sun-coded moonboy

consummation, or: Khessar, the God of Love, has a very hard time on the night of his wedding

Arms stood over him, the silicone cock hanging heavily between her legs. His own twitched at the sight of her while he lay there on his back, and maybe his mouth was hanging slack a little if he cared to admit it. It's not that he hadn't seen a dick or two in his twenty-or-so laps around the sun, silicone or otherwise. Hells, he had probably even seen this same brand of strap-on on a few others in the last few months. It's just that this was the first time he’d ever seen Arms wearing one in their relationship—

Which, he should take a moment aside to say, even with the recent addition of a wedding band to his left ring finger, going so far as to call what they had with one another a relationship made him want to shed his skin and slip into the ocean, never to be seen again. Perhaps become a triton. He could jumpstart a snap evolution, right? Surely the shock of the cold water would spur a miracle—

Halfway through a brief daydream of a new life under the sea, Khess was pulled out by the very-real, happening right in front of him image of Arms stroking the bright yellow-gold strap with one hand, as she tightened a buckle on the harness with her other. Khess quirked his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth pulled up.

No, it was something else entirely that left him gaping like a damn stupid fish at his new spouse standing above him as she prepared to fuck him into oblivion. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was yet. Or he wouldn't put his finger on it, if he could help it. Semantics.

"Why bother with the strap-on and everything? What is it that's stopping the greatest witch in the world from magicking up her own cock to fuck me with in flesh and blood?" He dropped his head on an angle just how she hated it. "Is it the colour? What, you wish to fuck me with the colours of my noble house? How sentimental."

Arms slid her eyes over him without making a sound, and he had never felt more like a piece of meat. Prey, splayed out, strapped to a four-poster in the middle of the night. It sent his heart into wild flutters, which felt like a betrayal like no other. 

What, pray tell, 'O Nature, were you trying to say? While other prey animals had the limited choice of either fight or flight, Lord Varhil's expanded options were what? Fight, flight, or fuck?

"Shut up, Khess," She ordered dismissively.

"Yes, ma'am."

'O Nature, ever the truth-seer.

Arms reached a finger down to Khess and pressed lightly against his asshole. The tip of her slight finger slid in effortlessly and without a sound from his lips (which didn't say anything about the young lord lying on the bed thankyouverymuch). Her other hand slid over his thigh and wrapped around the base of his cock, holding it upright in the cool night air.

When he noticed her eyes sparkling with rare delight Khess tried his darnedest not to roll his hips against the light pressure she offered him. It would not end well for him if he tried to hurry her. When her lips parted and he expected another quiet order, he felt the hairs across his body stand to attention at the opportunity to obey. To be ordered. To have use and to be used. Instead she gave him something even better when it came to his wife, as far as he was concerned: the time of day.

"Flesh and blood also means nerve endings, feeling and sensation, Khess. All a distraction. I would much rather be right here, present, watching you wriggle at the end of my fingers," she punctuated her sentence with two more fingers, slipping them in with the first. "I suppose I could magic up another hole for you, force you to feel even more, but I don't know if you could handle it."

Khess's laugh escaped through his nose in two small huffs of air. It was a taunt. She was taunting him. He was naked and warm and breathing heavily and his cock was growing hard and her fingers were inside of him and she was taunting him.

She was taunting him and he was helpless and vulnerable and part of him felt like he was teetering on the edge of crying or coming apart under her for some gods forsaken reason. And yet-

"It wouldn't be my first time, Princess."

And yet he still had it in him to poke right back. Lords across the continent knew that he wasn't going to be caught out by a few fingers. He still had his wits about him for now, and he'd rather be caught dead than stand by letting them go unused.

The light in her eyes flickered to annoyance. That he recognised all too well.

"What did you say?"

Her fingers stilled and Khess stifled a frustrated groan before it fully rose from his throat. Although that just made it come out as more of a pathetic whimper, which wasn't much better, and some would argue was, in fact, worse. It made Arms smile triumphantly though, so at least there was that. Even if the sudden thudthud of his heart's reply to her grin made him second guess everything he was doing.

Arms pulled her fingers out of him and climbed forward on her knees until she loomed over him laid back on the bed. She reached forward to grip his face, her fingers toying with the edges of his lips. She looked down at him and her eyes flashed lightly.

"Repeat."

His mouth moved against his will and repeated: "It wouldn't be my first time, Princess."

His voice was strained with the effort to refuse her Command.

He'd fucked up.

"Explain."

Khess rolled his eyes, he at least maintained control over that, and his tongue moved once more. She hummed lightly, acknowledging his eye roll with amusement, and settled back to rest on her knees, retracting her hand from his mouth.

"Some friends and I stumbled upon a couple of Shapechange scrolls during Dodge Week. It was a good deal so we put them to good use."

Arms's eyes widened slightly. "You used two Shapechange scrolls to fuck?"

Khess went to lift his hand with a pointed finger, clearing nearly ten centimetres off the mattress before the restraints Arms had charmed tightened and pulled his wrist back, sending a subtle shock down his body that settled in his abdomen. A quiet groan slipped out at the sensation and he almost thought he caught her eyes flick down to his cock. Khess kept his own eyes locked on Arms as he spoke. "Three, actually. And it was to get fucked. The other two didn't want to take turns, apparently. So we compromised."

"Sounds like it wasn't much of a compromise on your part."

"Hardly."

Arms twisted a ring on her right hand and it pinged with a small golden light. He relented to the push of another spell and almost thought he saw a slight smile when she noticed he hadn't fought it.

"Do you like being fucked, Khess?" She slid four fingers back into him and slowly moved them in and out.

"Yes."

The honeyed truth slipped right out before he even had a chance to consider telling her otherwise. He pursed his lips a little, clenching his jaw, not recognising the Zone of Truth when he had chosen to succumb to it.

"Don't say something corny about how you would never lie to me."

His jaw clenched harder before he relented and spoke. "I couldn't even if I tried."

She watched him carefully and a shadow cast over her eyes, her hand coming to a stop momentarily before she chuckled softly and shook her head, brushing off the admittance. Her hand started up again. "Good to know."

He didn't want to fight it so he bit his tongue. "What else did you want to ask, Princess?"

They were both grateful for the excuse to turn their tensions somewhere else. Arms glared at him for his 'Princess' remark, but he saw the fire dancing in her eyes, the amusement, the fun she was having with him. It was a distraction for them both. Each night he had been lucky enough to have her company was a distraction, for however long she could step away from her work. That was, if he believed that the work was what kept them from spending more than a few stolen hours together. He chose to believe it.

Just like he chose to continue sleeping in the guest room set up in the western wing, the one that he had started decorating but only had pillows on the one side of the bed. The one that had started smelling like him and he had been painting canvas after canvas in all summer. The room his wife hadn't so much as stepped foot in the entire time he had been here. He's not even sure if she had walked down his hall in the last two months. She certainly hadn't invited him into her room for more than a few hours. Every time they finished having sex she got up and went to the bathroom without saying anything and he made sure to be gone before she got back. If she had wanted him to stay she would have said something. If she had wanted him to leave she might have said something too, he supposed.

Khess wasn't sure what they were distracting each other from. For a few days he thought maybe he was a distraction from her work. From whatever was happening to Turia that she wasn't telling him about. Whatever she was up to that had brought his parents here on the eve of Lion Star's Dawning. He hadn't asked, didn't want to know what her business with them was, so long as it didn't intimately concern him he didn't need to know. It seemed based on her vague hand-waving explanation that she agreed. He simply didn't need to know. Khess thought it would have been nice to know anyway, or at least it would have been nice to feel like she wanted him to know. But he had learned that the list of things that Arms wanted was short, and outside of his capacity here on this bed, Khess was not on it.

Once he realised that Arms didn't need or want a distraction from her work, he started to wonder if maybe she was having sex with him as an obligation. Or an expectation. They were going to be wed, they were wed now. If they weren't going to sleep in the same bed, eat dinner together, or have a conversation longer than a few minutes a week, then maybe this was the one thing she was willing to do as a married couple. Maybe he was the naive one to think their marriage could be anything more.

Khess, on the other hand, needed the distraction from her.

When they were having sex he didn't have the time to think about why his heart did that gods forsaken thudding bullshit whenever she looked into his eyes with something other than boredom and annoyance.

When she was on her knees in front of him he didn't have to think about how nervous he was when he told his father, his real father, that he and Arms were getting married, or why that would make him nervous in the first place.

And when he was on his hands and knees in front of her, his face pressed into the mattress, and he was breathing in the smell of her that was layered into the sheets, and there were pieces of her everywhere he looked in this room but not one piece of him except the impression he would leave in the sheets when he left, well, then his body would shake so much and she would wring so much out of him that he didn't have the energy left to think about what it might be like to hold her hand and walk through the city together in the clarity of summer's dusk; or what it might be like to take her out to dinner in Northern Donimear again just the two of them and share a bottle of wine and an appetiser while they talked about the past, present, and future; or what it might be like to sit at the stained glass window in the room they would one day turn into a nursery going over paint pots and wallpaper patterns.

Having sex with Arms distracted him from that falling feeling.

But if he spent too long thinking about it then he might trick himself into thinking he was a distraction to her for the same reason. And that wouldn't help him make it through the last few weeks of the summer.

And now he needed to be distracted from everything that had happened earlier that day. The feeling of their souls coming together in whatever marital rite he hadn't realised he was going to be a part of. They had been made one and it felt more right than he realised could be possible. Like everything else he had ever done up until today had been a sliver of reality and the silvering of his heart with Arms had been the only thing this universe had ever truly existed for. It's something he felt coursing through every fibre, every cell of his being. This was meant to be and it was real and it was decidedly too much to handle and he needed to be fucked raw until his brain was mush and his body had melted and his soul was so torn up by the divinity of pleasure that he couldn't think about how easily the woman fucking him could tear his soul to shreds in a thousand other ways.

If Arms had noticed him disappear to a far away place she didn't call him on it, instead she cupped his balls and tightened her hold on him a little bit more, reaching up and tracing the tip of her nail down the shaft. Khess shivered, couldn't help himself, when she brushed her fingertip over the piercings along the underside of his cock.

The Zone of Truth over him held true when the next request came.

Arms lowered her head to his cock and ran her parted lips over him. She spoke into his skin, the warmth radiating across his body from her breath. "Tell me the details won't you, husband."

He tried not to blush when his cock pulsed and his hips bucked lightly at the new identity. He failed. She didn't say anything but he felt her smile against him. She mumbled something that sounded like "so easy" but he was too busy answering to take much notice.

"We were walking through Dodge Week together on the fourth day and found a Spelljammer selling high-level scrolls. Neither of the other two had bought anything yet so we decided to go browse and found a stash of perfectly good Shapechange scrolls that had been shoved in the back of some random mixed elementals. Probably someone stashing them to come back for at the end of the week. So we took one each and left the rest. Then that night at Fuckstick we were still trying to figure out what to do with them, when I had the brilliant idea for my own one."

"To give yourself a vagina instead of a dick?" Arms was listening, amused, while stroking his cock with one hand and slowly sliding her fingers in and out of him with the other.

Khess nodded, having a hard time splitting his attention between the retelling and keeping his composure. "When they realised what I was saying they both looked at me like I was a fucking mad genius, this look like they had never even considered it before. Astonishing, really, people do it all the time permanently why wouldn't you do it for a one off? Then they looked at each other, nodded, handed me both of their scrolls, pulled me up by the wrists, and we went back to their house."

Arms laughed and continued lazily toying with him. "That wasn't all the details I meant, but I appreciate the lead in."

Khess tried to stare at the canopy above the bed instead of down at his wife's eyes. He failed again and met her bright golden gaze. The strap kind of brought out the different hues of yellow and brown in her eyes, if he was taking the time to notice.

"What else did you want to know?" His voice was low, heady, muffled by the blood rushing around his body.

"Everything, Khess. Tell me what they did to you, tell me how it made you feel."

He didn't know what to say, how to say it, how to explain everything to her. So he caught her attention and gestured to his head best he could without pulling too far on the restraints.

"It's easier if I show you."

She nodded and smiled, waving a hand quickly over her eyes and speaking a short incantation.

He felt the prod at his mind and let her in, then he thought back to the night after Fuckstick, when he had used three Shapechange scrolls one after the other, overlapping each of them so there wasn't a moment where he would have to stop feeling anything.

Siven and Thea had carried him between them when they stumbled back through the house into one of their rooms, he couldn't really remember how he ended up naked on the bed but he had.

Lying back on the small bed tucked into the corner of the room, Khess watched Siven sink between his knees while Thea straddled his bare chest and tied his hands together above his head. Khess had taken the opportunity to reach forward and take the head of Thea's cock into his mouth. They had been here before in varying positions and surely by now Thea had known what would happen when he got that close. Even if he did expect it the gasp that escaped from his mouth was a gift to Khess's ears and he smiled wide around Thea's cock before humming a vibration against him and pushing his lips further down.

In the cooler air of the Tiluvian bedroom, Khess felt the soft push of fingers at his lips. He opened his mouth and welcomed two of Arms' fingers in.

"Keep going." She ordered, her other hand still moving steadily in and out of him.

He sucked on her fingers and did as he was told.

If he had tried to describe the feeling of Siven's tongue on his new body Khess doesn't think he could have nailed down the right words. But the feeling, the feeling was like nothing else. Siven's tongue was hesitant, like they could tell Khess was a little afraid of the new sensation. They tongued his clit and Khess bucked, moaning softly against Thea's cock, his forehead pressing forward against Thea's stomach and his thighs constricting up against the sides of Siven's head. It was like a shock of pleasure through his whole body, nothing like what he had experienced before, and he found himself pushing back against Siven, searching for more. More of what, he wasn't sure, but more. More and more and more and Siven obliged, their tongue moving in swift circles over Khess' clit, switching between pointed and flat, sucking on his clit and then kissing it softly. Khess started grinding up into Siven's face, unable to stop himself, desperate for just a little bit more contact and a little bit more friction.

"Now you know what it feels like," Arms murmured, pulling him out of the memory again as she parted her lips over the head of Khess's cock and let it slide along her tongue. "And now I know how easy to please you are," she said as she came back up again.

Khess breathed a laugh, lost in the muddy waters of the first time he'd had his pussy eaten out and the current feeling of his wife's fingers in his asshole and her tongue sliding along the length of his cock.

"Is that truly how it is when I'm between your legs? Every time?" His sentence was ragged but Khess had taken a break from trying to contain himself. His wife was everywhere for fucks sake.

She pulled up off of his cock with a quiet pop, there was a small smile playing on her lips. "Better, in my opinion."

The memory of then and the feeling of now didn't even allow him the satisfaction of an ego boost. She put both of her hands around him and bounced the head of his cock on her tongue, looking up at him from under her lashes. Khess groaned and bucked into her, pushing himself into her mouth again while she laughed and gave him a gentle bite.

Khess closed his eyes with a welcomed wince and remembered the feeling when Siven had sucked on his clit and slid two fingers into him at the same time. It was entirely different to the feeling of Arms's fingers inside him right now, like a fullness he hadn't known was possible.

"How do you not have me do that to you constantly?"

Arms sat up on her knees again and watched him while she stroked him, considering something for a moment before letting his cock go and crawling up to straddle his face. She shifted the harness to the side, holding the strap out of the way.

"You might be better than Siven at this," she said, seating herself over his open mouth and sinking down onto the tongue that Khess extended. She sighed softly, "But you are even better at everything else."

She pushed her fingers through his hair and held him down against the pillows, staring down past her breasts into his eyes and Commanded with another flash in her eyes. "Continue."

Khess started to mimic Siven in his memory, licking slowly then sucking on her clit. She pulled tighter on his hair and shook her head. "Be yourself, Khess. You're better. Give me what you wish Siven had given you."

He glared up at her and pulled at the restraint lightly, wiggling his fingers a little. She rolled her eyes and waved away the restraints, and they disappeared with a shimmer. His right hand came up immediately and cupped her breast, and the left slipped under her thigh. He pulled her further up his face till the tip of his nose pushed into her clit and his tongue curved up inside her. He licked up into her, holding her steady as she rocked back and forth on his nose, then he slid three fingers into her pussy. He curved them slightly to rub up inside her as she moved and his tongue flicked against her clit.

Arms made the first sound that wasn't a laugh or an amused sigh all night and gripped the headboard in front of her, holding herself up while grinding on his face. Khess laughed drunkenly against her wet pussy and he kissed her and he licked her and sucked on her while he slid his slick fingers in and out. And then he felt the prod at his mind again and he let her in and there she was: inside him while he was inside her.

Khess let Thea's cock slide out of his mouth as the slender crimson tiefling turned around to pull Siven up to his face, kissing the elf deeply. Khess writhed under them, the sudden empty air around his pussy frustrating him. He was content to watch two hot people make out on top of him as much as the next guy, but felt the need to remind them that they were on a limited and relatively expensive timer. A growl of annoyance came from one of the bodies straddled on top of Khess but he couldn't be certain which, and Siven's fingers slipping down inside his pussy again at the same time that Thea's rough tail curled around Khess's throat didn't make it any easier to determine which one he had annoyed. The two on top of him continued to make out with one another while the tip of Thea's tail caressed Khess's cheek and Siven's fingers continued pumping in and out of him and their thumb circled around Khess's clit over and over. Khess knew that if he still had his cock right now it would be rock hard, leaking all over his stomach while he watched his two friends kiss, or better yet Siven would be sitting on it, right to the base of him, and he could have been bucking up into them with a purpose. Instead he was lying here being made to watch when Thea reached between the two of them and started stroking Siven's cock.

"I thought the point of this was for the two of you to fuck me," Khess groaned.

Thea growled, his tail curling tighter around Khess's neck. "Be patient, angel boy."

Arms interrupted his memory with a laugh and Khess ran his teeth lightly against her clit. He felt her shiver but the laughter stopped.

"We have three hours, Khess. You'll wait your turn, and watch." Siven said, shimmying back a little till they were on their knees and resting on their heels between Khess's legs, their cock only inches away.

Thea climbed off of Khess as well, settling on his knees beside Siven to watch Khess. Khess pouted at the two Golden Blade fourth years, their eyes dark with lust as they looked down at the sheen between his thighs.

"And I'd like to spend all three of those hours with you both inside of me," He whispered, watching them both look him over.

His eyes shimmered when Thea reached down absentmindedly and started stroking Siven next to him, his own cock twitching in the air at Khess's need. Khess had the feeling that it was not going to take much to convince them, they were tired of exercising their restraint as much as he was. Honestly, they had been tired of exercising their restraint the moment he mentioned his idea at Fuckstick. Khess shifted over in the small bed, and curled a finger at Siven, gesturing at the now empty space on the mattress beside him. Siven lay down next to Khess and watched in hungry silence as he straddled their hips and started grinding against them.

Khess's head dropped back with the sudden friction and pressure against his clit that he had been seeking out, the feeling of his own body sliding along Siven's cock was so new yet so familiar in a way. He had always been on the receiving end, knew what it feel like for someone to grind against the length of his cock, knew what it felt like when the very tip of him grazed someone's clit and they stifled a quiet moan, knew what it felt like when he was given the grace to push inside them a little before it was taken away and a desperate sigh would escape him. He recognised it when he made Siven do the same. He captured Siven's escaped sigh with a kiss, leaning forward and bringing his lips down to meet Siven's, then their neck, then their chest.

Khess reached behind himself and grasped at the air for a moment before Thea's tail curled around Khess's wrist. Khess drew the tail to his ass and tested himself with a finger, then a second and a third. A benefit, he was learning, of self-lubrication was that it spread, and in his case it was seemingly plentiful. Thea moved behind him, drawing up close to Khess, and released his wrist from the tail. He pulled Khess's hand away gently and leaned down, his hands spreading Khess from behind, before he pushed a long, forked tongue inside briefly, and then pulled back and pushed the head of his cock into Khess. Khess's face dropped into Siven's chest with a strangled gasp and he lowered himself a little until the tip of Siven's cock grazed his clit. The moment he felt them both, Thea in his ass, Siven's cock pressing against his new cunt right as his body relented and let them both in, Khess felt like he could have come right then and there. Hells, he had three hours of this, what was stopping him.

Meanwhile, on a cool summer night in the bedroom of the High Matriarch of House Tiluvia, Arms had been getting louder the longer Khess had gone on in the memory. And somehow he had managed to continue giving her exactly what she needed exactly how he knew she liked it. She was right, he was just doing what he wished had been done to him. Maybe if nothing else had come of his Shapechange venture (although much had come of his Shapechange venture) at least he had a little more insight in how to please his wife.

You see, there were few things that had made his chest hurt and his stomach drop the way that Arms had (to be fair most of what was on that list were Arms-adjacent); her real, genuine smile, the one that he had only managed to see a handful of times; her real, genuine laugh, the one that he had only managed to see a handful of times; her real, genuine anger, when she was fighting for her people and her family and her house and, once or twice, for him; and her face, flushed and blissed in pleasure and ecstasy each time he made her come. There were other things of course that made his guts twist and his heart do that thudthud that were not Arms-adjacent but, frankly, they didn't matter to him as much right now while she fucked herself on his face.

Khess, believe it or not, never had an issue with doing as he was expected to when it came to sex. He was reliable and efficient and good at what he did. It was why his noble parents had seen him bedding others as a veritable political tactic, the fact of the matter was that it got results. The problem he was having right now, which he usually did not have in this situation - the situation being where he was about to have a beautiful woman fuck him senseless - is that he usually did not (see: never) have feelings vaguely reminiscent of love that he was actively trying to ignore. The beautiful women were also, not often (see: never) his wife. Though once or twice they had been lined up to be, before, of course, an unfortunate accident caused a dramatic shift in their House's social standing or political influence and forced them out of the race for the lord's hand.

In fact, only once before had their been any feelings vaguely reminiscent of love attached to the sex he was having and that had not turned out well. The handful of years since had been barren of any feelings like that. Sex had been fun, enjoyable, it felt good but it didn't feel like anything more than that. Even the first time he and Arms had had sex at the beginning of the year it wasn't like this.

Sex with Arms over the last two months had felt like finally waking up.

And then sneaking back to his room while she collected herself in the bathroom had felt like dying.

Khess shook his head, trying to knock out the feelings his heart forced his head to think about, which only went so far as to achieve rubbing the tip of his nose up into Arms the way that she liked. Which, of course, led to the stifling of a quiet moan on her part and successfully brought him back to the reality in front of him. Or above him. However you wanted to look at it.

Arms coming made his stomach do flips and his heart stop for a second and it took every single muscle in his body to stop his grin from outshining the sun. And the fact was that he would walk into the Hels unarmed and blindfolded just to do it one more time. So, with his hands still free of their restraints, Khess acted quickly.

With both of his hands up under Arms's thighs, he lifted her onto his shoulders, his tongue deep inside of her, quickly rubbing his nose up into her as they moved. Both of her hands tightened in his hair, not for fear of falling from his shoulders - he had her, she knew that much - simply to hold him and keep herself as close to his face as possible while they moved. He shifted to his knees and turned around before slowly lowering Arms down to the mattress. She dropped her head back onto the pillows with her legs hooked up over Khess's shoulders with a knowing sigh and looked up at him. He couldn't quite pinpoint what the look was, but she wasn't recasting the restraints at least. She nodded slightly. Khess tried to hide his grin, and now that he had a better angle, better control, he pulled Arms close to his face and listened to the noises she made and the way her body moved in his hands.

He slipped his fingers into her again and used his other hand to hold the silicone cock out of his face while he circled his tongue over her. And he brushed his teeth against her clit and listened to her sharp inhale with a smile. And he wrapped his free hand around the silicone cock between his wife's legs and started stroking it, pulling a soft chuckle from her lips. Arms started lazily thrusting herself into his hand in response, her head hanging to the side to watch.

"Good boy, Khess."

Another one of those thudthud moments he knew she liked to tease out of him. He smiled against her skin, which made his wife laugh again, and it was like he had finally ascended to the divinity his birthright had promised, and all it took was a couple of sleepy chuckles and two words of praise from the hottest person in existence. A saint if he'd ever known one.

Khess pulled his fingers out and reached around to her face, his cock twitching in response when Arms sucked each finger clean. And he rubbed newly wet fingers down the middle of her pussy and sucked on her clit as he slid them inside her again. And he curled his fingers slightly to let her grind into them while he held his tongue flat against her clit. And with his fingers sliding smoothly in and out of her, while he peppered her with kisses and circled his tongue over her, Khess saw Arms pull the sheets tight in her hands out of the corner of his eye before he felt her orgasm on his face.

Arms tightened her legs around his neck and pushed up against him, her thighs shaking against his shoulders. Khess pulled his fingers out and started rubbing light, gentle circles over her clit, slowly running his tongue along the centre of her pussy as she rode his face through each wave of her orgasm. Khess kissed her inner thighs softly, his fingers still brushing against her lightly, holding still when she pulled back, circling again when she pressed back into him, until she finally came to rest back down on his shoulders again.

For a brief moment, Khess had an idea of how he might like to spend the next part of his night, but he had a feeling that Arms had given him all of the control he was going to have for some time. And right as he was working up the courage to open his mouth and maybe ask for some direction, Arms sighed and removed her legs from his shoulders before she quickly muttered one incantation after another.

There was a flash of dim purple light, intentionally dampened so it wouldn't blind them both with the usual light show, and the two had swapped places. Khess lay on his back again and before he had a chance to really register what had happened, the arcane restraints Arms had previously given him the grace of removing had returned. He tried to pull himself up to test them, just because, and welcomed the satisfying strength of them slamming him back down to the mattress, not to mention the pleasing shock that the restraints sent down each of his limbs, meeting at the centre of him with a warm buzz. Khess grinned up at her, he couldn't help himself.

It was formulaic, almost; they both knew what he liked, they both knew they would start out the night pretending that they didn't. Bits of Khess would peak through every now and then, a soft smile here and there, a grin he would try to hide with a nipple in his mouth or by pressing his face up against her thigh. He would fail. They were like rays of light peaking through clouds, an inevitable sign of the sunshine yet to show. They both knew that eventually, after he had made her come at least once, he would drop the stoic facade and would return to his natural state: putty in her hands. Not even 'just happy to be here'. Khessar Varhil was always thrilled to be here.

Arms waved a hand in the air and a bottle of lube from the bedside table started floating towards her, held aloft by a translucent hand of arcane energy. While it went about applying itself to the strap now reseated on her hips, Arms turned her attention to the man lying restrained before her. She watched him from under her lashes, and he watched her get comfortable between his legs, his eyes dark and sparkling with unbridled hunger. Every other second felt like a lifetime and every other lifetime he pulled against one restraint or another, relishing in the shocks that followed. Arms wrapped one hand around his cock, swiping the bead of pre-come from the tip and dragging it down and around the head. Khess pushed his hips up at her and smiled when she obliged his silent request, stroking him slowly. He had given up on the muffling and stifling, because, although Arms would rather die than admit it to his face, Khess knew she liked the sounds he made as much as he liked hers. And every moan and pant and whimper she pulled out of him had her biting her bottom lip.

But, Khess remembered, she was here to do something that she hadn't yet had the pleasure of doing herself. She had been...involved, when Faire had fucked him. Though he had been in the middle of the Faire and Arms sandwich that time, and had had the gift of fucking up into Arms while Faire had been deep inside of him. This was something Arms had mentioned wanting to do a few times in the last year of them having sex, though it had always been during the height of passion or whatever the fuck you wanted to call it, so Khess had tried to keep his hopes low. But tonight, when Arms had pulled Khess into her bedroom and the strap had been lying on the bed waiting for them, he had to stop himself from jumping straight to the prize.

He was lost in his thoughts again and Arms pulled him out with a finger in his asshole, stretching him gently while she continued stroking his cock with her other hand. She added another finger, and then another soon after. Khess was, frankly, becoming a little impatient, and started moving quickly against both of her hands, desperate for the feeling of both, desperate for something else entirely.

Suddenly, Arms filled his head. It was the scent of her and the sound of her and the warmth of her and the feeling of her. That thudthud feeling boiled down into the pure essence of her that was being pressed into his mind and into his heart.

She was everywhere, like anything else he had ever thought of had been pulled out of him and the only thing that had been put in to replace it was her.

Arms, his wife, this woman he had been trying desperately not to love too much but all of his effort had been for naught. 

And if here, in this bed, all of these times she welcomed him in instead of shutting him out, if they were the only opportunities he ever got to show her what the full depth of his love felt like for the rest of time; until the sun imploded and the moons fell and formed craters in this earth; until all of the atoms that he was made up of had been stripped of his identity and they had moved on to become something else; until his soul was nothing but the memory of a memory of a memory of a memory, well, then he would make sure she knew exactly what it felt like to be known by him and to be loved by him. If only so she would give him the gift of her presence in his mind just one more time.

He felt her smile in his head, this warm glow that he had never felt before. A calmness in his mind like all the buzzing had stopped and there was just a quiet wave lapping at the shore of his consciousness. The peace was a first for him. She had heard it all, or felt it all, however it worked when she was walking through his mind. She had bore witness to what was essentially an admission of love, one that he hadn't voiced before and maybe wouldn't ever, because saying it to her in his mind was one thing, but actually speaking the words were another. Because she had heard it all and she had smiled, but she had heard it all and she had just smiled. Maybe she was feeling it now: his panic, his fear, his sadness. And if she was she didn't draw attention to it. Maybe that was her way of being kind.

What do you want, Khess?

When she spoke in his mind it was gentle, he thought, though that might have just been a filter he was giving himself. Because what she had said shocked him back to the moment they were in and for a second he forgot what he should say and almost said what he wanted to say.

He almost said: You, always. You, forever. You, if you'll have me. You, until the end.

But this was sex, he told himself. A distraction for them both, he told himself.

So he coated his words with a thick layer of need. "Fuck me," Khess said aloud, the trust he had in his own mind waning. "I want you to fuck me, Arms."

Arms left his mind and it felt empty. And then he felt the tip of her silicone cock push at his asshole until it gave way and he let her in and then he felt full again. And it was enough, this was enough, because Arms had put his legs up over her own shoulders, and it pushed her breasts together in a way that he couldn't stop looking at, and she still had one hand on his cock, and his body had pulled at the restraints when she had pushed herself into him, and he was nothing if not responsive to a shock or two.

Her face was flushed and needy and she was looking down at him like she owned him, and that was enough. And Khess meant it when he had thought it; if this was the only chance he ever got he would take it and run with it. So he reached up and rolled her nipples in his fingers as she fucked him.

Her head hung forward at his touch and her hair fell further down to him, brushing at his stomach, curling over his hips. Her hair was a canopy of it's own just for him, and he smelled her everywhere and he felt her everywhere and he thought for a second that maybe this was the depth of it. The veritable ocean of his love. Arms deep inside of him after fucking herself on his face, Khess desperately muttering her name between thrusts, her smiling and laughing and brushing a hand across his cheek while he melted at the end of her.

Then she pushed his legs further and sunk herself deeper into him still and he thought maybe this was it.

But then she pushed his legs further still, folded him over and sank even deeper till he felt the cool touch of the harness against his skin, felt her hips pressing against his body, and she leaned down close to him, his legs up by his own head. She pulled her hair to the side and now he could see her clearly, she kissed him while she pulled out and she kissed him again while she pushed back in. And she kissed and she kissed and she kissed and each time she kissed him he came out of it with a moan on his lips. And each time she thrust into him he pushed back into her to stay with her as long as he could. She brushed his hair to the side and lowered her mouth to his ear and whispered, her voice ragged, her thrusts slow and perfect:

"You take my cock so well, my darling husband."

Thudthud. And that was the depth of it. Khess went to reach for his wife, to kiss her, to have her, to hold her till death did they part. And he was rewarded with the familiar punishing shocks of the restraints, and his hips bucked from the mattress and he choked out a, "Fuck, Arms-", as he came across his own stomach. Arms's smile was proud, positively beaming, and she continued to fuck him slowly as his cock pulsed and his chest heaved with each soul-shaking breath.

After a moment to let him breathe, after she was satisfied that every last drop of come had spread across his chest and dripped out onto his stomach, Arms pulled out of him and licked her way up. She waved a hand and the strap and harness vanished before she straddled his hips and leaned down to kiss him once more.

"To our wedding," Arms muttered against his lips. Kissing him again, lightly, like she had at the altar earlier that afternoon, when the fibres of their hearts had become entwined.

"To us," Khess responded, afraid to say too much more.

He took his opportunity to kiss her one more time before steeling his heart to the inevitable.

Arms got up off the bed and walked to the bathroom. And Khess was never good at learning his lesson so he lay there and took slow, steady breaths, staring up at the bed's canopy, waiting to see if she would call for him. When nothing came and three minutes later the shower started up Khess sighed and rolled off the bed. He pulled on his pants, picked up the rest of his clothes and left the sheets rumpled up in his image out of spite.

Khess wasn't to know that Arms had stood at the doorway watching him breathe for those three minutes. Waiting for something, or hoping for something, or working herself up to something, who's to say, but he didn't look up to find out. He wasn't to know that when she came back from the bathroom, where the shower had felt lonely, that she left the sheets as they were and lay down on 'her' side of the bed, not that she'd ever invited her husband to claim his.

Stained Glass

"They remind me of you," Khess said quietly, his fingers still light on the edges of the bouquet as he handed them to Arms.

He didn't have to look at her to know her lips had pulled into a smirk. He could sketch the exact shape of her mouth with his off-hand, eyes closed, in the middle of a Stratosphere game. Still couldn't bring his eyes up to meet hers though. Instead, he kept them trained on the blue and purple hues of the bouquet’s stained glass petals.

"How so?"

Khess sucked in a breath, it was the only way he had figured out how to ground himself whenever she spoke. Always a breath, just a second to steady himself, drag some oxygen to his brain before it short-circuited and shut down. 

If someone had asked Khess to describe it he would say that his fiancée had a voice like molten lava. He'd say that it poured over him like honey; slow, sticky, sweet, but golden and light all the same. It washed through his blood and warmed him from the inside out, left him feeling heavy and weightless all at once. Like a ship on the sea, rolling over the waves like he was nothing to the forces of nature, but anchored by something heavier, wrought iron keeping him trapped in place. It got a little hard to breathe sometimes, and the waves crashed over him because it was inevitable. But she kept him there and drowned him in spurts of sea spray, weighed down with honey and lava to keep him from drifting away. 

For months it had floored him, left his brain buffering on repeat like she had gone in and ripped something out each time she spoke, and for a while Khess thought that he had made a mistake approaching her in the first place. 

If he was being honest, she was the only person he had ever met that made him question whether putting his all into loving everyone was, in fact, wise. Khess had shown up to the party at KAB's house to watch his first Stratosphere game, then he had seen the hottest person he'd ever laid eyes on hovering in the air surrounded by flying swords and thought, 

'Yeah, I think I could manage that.' Naturally. Like a fucking idiot.

The moment he stepped out of that mirrorcury into the SOMA house in Northern Donimear for their date a week later, and he had been wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, unsure of what to expect, and Arms had been wearing what - he had come to learn - Arms tends to wear (which is not a lot evidently), Khess quickly realised what he had actually gotten himself into. 

He wasn't so naive as to call it a game of wits. Or a game of cat and mouse, even. Games were supposed to be fun. And a mouse is chased--hunted. No, he didn't feel hunted. Watched, maybe. But watched in the way that the cat was lying there, lounging in the sun, occasionally looking up but never once choosing to break their peace to chase. After all, what was the point in the chase when the mouse walked right into your mouth anyway?

But things had changed. He didn't know when, exactly. Or the why or the how. It had just gotten easier at some point to talk to her. To listen to her without getting lost in the panic. He had, at some point, learned to keep his head above the water. Maybe it was when he saw her getting close to Faire. Maybe it was when he realised that all of the things he was offering, all of the love he had to give - not just to Arms, but to everyone - it just wasn't what she was after. Maybe it was the night before the Stratosphere game when their relationship had become more transactional. More political. Diplomatic, contractual, obligatory. All of those words that stripped the feelings from it and left him with something hollow and achingly familiar. 

Yeah. Maybe it was the familiarity. 

He had been asked to feign relationships before. The only thing different this time was, well, apparently everything.

Arms was kind and compassionate. She hid behind barricades built of calculated disinterest, sure, but Khess was stubborn enough to not be stopped by a barricade. And he trusted her. Liked her, even, which was a first for these kinds of things. Diad had been okay, likeable, but it was the first time he had ever been in the arranged marriage situation with someone else that had somewhere better to be. Diad and Kaya were better off with each other. And in the long run, Khess was better off with the High Matriarch of Tiluvia than anywhere else as well. If she kept to her side of the bargain he was more than happy to keep to his. It made it easier. Or it had. Before Everything Else That Came After.

You ever casually hook-up with someone for most of a school year, then get engaged to them one night during a casual conversation on your way to her sister's birthday dinner where you had just offered to keep her company (because you know those kinds of dinners are like being roasted alive on an open fire), announce the engagement to her entire (living) family at said dinner, and in the same breath then announce the dissolution of your previously arranged engagement (which then made way for your new-future-sister-in-law to get together with her childhood sweetheart a.k.a your ex-fiancé (who is in attendance at said birthday dinner might I add))? 

Then the next day you both enter into the most dangerous battle you have ever been in to try and save the very fabric of time and the universe itself, somehow meet what you suspect is a future version of your now new-fiancée who desperately doesn't want you to do whatever needs to be done to save the universe because of something that happens in the future, see a snippet of that future in which you and her have had a baby together where she also drops the bomb that the woman you just found out is your mum a few months ago might actually not be your mum and also you're dead? 

Then it's the next day but also it's the day before and you experience some strange dream sequence inside the mind of a long dormant Titan in which the previously-mentioned-baby that you had with your previously-mentioned-new-fiancée-wife-mother-of-your-child is now a teenager that is mad at you for being a mediocre dad and is named after your mum-not-mum? Then you and your closest friends experience some incredibly traumatising versions of events in which everyone you've ever known and loved and shaped and been shaped by have died and you're left loveless and alone for over forty years (aside from aforementioned closest friends) so you all agree to work together to Wish reality back to how it was (plus some extras)? 

And now back in the present reality your new-fiancee-maybe-one-day-wife-and-mother-of-your-child doesn't know any of this, so you choose not to tell her, but you've been thrust back into this contractual relationship that feels so small and tender but so big and overpowering in the palm of your hands, and the heat radiating off of it is enough to ignite a second sun? But you don't want to jeopardise the bargain because she's going to help you fulfil that first promise you ever made to the full moon; to kill your parents; to destroy your House; to free your siblings. Which is big, huge, perhaps the biggest thing ever, maybe. 

But also. You don't want to scare her. You don't want to overwhelm her. You don't want to influence her decisions because sure, this relationship is contractual now, but if it grows into something more, if it's something you both for the first time, finally have a choice in, then you want her to experience it for everything it is and give her the chance to choose. And maybe that's bigger.

Or maybe telling her now and letting her have the choice now instead of keeping it to yourself is more important. But you haven't decided yet, because the world just un-ended and you're taking a moment to breathe for fucks sakes.

No? That hasn't happened to you before? Okay. Bummer. You should try it sometime.

"Khess?" Her voice was tinged with concern, and it was enough of an emotion to pull his eyes to hers. Which was a mistake, of course, because it had gotten easier to keep his head above water for a bit but then after Everything Else That Came After, it had gotten sososososo much worse. And her eyes were like stars and her skin was pristine and soft and she always tasted sweet, and her honey-voice, and her perfect hair and sure she wasn't telling him everything but now neither was he.

"Hm? Sorry-"

"Are you okay?" Lava tipped the end of her question down and it dragged along Khess's spine, sent a shiver across his body.

If he was a lesser man, Khess would have started salivating at her consideration of his okayness. At the mere inkling that someone like her cared. But he was twenty-one now and had better control of himself than that. Sure, his heart was thudding against his ribcage and his palms were sweating and his cheeks and the back of his neck were hot, but that was probably unrelated.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just distracted," he cleared his throat and stepped away from her. "What did you say?"

She had created a clay vase while he had been lost in his thoughts, it was warm and heavy, and she positioned it on her desk and carefully placed the flowers inside. They tinkled like bells against one another as she settled them into position. 

She had a smile on her face again, but it was shaded with the last dregs of confusion. Or worry, if he dared himself to think of her like that. If he thought lesser of her he might have assumed the tightness of her voice was annoyance at him not listening to what she had asked. Or frustration for forgetting what she had said. Others probably expected her to be the kind of highborn Turian that wanted everyone to be paying attention to her all the time. But that wasn't like her at all. 

"I asked how these flowers that you got remind you of me?"

"I made them."

"What?"

"I didn't get them, I made them for you."

"Oh. You did?"

"I did."

"They're very nice, thank you." Her eyebrows carried her earlier question still, and a more perceptive man than Khess might have seen further questions flash on her features for a moment.

His answer is:

All of it reminds me of you. I think it's the glass, mostly, and the strips of lead holding it together. I think people get caught up in either appreciating the beauty of the glass and the image it presents, or they obsess over the way the sunlight catches the colours and spreads it across the ground beneath it, but it's always one or the other that are their favourites, never the whole. And a sculpture like that, made of glass, people are scared to hold it, afraid of the consequences of it breaking more than anything. The clean up, the waste, the loss of something seemingly so perfect. But stained glass is a sum of it's parts in all ways. Sure, the glass itself and the light it paints, but under the strips of lead it's also made of broken pieces built together again. 

I think people look at you and see something they believe to be fragile. Easily breakable, to be handled with care. Wizards, y'know. Or they're afraid of how sharp the pieces will be if you break, so they never even try to hold you in the first place. Because they don't want to be cut if you break. Which is a waste, I think. A waste of an opportunity to let fear stop you. 

But they don't see that you're already built from broken pieces, and if you shatter into shards again whatever comes of that will be beautiful in all of it's parts as well.

But instead, he says, "The glass and the colour, and all the light between them. It all reminds me of you."

Because he doesn't want to scare her. And he doesn't want to overwhelm her.

And she says, "They're beautiful. Thank you, Khess. "

And Khess opens his mouth, and for a second he says:

Of course they're beautiful that's why they remind me of you. Of course, you don't have to thank me for this, I would lay down my life in an instant for you. Of course, I have seen a future of mine with you and one without you and I know which one I want you to choose. Of course, if it was satisfactory I would tear out my bleeding heart and show it to you, but these flowers will have to do.

But instead, he says, "Of course." And he hopes that she hears the rest.