D. S. Black

Heinrix panted, the lighter of his mismatched eyes fixed on Marazhai as he failed to stop a frown, a pleasured whimper staked in discomfort. He then arches with a silent, teeth-clenched wince. He tried again, focusing on the cold, hard authority he was supposed to embody. "This is Interrogator van Calox. Stand by, Hexen. I am... concluding a sensitive matter." The vox crackled again, Hexen’s voice cutting through the static, tinny and utterly oblivious to the drama unfolding in the chamber. "Understood, Interrogator. But the matter is urgent. The cargo manifests from the Xylos transfer require your authorization cipher to be sealed. Without it, the records remain open, and Lord Aurastor was... explicit... about discretion." Heinrix squeezed his eyes shut. Of course. A cipher. Something that required memory, precision. Marazhai seemed to sense the shift, the new layer of pressure, as he shifted his weight, a subtle, deliberate movement that made Heinrix’s legs tremble. Some heretical, defiant, buried part of him wished to declare that he was… servicing a superiour asset. "The cipher..." Heinrix gasped out-fingers on the panel- trying to focus, to pull the string of characters from his memory. He could feel Marazhai’s claw tracing the line of his spine, slow and deliberate. "...stand by." "Did you say you are transmitting, Lordship?" Hexen's voice was laced with strain. "Vox is unstable on this channel. There is... interference." "No," Heinrix gritted out, his forehead pressed hard against the cold plasteel. The 'interference' was the sound of his own ragged breathing, the low growl of pleasure from the Drukhari behind him. He needed to end this.

I’ve seriously thought about this! Setting corny jokes aside, it largely depends on what you’d answer to the question that follows the kiss: In the past, Lazarus was a Librarian, and his knowledge spans an infinite array of topics, including the literary works of the Imperium. It can’t be said that he’s completely unaware of why people press their verbal interfaces against one another, but he might speculate on a few reasons for this — perhaps you want to see a puzzled Adeptus Mechanicus adept? Are you expressing affection and trust this way? …Or maybe you just tripped and accidentally landed your lips on his face? Or have you always dreamed of kissing an admech and couldn’t resist? Well, if touching his cold, damp skin, streaked with oily smears, truly brings you some pleasure, Lazarus wouldn’t mind offering you a chance for such an interaction. In return, though, he’d ask you to volunteer for his biomantic experiments. He might not be the most exciting partner (a total log, really), but in those very experiments his psyker abilities let him play the nerve endings like a violin, achieving sensations — of both nature and intensity - that the subject couldn’t have even imagined.

“My place,” Saren echoes from behind bared teeth. “Let us speak of hammers, then. Where,” Saren began, his voice a low growl that cut through the sterile air, “does the maker’s credit end, and the weapon’s merit begin?” Origen paused his departure around the desk, his back still to Saren, a gesture of supreme condescension. “When the weapon forgets who forged it.” “Never,” Saren bit, taking a half-step forward, reclaiming a sliver of the space Origen had taken. “But a hammer only strikes the steel. It does not grant the metal its temper. It does not endure the quenching in the cold void, nor does it learn the shape of the blade it must become.”