now what remains, if not blame. There is the beginning of a suspicion forming, under the press of those too-clever fingers on his neck...though giving it water would mean a lot of things. Does he really plan to...?] Am I also to be flattered that you liked it, horrible idea that it was?

[Sometimes he wishes he could mute his own guesswork.]

...Just what are you planning to do in here, then, if you'll seek neither answers nor a way to vent any frustrations? You haven't many options here, you realize.

[receptacles]

[ Then, at last — the Stellaron laughs.

It's a pulse more than a real sound, a real voice. Luocha cannot see or hear this so much as he will feel this: it laughs. It unhinges its jaw and smacks its lips, displaying fangs and strings of saliva, like the wet, open maw of a beast. It purrs. Caelus, for his part, feels something in him snap when Luocha pulls slightly away from him; his blood surges in his veins as the Stellaron's sound flows through him like so much adrenaline.

It's not a clean break, though — not something that manifests as immediate action. He doesn't do anything immediately. But his blood is boiling. His heart is racing. The Stellaron is accelerating with it, driving him towards a direction that has no good ends.

It makes him feel a little bit sick to think that this is going to be a lot easier than he thought it would be.

He chuckles anyway, because it feels like the right sort of thing to do, and he doesn't answer Luocha's question again. ]

Scared of me, Luocha? [ He moves his thumbs a little lower, still rubbing at that same unhurried pace. ] What's there to be afraid of? I've never been anything but good for you.

[ He straightens his spine, pulling away, because Luocha has pulled away, too. ]

Like when you put your fingers in my mouth, made me beg you to let me come... Remember? You liked that just as much as I did.

[ Caelus's hands go still. One sturdy hand reaches up towards the blond's jaw again, but this time he rests his index finger lightly on the man's bottom lip, almost as if testing to see if he'll bite, or waiting to see if Luocha will let Caelus put his fingers in his mouth, too. He doesn't actually venture any further than the bottom lip, though, because he wants to hear Luocha's response to what he's said. ]

[casketeer]

[The Stellaron laughs, flexes its jaw, shifts and coils its amorphous sonorous shape into an endlessly hungry beast in subliminal form--and this, for the first time, is nearly familiar. Even if it yet doesn't swell quite large enough, stretch and reach out quite ravenously enough...still.

It's the most reminiscent of those cancers consuming worlds that it's ever been, in this body, in this moment. And there's only one thing for it to consume in this room presently, now isn't there?

...Alarm would be warranted here. As if everything else leading up to this point hasn't also been ample cause for alarm anyhow. Caelus's question is hardly too out of left field, in that sense, and Luocha already knows that pulling away even that slight bit was too much give, the precarious balance of the already-skewed power dynamic here tipping even further out of his own favor. There's not going to be much opportunity for damage control or course correction at this point, too little far too late. But that's sensibility speaking...and Luocha still has his pride, all the same.

As if he hasn't already stared down prospects far more bitter than this. As if a certain level of steeliness hasn't already gotten him this far--]

Don't give yourself too much credit. [Clipped and cool in a way that his tone never has been before, at least never in front of Caelus. The cracks in the facade are already splitting apart to the point of little salvage, in this sense, for all that Luocha presses on as if it's still in place.] Fear has not visited me in a long time, and it won't here. Much less from you. Why, do you find the idea pleasing?

[His smile has already faded well before Caelus's hand is on his jaw again, a finger pressing upon his lip. --There's no bite, but no yield either, mouth thinning and his posture entirely stilling. Nearly statue-like, if not for the breath still being drawn with painstaking control--in, out, soft words painting over Caelus's fingertip.]

...I will admit it is a bit surprising. This, coming from you. [From the boy who had, indeed, begged so very sweetly and eagerly for release back in that hotel room, on that chair. Who had been happy to acquiesce to unkind kindly-worded requests even afterwards. Seemingly anything to garner approval, praise, affection--motions reminiscent enough of affection, anyway. There's really a very fascinating duality here, some detached thing in the back of Luocha's thoughts muses distantly, though really it's probably always been present. Caelus simply had no cause or reason to tap into anything else in his presence, before. But now...well. At least there's not much need for pretense anymore at this point.] It's quite loud now. You must be hearing it too. I suppose you've always had the capacity, haven't you?

[receptacles]

[ Luocha's voice has turned just slightly colder. There's a kind of rejection in this that still stings, even now, but Caelus tells himself that it's only the masks being torn off, only the truth hiding behind the facade that he always knew was a facade to begin with. He shakes his head ruefully, and — at last, in a move that might come as a bit of a surprise — takes his hands off Luocha's shoulders and lip.

Yes. He can hear the Stellaron in his heart. He supposes Luocha can hear it too. ]

Honestly? I don't like being this messed up either. But, yeah, most of the time... I'm holding back.

[ Because he does, really, feel very messed up. The monster that he tries to keep collared inside of himself is awake and alert and prowling, and adrenaline is rushing through his bloodstream in a way that only rouses its hunger. But — not yet, he promises it, holding it by its metaphysical scruff. Just a few minutes longer.

...Nothing more he needs to hide, then. This is a bit unexpected, but suddenly, Caelus sighs and says — ]

Hey, can I monologue for a sec?

[ Very comical, in the way that he's often been.

The chair was made to hold men and beasts even bigger than Luocha, if need be, so there's ample room on the seat for Caelus to sort of perch on one end of it. He does. The Trailblazer leans his weight slightly on the man's arm; if he leaned his head far back enough, he would probably be able to rest his head on Luocha's shoulder, but mostly he's got his back turned to the man. The flip side of this new position is that Luocha still can't clearly see his face, but that's okay, Caelus figures. He can feel his weight, and the Stellaron in his body, now loud enough for both of them to hear. ]

...I'll explain myself first, since I'm not like you. I don't like leaving people hanging, if I can help it — and I don't want anyone else to get any wrong ideas about why I'm doing this, either.

[ He clears his throat, and then the first thing he says is this: ]

See, if I'm gonna be honest — really, really honest — there's a part of me that doesn't care all that much, honestly. About the Stellaron, and Phantylia, and the other stuff that happened.

[ The officers observing them are, again, probably not pleased about this one. He waves his hand, as if fully aware of his audience and their concerns. ]

I mean, I care. About the people who were affected. I care about Jing Yuan, and Yanqing, and Fu Xuan, and everyone else. But it's like — you probably have your reasons. You're not gonna tell me what they are, but you probably have reasons. For all I know, they're even good reasons. I mean, you seem really smart. I'll even be generous and say that they're probably good reasons.

[ He scuffs his shoes against the tile beneath them, as if suddenly concerned about the dirt on the sole of his sneaker. ]

You're not with the Disciples of Sanctus Medicus, are you? ...It doesn't matter if you are. You know, for a minute there, I got to know their leader, Dan Shu. I hate to say it, but I really liked her. She was crazy, but still, I liked her. It's not like she could have been anything but crazy. She was born blind, found out that Lan killed the woman she loved, watched everyone celebrate it as a huge victory... 'cause Aeons don't give a fuck about people, you know? And people don't give a fuck about people, you know?

[ A bitter, entirely too empathetic laugh.

The Stellaron is doing an interesting thing, in the subliminal plane: it is waiting to sink its fangs into Luocha, of that there can be no doubt, but having been told to heel for the moment, it sits sort of coiled around Caelus's heart. The greed is still there, but it's characterized by a sort of symbiosis, a protectiveness. ]

So when I really think about it, it's like — whatever your issue is, you probably have a point. [ He lifts his voice slightly, as if to address the Ten-Lords Commission directly: ] It's not like the Xianzhou is all that great.

[ He shrugs; he's close enough to Luocha right now that the man will be able to feel the movement. ]

Maybe it's not even about the Xianzhou. Maybe you're trying to change the world. Seems valid. The universe isn't all that great. I like being alive, but even I've thought more than once that life in this world could be a lot better.

[ Now, by his tone, Caelus is not quite done — but still, he pauses, just to asses Luocha's reactions to all of this. ]

Just feels like you probably have a point.

[casketeer]

[It is a surprise...when the fingertip pushes no further in the end, and the weight of the palm on his shoulder finally lifts. Again, as before, there's little relief to derive from the reprieve. This entire interaction so far has been one strange pivot after another, like this, never quite easing the uncertainty Luocha so thoroughly dislikes. --Perhaps if only he could properly see Caelus's face, he'd be able to get a better read...but in the end there's only the proximity of his body when he perches onto the chair, and the Stellaron's sharpened intent ringing in both their ears. Not as if that intent has receded any, either. At this point it's only a matter of time, Luocha's certain, before the restraint that seems to be holding it back is finally lifted. But before then...there's the protective way it stirs in Caelus's person. And the tone that Caelus himself is using, as he goes on to speak of several things. With a frankness Luocha would never impart himself, yes; a decision, seemingly, to clear the air firmly where his own motives are concerned.

The officers in observation have probably been none too happy about pretty much everything that's transpired in here thus far, really, though there's a certain impressive boldness in the way Caelus so flagrantly shrugs any last vestiges of value for their opinions aside. Sanctus Medicus--suffering souls trapped in lives too long, snared by webs of promises they'll never attain--no, Luocha isn't affiliated with them, for all that their foundation of desperation had made for very simple negotiations. But he doesn't confirm or deny anything aloud, promptly as Caelus sets aside the importance of the answer. The matter of the Xianzhou as a whole, too...and the fact that Luocha's sights are likely set rather beyond them...

Yes, all around, it's not actually as if the Trailblazer is entirely off-base. It's another interesting sort of duality here: the ways in which he seems so very inexperienced with this world in some aspects, and yet perceives other parts of it so much more sharply than others. Perhaps there's an underlying reason for this. A pity this isn't going to be an occasion for investigating that, though.

No, instead, Luocha remains still and quiet throughout the monologue...until it's paused, ever so generously receptive to input. He stirs a little then, and his tone is wry.]

It sounds as if you've put plenty of thought into this. ...Yes, perhaps, my cause has a point--or perhaps it might not. Such a determination would only be in your own eyes. And I will not say anything one way or the other, no. For even if I did...the answer would be pointless. Everyone thinks that their reasons are "good" reasons, that their goals are "valid" ones. Those who are willing to sacrifice anything to pursue those goals, however, are the ones to bring them closest to realization in the end.

[Luocha turns his head slightly, as if he might yet be able to glimpse Caelus's face after all--though of course, in the end, he cannot.]

...I do not seek absolution for mine. Which is just as well, since that also isn't what you plan to give me here, is it? [As if Caelus could give him such a thing anyhow, even if he wanted to. As if anyone could. No, at the least, that path is firmly closed to near everyone in this particular vicinity...]

[receptacles]

[ Caelus laughs hollowly, shaking his head. ]

I don't think I can give you that anymore.

[ Anymore?

And yet, swiftly, he moves on — ]

I guess what we're both saying is that "good" and "bad" are all just relative in the end? Which — you know, smarter people have said already. [ He shrugs. ] But — personally, I couldn't do it. Sacrifice people, I mean. Like when I think about all the Cloud Knights that died or were mara-struck in the wake of Phantylia's rampage — and the aunties and uncles down in Aurum Alley who give out free samples and are just trying to make a day's living and stuff — I couldn't do it. I don't know how you can stomach it. Living with these people, talking to them. And then... getting a bunch of them killed.

[ He leans his head back against Luocha's shoulder; his grey hair is soft as it fans out over Luocha's black shirt. A wry, weary tone creeps into his voice at this angle. ]

I guess that makes me a person who doesn't realize his goals, or whatever. I don't know. I think I'm doing okay so far.

[ Caelus lets out a long breath from between his lips, and then continues, slowly leaning back onto his knees again: ]

So we pretend, right? Now I'm in this position where I have to do "bad" things to a "bad" person and that's supposed to make me a "good" person in the end, and we both know that doesn't make sense. But we pretend. And I don't really want to hurt you, but I think you gave up your right to not to be hurt when you launched the Stellaron onto the Luofu, and...

[receptacles]

...and I really liked you.

I know it was just fun for you. But I really liked you. I don't just mean when we had sex. I liked you because you were nice to everyone, and you were cute when you ate everything at the food stall, and you were always weird but I just liked listening to you talk.

I could have done that. For a long time. Just listened to you talk.

[receptacles]

[ At last — he shifts his weight fully onto the chair. His shoulders turn before his long legs do, but it only takes an instant for the Stellaron's influence to snap over him again, thrumming bass confidence back into his voice where it had gone soft and broken and hoarse with honesty. The look in his eyes — ]

So — you know. Just to wrap this all up. I thought a lot about what I was going to do to you when they let me see you. What I was going to say. And I figured —

[ — the look in his eyes is exceedingly tortured, even as the Stellaron-madness creeps into them and turns them molten gold again, and his hands press Luocha back against the chair, fisting hard enough to unclasp the buttons holding his high collar together. ]

— since nobody cares about my morals anyway, and everyone wants to see me do something horrible, I might as well just do whatever I want to you.

[casketeer]

[Anymore, hm. Yet another thing there's little time to examine. Truly, altogether, there's...actually quite a lot all around, here. Many things that probably need unpacking and probably never will be. But oh, here that inexperience dwelling as the other side of Caelus's strange coin of duality rises to surface once more, brief as it might be. Luocha stilled again when the boy's head made brief proper contact with his shoulder, but a slight sigh pressed out at the mention of the death toll. Price exacted that it was--]

Sacrifice is not a cost learned overnight, after all. One either starts small, or unwillingly large, and then one familiarizes with the weight over time... [And maybe it gets a little easier, too, when you're already walking around with little left to stomach much of anything. With nothing but that empty thing in the heart that never fills, ever aches, until you hardly feel anything but exhausted anymore. ...Not to mention that the Luofu was not his first stop,] You may yet gain such experience for yourself, whether you want to or not, as all living things eventually do in this world. ...Regardless, I will not apologize, for that or for your impressions in earlier times.

[Even if it's regrettable. Exceedingly regrettable. A consequence, in the end, of a mask a little too well-worn--a mask that may even have some genuine components, in some ways. It should have been just a means to duck notice and overt suspicion, and yet...for all Luocha's best efforts to distance himself from the majority of encounters upon the Luofu, it seems, he still just wasn't quite successful enough to avoid this one. It's...such a strangeness, to hear it so plainly, that Caelus liked him so. Even before the sex. Perhaps would have continued to even without any sex at all, if they had indeed done nothing but talk.

At least it's past-tense, that same detached branch of thought remarks distantly. Just as well. Ideally it stays that way, and if this meeting here will serve to sever whatever's left entirely, then perhaps there will be at least some sort of beneficial result here. Because it never should have reached such a point that Caelus's voice would now grow hoarse with the honesty, and his eyes--

--Yes, finally a proper look at his eyes, when Caelus turns at last, weight sliding over the seat and practically into his lap. The conflicted torture couldn't be clearer in them, which--is not a sight that Luocha had expected to see. A regrettable thing in its own right. Enough so that the odd twinge Luocha finds himself feeling, for just a second, can't be entirely attributed to the strange way the Stellaron's thrall is already clearly overtaking those eyes too, driving motion at last. (Though that's obvious too. An end to the restraint, now, tenuous as it had obviously already been...)

This is going to be unpleasant. ...So Luocha nearly hopes. It would be easier, if it were completely unpleasant. Straightforward violent torture truly would be better, because otherwise, if it's not, it'll be--well, there's no use in dread at this point. Either way, quite objectively, this is simply another price being paid--something seized which must now be repaid. The fact it still places such conflict upon Caelus is telling in itself. But the hunger of the Stellaron, exacerbated in this way, will likely be closing the gap regardless--

Hands press him back against the chair, press out Luocha's breath sharply in turn; the buttons on his high collar are twisted apart, but his shoulders remain square and his expression remains controlled, save for the tight frown settling upon it now. (Save for how, unseen, his hands have curled into fruitless fists against the bindings restricting them to the back of the chair.)]

...I see. Very well. [Breathless, but still measured. Some semblance of something placid, despite everything. Caelus will have to put active effort into drawing out anything more; Luocha may not be able to do anything else, but at least there is this last form of difficulty, something demanding work. Green eyes lock unwavering with that unnatural molten gold.] And what is it that you want?

[Is there something that you want, right now? Maybe the soft cadence is familiar, as all of this is maybe a bit too familiar in the moment--a chair, a straddled lap. Despite how extremely different things are now. There's some sort of irony here...it would truly be very funny, even. If either of them were in any sort of laughing mood about it.]

[receptacles]

[ In lieu of a response, Caelus brings his mouth crashing down against Luocha's lips.

There is a part of him that regrets having said everything that he did, but another part that had to do it no matter the cost— wasn't cold-hearted enough to keep up that indifferent act, could not have ever walked into this room and ruthlessly took what he wanted from Luocha's body and left without explaining why he did it or how much that would hurt him too. But as much as he'd regret that, he'll also have to regret this. The real truth is that from the very moment he decided to reach out to Luocha in a whimsical moment of weakness, there just wasn't any way he was ever going to end this without getting hurt, but it's fine. It's fine now.

There's nothing Luocha can say to hurt "Caelus" anymore.

The blond is saying something, but the creature that has coiled in the chaos of the Trailblazer's lusts won't let him hear it in a way that matters. The Ten-Lords Commission will never be able to see that look that was on the Trailblazer's face, but it will be able to see — even hear — the way he sucks at Luocha's tongue, messy and eager and sloppy, coaxing the man's chin up for more, entwining their tongues in ways that will leave them both breathless, that will make soft wet sounds of moisture echo in the silent room.

Does Luocha accede to it? Or does he struggle? Either way, as they kiss, Caelus's hands undo his shirt, tracing a reverent trail down his chest and abs to the button of his pants. Once he's there, he ends the kiss with a vicious bite to Luocha's tongue, hard enough to send the familiar taste of his blood into Caelus's mouth again.

It's just as well; shamelessly, Caelus slurps it up and licks his lips, openly and hungrily swallowing Luocha's blood. The taste of iron makes him feel more like a beast, helps him think only of the Stellaron pulsing in his ears, telling him to keep going, to take what he wants. ]

Kinda feel bad for your interrogators, really... Have they figured out yet that you get off on pain?

[casketeer]

[Luocha's question never gets an answer, and in the end it doesn't really matter. Not when he already knew it anyhow. Not when Caelus is barely listening anymore, clearly hearing something else, following the demands of that untethered greed to its end.

Still. There's some initial push against the kiss, yes, as much of a struggle as can be had in a position like this; the back of the chair is unyielding, and the heat of Caelus's mouth is insistent, but Luocha's lips part only when his chin is coaxed up and that greedy tongue's pushing in, tangling with his own. A kiss that's wet and messy and suffocating--far from the slow and measured kind of kiss Luocha would favor, at least initially leading into sex--and even when his mouth eventually yields there's still a resistance in the set of his jaw, in the flex of his tongue against Caelus's invading one. Luocha's breath is tense and quiet even as it's robbed, a measure of other things being held back--an evident determination to take no pleasure in this, no matter how familiar the heat and taste of Caelus's mouth might be, no matter how distinctly that contrasts against this sense of being overwhelmed already. But--

--the Trailblazer knows, of course, where to hit where it hurts. In multiple senses of the word. He bites down viciously, and a warm iron tang floods Luocha's mouth too, and the sting finally draws a proper gasp from him despite his best efforts. His head moves as if it doesn't know whether to jerk away or press into the ache; Caelus makes the choice for him, overtaking his mouth again, lapping at the blood as if he already can't get enough.

It's a perverse sensation. Just as perverse as the string of mingling saliva stretching between their lips when they part, dampening a corner of Luocha's flushed mouth in a way he'd never normally tolerate. Just as perverse as the hands pulling apart his shirt all the while, warm palms trailing over bared skin chilled in the open air, searching ever lower. On any other person there would likely be lingering bruises or cuts from the interrogations of days past, but Luocha's body remains ever pristine of such things with enough time passed. Rather remarkably, the scent of pale flowers still even lingers on him now, fainter but distinct all the same. Such are the little gifts of the Abundance's "favor"...

It takes a second or so's delay for Caelus's remark to sink in properly. Luocha has to recover enough breath for a response, head tipping back against the seat in this brief reprieve from Caelus's mouth, eyes half-lidded and darkened with something difficult to pin down.]

--They've learned nothing, for all their efforts. [Much to their collective frustration of late. They've not even managed to get a single straight answer out of him where any motive might be concerned, much less picking up on anything else along such lines. ...Besides which, there are different kinds of pain. For Luocha, truthfully, it's as much about the intent as it is about the sensation--but this isn't what he says out loud. Tone lilting in a derisively vindictive note, even slightly ragged as it is, even as his tongue still aches:] Yet you'd give them a show. Do you really think they'll absolve you, like this?

[Not that Luocha's expecting to actually impart any second thoughts upon Caelus's resolve at this point. The Trailblazer's misgivings have almost certainly been overtaken by the Stellaron's singular intent; the course is already set. Still, if Caelus is going to leave his mouth freed at times, Luocha will deliver such barbs with it instead--while he still can--while there's no other real way to rebuff those traitorously sensitive touches over his body...]

[receptacles]

Maybe they won't. Who cares? Let 'em watch the show.

[ Vaguely, and without real bite to it, Caelus thinks to himself that maybe he should gag the prisoner. It wouldn't even be hard — he's pretty sure he can do it with a function of the torture chair if need be — but the argument against doing it is that it'll be too much like fucking a limp sex doll if he shuts Luocha up, and he might feel a little too sick thinking about it later, if he goes through it that way. The argument for doing it is that even Caelus will eventually get annoyed if Luocha keeps luring him into pointless philosophical conversations when he's just trying to fuck, and even he's not entirely sure what he might do, in this dark sort of mood, if he's sufficiently riled.

He's not all that bothered, though, by what Luocha's just said. Whatever. Doesn't matter anymore. If the Ten-Lords hasn't already concluded that he didn't have anything to do with this, after every horrible and honest thing he just said, then they're dumber than he thought. The Trailblazer just smiles bitterly with the taste of blood in his mouth, diligently undoing the front closure of Luocha's pants and pulling them down to his thighs as he leans in, closing his eyes and pressing his nose into the merchant's hair like a lover would. ]

You always smell so good...

[ Voice soft, low, dangerous. Murmured. He doesn't bother to hide his deep intake of breath, slow and steady. This scent — it did always have a bit of a hypnotic effect on him. A relaxing effect, now tainted with the memory of arousal. ]

You'll look good, too, once I'm done with you. All fucked out with my cum dripping out of your hole.

[ He says this, but — tellingly, interestingly, Caelus still hasn't moved to take off his own clothes.

The Trailblazer doesn't need both hands to extract Luocha's cock from its confines, or to start pumping it, either, so his left hand works on tweaking and pinching one of Luocha's pretty, flushed, perfect nipples while his right hand rubs and massages and coaxes the merchant's cock to fullness. ]

Need you to get a little wet for me, kitten. Can you do that for me?

[ There's a bit of mischief to it — he seems to know full well that Luocha is probably the older of the two of them, but it seems that Caelus is enjoying his momentary power, anyway. Impishly, he nips at the blond's earlobe, but this time the snap of his teeth and his lips emerges as nothing more than a playful, gentle nibble. ]

...Or are you going to deny me every step of the way?

[casketeer]

[Who cares, let them watch, as Caelus drags more of him into exposure and smiles that bitter smile. ...Then again, the prospect of an unknown number of eyes watching from beyond the cell really probably should be the least of Luocha's concerns right now, even if the idea of it still rankles against that dignity he prefers conducting himself with before audiences of any kind. Something Caelus is quite clearly intentionally playing upon, too, saying the filthy things he does after that. (Honestly, though, do the Ten-Lords even have any precedent or process for something like this? In the span of a few millennia, perhaps interrogations have broken down like this. One wonders if there will be any motion to intervene; Luocha already assumes not, however. They're an entity fixated on punishment first and foremost, after all, and this too doubtless falls into some sort of criteria there--)

Caelus leans close, warm breath painting into Luocha's hair--far too much like a lover. His hands play over Luocha's chest, his cock--far too deft, too clever. There is a pleasure in this--as there must be, coaxing and familiar as Caelus's touch is--a burgeoning heat already coiling low in his gut with each pump over his sensitive length, chasing electric with each teasing pinch of hardening nipples. Luocha's own body betrays him with responses too plain: the way a shiver straightens his spine, and his waist twists minutely in a futile recoil from that hot palm as he hardens under it, thighs tensing beneath the Trailblazer's weight. Even the nip at his ear is too gentle, now, because there's truly something so much more sickening about a lack of anything properly vicious here. That Caelus won't even grant him the pretense of being fully harsh about this is an agonizing thing in itself, and perhaps that's the point.

But there's the goading, at least. Clear as it is that Caelus is relishing his advantage in the moment.]

Please, [not begging, (not yet,) more acerbic, as bitter things are,] you need not mock me with your pretensions of choice.

[Muttered in Caelus's ear in turn, close as he's drawn--but it's thin, a bit strained. Luocha's breath can't help but draw in heavier unbidden, yet just shy of panting but still distinct in the rise and fall of his chest. Precum starting to bead at his tip, eventually, inevitably.]

[receptacles]

[ Caelus smiles, letting the heady pleasure of conquest claim his senses. Triumph feels like so much glorious ichor in his veins. There is something damning and judgmental in his voice when he says: ]

You had a choice, Luocha. You had a lot of choices.

[ He could — and undoubtedly is — referring to the Stellaron crisis, here. That selfsame cancer that is running through his blood, making him unstoppable, vicious, mean. But he deliberately turns the conversation away from that, all the same. Serenely, the Trailblazer presses a soft kiss to Luocha's cheek as his hand moves faster, more vigorously, more unyieldingly. ]

Like it was your choice to invite me up to your hotel room twice. Oh, it was my choice to say yes, too, I don't deny that. Can't say it was a mistake when we both did it twice, right? [ Cruelly, he rubs his finger right into the slit of Luocha's erection, thumb rubbing the sensitive flare of his leaking cockhead over and over and over. ] What's the matter, baby? I'm not your type anymore? Or is it just that you don't like not being in control?

[ Caelus kisses his mouth once more, sweet this time, not too needy. The bite to Luocha's tongue seems to have healed already. He's not actually all that bothered by the blond's attempts to bite back; Luocha's body is being honest enough with what it wants and needs, even if his words imply denial. Again, it's funny: they never really talked about anything this serious at all, and yet the Trailblazer knows perfectly well that the merchant always seems to be at war with his own body, even in matters like this. ]

You don't like people finding out you're more human than you pretend you are? Want me to tell everyone how filthy you like it?

[ Biting questions, meant to arouse more than degrade. Careful movements, never quite enough to bring the beautiful blond to completion. ]

They should have seen what you looked like when we hooked up. Pretty, dignified, mysterious Luocha... so eager to get me on my knees and shove his cock in my mouth.

[ Once he feels like he's edged Luocha for long enough, Caelus swipes off a bit of Luocha's wet precum, rubs and rolls it over his untouched entrance; he hums thoughtfully, though, as he realizes it's going to take them much too long to get enough to make this comfortable.

This doesn't stop him from continuing, in that same low mocking tone: ]

C'mon, say it so they can hear. I'm hot and I make you feel good and you love it.

[casketeer]

[...Indeed, Luocha doesn't like not being in control. That's a severe understatement, really. For a man who banks so heavily upon his grasp of it, to carry out what he does, to continue the bitter journey to the end that must be reached...there's no greater insult--(no greater vulnerability)--than to have it stripped away. In this situation that is evenly half of his own making, no less, a result of choices he'd certainly made, but failed to properly trace to the kind of endpoint they've now reached here. Because he's still more human than not, yes, despite his own painstaking efforts. Despite all that has been lost already. A human with human fallacies cannot attain what he's seeking, and with a heart so hollowed out he can sometimes even fool himself into thinking he's finally moved beyond that weakness, but.

Caelus's pace grows faster, firmer, shamelessly plying for more sensation in that vindictive rub of his thumb at the head of Luocha's length, and yet still steering just shy of full stimulation with a wickedly measured sort of intent. It's torturous--(it's delicious)--luring up a heat that has nowhere to properly go, fruitlessly as Luocha's body might try to reach it. Cock at full attention now, muscles in his abdomen flexing and shuddering, hips haphazardly half-rolling in a conflicted need to push up into the not-enough tightness of those curled fingers. Luocha's wrists are going to be rubbed raw anew, how he reflexively tugs back against their bindings with every new ripple of traitorously keen feeling. The kiss against his cheek is a tender contrast in the most unwanted way; the languid kiss to his lips is even more of an affront. Yet Luocha doesn't have the presence of mind to turn his head away from it in time, finds himself panting properly into Caelus's warm mouth before he's pulling away again.

Here are his own curiosities, his own fascinations, coming back round to reap what's been carelessly sowed. --And the worst part is how Caelus still commands such a unique sort of magnetism, even like this, maybe especially like this. Clearly savoring the power he can exert with his touch as a predator would savor prey between jaws, mocking and cruel in whims unrestricted, almost an entirely different person from the boy so anxious to take hold of the simplest approvals--but the potential had always been there. That initial impression of an irreverent surface belying vast things beneath holds more true than ever, now...

Maybe that's what truly drew Luocha too far in, interest in the Stellaron there entangling into something more.

Maybe that's why--even now--even as preference and pride and ambition bitterly hate it, this taste of powerlessness--there's still a part of him...that relishes it, isn't there? The novelty of being taken apart like this--

(Or is that just what his body wants to believe? It's getting more difficult to think with clarity--)

It's true, there always has been a physical appeal in the Trailblazer. It's true, he does know how to make a man feel good. Traits that had been so appealingly pliable once before, now weaponized with such irony. Luocha resents how easily and pointedly (and arousingly) Caelus brings it to spoken word, all of it--just as he resents the mock kindness of his lips contrasting against those infernal hands. He needs--(he wants)--he needs to, has to cast out for something to grasp at on the basest level. Something more like a thorn. Needs the sting and burn of proper adversity, something he'd at least know how to weather.]

As if you weren't so very eager to please, yourself-- [Breathless, painstaking, eyes fluttering shut against a particularly infuriating-tantalizing stroke.] Searching for any semblance of affection wherever you could find it. Upright and honest friends--all around you--and yet you'd come to me, when you knew better.

[There's a rare sort of venom to this bite, now, too clearly as it usually indicates a rise--but at this point it's a little late to be maintaining appearances, after all. Not when Caelus has been actively sinking claws into Luocha's composure for the last few minutes now, less a fraying and more a shredding. The sensation of something pressing lower, over his entrance, a fingertip dampened with his own precum--it sends a slight but distinct jolt through Luocha's frame, tensing but unable to withdraw from the touch, and an unbidden sound of something between revulsion and need finally half-escapes from his throat before he's biting it back. Part of him rejects the obvious intent there; another part of him wishes Caelus would just get on with it, the more viciously the better.]

--Greedy boy. I won't praise you, if you aren't going to tear it out of me--

[receptacles]

[ Oh, now this is fun. This is vicious. This is much more interesting than trading back-and-forths over tepid morality. Now things are getting personal, and Luocha is sinking his teeth into the things that make Caelus a vulnerable hypocrite in the worst way — and the only issue with that is that Caelus has already accepted those things about himself, so he simply smiles like a wolf with prey in its mouth, about to bite down and claim the kill.

Luocha looks so good like this, flushed and panting — hard and leaking despite his smart mouth, wrists and arms chafing vainly against his bindings. Strands of blond hair, all gold and gossamer, falling down his shoulders in the loveliest way.

Isn't this nice? some mad part of Caelus whispers, in a dark corner of his heart that is less his own and more the Stellaron's. Isn't this familiar? The boy who wants praise and the man who likes withholding it. Greedy boy, he called you, and you like it. Look at how we've gone back to the same old tricks.

And yet all he does is offer another soft laugh before he sinks his teeth into Luocha's shoulder, vicious but without real heat to it, as though he's merely trying to placate the man. ]

...Patience, babe. I'll fuck you rough the way you like it — just let me warm up to it first.

[ Anyway — back to business. He licks his teeth clean of blood again, considering the dilemma he's now faced with. First of all, they need lube. They don't have a lot of options for that. There might be something that could substitute for it in that torturer's toolkit that the Ten-Lords provided over there in the corner, but Caelus doesn't trust that any oil in there wouldn't have unpleasant side effects. So...

Do I have anything with me? the Trailblazer wonders, not without a bit of internal anxiety. He pulls his hand away from Luocha's cock just to go through what he's got in his coat pockets, which isn't much, since the gaolers confiscated most of his other things: at the moment, he has 50 credits, an unused tissue, the crumpled receipt from the shot of alcohol he'd had before walking into this room... and then his fingers pause over a beautiful tub of hand cream that he's had in this pocket for weeks.

It's not the sort of thing he'd normally carry around, or even buy for himself in the first place. It's too luxurious, too fancy. The hand cream was a gift from Yukong — that beautiful sorrowful pilot with too many regrets — as a gift for helping her with the Caiyi situation and because she'd noticed a bit of chafing on his palms from the way his baseball bat had burned against his gloves the last time they'd sortied together. It's very lovely and glides like butter over the skin and it's probably more expensive than he really deserves.

If Yukong ever found out that Caelus had used it to fuck a captive in the Shackling Prison, she would probably rightly be disgusted.

It'll do, Caelus decides, as he places both of his hands on the crotch of Luocha's pants where they're pulled taut across his thighs.

Then he tears the garment apart.

It's not as though Luocha's clothes were made of paper. That was good fabric — incredibly well-woven and sturdy fabric that Caelus just ripped apart with his bare hands and a loud popping of seams and thread. The reason why is obvious — he couldn't reposition Luocha the way he'd like with them on, but also couldn't get them off past the shackles on his ankles. So. ]

Sorry about the pants. I'll make it up to you.

[ He says this as he repositions their legs, moving his own thighs from where they've been straddling Luocha's lap, rearranging their bodies so that the blond's thighs are spread and he has better access to that lovely tight hole he's currently got his mind set on getting into. Caelus opens his tub of hand cream to coat his fingers in the silky lotion within, taking the time to warm it between his fingers properly before rubbing and pushing them into that hot tight passage — ]

Not that it matters... You're hot when you're mad at me.

[ For all that Caelus often seems lackadaisical and inattentive, he's surprisingly brisk and methodical about finding Luocha's prostate and pulsing into it — albeit with the occasional tight grip on the base of his cock to make sure he doesn't come. He's being really very rude about this. ]

[casketeer]

[Not enough, not enough, it's not enough. In some ways it's more degrading than the toying with his body, the way Caelus so serenely takes Luocha's spoken barbs in stride. The way it seems as if he's made himself numb even to pressed-upon bruises, pointed provocations, the Stellaron's greed a thorough insulation. To scrape for anything that could be grasped hard enough for a reaction, to find some fraction of a thing he might yet be able to control, even if only to direct a more desired level of animosity to himself--only to find nothing, to be denied, to be laughed at--perhaps Caelus is aware of how keenly frustrating it is, for Luocha. How very little the sting of those teeth in the flesh of his shoulder do to soothe it, pain without vehemence, a sharply pleasurable thing delivered to nerves with nothing offsetting it. Not enough anger--not enough spite--instead something placating, still too sickeningly indulgent. ...Caelus had already stated his reasons, of course. That he isn't doing this from a place of resentment or vengeance, not really. Which is what makes this worse--infinitely worse--moreso as time goes on, and Luocha finds that he cannot even invoke anything properly hateful here.

That he's apparently meant to weather a twisted affectionate humiliation, in this.

Honestly, in a way one has to hand it to the Trailblazer; as far as Luocha's concerned, he's managing to inflict a punishment far worse than anything the Ten-Lords have managed thus far...

There's still little human deviations and delays in the delivery, too, yet more ways in which this is all far too intimately grounding. The brief reprieve when Caelus releases his cock is clearly less than intentional, in that moment the boy takes to search his pockets, and in the slight pause that would be comically awkward in any other light Luocha is left wondering--detached, ever moreso, almost feverishly--if the boy even had any of this initially in mind when he first set foot in this cell. How much of this was planned, and how much of it was impulsive? Difficult to tell...and in the end it's hard to say whether having the answers would be better or worse, really.

Caelus tears his pants apart, and Luocha cannot help the half-startled half-disbelieving scoff that slips out.]

You--truly are that determined, to play the part of a beast--

[Maybe it was going to be phrased more like a question; even he's not quite sure. It really does feel as if composure's slipping ever further away, though, when the first mixture of feeling to accompany this is a visceral sense of how absurd this entire situation is...but also a muddle of something surprised-yet-piqued, in noting that was very good fabric the Trailblazer just ripped apart. With his hands. Those same hands now inexorably spreading apart Luocha's thighs, and being coated with something that looks far more like a hand lotion than lube brought along with intent, and--

Luocha's entrance is quite tight, yes. Not enough so to hinder the expensively silky quality of the lotion, but if Luocha has ever allowed himself to be penetrated in the past it was quite awhile ago; Caelus had never been permitted this opportunity in their previous encounters, at any rate. Either way, the sensation's foreign enough to punch a gasp from Luocha's lungs, his entire frame tensing against the sting and burn of being so methodically spread open. (In a way--already--there's an exhilaration even in this pain, isn't that terrible?) He's not able to do much else to hinder the intent press and glide of those strong fingers, probing and searching, until--]

Ah-- [It's not particularly difficult to tell, no, when Caelus finds his prostate. Pressure presses deliciously on a spot sending sparks right up his spine, and Luocha's thighs tremble as he twists futilely in the seat, trapped against that maddening touch, a choked sound spilling from his lips. Then again--again--a punishing pulse, as the Trailblazer hones on it--and Luocha's bitter resolve to bite back any pleasing noises is crumbling, a proper desperate whine pressing out of his throat of its own volition. Reflexive, inner walls clench hot and sweetly around Caelus's fingers as he pumps them in and out, the lotion-damp slick of the motion audible and obscene in the still air of the cell.

It's an ever-prettier sight for Caelus and the Ten-Lords alike to enjoy, no doubt, the way the merchant's hips shudder and lift into the sensation of their own volition; the way that lovely pink blush on pale skin spreads further, warmth growing warmer, flaxen blond hair spilling further over his shoulders as his head moves in tandem with gasping breath from parting lips; the way his cock twitches and drips with every agonizing stroke, flushed and trapped so very rudely in Caelus's restrictive grasp, still denied release.

He should--say something--some part of Luocha thinks, distantly, the part still desperate for some sort of fight in this, some way to deny the traitorous pleasure of it. Yet, with every sweet stroke against his prostate his head's drawing a blank, ever more consumed by the frustration that he can't rebuff this, can't influence this, can't--come--worked up by one of Caelus's hands only to be repeatedly restricted by the other. The boy must be enjoying this, Luocha's sure, because he knows he'd enjoy it--has enjoyed it--it really has been a closed circle, all of this, how neither of them seem able to truly untangle from those appealing things they'd so impulsively pursued in each other the first time. Despite his best efforts, there's a certain level of unfocus starting to cloud the sharpness in Luocha's eyes, even as he's still bitterly trying to watch Caelus's features, divine when he'll make his next cruel move.]

[receptacles]

[ He's beautiful. He's beautiful. Pretty doesn't even begin to encapsulate it, the way Luocha looks. Blond hair all in his face, caught on his lip, eyes glazed over and hazy even as they're glaring right into Caelus's. Hips bouncing and rolling into the Trailblazer's hands despite the half-hearted protests of that lovely mouth.

He was, honestly, having a little bit of a hard time getting it up. Caelus was, anyway. There's a lot going on, psychologically. The pressure of performing with an audience; the knowledge that what he's doing is wrong. (A desperate longing, still, for something sweeter and less cruel than this. He wanted it to be different. Wanted so many things to be different.) But seeing Luocha like this — it makes heat rush directly to Caelus's head, and, well, to the other head, too. He drags his tongue over his lips, slow and unhurried, as he takes in the vision of Luocha's body shuddering and dripping and unraveling beneath his fingers. ]

Haha... wow, look at you...

[ A curious hand traces the curves of the merchant's muscular body, still partially clothed by his shirt. Taking in the sinful sinuousness of it, the way Luocha's broad shoulders give way to his waist. As his other hand pulses into Luocha's prostate, pulling and teasing his hole loose with two, three fingers, Caelus rests his palm right above the blond's hip, thumb gripping his belly just slightly in a one-handed grasp. He'll have both hands right here soon, Caelus thinks; right here, pulling Luocha's hips down over his cock over and over and over again. ]

You know, I thought this would be harder... but honestly, I'm dying to fuck you.

[ Both hands withdraw. Caelus withdraws, too, getting up from where he's been straddling Luocha. At last, he sheds his jacket, his shirt. His pants, taut over his groin. His cock is throbbing red and dark when he pulls his underwear off and he casts everything to the floor on top of Luocha's torn trousers. ]

You look like you wanna come so bad. Think you're gonna feel that good with my cock in you?

[ One hand gripping Luocha's thigh. Another wrapped around his knee, hoisting them up as if to suggest that Luocha can wrap his legs around Caelus's waist if need be. No mercy for the arms that have been shackled behind him this whole time. Not a lot of mercy for anyone here at all. ]

...Want to find out?

[ He leans in. Catches the head of his cock on Luocha's rim; doesn't even need to use his hand to guide the motion. It's all going rather smoothly, he thinks, it can't possibly be this easy —

He pushes in, and feels warm wet hot pleasure close around all of his senses. ]

Oh, fuck... [ He twitches despite himself, sinking into his own need, a kind of jolt that tears through his spine and settles between his legs. ] Yeah, that's good...

[ He spent a couple of nights thinking about how he'd love to do this with Luocha's hand enclosed in his. Right now, his grip on the man's legs is harsh enough to ensure that he can't possibly resist. It's a little sad and a little bitter and Caelus tries to tell himself that he doesn't care anymore. ]

[casketeer]

[The Trailblazer's Stellaron-molten gold glance is searing, the way it so openly and hungrily rakes over the body underneath him. Clearly drinking in the handiwork he's wrought, relishing it. Luocha doesn't want to think about it--doesn't want to indulge it--the debauched picture he must certainly be painting this moment, for Caelus, for the surveillance over the room, for any other eyes this footage might yet pass to beyond this day. Not when there's nothing to be done about it anyhow, still firmly trapped as he is between the seat and Caelus's two--three fingers, relentless in their invading rhythm. The ache of being so patiently loosened intertwines maddeningly with periodic jabs of pleasure; every nerve ending in Luocha's body feels aflame, all the more sensitive for it. ...Which means it's that much more difficult, to try tuning out the hand that eventually traces the lean-muscled lines of his torso and waist with such fascination. Curves over his hip and belly, as if Caelus is already mapping out where he'll be gripping to bruise.

The thought should be sickening. Insulting. --It is both of those things, and yet, and yet. Caelus withdraws, pinning weight briefly no longer straddling Luocha's lap, fingertips no longer probing into his prostate, and the sense of reprieve that should have accompanied the separation--is tainted by a desperation too, irrational, treasonous. To be left opened and aching, still denied relief. To find something half like dread and half like a thrill chasing up the back of his neck, watching Caelus strip off his clothing, cock full and eager as soon as it's pulled free.

It's probably hard to tell whether the cutting heat in Luocha's glare is closer to helpless fury or bitter arousal. Perhaps it's somewhere in between.]

You thought--you thought-- [No longer drawing entirely blank in this lapse of physical teasing, but there's still a breathlessness in his words, a vehemence bordering on raw. His voice is finally just a bit less than entirely steady.] Did you doubt you'd enjoy this? Yet now you have power, and you can consume as you please. That is its nature--even if it's not yours.

[No...it's not Caelus the vessel's. Even driven to this kind of distraction, Luocha can still draw upon this much, of past conclusions drawn long before this meeting in this cell. The boy who so happily runs errands and requests for others, who could not stomach countless sacrificed lives for a higher cause, who still looked pained in the first moments of letting the Stellaron take the reigns here. (....And, truly, this is an insult too. That he must take this degradation from someone who's likely going to regret doing it. Someone that likely cannot even properly deaden his own heart to it--)]

When you leave this place you won't even enjoy looking back on this, will you? You...

[Perhaps there might have been some sort of insult there. But it dies in his throat, as Caelus is moving back in--as hands pull apart his thighs, hoist his legs, a grip too harsh to resist despite a moment's strain on Luocha's part. Loose jade chain links clink with the movement from the floor. He does not wrap his legs around Caelus's waist--(yet)--but either way, there's nothing to fetter the heat of the cockhead that presses against his rim. Nothing to offer any resistance at all, no, as Caelus pushes in luridly easily.

There aren't more immediate words for Luocha to draw up, again, nothing that can quite get around the sensation of that hard and hot length of cock slotting inside him. Just the twitching of Caelus's pleasured pause is already distinctly felt against sensitive walls trying to adjust--but the Trailblazer doesn't start moving yet, and the delay is an agony of its own. Cock damp and flush against his abdomen as it throbs for release, Luocha's hips shift, his body already searching for any bit of new friction against his core. --But unable to produce much movement at all, in this position. Entirely at the mercy of Caelus's own pace. Luocha's breath hitches; his voice comes out low and shamefully needy even to his own ears, too late to bite back.]

Fuck me, damn you--

[receptacles]

[ Caelus feels like he's gone crazy. Maybe he has. It shouldn't feel so good but it does, feels amazing, to have Luocha's wet insides coiled tight around his cock, to hear his soft low voice demanding hotly in a near-growl to be satisfied. He's so damn pretty and there's a part of Caelus that loves ruining pretty things, wants to take him by the hair and fuck him hard and rough, use him like a ragdoll for his pleasure, leave him bruised and aching and satisfied. The only thing that has ever stopped him from these destructive impulses is that soft heart which Luocha already knows so well, has learned so thoroughly to manipulate in every possible way —

But Caelus's heartbeat has gone fully silent. Only the pulse of the Stellaron resonates in the empty air of the prison — only that bass note, as he leans close and claims another kiss. ]

Oh, [ he laughs breathlessly, shifting his hands, ] no — no, I'm going to think about that on a lot of lonely nights.

[ Still. Even now, with Caelus as the aggressor, taking what he wants. Even now, as Luocha demands to be fucked, there's a shard of unbroken glass to be found in the shattered remnants of their past relationship. Luocha says fuck me and Caelus's hips snap forward immediately because he's so, so good at taking orders when a beautiful stranger is coaxing him into them, and he wants this and he wants it badly, and this time his hand isn't on Luocha's cock to stop the man from coming.

His hands find their holds on Luocha's hips the way he'd mapped them out before, gripping pale skin hard enough to bruise, breathing in the maddening scent of that intoxicating white flower as if its pollen is what's driving him towards insanity, and he fucks Luocha wildly. Brutally. Hard punishing thrusts into his prostate, enough to make that leaking cock jolt, that gorgeous cock he's not even palming because he wants to watch Luocha come on his cock alone. And as Caelus's hips snap forward and he sinks into the silky comfort of Luocha's sinfully welcoming body, the Trailblazer can't help but murmur, in lust-maddened, crooning tones: ]

Say it again. Say it louder for me, Luocha. Tell me you want me. Beg for it —

[casketeer]

[There's no resistance against the kiss that Caelus takes this time, all frantic breath and claiming tongue. His laugh doesn't register; his flippant reply doesn't either. (Not as if Luocha had expected anything but flippancy anyway, as far removed as they both are from considering consequences of actions at this point. His own words simply a last pricking of thorns, so that there are thorns of some kind of in this--even if...even if--) All that's really sinking in, for that brief window of anticipatory frustration, is the hot press of that cock against Luocha's insides and the hands grabbing hold of his hips, and--

Caelus starts fucking him, eagerly, immediately, the obedient boy who delights in taking orders from pretty men--the Stellaron's proxy that destroys and consumes what it wants. It's harsh and punishing and far too much at once, for a body that's had precious little time to adjust to the transition from fingers to greedy cock. Luocha's crying out with the first vicious thrust that spreads him open further, pushes deeper, presses right into that bundle of nerves already sensitive with earlier teasing; there's more pain than pleasure in this aggressive start, but for a man who draws equal arousal from both it's a sinfully delicious combination, open lust heating the breathiness in his voice.]

Hah--like that--yes--

[Yes, this is what he wanted--if this is what he must take--no hypocrisy in gentleness or loving caution, just the harsh and savage honesty of greed being fed. Gripping hands that bruise and relentless thrusts that claim. Caelus sinks in deep as quickly as he pleases; in this chair there's no give for Luocha's body to sink back against, no means of even slightly pulling away from the cock driving into his body over and over. Every stroke against his prostate is a new pulse of pleasure, already gradually superseding the ache, flaring right up both his spine and his throbbing cock. Luocha can hear the positively filthy moans leaving his throat as if the sound were coming from someone else--can hear Caelus's crooning words at his ear, degrading, demanding. --There's no longer a restrictive grip wrapped around his length, and after even only a few thrusts he can't--he has to--

He does come just on the stimulus of Caelus's cock, with a sweet gasp of sound, back arching against the back of the seat and arms yanking fruitlessly against their shackles. Trembling thighs can't quite support spread legs any longer, wrapping around Caelus's waist in the end, bringing them even closer as Luocha's hole clenches tight around the Trailblazer's length and hot pleasure shudders through his frame.]

Please... [His voice is already a bit wrecked, breathless, words forming of their own volition. Luocha's long eyelashes flutter, close, open again--struggling to focus.] Please--I need--

[More? Nothing? Is this enough, or already too much? His entire body throbs for more punishment, masochistic in this heightened state, yet his head--fogged over, thoughts numbed in the haze of orgasm. Coming down from the pleasure might well take longer, if Caelus is still moving, and pride is a muffled thing when buried like this. Maybe he'll beg. Maybe he's begging already--]

[receptacles]

[ No resistance. It's delicious. Luocha wants and he begs and he needs, even though Caelus is only moving to the beat of his own pleasure now. The blond seizes up and arches his back in the prettiest way and tightens around Caelus's cock like he wants to milk it dry. The Trailblazer's fantasized about this, getting Luocha this greedy for him. Reality is even more potent than his daydreams.

So rewarding. So sinfully addictive. To think, after all those days of careful obedience, hoping to please him, that Caelus would finally get Luocha pleading and fucked pliant just by letting go and taking everything he wants. It's enough to make him take more, viciously, with impossible avarice. It makes Caelus bite savagely into the man's alabaster neck, as if craving the taste of his blood; when crimson ichor rolls down his neck in weak rivulets, the Trailblazer leans forward and licks it up. Hips still snapping, but slowed slightly to accommodate the fog of ecstasy clouding Luocha's mind.

Not for too long, though. As soon as he suspects that the most intense rush from the orgasm has ebbed out of Luocha's pleasure-fogged brain, Caelus picks his pace back up again. Wrenches the man's hips to one side, twisting them so that they're tilted slightly on the chair so that Caelus can fuck him in an even more vulnerable way, and with less effort on his own part as he fucks in rough and deep.

Luocha moans and gasps and says pretty things like please, and Caelus hums in quiet understanding, like he's not even bothered, even though he's hovering at the edge of pleasure now, and he wants so desperately to fall in. ]

I know. I know. [ Does he really? Maybe he's just convinced himself that he understands. ] I'll give you more. Give you everything you need —

[ His own orgasm — it takes him in a very different way. Slow, creeping up on him, building in intensity until it's all too much to bear. It leaves him gripping Luocha's thighs as he tips his head back and fully surrenders to pleasure, nails digging in hard enough to leave crescents, pressed into Luocha's body down to the hilt, unable to resist a desperate groan of his own. It leaves Caelus dazed and gasping for breath, trembling through his legs down to his toes.

He's never been so satisfied.

It's still not enough. ]

...Everything you've craved.

[ Licking his lips, doggedly pulling himself together through his own earth-shattering orgasm, Caelus reaches behind the chair to touch Luocha's bindings, and adjusts them in a way where his wrists are now pinned to the top of the chair, above his head, giving him slightly more mobility, but no more freedom. He hasn't pulled out. ]

[casketeer]

[Everything he needs, everything he craves--is this? Is there any part of him that ever wanted this, that isn't the base pleasure-hungry humanity of his own flesh caving to mindless instinct? There's more than a small degree of entrapment in this, after all, the fundamental humiliation of being rendered unable to truly reject the ministrations of the Trailblazer's too-appealing hands and mouth and cock--forced to submit and endure until the "interrogator" is satisfied. No, Luocha would deny personally wanting this or needing this, if he were receiving those words from Caelus with a clearer head. If confronted with such a question within his own element, collected and composed and in control of the situation.

...But all the same. All the same. Isn't there something blasphemously novel about this? To be rendered at the helpless mercy of another--to be pulled open and vulnerable--to have no say in any of it, no role but to receive. ...It has been a very long time since these things were last felt, if indeed Luocha ever has. After so long treading through a journey where his grip on his circumstances cannot soften for even a moment--where he must pursue the promise without rest--isn't it different, to have the control forcibly ripped from his hands, if only in this brief window of time in this quiet cell?

Isn't it disgusting? Isn't it thrilling? Isn't it intoxicating, as all terrible poisons are?

--Too much, not enough and too much. It's overwhelming, the way Caelus's hips continue pushing into him through his orgasm, the way his hot mouth closes against Luocha's neck and teeth sink into skin--a wonderful sear of pain twining with the sinking tide of pleasure, the damp press of tongue against the wound yet another contrasting sensation to contend with. Caelus might be slowing his pace slightly as Luocha comes down--an insulting display of consideration in its own right, probably, if Luocha were aware enough of it to actually have any thought on the matter--but the slide and pulse of that hard cock inside him is still an over-stimulation that briefly peaks to a sort of numbness. Nearly enough of a reprieve for Luocha's panting breath to draw back in a bit deeper, for the involuntary sounds leaving his throat to be quelled. For some semblance of a line of thought to nearly settle back into the haze of his head, something about a revulsion at this, a resentment at how undeniably good this feels--

And then the grip on Luocha's hips is vice-like again, dragging his pleasure-pliant body into a new position that turns his hips and spreads his thighs even more obscenely. There's barely enough time to even register the shift before Caelus is fucking into him anew, that harsh pace of earlier picking up again--that punishing cock pushing right into his prostate at a new and even deeper angle that tears a new choked moan from Luocha's lungs. The over-sensitive walls of his hole shiver and tighten weakly around the Trailblazer's length once more, not that it does anything at all to alleviate the brutal rhythm--numbness is throttled up into a new burst of pleasure, nearly circling around to painful once more in its sharpness, pulsing through every nerve ending with every thrust. There's no room to breathe around it, to think around it. It's cruel and torturous and some traitorous part of him still can't get enough of it--

Caelus comes. He must have, the way he clutches and sinks into Luocha all the way to the hilt and his hips still, the way he's finally making a pleasured groaning sound of his own, gasping and trembling. It's an intimately familiar sight--a sight that Luocha had once relished bringing about himself, unraveling the boy under his own hands time and time again in those encounters past--but the feelings accompanying it couldn't be more different, here and now, this sticky damp heat of being claimed as he's filled with the boy's cum. Worse still--thrillingly still--he can't do anything in response to this, can't pull away or push closer. Luocha can only tremble and shift his hips minutely while Caelus works through his post-orgasmic bliss, panting under the acute sensation of the cock still filling him, every slight movement a new light stroke against his too-sensitive walls and abused prostate. Under this much stimulation his own cock is starting to grow half hard again already; the world is a hot and lightheaded haze once more, save for Caelus's face as he leans near, reaches behind the seat.

Luocha hadn't realized how acute the numb ache in his arms had grown until they're being moved, pins and needles at his fingertips after an indeterminate amount of time spent straining reflexively and repeatedly against the cuffs on his wrists. ...He doesn't have the presence of mind to try struggling, as Caelus adjusts the bindings until Luocha's hands are pinned over his head against the back of the seat, but it's somehow a new wave of helpless vulnerability to be displayed like this. Adjusted into new pretty poses as if he were some sort of doll for the pleasured viewing of Caelus and the Ten-Lords all alike--and maybe he may as well be, at this point. Embers of a proud frustration still flicker, at this; Luocha wants to demand that Caelus unshackle him, wants use of his hands again so that he might at least be able to touch and grip and claw any initiative back, reap some kind of vengeance for all he's been made to receive--

His head has tipped back against the seat, too heavy to keep raised at some point in the last minute or so of coaxed ecstasy. It's only in this slight lull now that Luocha tries to lift it again, and level a glare up at Caelus once more--diminished as the effect probably is by the unfocus in his eyes...]

--Bastard. [Panted out at length, venom still tinged with too much lust--he just can't seem to modulate his own tone anymore--] You...you've craved this just as much. [Perhaps Caelus always has, since that very first encounter. Perhaps being linked with a Stellaron's nature made it inevitable. Luocha's hands curl into fists.] How much more--do you plan to take, before you're satisfied?

[The Trailblazer's still inside him, after all. Of course, some lingering fragment of a thought muses feverishly, it'd be too much to expect that Caelus would be content with only one round of release; the boy always had been in possession of a notable recovery. Fascinating to observe and tease upon in times past; sickening to remember now. (Thrilling, too, that traitorous part of him still whispers--the part that tingles down to his cock, an anticipation against all reason.)]

[receptacles]

[ At this, Caelus smiles a little wryly, wrapping one hand around Luocha's burgeoning cock: ]

...However much it'll take to get you to remember me, I guess?

[ And that says a lot more about why Caelus is doing this than the entire "monologue" he'd given prior to starting it in earnest — but the Trailblazer doesn't linger on himself. He moves swiftly on, tugging and jerking Luocha's spent and recovering cock with soft, patient strokes, letting the filthy mixture of cum and precum squelch and slip between his fingers, over their skin. He wants to see the haze of pleasure come over Luocha's pretty features again. He wants to hear the blond make those sweet, broken sounds, glare at him with that intoxicating mixture of hatred and lust, flashes of anger still flaring through his green eyes whenever he remembers that he should feel shame.

He wants, he wants, he wants. The Stellaron urges his greed onward, tells him that everything in the universe belongs to him.

(He knows. Really, he knows. Even in another life where Luocha did not commit the crime which he has been accused of — even if he had genuinely been a trinket-selling merchant with no other aspirations to speak of — Caelus would have been nothing more than a bit of fun. A handsome face with a willing mouth and a pleasing body to be fucked and forgotten about by the time Luocha reached the next harbor. And it's not like Caelus hates that — it's not like he doesn't know that the universe is just that cold and unfeeling most of the time — but still. He wanted something different.

It's not Luocha's fault. It's not Luocha's fault that he wants something more out of life that no one is able to provide him, and maybe that's the real conflict here, the real reason he's doing all of this. The real reason that he —)

He stops moving his hand once Luocha's cock is standing proudly erect at its most full and flushed, opting to move his hips instead. Slow this time, not the frantic pace at which he was taking pleasure out of Luocha's body before. He rocks in and out of Luocha's wet hole, gentle and unhurried, as he takes the time to admire the beautiful body stretched out beneath him. Acting on a sudden impulse, Caelus leans down and takes one of Luocha's nipples into his mouth; he runs his tongue along it until he feels it peak and pebble, then sinks his teeth into the gorgeous white flesh around its pink base, sucking hard on Luocha's tit and drinking deep of his blood like he loves the taste of iron in his mouth. Pain and pleasure, mingled, indistinguishable. He knows what gets Luocha off if nothing else. ]

...You get tighter when you talk. It's cute. [ He resurfaces, licking his lips, still bouncing his hips gently into Luocha's body. ] You should hear the sounds you're making — they're cute, too.

[ Caelus licks the blood from his mouth, and then leans in for another kiss, just as slow and unhurried, even a little loving. He wonders if Luocha feels revulsion, taking this kind of affection from him now. But there's no genuine attempt at empathy. There's a part of him that doesn't care how Luocha is feeling as long as the man's reactions are telling him that he feels good.

It's a shame that his arms are pinned above his head, but it's fine. When Caelus wraps his arms around the man's waist, and breathes deep of his tempting floral scent... it's enough affection for him that he can pretend. ]

Luocha. [ Nuzzling into his neck, so gentle. The beast pacified for the moment. ] Luocha...

[ Only for the moment, though.

He knows Luocha doesn't really care for the boy. He knows Luocha is a man more used to dealing with beasts. ]

Hey, turn around for me?

[ "For me," the beast says, but Luocha doesn't actually get a say in it. Suddenly — the cuffs allow for the captor to reposition the captive, but not for the captive to reposition themselves — Caelus picks up Luocha's body and manhandles him enough that he turns the man's hips around while he's on Caelus's cock, and the Trailblazer lets out a soft breath at the sensation, oh, now that's an interesting feeling — but this way, Luocha's belly is pressed against the back of the chair, and his long golden hair is splayed against his beautiful back, and Caelus can and does fuck him from behind like an animal, both hands on the man's hips slamming him back into the Trailblazer's still-hard cock.

Groaning gratefully for the waves of pleasure cresting low in his belly and high in his head, Caelus takes one hand off Luocha's sweet ass just to seize some of that beautiful long hair at the crown of his head and pull his head back. Nothing crazy. It's just to get a bit of leverage, and just because it's hot, getting to pull Luocha's pretty hair like this. ]

Mm, yeah. [ Over the lewd sounds of skin against skin, all wet lovemaking and unholy union — ] Always wanted to fuck you like this. Even the first time we met.

[casketeer]

[To remember him. Remember him...

Telling indeed. And what an irony it is...that Caelus thought he'd be forgotten in the first place. Even without any of the sex--even if they had only ever been simple passing acquaintances, a few words exchanged on the Express and nothing more--Luocha wouldn't have forgotten him, no, that newest member of the Nameless with a stable stellar cancer for a heart, rife with mystery and potential both alike. (Traits a truly simple merchant drifting from harbor to harbor wouldn't have noticed, ever more ironically; here is an intrerest burgeoned as a direct result of the strange interstellar terrorist he's become.) Caelus had been a puzzle it wasn't time to piece together, yet--a puzzle that shouldn't have yet been pursued, really. The temptation to investigate it just a bit more had been a mistake, in the end, indeed due in part to the Trailblazer's handsome face and willing mouth and pleasing body. The sex that had happened anyhow was an indulgence far beyond the necessary, with repercussions he'd thoroughly neglected to calculate...repercussions he's certainly reaping now. ...But none of it was "forgettable". Yes, Luocha had always somewhat suspected their paths would cross again down the line, considering the angle of his own set goal...

But perhaps being remembered isn't the full phrase for what Caelus is seeking here either. Not quite.

The hints are abundant, after all, in the gratingly gentle lull. The soft way Caelus strokes Luocha's cum-slick cock, patiently coaxing it to fullness once more. The unhurried way the boy's hips start rocking at length, already hard again yet apparently briefly content to savor the feeling; languid strums of a slower simmering pleasure that Luocha's gasping breaths can't help but fall in sync with, as the sensation of being filled with cock sinks in all the more thoroughly. ...Though the air does stammer in his lungs when that mouth closes over one of his nipples, hot wet tongue giving way to pricking teeth and bruising lips--sweet jolting sensation and another sear of pain all mingled together, dragging a strained whine from Luocha's throat and a shuddering shiver through his frame and a fresh drip of precum from his tip.

He does tighten again making the noise, too, which makes it all the more mortifying when Caelus goes on to remark on it. Another flicker of anger across eyes unwillingly hazing in new pleasure--shut up, shut up, or so Luocha wants to bite out, except by then the Trailblazer's already lifting his head and kissing him again, swallowing his sounds...and he can still taste a bit of his own blood on the boy's tongue. Can still find a revulsion, yes, in the way that so easily coils a renewed heat in his gut. Revulsion at that, and revulsion at the loving softness of the mouth on his own too, so carelessly contrasting the act it's being paired with.

Knowingly going through the motions of a one-sided affection. Just the same as the arms wrapping around his waist, the enamored breath taken against his neck, the name crooned on his skin. A deceptively heartfelt sort of indulgence, warped into something predatory by the Stellaron's greedy influence. Perhaps what Caelus wanted was to be remembered fondly, but now he settles just for being remembered at all--even if it's blackly, bitterly--so long as he can indulge in a facsimile for even a moment, here in this way that cannot be rebuffed. ...And a facsimile is all it can be, at this point, because Luocha truly couldn't have granted him anything else. Even if this particular encounter in this cell had never transpired. What Caelus wants out of life is something Luocha is indeed entirely incapable of giving him--at least not right now, not like this. Not when it would take a great deal more time, and rather more circumstance, to even begin filling the empty thing currently sitting where Luocha's heart was.

And so, since there's nothing sincerely warm for it to give, Caelus takes instead. ...Takes what is there, anyway. The lasting vindiction of resentment, the easy consistency of bodily pleasure--far more attainable, tangible things.

It's a conclusion Luocha will likely draw eventually. Long after this is done. When his head is finally fully clear once more, and he isn't being--

--turned on top of Caelus's cock, a distinct sensation for a fact, enough so to startle a choked gasp from Luocha as well; there's something particularly degrading about realizing he's already been fucked loose enough and filled wetly enough for this to be done. But the fleeting thought has no time to really solidify before he's being positioned against the back of the chair, knees on the seat and thighs forced apart in this unconventional posture, and--Caelus does rail into him from behind like an animal, a beast insatiable. Gripping fresh bruises into Luocha's hips, dragging him back onto his cock, setting a new vicious rhythm.

Better than the gentleness. Yes, better, preferable--even as it's not, even as a renewed sense of humiliation twines with the vindicating burn of it. It somehow feels even filthier, being fucked like this, between the base irreverence of the new position and the obscenely slick way the Trailblazer's cock pumps into his hole still damp with cum--on top of being yet another new angle for his prostate to be struck against. Each pulse a renewed spike of painful pleasure, forcing sharp breaths from Luocha that eventually can't help but warm into ragged reluctant moans anew. Belly periodically pressed against the back of the chair, and his own flushed and leaking cock brushing against it too with every thrust, a maddeningly paltry substitution for the touch of a palming hand that still might--be enough--isn't that blasphemous? When it feels all the more as if he's being used like a cocksleeve, a pretty toy for Caelus to fill as he pleases, all under the watch of invisible eyes...

Dignity loathes it, yet his body revels in it, every nerve alight like a live wire, relishing the ache of oversensitivity. Caelus's harsh grip would have ensured it regardless, but Luocha's hips still mindlessly grind back against the push of that hard cock of their own volition...and that's even before a hand reaches up to fist in his hair. Seizing long locks, pulling--yielding a new and particularly filthy moan, a shudder running through his entire body. Luocha's back arches prettily into the tugging, the hollow of his throat exposed like an animal's to a predator as his head's tipped back. It shouldn't--feel this delicious--yet it does, something in the vulnerability of it, the careless leverage of it. Paired with the pleasure still being pounded into him--]

Fuck--n-no...I don't-- [He's going to come, again, for all that a large part of him doesn't want to--not this soon, not like this, on Caelus's cock once more, like he can't get enough of it. How he'd begged for something harsh and punishing earlier--how he's receiving it now, just as he'd wanted it--yet Luocha truly is always at war with his own body, and at this point he's barely aware of the choked words spilling from his lips himself. The weak protest aloud can't override the ecstasy of being manhandled in this sort of way; he wants to stop himself (touch himself), the hands still bound immobile in front of him curled into fists tight enough to dig crescents in his palms to no avail. A particularly deep thrust rolls his hips, brushes him against the back of the chair yet again.] Caelus--

[Half a plea, half a moan, as green eyes flicker shut and he spills over the seat, body shivering, tight and hot around Caelus a second time.]

[receptacles]

[ Luocha says no and he says don't but he also says Caelus in the sweetest, most desperate voice, his body squirming and yielding and arching, welcoming Caelus's deep, merciless thrusts, bucking his hips for more even as his pretty mouth begs for contradictory things. Stop is just as much imbued in his tone as more, and Caelus hasn't forgotten the way he practically growled fuck me right before the Trailblazer started pounding him in earnest.

Does he have any idea how he looks right now? Like a whore to be claimed, posing prettily for the cameras still trained on him, their digital lenses focused on his every twitch and shudder and desperate movement, as if the vision of his face in the throes of sex-induced ecstasy might tell them his Aeonic secrets? Does he have any idea how he feels, hot and wet and tight but soft and flexible — utterly loosened to Caelus's whims, unable to resist even the Trailblazer's deepest and most punishing thrusts? Truly, he's the perfect fuckdoll right now, Caelus's beautiful cocksleeve — proud and pretty but moaning and reacting in ways that a simple sex toy couldn't ever aspire to.

And it feels so good. To have finally made Luocha say his name. Not that he hasn't said it before, in the past — but he always made Caelus beg for that acknowledgment, implicitly in behavior if not explicitly on his knees, and it feels so euphoric to have made him say it like that, begging for a mercy that Caelus will not and cannot give him. Not when he's so lovely, and smells so addictive, that Caelus doesn't want to let go of him. Not when he looks so good with his cum spilled out in a mess all over the seat beneath him. He looks so good that Caelus grits his teeth and surrenders blindly to the white-hot pleasure searing through his lower belly, coming deep inside of him, filling him with filthy wet slick once more. So much. There's just so much.

For a moment, they're both sated, taking shaking, shuddering breaths. But only for a moment. ]

Luocha...

[ It's so fucked up. He's so fucked up. Saying the man's false name like that, in that besotted, love-drunk voice. Doing things like this, with the Ten-Lords Commission watching and judging their sins, until their bodies are coated with sweat and no amount of sanitation will ever make this cell feel clean again. Luocha feels so pliant, finally, that Caelus feels comfortable reaching fingers into his pretty mouth, his soft fingerpads feeling out and pressing into Luocha's silken tongue. It's squishy and wet and slippery and he likes it. All of it. His fingers reaching into the back of Luocha's throat, knuckles eased carefully against his teeth so that it won't hurt much even if the man locates the wherewithal to bite down.

His mouth feels so wet. He should have fucked Luocha's mouth when he had the chance. Actually, there's nothing stopping him from working up to that later. Calmly, Caelus puts that at the back of his mind. ]

It's too bad. They should let me have you. [ He's just rambling; he doesn't believe any of this. It's only a madman's idle wishes. Dirty talk to make Luocha feel that glorious mixture of arousal and shame. ] I could lock you up on the Express, fuck you whenever I want. Make you cum like this, over and over and over, every day. Would you like that?

[ Caelus is certain that the answer is no, but it doesn't matter. With his fingers in Luocha's mouth, clumsily pressing into the back of his tongue to steal his breath away, the merchant probably can't answer him anyway. He might be choking Luocha a bit more than he intends to, with this; he's not going to be as skilled at it as Luocha was with him. But he learns. He's always been good at that. Caelus learns quick, and all too well. ]

Our bodies are so compatible. Whatever fucked up shit Yaoshi did to you plays pretty nice with a Stellaron, huh? I bet we could fuck until the Xianzhou goes under.

[ He can find a certain humor in it. If Luocha has the Abundance's blessing, either as an Emanator or as a mara-struck monstrosity or as something else entirely, it is very funny that it's given him insatiable sexual stamina to match Caelus's own, and a deliciously addictive scent. There's trashy smut on the Luofu about alphas and omegas that goes something like this. Humming, entirely too pleased, Caelus nuzzles into his cloud of silken hair, affectionate, filling his lungs with the scent of white flowers.

It gets him hard. Again.

Licking his lips, he pulls his hand out of Luocha's mouth to adjusts his grip on Luocha's waist, pulling him back one more time — ]

Sorry, babe. I'm not done yet. One more time...?

[casketeer]

[Caelus's hand is indeed met with little resistance, cleverly as he chooses this moment where Luocha's body is still suffused in a high of ecstasy only gradually coming down, head too fogged to yet register what's happening; panting for breath in the wake of the last orgasm means flushed lips are already parted for those fingertips to slip in. Pushing into his mouth, pressing over his tongue, the taste salty with traces of his own cum. Invasive and humiliating in yet another novel way--oh, he's aware of the parallel here. The echo to that first time, yet another table turned...revulsion and thrill mingle, near indistinguishable. A soft sound of something like rejection might slip from Luocha's throat, and his jaw might tense as his frame weakly does--but by then Caelus is already pushing further into the back of his tongue, clumsy but intent, restricting breath against the curl of those digits in a further perverse mimicry--

So, yes, it's a bit difficult to respond in any way to those filthy words. They're heard, in rather the same way one might hear sounds just under the surface of water; there's still a shamed arousal to be derived from them, the picture Caelus so roughly paints of the marvel of Luocha's body, what he'd do with it in a degenerate's fantasy. --They are, physically, distinctly compatible in such an incidental way it's almost comical--between the rarity of a Stellaron-housing human vessel, and the likely similar novelty of whatever it really is going on between Luocha and the Abundance. An exception that enabled him to deliver a Stellaron to the Luofu unscathed...and an exception that now also renders his body uniquely qualified to, apparently, weather the unfettered unnatural greed of Caelus's own. Oh, there's salacious novelists out there who'd truly leap at the premise...

(The greatest irony of all, really, being that even Luocha himself hasn't actually been aware of this particular "boon" of his contract with Yaoshi. Sex being an appetite occasionally indulged, but never overly long, a self-imposed brevity...so it's not, exactly, as if he's ever taken the time to test the extent before now. Nor encountered anyone who could administer such a test to begin with. Knowledge he'd have been content never discovering, objectively, and yet here they are now--both of them insatiable, the Stellaron in Caelus's body ever craving to take and take, the persistence in Luocha's body ever drawing pleasure from adversity, blending far too well with his own irrational masochism--)

This, too, is an adversity. Being choked beyond Caelus's intention, mouth wet and hot and yielding around those fingers because there's eventually no choice, because there's no room to think of anything at all, much less about biting down. Luocha's body reflexively shudders, struggles for air, bound hands wishing to grab but tugged against cuffs. Head and frame trying to recoil from that obstructing hand only to press back against Caelus's body, still draped over him and cock still inside him in some perverse facsimile of a nuzzling embrace. Eyelids flutter over glassy eyes; it's a strain just to swallow; his head is light, straying into too light, and it's...there is another sort of pleasure in this, which is the worst part. This dulling of even the sharpest corners of thought, whether he wants it or not--a sort of mental quiet he'd never permit himself, on his own terms. Letting the world blur out, letting his body ride through the rest--

--Caelus pulls his fingers back out, and the breaths wetly gasped back in are an ecstasy too, restored air yet another too-heady rush to his head. Luocha doesn't really hear that question asked at all--not that it matters, of course, not that any answer he might give would make any difference--only feels the renewed grip on his waist, the too-slick slide and fill of being fully pulled back onto Caelus's hardening cock. Again. Maybe some sort of desperate sound slips from his throat at the sensation; maybe there's a brief shake of his head, more impulsive than anything, as much to try clearing the haze as to reject the inevitable. But, traitorous still, savoring the strain, his body hums with anticipation of more. Pliant and arching into Caelus's hands, cock spent but twitching anew--]

[receptacles]

[ Caelus takes, and takes, and takes.

He has Luocha every single way that he can think of. Fucks him like that, backwards on the chair again, one hand stroking the man's cock in time with his rhythmic thrusts. Then one more time, something between sideways and missionary, so that Caelus can see the way Luocha's rapid breaths make his chest swell and tremble. He figures out a way to suspend the cuffs from the ceiling and then takes Luocha like that, with the man's weight fully held up on his arms and their chains. Caelus decides that he likes fucking Luocha on the suspension system; he doesn't have to put effort into thrusting into the man, can just push and pull him and watch his body glide, effortless, on the swing created by the chains. He fucks Luocha another four times just to figure out all the ways he can hang the blond from the ceiling, then lets the man down and cleans them both off with his own white shirt. Pauses to pour himself some tea; holds the cup to Luocha's lips and makes him drink some too, just to wet his throat. Just to soothe his throat before he slips his cock into Luocha's mouth and enjoys the moist heat from the tea in earnest, fucking Luocha's throat with wild and reckless abandon. Pulls him up once he's finished, sucks Luocha off in apology, drinks him down like his cum is as addictively sweet as his scent. Fucks him again. Sucks him off a second time. Fucks him again.

He does everything. Anything.

Debauched, deranged, desecrated.

Caelus really wouldn't stop at all, except for this one thing: eventually, mercifully, a voice crackles over the intercom in the room.

"Caelus," the voice says, in a low baritone, "I think you've made your point."

Caelus pauses.

The main reason he pauses is that he's pretty sure, he's reasonably sure, that the owner of the voice is not General Jing Yuan. But it sounds enough like Jing Yuan with a head cold and perhaps a mild hangover that the Trailblazer can't rule out the possibility that it is Jing Yuan.

He hopes it's not Jing Yuan, because that would be, well, rather embarrassing to say the least for literally everyone involved. The other problem, though, is that the voice addressed him with a weird sense of familiarity, and — well. Caelus doesn't want to think about it.

He looks down at Luocha, who has by now been used in every way, covered in cum both Caelus's and his own. His hair is a tangled mess, his cock seemingly reddened and darkened from how much it's been abused, his bruised flesh healing over into alabaster white again.

Gently, Caelus brushes some of his hair out of his face again. He thinks Luocha looks beautiful. ]

...Alright. [ He sighs, letting his hand drop. ] But you guys had better put his pants back together. Probably let him take a shower. It's not like he's going to run away anyway.

[ Caelus casts his eyes across the floor, taking mental inventory of his things and Luocha's things, all mingled together. His cum-stained shirt, that's over there — his coat and pants are on the floor — that's all he brought into the room, actually. His tea's gone cold.

The Trailblazer sighs again, thinly through his nose this time, and then turns to look at Luocha, who has by now been set back onto the chair to catch his breath. Patiently, warmly, Caelus leans in and kisses him on the crown of his head with all the patient affection of an older lover. ]

Guess this is goodbye, Luocha. If we're lucky, I guess we won't have to see each other again.

[ His smile seems to hurt himself more than it likely hurts Luocha. It's a bold thing to venture, after all he's done. ]