#sbtah

"You keep doing that," you said.

"Doing what."

"My thigh. You can't keep your hands off them."

His jaw shifted but his grip didn't loosen. If anything his fingers pressed harder, sinking into the give of you and the look on his face was the one he usually reserved for targets he'd already decided to pursue.

"And?"

"And I want to know why."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he moved closer, his knee nudging between yours, his hand sliding higher on your thigh until the heel of his palm rested against the thickest part of it. He squeezed again, and watched your breath catch with open satisfaction.

"Because you fit nicely my hands," he said, low and rough. "Because every time I grab you here your whole body reacts and you don't even notice."

His thumb traced the inseam of your pants. "And because you're mine. That's why."

He squeezed once more, let go, and went back to his pack like nothing had happened.

Your face burned for an hour afterward.

Dotta Luzulas

You noticed the pattern before he did. Every time you sat next to him his hand drifted to your thigh. It wasn't a bold move or a conscious decision either for him. His fingers just... migrated over like they had their own agenda. During meals, during watch, during the long boring stretches between missions where the unit sat around doing nothing. His hand would find your leg and his fingers would curl into the flesh and squeeze, light at first, then firmer, kneading into the thick of your thigh like he couldn't help himself.

He never seemed to realize he was doing it until you pointed it out.

"Dotta."

"Hm?" He looked up from his drink, eyes unfocused, cheeks pink from the alcohol. His hand was on your thigh under the table, fingers pressed deep, thumb rubbing an absent circle into the inner curve.

"You're doing it again."

He looked down. Stared at his own hand like it belonged to someone else. The pink on his cheeks flared to full crimson.

"I-- that's not-- I wasn't--" He yanked his hand back and shoved it between his own knees. "Sorry. I don't know why I keep--"

"I didn't say stop."

His mouth hung open. His eyes darted to your face, then to your thigh, then back. You took his hand from between his knees and placed it right back where it had been. His fingers twitched against the fabric and then curled in, tentative, testing.

"It's just..." He swallowed. His voice dropped to a whisper, so only you could hear him. "You're really pre--I mean you feel really-- there's just a lot of you right here and my hand likes it a bit and I just do it without thinking... I think."

"...A little bit?"

"Okay a lot bit." His fingers tightened on your thigh and a shaky breath fell out of him. His thumb found the inner seam of your pants and traced it and his blush spread to his ears. "Can I just... keep doing this? Is that an option for me--us?"

"It was always an option, I was just waiting on you to make the first move."

His hand squeezed again, more deliberate this time, and he bit his lower lip and stared at the table with the focused intensity of a man trying very hard not to combust in a room full of his colleagues.

Norgalle Senridge

Everything Norgalle did had to be a declaration, a public act, a king exercising his right to what belonged to him.

The first time his hand closed around your thigh you were standing beside him while he addressed the unit about a mission plan.

Nobody mentioned it, so you didn't either.

It became a pattern after that. His hand on your thigh whenever you sat beside him at meals, his fingers curling over it with ease. His grip would tighten whenever someone addressed you directly, as though giving a silent territorial reminder. During briefings he'd pull your chair closer with one hand and claim your leg with the other, his broad palm covering as much ground as it could.

But the way he did it in private was different. Slower. Greedier.

You were in his quarters, seated on the low couch while he reviewed his seal work. He set the blueprints aside and his hand found your thigh and squeezed. He watched his own hand with open fascination.

"You do that constantly you know," you said.

"I am aware."

"Want to tell me why?"

He looked at you the unguarded hunger in his eyes. His hand squeezed again, harder, and he pulled your leg toward him until your thigh rested across his lap.

"Because a king must know his territory," he said softly. His fingers kneaded into the thickest part of your thigh and his breathing deepened. "Every hill. Every curve. Every border." His other hand joined the first, both palms pressing into you, mapping you.

"And because when I hold you here, you make a lovely sound, right at the back of your throat."

"I do not."

He squeezed with both hands and you gasped.

His smile was victorious. "Do not question your king on what he knows to be right."

Venetim Leopool

The first time it happened his hand flew off your thigh so fast he knocked his drink over, stammered an apology and refused to make eye contact for twenty minutes. The second time, during a supply review, his fingers landed on your leg and stayed for a full three seconds before he realized and pulled back with a strangled cough.

By the fifth time you stopped counting and started paying attention to what triggered it. It was stress, mostly. The worse his day got, the more his hand gravitated toward your thigh. After a bad briefing he'd sit next to you and his long fingers would creep onto your leg and squeeze, like he was trying to stop himself from spiraling.

But he always caught himself, always pulled away and always pretended like it didn't happen.

Tonight you decided to end that cycle.

He was beside you on the bench outside the command tent, hair loose, eyes tired, recounting a supply disaster in a scattered way that meant he was actually frustrated with himself. His hand landed on your thigh mid-sentence and his fingers pressed in, squeezing in a rhythm that matched his breathing.

You put your hand over his and held it there.

He froze. Looked down at your hand on his. Then up at your face. The flush started at his collarbone and climbed.

"I was--I didn't mean to--"

"Yes you did."

His fingers twitched under yours, caught between the instinct to pull away and the desire to stay.

"You do this every time your stressed out," you told him. "And every time you act like you got caught stealing--Which is more Dotta's thing if we are being honest. So I'm telling you right now, you don't have to let go."

His eyes searched your face for the lie but couldn't find one and his fingers slowly relaxed under your hand and then curled back onto your thigh, tentative at first, then firmer. His thumb found the inner curve and pressed and his breath hitched.

"It helps," he admitted quietly. "I don't know why. When everything gets overwhelming and I can't find the ground, you become it."

"You should have just said so from the start." you teased with a grin, nudging his arm with yours.

His grip tightened and his head dropped onto your shoulder as his thumb kept moving against the inside of your thigh slow and steady.

"I suppose so... thank you for being patient with me." he murmured.

Tsav

He didn't have a subtle bone in his body, so when the thigh thing started there was zero ambiguity about it. You were sitting beside him while he cleaned his thunder staff and his free hand landed on your thigh, long fingers wrapping around it, and he squeezed like he was testing fruit at a market stall.

"Huh," he said out loud to no one, while staring directly at your leg.

"Huh what?"

"Nothing. Wait--Hold on." He squeezed again, slower, his fingers pressing into the give of the flesh and then releasing and then pressing again. His gap-toothed grin spread across his face. "Okay so this is going to sound weird but I need you to know that this is now my favorite thing."

"My...thigh?"

"Your thighs. Specifically this part right here." He squeezed the thickest section above your knee and his eyes lit up like he was lining up a shot. "Because there's this perfect amount of resistance, right, and when I press in it just--" He squeezed and released, as he watched your thigh bounce back to shape. "Yeah. That. I'm obsessed with that."

"You've known me for months and this is the thing that gets you obsessed with me?"

"Apparently." He didn't let go. His hand stayed on your thigh, squeezing at irregular intervals, each time followed by a small, satisfied exhale.

When you stood to leave, his hand chased your leg and caught it, pulling you back down. "Wait-wait-wait!--Where are you going?"

"To get dinner, it's been 4 hours man."

"Bring it back here--Dinner I mean, I'm hungry too," His fingers tightened. "But I'm not done with this yet either."

From that point on it was constant. Whether it was during meals or while the two of you were on watch duty, his fingers would find your leg and squeeze it like a reflex.

During a mission briefing he grabbed your thigh in front of the entire unit and Xylo stopped talking mid-sentence to tell him off.

Tsav stared back but didn't remove his hand. "Sorry sorry! I'm listening now!"

He was not listening. His thumb only continued move higher and higher on the inseam of your pants as his eyes kept darting to you to try and catch your reaction.

Least to say, you stopped wearing thin fabric around him after the third week, yet somehow it only made things worse.

Jayce Partiract

It started after a flight. You rid behind him on Neely for the first time, your thighs clamped tight around the dragon's sides with your arms locked around his waist, and when he helped you down afterward his hands had landed on your thighs to steady you, and froze. His eyes dropped to where his fingers gripped your legs, like he just discovered something about himself.

He let go and didn't mention it.

But after that, his hands found your thighs constantly. When you sat beside him his hand would drift to your leg and squeeze, while he talked about Neely's wing maintenance or complained about grounding orders.

When you sat across from him he'd hook his boot behind your calf and pull your leg closer until he could reach your thigh and rest his hand on it. Always gripping. Always kneading. Like he couldn't believe the give of it under his fingers.

You called him on it one night on the stable roof, his hand on your thigh for the fourth time that day, his thumb tracing circles into the inner section while he stared at the sky.

"Jayce."

"Mm."

"You and my thighs. What's happening there."

He looked at you for a moment before snapping his attention back to the sky, jaw clenching and unclenching until he could find his words.

"When we fly," he said, "Neely and I move together. I can feel her body shift under me, all that power and weight..." His thumb traced higher along your inseam. "Your thighs are basically the same thing. When I grab you here I can feel you and I... appreciate it."

"You're comparing me...to your dragon." you side-eyed him with a laugh.

"I'm comparing you to the thing I love most in the world.--Just take the compliment!" He squeezed again, hard enough to make you inhale, and his grin came back, sharp and unapologetic. "Besides. Neely doesn't make that face when I hold on tight."

"What face?"

He squeezed harder, watched your expression, and grinned wider.

"That one."

Rhyno

The first time it happened he looked genuinely puzzled by his own hand. You were seated beside him on the supply crates after a mission, close enough that your legs touched, and his broad hand had drifted to your thigh and squeezed. Not hard, more like... exploratory. His eyebrows lifted and he looked down at his own fingers with pleasant curiosity.

"Fascinating," he said.

"What is?"

"The way you feel under my hand." He squeezed again, slower, his pale fingers pressing into the give of your thigh through the fabric with his ever-present smile. "Huma--You are so remarkably dense. In a physical sense. All this muscle and tissue layered over bone, and when I press here--" Another squeeze, deeper. "--it gives, but only to a point. And then there's resistance."

"Are you... studying my anatomy right now?"

"Thoroughly." His thumb found the thickest part of your outer thigh and kneaded into it. His eyes found yours and the curiosity in them had darkened into something a tad...hungrier. "I find I don't want to let go."

He didn't.

His hand became a permanent fixture on your thigh whenever you were near him. Always gripping, always kneading, always seeking out that same territory with a focus that bordered on obsession.

The strange part was what it did to the rest of him.

Xylo noticed it first. Rhyno stopped disappearing after missions, stopped deviating from as many orders and reduced the destructive tendencies that landed him in solitary confinement every other week.

So they started pairing you with him. For every mission, every patrol and every assignment. Xylo never explained why. Didn't need to. The results spoke for themselves. Rhyno with you beside him was focused, contained and effective, whereas Rhyno without you was well, expensive.

One night after a clean mission that had zero incidents and collateral, you sat with him on the crates again and his hand found your thigh immediately.

"You know why they keep putting us together, don't you?" you asked.

"Because I behave when you're around." His fingers squeezed slowly, moving up and down your leg. "And I'll keep behaving, so long as you keep letting me hold onto you."

"Didn't say I cared. Said it was thin." He kissed you harder.

You were a mess. Spit-slick and gasping, his armor dug into your chest while you combed your hands in his hair and pulled. He groaned against you as his hips rolled forward off the wall into yours.

You bit his lip and the sound he made was barely human.

His earrings caught the light when his head tipped. His hair fell across his eyes but he didn't push it back because both of his hands were too busy dragging you closer.

His fingers found the hem of your shirt and pressed against your bare skin.

"Xylo."

"Shut up."

"Make me."

His eyes snapped to yours, furious in a way that had nothing to do with anger. His skin was flushed down his throat, his own mouth swollen and slick. He grabbed your jaw and kissed you so deep you stopped breathing, his back bracing hard against the wall, his arm banding around your waist.

Footsteps in the corridor. Once. Twice. His mouth never left yours. His grip never loosened. You grabbed his armor straps again and pulled and he groaned into you and gave you everything he had.

You broke apart gasping. He stared at you. His thumb traced your jaw, unsteady.

"Get back here," he said, sounding more wrecked than he intended.

You did, ignoring the door that rattled behind the two of you. Neither of you cared from the second this started, and you weren't going to start caring now.

Dotta Luzulas

The second the patrol rounded the corner you grabbed Dotta's wrist and yanked him behind the nearest door.

He yelped, tripped, and you caught him by the jacket, slammed the door shut, and kissed him.

His eyes went huge. Then they closed and he grabbed your arms and kissed you back clumsy and frantic, nose bumping yours.

He tasted like the candied fruit he stole off a merchant cart that morning. He was eager and uncoordinated, making small choked sounds every time you changed the angle, his pink hair crushed against your forehead.

You walked him into the wall. He went willingly, hauling you with him by fistfuls of fabric.

"W-Wait--" He broke the kiss, panting. "Is the door locked?"

"Nope."

"Shouldn't we--"

You kissed him again and he forgot the question as his hand tangled in your hair, the other grabbing your waist.

The kiss this time slower, deeper, with a focus that hadn't existed ten seconds ago. He licked into your mouth and you made a noise and felt him grin against your lips. You bit his bottom lip and the grin collapsed into a whimper.

His hips shifted against yours and he gasped, startled by himself.

"I'm supposed to be on rotation--" he managed. "Xylo's going to kill me."

"Xylo doesn't need to know."

"Xylo always knows. If not now, then later."

"Dotta."

"Yeah?"

"Stop talking about Xylo while I'm kissing you."

His ears went scarlet. "Right. Valid point."

He pulled you in by the collar and kissed you again, open-mouthed. You cupped his face and tilted his head and he whined against your tongue, his back arching off the wall into you. His hands slid down to your waist and gripped hard to keep himself steady.

You broke apart and his eyes were glazed. His mouth was red and wet. His stolen coin had fallen out of his pocket at some point and was on the floor between your feet.

"I should get that," he whispered.

"Leave it."

"I can't leave a coin, what if someone else tries to ste--"

You kissed the corner of his mouth. Then his jaw. Then his mouth again, slow. He shuddered and subtly shifted the coin under a barrel with his foot.

"O-Okay it can stay there."

Norgalle Senridge

You caught his eye during one of his hallway addresses about the proper decorum, and you tilted your head toward the side rooms. He hurriedly wrapped up his speech and none of the knights there believed for a second it was natural when they saw the two of you rush into a room.

The door barely closed before he started.

"You summoned your king most unexpect--"

You grabbed his cape and kissed him and his sentence evaporated in his throat. His eyes widened for half a beat before his broad hands landed on your hips, firm and assured, and he kissed you back thorough and unhurriedly.

You tried to push into him but he didn't budge. He pulled you flush against his chest instead, one hand flat between your shoulder blades, and opened his mouth against yours.

His mustache brushed your upper lip and his tongue slid against yours while he kissed you like this was a ceremony of some sort.

You grabbed the front of his military coat and finally managed to yank him closer. He made a low sound in his throat and his composure cracked, just slightly. His fingers dug into your back. He kissed you harder, wetter, his breathing picking up.

"Been thinking about this all day," you said against his mouth.

"As is your right. A king's beloved should never have to suppress such urges."

He walked you backward into the door and caged you there, his arms braced on either side of your head. He kissed you again, his tongue doing something that made your brain go white as he growled against your teeth and pressed you further into the wood.

You bit his lower lip and his hips jerked forward and he exhaled sharp through his nose and pulled back just enough to look at you.

His face was flushed and he was breathing hard.

"More?" he asked as the composure in his gaze began to crack.

"More." you confirmed as he cupped your face with both hands to tilt your head and kiss you so deep your knees gave out.

He made a sound against your mouth that was barely dignified and you grinned into the kiss, but he felt it and pulled back.

"Do you mock your king?"

"Never." You pulled him back in. "I just like making him lose his sense of self."

"Impossible." He kissed you again, messy and undone, though the word had never been less convincing in his entire delusional life.

Venetim Leopool

You caught him ducking out of a briefing, grabbed his arm, steered him through the nearest doorway, and shut the door. His back hit the wall and he blinked.

"What--oh." He processed. "Oh. Here? Now? With Xylo approximately forty steps--"

You kissed him and his hands flew up and landed on your arms, then your shoulders, then the sides of your face, cycling over your frame without committing.

Then his mouth softened against yours and he kissed you back with practiced ease, one hand finally settling on the back of your neck, the other curling into your shirt. The desperate sound he made between breaths nearly took your legs out from under you.

You pressed him harder into the wall. He went easily, his thin frame flattening against the stone. You bit his lower lip and whatever composure he been maintaining left the room.

"You're going to get us caught," he hissed.

Then he grabbed your collar and kissed you so hard your vision went fuzzy.

His hands were everywhere, greedy and restless, pulling at your clothes, dragging down your back, gripping your hips. Nothing at all like the meek commander everyone else got to deal with.

"You don't seem worried," you managed.

"I am extremely worried." He kissed your jaw, then the corner of your mouth, before coming back to your lips frantic and breathless. "I am also not stopping. These two facts can coexist."

"Venetim."

"Yes dear?"

"Stop talking."

He kissed you again and you grabbed his braid and tugged his head back and he moaned, eyes flying open. His throat was exposed and his chest was heaving. He stared at you from under his lashes and his expression was completely stripped.

"Do that again," he said, barely masking his begging tone.

You wrapped his braid around your fist and pulled harder as you kissed his throat. He shuddered against the wall and his hands locked on your waist and held.

"If we get caught," he breathed, "I am blaming you entirely."

Jayce Partiract

He had been in a foul mood all afternoon because some knight from the Fifth Order had looked at Neely wrong. You listened to twenty minutes of ranting about the disrespect shown to dragonkind and decided direct intervention was required.

You grabbed his scarf and pulled him into the empty storage room.

"What the hell are you--"

You pushed him again the door, slamming it shut, and kissed him. He made a sharp noise against your mouth, his hands flying to your waist on reflex. For about two seconds he stood there rigid, his eyes open as his brain tried to catch up.

Once it did, he flipped the two of you around so that you were against the door before kissing you back hard, all teeth and temper as his fingers pulled up the fabric at your hips.

You bit his bottom lip and he hissed and pressed closer, one hand bracing on the door behind you, the other sliding up your side possessive and impatient.

"You could've just said something," he muttered against your mouth.

"You were busy defending Neely's honour."

"Don't bring up Neely right now."

"You bring her up every five sec--"

He kissed you again to shut you up and it worked. His tongue slid past your lips and his hand gripped the back of your neck and he pulled you in with a force that didn't match his size at all.

His scarf was bunched between your bodies and his goggles had gotten knocked sideways on his head and he couldn't have cared less about any of it. Especially not when you grabbed him by the belt and hauled him closer.

"For the record," he panted, pulling back enough that you could see his blown pupils and his bitten-red mouth, "I'm still mad about the Neely thing."

"For the record, I don't care." you replied before yanking him back into another kiss.

Tsav

You didn't even have to trick him into the room. You just opened the door and said "come here" and Tsav walked in grinning with that gap-toothed smile already going, already talking.

"Oh, are we doing something secret? I love secret things. One time in the order they made us practice moving through rooms without making any noise and I was actually terrible at it because I kept--"

You shut the door and pushed him against it and kissed him. He laughed into your mouth and then his hands landed on you, palms warm against your back, pulling you in without a shred of hesitation.

Tsav kissed you back messily but enthusiastically with absolutely no technique to speak of. He just went for it, mouth open and grinning even while his lips were on yours, his fingers drumming restlessly against your spine.

You pulled back half an inch. "You're still smiling?"

"Yeah, cause this is great. Why wouldn't I be smiling?--You just grabbed me and kissed me. That's the best thing that's happened today. Possibly this week. Possibly since I got out of solitary, which--"

You kissed him again and he hummed happily against you, tilting his head as he started to move with more intent. His mouth slowed down as his hand slid up to cup the side of your face. His thumb traced your cheekbone and for a brief, startling moment, Tsav was completely quiet.

Then you nipped his bottom lip and the quiet was over.

"Okay I loved that."

"Which part?"

"All of it. From start to finish."

"Tsav."

"What?"

"Shut up and kiss me, we're not done yet."

"See, people keep telling me to shut up but I physically can't, it's like a medical--"

You grabbed a fistful of his jacket and kissed him hard enough to actually stop his words this time. His back hit the door and he melted into it as his hands pulling you flush against him. When you finally broke apart his eyes were half-lidded and dazed, his mouth was red and his hair was a wrecked.

He was quiet for three full seconds.

"... Tsav sweetie? Are you alright?"

He pulled you back in for another kiss without a word.

Rhyno

He was waiting for you when you opened the door, already inside the room, standing in the middle of it with that easy smile of his, his gloved hands folded behind his back.

You hadn't told him to meet you here yet.

"How did you know I--"

"I had a feeling." His blonde hair fell across his forehead and his eyes tracked you as you shut the door. "You've been looking at me all day, waiting to pounce."

"I have not--"

"Oh but you have. During the briefing. During combat. During the celebration dinner..." He counted each one off with visible delight. "I noticed."

You crossed the room and grabbed the front of his black uniform and kissed him. He received it with perfect composure and an unsettling amount of pleasure.

His hands settled on your hips and he pulled you against him slow and controlled, his mouth curving into a smile against yours before he opened up and kissed you properly.

You bit his lip and his fingers flexed hard on your hips. His eyes opened. Still smiling.

"Someone's fiesty today," he muttered lowly.

You slammed your lips on his again and he made let out pleased sigh as he walked you backward, your shoulders meeting the wall. His frame blocked out the rest of the room while he kissed you deeper, one gloved hand cradling the back of your head, the other pressing flat against the wall beside you.

"Mm, you might just be the best part of this whole operation..." he murmured against your mouth. "All of you. Everything... I mean that."

Something hungry yet adoring flickered behind his eyes when he said that before kissing you again, gentle and devouring all at once.

He broke the kiss sooner than he'd like to give you a chance to catch your breath, tightening his arms around you to hide the devious curl of his lips.

"My favorite comrade~" he cooed against your ear.