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⟣⟢◯⟣⟢Warhammer 40k⟣⟢◯⟣⟢
⬩Dress to Impress: Blood Angel/Fem!Remembrancer Reader
Description: The daemon uses Chairon's own memories against him.
Find the previous parts of this series on my Masterlist, comment and ask to be added to/removed from the Taglist, and remember my Asks and DMs are always open!
The daemon shrieked as it felt one of its prey break free. The Sergeant's soul lunged toward a crack in the Warp pocket, its desperate defiance searing any tendrils that tried to reach for it. Then…
Gone.
“NO.”
The howl resonated through the sea of chaos. The daemon sensed it ricochet off other entities. Small ones. Large ones. Fellow creatures of the Dark Prince… and servants of Their rivals.
Soon, they would swarm. And the daemon’s private feast would become a free for all. It hissed in displeasure, sending a wave of agony through its servant on the other side of the thinning veil.
“Hurry. HURRY.”
The ritual must be performed. The gates must be opened. It would take longer now that a source of desire had slipped its bonds. An amorphous tangle of taloned hands flexed and clenched in frustration.
But two sources still remained.
And the second… oh, the second….! He would not be so easily distracted.
Tongues lolled as the capricious being felt a surge of pleasure once more.
“Try, try, and try again, little psyker. Your false hope is,” a hissing moan flooded unreality with a sickly purple tide, “deliciousssssss.”
***
Meduras Chairon drowned in nostalgia.
Those curtains fluttering in the warm breeze. He remembered sitting with his legs drawn up at the kitchen table, watching his father hang them over the window.
“A little to the left, my dear.”
“Anymore to the left and they won’t hang securely, my love.”
“Oh, hush. They’ll be-”
CRASH.
“... if the words “I told you so” come out of your mouth, my dear, I am never speaking to you again.”
The worn carpet in the main room. He remembered laying on his stomach there, playing with his sisters.
“In the name of the Emperor, I will slay the enemies of humanity!”
“Meddy, stoooop it!”
“RRRAH! Fear the might of the Ultramarines!”
“We’re playing House, stupid!”
“I am NOT stupid!”
“Mama! Meddy is being stupid again!”
The intricately carved rocking chair in the corner. He remembered clambering up onto his grandmother's lap.
“Oof, you’re getting too big for this, my strong boy.”
“Sorry, Grandma. I can get down.”
“Nonsense. You stay right here as long as you like, sweet boy.”
“Forever?”
“For as long as Calth endures, child. For as long as Calth endures.”
Chairon’s breath caught. The images were so clear. So fresh. Things he had not thought about since awakening in an Imperium so very different from the one he remembered. No. Since before even then.
Since he joined the ranks of the Ultramarines.
“I… had forgotten.”
“Forgotten what, my son?”
He looked down into the weathered face of his mother. For years he’d clung to a slowly fading outline. Every campaign, every bloody slog into the next warzone wearing away the image until he remembered the memory more than the actual person. Until the pain mutated into rage for a loss he could hardly recall.
But now, it all surged back.
“You,” he answered her, “everything. Forgive me.”
She smiled. It should have comforted. But… why did she look so… satisfied?
“Mother, how-”
“Meduras, come here!”
The laughing voice snapped his head up and around. Vesta beckoned him to the kitchen table, where she and his sisters sat. Chairon found himself moving to her side. He watched her tiny hand slip into his own. Felt the cool softness of her skin.
“Caballa was just telling me how you once tried to stow away on a transport bound for Macragge. Is that true?”
He blinked again, another long lost event of his childhood crystallizing in his mind.
“I… yes.”
His eldest sister reached across the table to poke his side. The sensation was painfully familiar. She always did that when she found him insufferable. Glancing over at her, he marvelled how she still looked so much like the adolescent she’d been when the….
When the… event… something….
Something had happened.
Something terrible.
Hadn’t it?
“Father was furious. I remember him dragging you by the scruff of your neck. You sulked for a week!”
Vesta laughed again, and he found himself smiling. He loved her laughter. He loved the way she looked up at him with eyes full of joy so rarely found in the… the….
Where?
Where had he met her, again?
“Vesta-”
“I can’t wait to meet your father, Meduras. Will he be home soon?”
Home.
His mother chimed in.
“Oh, yes. His shift ends soon. He’ll be home in time for dinner.”
Home.
Vesta leaned into his side. He inhaled the fragrance of her. Flowers. Sun-lit air.
Wait. No. She should smell of medicines and sterilizing agents. He’d teased her before about reeking like an Apoth… Apothec… something. Something else. Something different.
“Vesta, why-”
“You have such a wonderful home here, Meduras.”
Home.
Her soft, cool hand moved up his arm, then down again. Her fragrance filled his nostrils. He closed his eyes and wanted nothing more than to sink into the comfort of it. The peace. Sink down, down, down and never surface. Never go back.
Go back.
Back to what?
“Shhhh.”
The sounds of his sisters’ chattering faded. The birdsong and breeze and clucking poultry from the yard just beyond the door muted beneath the pounding of his own heartbeat.
A double heartbeat. Two hearts.
That was important. Wasn’t it?
“It doesn’t matter, my love.”
Vesta’s hand moved from his arm to his chest, her touch growing bold. More bold than she’d ever been before. He remembered her shyly cupping his cheek as he knelt before her in an isolated alcove. She’d bitten her plush little lips, eyes alight with mischief and wonder. He’d leaned down further to rest his forehead against-
“Stay here, Meduras.”
He opened his eyes.
No longer did he stand in the kitchen of his family home. This room….
This room was his.
Crude model voidships hung from the low ceiling. Various sporting equipment lay scattered about the floor. Imperial propaganda posters lined the walls. The Primarch. The Ultramarines. Heroes any young boy of Calth would idolize.
Picts in simple frames sat on the window sill. His parents. His grandparents. His sisters. All accompanied by a young boy with gangly limbs and a gap-toothed grin so wide it threatened to split his cheeks.
Dark eyes full of innocence.
Chairon stared. He knew that boy. He knew he’d died long, long ago. When the skies above Calth cracked wide open and fire fell.
“Meduras.”
He refused to turn toward the too-sweet voice.
“No….”
“Oh, poor boy. Poor lonely child.”
Hands on his shoulders, kneading, embracing.
“You need no longer be alone.”
The voice changed. First, his mother. Then, his sisters. His grandmother. His father. Grandfather.
Vesta.
The last sent his teeth on edge. Something whispered at the edges of his consciousness. Something he had to do.
“You can have everything back.”
Back. He’d lost them. Lost them all.
“Yes. You did.”
His room burst into flame. Chairon staggered back as fire consumed every vestige of his childhood, picts curling and blackening in the heat, smiling faces obliterated. Smoke burned his eyes, dragged wracking coughs from his chest. He couldn’t see.
But he could hear the screams.
“Meduras!”
“Mother!”
He lunged forward, only for the unseen floor beneath his feet to melt away.
Chairon crashed down into hell. All around him, the figures of everyone he’d ever loved writhed in agony. He saw his mother’s lined skin char and crack, his father’s pooling blood beginning to boil, his sisters convulsing on the floor as smoke stole the air from their lungs.
Only their eyes remained whole, staring at him. Begging..
“HELP US.”
Chairon screamed.
Silence. Nothingness. He knelt in a void, tears streaming down his face. The hands settled on his shoulders again.
“It need not be that way.”
Vesta’s voice purred in his ear.
“You can have all your heart longs for. Family. A home to return to. I can fulfill your deepest desire.”
His deepest desire.
“Just give yourself to me.”
A home.
“I will make all the pain go away.”
Family.
“Say yes, Meduras Chairon.”
“...Vesta.”
The sound of her laughter, so bright and unexpected in the dour chambers of the Apothecarion. The way her green eyes lit up when he came through the door on some flimsy pretense. The soft touch of her lips when he kissed her.
He may ache for a past turned to ash. But the present needed him.
She needed him.
Chairon snarled, low and deep. “How DARE you, daemon!”
He lurched to his feet and swung blindly. “How dare you pollute what I hold most sacred!”
Unholy laughter nearly knocked him back into the blind void, but he gritted his teeth and refused to retreat. He would fight. He would find a way out of this wretched illusion.
“I will not abandon her!”
“It’s too late, pathetic little soul. Far too late to play the dashing hero.”
“You lie!”
“She’s dead. She died screaming. Begging for you to save her.”
“No!”
“But you were too late. Again.”
Chairon remembered.
He was that gangly limbed, gap-toothed boy again. Running. Running so fast. So hard. Until his lungs burned. His father’s last words echoing in his head.
“Go… son… save them….”
Right before the light in his eyes died.
So he ran. As fire fell. As monsters roared and people screamed and explosions tore the very atmosphere to shreds. He ran and ran and ran.
“But you still failed. As you will always fail.”
Purple fire exploded all around him. It burned through his armor, through his toughened skin and carapace, through to his very soul. The agonized screams of his family mingled with the daemon’s maddening laughter in a swirling cacophony of gleeful suffering.
“... awaken….”
A new voice. Small. Weak. Straining like it took the effort of ages just to speak the word.
“... awaken!”
Chairon forced his eyes open and saw it. Through the flames. Through the agony. A tiny spark of light, flickering in the recesses of the mad void. Howling his fury at the creature who’d ripped his scars wide and let them bleed, he willed himself toward the light.
Toward the only home he had left.
***
For a moment, Atius sank into blackness. Blissful, restful oblivion.
A sting at his neck sent molten energy surging through his veins, dragging him back to consciousness. The Apothecary knelt next to him with his narthecium poised and ready to deliver another injection.
Atius struggled upright. “Enough, brother.”
Callistus stared at him with grim eyes. “Your secondary heart stopped, psyker. What is happening?”
The Librarian spat a globule of fast-congealing blood and managed a smile. “Another of Squad Damocles has fought free of the daemon’s lies.”
Callistus gave a sharp nod. Behind him, Captain Acheran’s orders sent another pair of battle brothers marching from the cramped room. Searching, Atius knew. For any sign of the missing Ultramarines, the women, or the abomination.
So little time had passed, all things considered.
And yet it is too much! I must… continue….
Ignoring the Apothecary’s displeased grunt, Atius let his eyes unfocus and stretched his mind out once again.
There.
Demetrian Titus’s soul burned bright in his mind’s eye. Stalwart. Incorruptible. All he had to do was-
SO this was originally part of that pheromone perfume/spray series I was doing and well its clear I'm not doing much recently SOOOOO I'm just going to start positing what I got written up in my notebooks and this is of course for @moodymisty and her favorite boy to celebrate me finding a notebook I had thought long lost! Which kinda kicked off my haitus because i lost a notebook in my move.
Zul's win rate in the fighting pits had improved since getting his Spaseniye. It was clear to him why he had improved... he could think again. Which earned her the privilege of her being the only one of his slaves to stay in his room. The warband he was tethered to had a large number of Khornites to which Zul wondered if he was part of their number anymore... he had worshiped Khorne because it was easy for him to do in the heat of battle as it was mindless. Besides the death of her by the Khornites he had seen the way the few Sorcerers in the warband's employ look at her. Zul had caught one cupping her face as if he was looking at something to be bought or stolen. Spaseniye was his.
The heavy door to his room opened up and he could see Spaseniye asleep in her corner, his eyes catching the subtle way she flinched in her sleep. Zul exhaled hard as the nails were softly singing and just he felt that high of adrenaline still. But as he looked at her he could feel something snarl inside of him demanding for her death but he ignored it as his eyes went over to the most recent skull upon the skull pile that he knew deep down acted as an alter to Khorne. He snickered at Kreeg's skull as that was what he got for his selfishness... a spot on his alter. But he was having to reconsider his relationship with the blood god given how Spaseniye complicated things.
He finally took off his rebreather, the steel pegs that acted as his teeth loosening up off the metal he often bit onto, certainly when he sparred. He wiped drool off of his chin and bottom lip as he just inhaled... blood. His pupils became pinpricks at the smell of blood, he could smell how it was a mixture of old and new... along with something feminine. He slowly stalked closer to her as he was hardly versed in Khornite moon blood rituals, beyond knowing that they existed. Zul for the most part was hardly versed in normal Khornite rituals beyond the ever growing pile of skulls he would offer to an uncaring god.
The blood god cared not from whence the blood flowed... as long as it flowed. Spaseniye grimaced and winced in pain as Zul knew it was painful for her as she writhed on her meager 'bedding'. He just never saw her in the midst of it. The whimpers of pain from her as she curled up tighter... Zul was moving slowly only realizing how close he was getting when her breath dances on his skin and a finger pressed against her sex watching the blood cling to his finger as he tilts his head like a hound. Her exhale as the warmth of his hand brings her some relief that she squeezed his hand between her thighs... and in that moment Zul realized one more very important thing... Spaseniye... Spaseniye was naked.
It was as if Slaanesh was waiting for him to realize that, along with his own lack of clothing in this moment for it to strike, to send that feeling of desire between his legs. Pleasure receptors long underused spark back to life in his broken brain as the nails, loosened by her psyker gift, no longer bite and punish him and allow him to feel something else. He whined like a dog... as sensations flooded his nail bitten brain long forgotten and the cloth that he was wearing felt rough almost painful.
Spaseniye startled awake as Zul's voice was in her ear. She was anemic and tired and she doesn't know why she thought being naked would help with the pain. She pulls the threadbare blanket close to her body, "Zul!" She says startled and pained as another cramp rolls through her body. Her throat tightened as she looked into his red-brown eyes seeing the way he was looking at her with an intensity she had never seen before on him.
With their eyes locked Zul could feel the mounting feelings and desires stop as her powers soon washed over him like cold water... but Zul didn't want to stop. "Close your eyes." He growls out his order and like a well behaved thing she obeys. Zul strips a piece of cloth off of his shredding bedding, he assumes that's what it is, and ties it tightly over her eyes. She flinches with the movements and he can hear her heart race... in this moment Zul doesn't want to be calm...
He looks at the blood on his fingers and licks it slowly tasting the tang of old blood and the sharpness of fresh blood. Something inside of him keeps him from just quickly cleaning his fingers as he just lazily licks them clean soothing that underlying demand for blood. He pulls Spaseniye to her feet, gripping the collar as he leads her over to the alter of skulls. She whimpers softly, bloody thighs pressed together as she is blind to what he does. He grabs brother Kreeg's skull and presses it between her legs. She whimpers and twitches as her blood is smeared onto the skull. He snarls in high gothic, "I was willing to share Kreeg... to be as brothers once more. You were always a selfish bastard weren't you? Be thankful I'm willing to even share this with you."
Zul continued to grip the gorget, a thumb of his pressed into her cheek as he put the now bloody skull back on the altar. Zul still felt desire as that did not scratch that itch for him. She could feel him drag her back to his bed as she could hear the abused thing whine at his weight. Spaseniye was use to Zul using her to calm down and interact with the world as if it was new to him again... the divine knows how long its been for him. A gasp left her lips as a rough calloused hand of his touches her stomach and begins to slowly move down to where a cramp was... so warm... she bites back a moan. Another gasp leaves her mouth as something heavy throbs as it rests between her legs... Spaseniye wasn't a virgin anymore to be able to play coy to what was pressing against her flesh... and what it was doing to her.
Zul pressed his nose into her neck feeling the way her hair brushed and tickled his cheek like a gentle caress. She smelt so her and for some reason that did so much to him something far more than the taste of her lingering blood in his mouth. The blood was helping but Zul realized quickly that he liked her smell... he liked her skin... he liked her. He looks up at her as she stood there trembling and whimpering blindfolded as she could feel Zul holding her shoulders. It was far too quiet and sure she was use to him using her to calm down but this was a calm she was unsure about... and her poor pitiful whimper was cut off as his mouth crushed her own, and she yielded. Spaseniye flinched as the world moved and came to realize she was on her back trapped under him... his cock brushing against her sex. Her heart fluttered fearfully as she could be crushed or killed... she was blind to his whims as while normally weakened on her moonblood... she couldn't use her powers at all as there was something so angry and heavy watching her try to use her powers. Zul bit her bottom lip and sucked on it tasting her blood but another teary whimper is what gets him to stop, his throbbing member slapping hard against her thigh, bloody strands of saliva connect their lips, he looks down at her under him... trembling... afraid.
"Do you want this?" Zul asks in a whispered voice.
'No' rests at the back of her throat but fear... fear of what should happen if she denies him... "Zul," She says his name breathlessly not seeing the way his red-brown eyes turn black at how she says his name... "Please be gentle." She softly begs as she feels his face against her form inhaling her scent and dragging his lips against her flesh in a form of a kiss. He pulls away to put his rebreather back on, biting the metal plate in his mouth, tightening the straps and making it slightly painful but he must do it to keep himself from biting her. But oh... he wanted to suck on her soft flesh, to leave his marks on her thighs and drink deep of her blood letting it coat his tongue.
Zul tried... he tried to be gentle...he could feel the way her nails dug into his skin as she gasped loudly, biting back a scream, too hard too deep too fast her mind screamed. Tears that make it through the blindfold on her wet his chest as he pulls her down too quickly. She keens in pain and an attempt to arouse as she rolls her hips working herself on his cock. She shivers as she feels his hands move up her waist, she is unable to see the look on Zul's face... the blissed out expression he wears as that small bit of eye contact from her was still helping to dull the pain leaving him to fully enjoy all of what he has done so far... the licking of her tears and the imbibing of her blood all things that sate the warrior.
He sits up and she scrambles to purchase before locking her fingers around his neck. Something shifts and they moan in unison and soon she is screaming in pleasure as her whole body lights up in pleasure. Her mouth widening like some dog panting as she herself pants trying to get more air in her lungs. Zul could not exactly see the union that he was having with her, he wanted to see the junction of his cock entering her body but he was left with seeing the way her body darkened as blood rushed to the skin's surface all the way from her cheeks to her nipples was the blood rushing to the cells of her flesh. While he snarls at the frustrated moment he just holds her and thrusts in to a beat that he knows deep down but from where he cannot recall... was it the cacophonous sound that the worshipers of Slannesh called music? Was it the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears? Was it the sound of final breaths happening around him? He could not say but the smile that was on the corners of her lips told him that she was enjoying the rhythm all the same. His eyes rolled back as she clenched hard around him and he just continued to buck his hips against hers.
Spaseniye felt panic rise in her body as he pulls out with a harsh tug, she is ready to protest, but she is thrown onto the bed. Face down in sheets and blankets that have old sweat and blood mixed into them. Zul pulled her hips up to line up with his as he rested one knee on the bed. She felt him push in again and really all that left her poor mouth was an 'uhuhuh' mixing in the small room with the wet fap from her probably injured sex. His fingers bruised her hips as he pulled her hips back against him, down his cock as his head was thrown back just savoring the feeling. Spaseniye was in a pleasured dazed as Zul's inhuman precision kept hitting all the right spots in her sex in this position.
Spaseniye was on the cusp of her final orgasm, because only the dark gods knew how she was getting off on this, but she could feel that big orgasm just beyond the crest of her pleasure... right there to feel and to fill her. Silently begging Zul for a little bit more but it must have been a cruel trick because she could feel Zul grind his hips against hers as he cums. A satisfied grunt from him as he can feel himself spill inside of her. When he pulled out he looked surprised as Spaseniye cried out begging, "Zul! Zul please just a bit more I'm so close!" She begs, practically sobbing, as an orgasm was just right there for her, "Just let me ride you!" She says somehow convincing the Astartes as she feels him inside of her again.
Zul was laying back like some predator full from a kill as he watched her work herself on that softening cock of his. He pulls her blindfold off as his eyes meet with those swirling eyes of hers. He shiver of pleasure that walks down his spine as he watched her chase that pleasure with saliva dripping down those cracked lips of hers that at one point looked full enough from the recollections of his mind. Spaseniye could feel how close she was and perhaps she would feel shame for this later as she closed her eyes... but she grabs his hand and Zul lets her move his hand... she places it to her throat. It was just resting there... pushing the gorget against her sweat covered skin and she could feel herself tighten... she could feel Zul tighten his hand as she could feel the heavy hand of control around her. She opened her eyes again and the red-brown of his eyes looked into her own with that intensity of his... the same one that made her shrink away in fear... no it made her press her throat harder into the webbing of his hand. He felt her hips move harder... the way drool runs down her mouth... she was a beast to her desires and it finally snapped as she orgasms with a near silent gasp.
Spaseniye collects herself for a moment as she tires to ignore the awkward thoughts as this certainly wasn't like any of her other previous partners...she pulls her hips up just enough that Zul's cock is covered in her blood and red cum is oozing out of her too. Zul pulls off his rebreather finally freeing himself of his desires to rip her apart with his mouth. She goes to climb off of him and return to her corner as he is busy wiping his chin... but she doesn't even get her feet to the floor as he grabs and holds her against himself. His hand gently groping as he is far to busy replying in his mind the look on her face... the way her eyes fluttered as she orgasmed and how they rolled back... the way her tongue stuck out slightly as drool ran out the corners of her mouth... oh and the way she opens up her whole mouth with that final gasp as it hits her. He is certain if he had anything left it would have emptied in that moment.
They laid there and of course it did not take long for his Spaseniye to drift off to sleep against him with how warm his body was. Zul rested an arm over his eyes as his other hand had moved down to playing with her ass... and Zul once more was thinking that she was far too thin...
Description: One step forward, two steps back. Taliesin and his Little Cat wrestle with new emotions and old shames.
Find the previous parts of this series on my Masterlist, comment and ask to be added to/removed from my Taglist, and remember my Asks and DMs are always open!
“Taliesin,” you gasped through irresistible giggles, “I’m… I’m all right…!”
“Be still.”
He remained above you. Over you. One hand bracing himself against the soft turf of the river bank, the other gently cradling your head as he tilted it back and forth. Golden eyes gazed down at you. Full of something that was not quite fear.
You should be afraid. Your better sense hissed in the back of your mind. The river had very nearly done what false Angels and horrors and cannibals could not accomplish. But the very thought only pushed your euphoria to new heights.
Alive! I’m alive!
Your shoulders shook with another round of helpless laughter.
“Did you strike your head?” Taliesin hadn’t stopped his hesitant examination. “The mortal cranial structure is fragile, the organ within even more so. Or so the Apothecaries say. I have no tools with which to repair fractures, no augmetics to compensate for brain damage-”
Throne! He thinks…?
Reaching up, you cupped his scarred face between your palms. The both of you stilled at the contact.
He was so warm. You couldn’t remember if you’d noticed that before. His heat banished the chill from the water dripping off him and onto your already soaked form. Without thinking, you slid your thumbs along his cheekbones.
Rough. Leathery. Nothing like… His.
You traced the scar bisecting his lower face. When you ran your fingers over his lips, he shuddered.
“Little Cat-”
“Beautiful.” The word slipped out without conscious thought.
He was. The sunlight reflected off the water droplets clinging to his hair, turning what had once been vaguely yellowish to glittering gold. Crouched over you, he seemed crowned by a halo of the Emperor’s Light.
An Angel. A true Angel.
He closed his eyes under your touch. When they opened again, you gasped. There, too, was that holy light. Bright with an intensity that made you want to press closer. To bask in the warmth you saw reflected there.
For a heartbeat, his great head lowered, forehead brushing yours. Hot breath washed over you. Not sweet. But you didn’t mind. Your eyes fluttered closed as you lay there, surrounded by your Giant in Yellow armor, your Angel.
“Taliesin.”
Emperor, please, let me stay like this. Don’t take this away.
But, like so many before it, this prayer remained unanswered. The trance shattered as a tremor seemed to run through the giant warrior. He reared back, first to his knees, then up to his feet with a groan of overtaxed metal. The damp earth beneath you quivered as he backed away.
Something sharp pierced your chest.
Shame followed, hot and foul. You curled in on yourself, trying to hide beneath the folds of your soaked poncho. The skin of your hands tingled. You stared down at them.
What have I done?
***
Uncertainty was not an emotion familiar to Taliesin. Bewilderment, even less so. Yet as he staggered backwards, away from the tiny, sodden figure on the grass, he did not know what to do.
Water dripped into his eyes. He swiped at them, as if clearing his vision would somehow clear his mind. All three of his lungs expanded. His chest rose and fell with increasing rapidity, his cracked chestplate groaning.
Is this the Rage again?
The thought sent a lightning bolt of very un-Astartes fear straight through him. He shook his head, flinging river water in all directions.
No… no. That was different.
Taliesin half-turned to look back at you, his Little Cat, to reassure himself you had suffered no true harm. His eyes made it as far as your feet before darting away once more.
You’d been so small beneath him. Shivering from the shock of icy water. He’d just wanted to make sure you were all right. That was all he had wanted. But then you laughed.
The sound had shocked, then concerned him. Mortal minds broke as easily as mortal bodies.
He remembered one ruined colony, a figure in a half-scorched Guard uniform stumbling out of the smoke, blood streaming from her skull. He remembered the constant, high-pitched titter emanating from her slack lips. He remembered spending precious hours coaxing her into the medicae’s tent.
He remembered the crack of a Commisar’s laspistol minutes later.
All these memories had flashed through his mind for one awful moment. Because surely that could be the only explanation. You’d almost died. He’d almost failed you. How could you possibly find any sort of… levity… in that?
But then, your hands on his face. Soft. Cool. Just like before. And your voice, whispering a word that damned as much as it uplifted.
Only now no madness blunted their devastating gentleness.
Taliesin squeezed his eyes shut as he had then. The loss of sight did nothing to dull the sensation of your willing touch against his face. The sound of your awed voice in his ear.
Has anyone ever touched me like that? Spoken to me like that?
Something hazy and vague, buried beneath layers of indoctrination, told him yes. Someone had. Long, long ago. His chest ached with a longing for which he had no name.
It sickened him to know he’d surrendered to it.
I only wished to comfort you.
A paltry lie, even to himself. You had not asked for more. Had not pressed against him like you did the previous night, seeking security in his arms. No.
This time he’d leaned into you.
And no Rage, no madness, no temporary lapse in faculties could excuse his actions. His weakness. His shameful, selfish desire for an intimacy he did not deserve and could never ask for.
Taliesin pressed a gauntleted fist to his forehead.
What have I done?
***
The crackling fire did little to soothe the chill settling deep in your soul.
Taliesin had not spoken in hours. He’d been gentle, always gentle, as he led you from the river’s edge to the base of the rocky, forested hillside sloping upward toward the mountains. Waiting for you as you hobbled on bandaged feet, canvas poncho heavy with rapidly cooling river water. Directing you around the roughest patches of ground. Pausing just long enough to ensure you ate and drank.
It seemed like mere moments before he discovered a boulder nearly his height with a hollow worn into its base. A hollow just big enough for you to huddle in. He’d then knelt and begun to hack out what you soon guessed was a firepit with his huge knife. You’d tried to be of use, limping out to search for firewood near the trees. One glance had sent you back into your little hollow.
Not in fear. You didn’t fear him. But the look of concern in those golden eyes inspired more obedience than the old terror ever could. Besides, if you complied, perhaps he would forgive your shocking boldness of hours prior.
Hugging your knees tight to your chest, you stared into the crackling flames. The moment next to the river replayed over and over in your mind.
What had you been thinking?
You hadn’t. That was the only explanation. Exhaustion, the euphoria at surviving once again, the sheer relief of putting another obstacle between you and the horrors behind, it made you reckless.
You cringed.
Your eyes flicked to Taliesin, standing with his back to you on the opposite side of the fire. A monolithic sentinel in battered armor.
He’d killed people before your eyes in ways no mortal man could have. He’d clawed his way through madness. Even the way he moved screamed something you’d been willfully ignoring for far too long.
Not human.
Not a monster either. Not like those cannibals. And not like… Him.
But still not human. More than human.
And yet you’d babbled to him about your childhood. You’d asked questions. You’d touched him. Not to pull him from madness, but simply because you’d wanted to.
An Angel of the Emperor. A real one. A chosen warrior spoken only in the passed down legends of village elders, or the sermons of wandering holy men and women. Someone to be revered and respected.
But not befriended. Not poked and prodded by someone… someone like me.
You pressed your face into your knees.
I don’t deserve his kindness.
Tears welled. Everything you thought you’d buried clawed its way back to the surface of your mind. The mark carved into your back pulsed with remembered pain. The thin golden wire around your throat, almost forgotten until this moment, seemed to tighten.
“You are mine now, pet. Sweetly ruined, deliciously debauched. MINE FOR ETERNITY.”
Hands, hands on you, and worse than hands. Everywhere. Always. Corrupting. Fouling. Unclean in a way no river could ever cleanse.
And I dared touch him. Him!
***
Distance. Distance would be his salvation.
Or so Taliesin told himself. All the rest of that day. Not allowing himself to speak to you, or even look too long in your direction. Because if he did, if he gave into that longing, he would be lost. And you with him.
Did I forget my curse? The torment I am doomed to bring down upon any I grow close to?
As he scouted the terrain, found a defensible position, and prepared it for the long night, he forced himself to remember every person he’d failed. Every Battle Brother he’d watched cut down. Every civilian refugee who’d slipped from his grasp. Every serf child he’d failed to save.
How many times must I learn the same lesson?
The sun set. He stared into the growing darkness, the heat from the fire radiating against his back. He’d promised you rest. And he would fulfill his promise.
As a guardian.
As a sentinel.
As a protector.
Nothing more.
His fists tightened on the hilts of his combat knife and chainsword as he methodically analyzed every moment since he’d found you. He’d let himself grow too close, too fast. He saw that now, and the shame ate at him.
The foul Mark he’d seen on your back burned behind his eyelids. You did not speak of what was done to you. But you screamed words in your sleep, muttered stilted phrases when your eyes went vacant and haunted. And he knew.
He’d seen the wreckage those abominations made of human bodies, human souls. Even if outwardly you looked undamaged, he could only imagine the scarring within. Sometimes he wished he could still feel the raw terror he saw in you. If only to know how best to soothe it.
No. No! Damn it all, Lamenter!
You needed something he could not provide. Could not let himself provide. Not even if he wanted to. Not even if he ached to. Not even if your touch, your voice, had beaten back the Black Rage itself.
Why? Why you?
Taliesin’s mind drifted to dangerous places.
There were rumors. Whispers spoken between only the most trusting of brothers. Whispers that other Chapters allowed their brethren certain… eccentricities. Bonds between Astartes and mortals that went deeper than mere fondness or even friendship.
He wanted to turn around. He wanted to look at you. Were you sleeping peacefully? Did you need anything? Did you need… him?
Bile rose in the back of his throat. He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, embracing the pain.
I deserve it for such thoughts.
I deserve it for my selfishness.
I DESERVE IT.
Then you cried out, the sob of anguish shredding his defenses with all the force of an orbital bombardment.
He went to you.
He could not stop himself.
***
The ring pulsed with your anguish, and his eyes rolled in their sockets at the sensation. He felt his body responding. The delicious ache of anticipation as he remembered all the agonizing art he and you had crafted together.
Your every scream a symphony.
Your every convulsion a ballet.
The masterworks he’d painted across your skin had made his brothers weep with envy. Some had not been content with a mere share in your delectable flesh whenever he felt generous. Some had tried to claim you for their own.
His muse.
His masterpiece.
His beloved Pet.
HIS.
The runes on his fangs twisted as he bared them to the disgustingly clear air. His tongue lolled, forked end writhing as he let loose a sibilant hiss.
Those who dared challenge him took their proper places in his Gallery. Their covetous forms sculpted and shaped into perversions far more artistic. He even allowed a few to keep their minds, locked in eternal awareness of their new purpose.
To please him.
The highest purpose any being could fulfill.
The runes on his fangs pulsed, a shockwave running down his spine and igniting each and every one of his augmented nerve endings. He gasped and laughed as he amended his thoughts.
“The highest purpose, save to dwell eternally in your service, oh Dark Prince.”
The agony shifted into a caressing torment of a far pleasanter kind. He sighed, finally deigning to take notice of his surroundings.
The primitive little village rested at the bottom of the hill. It’s primitive little people just settling in for the night. He heard mothers hushing anxious children, telling them no monsters lurked beneath beds or in the shadows.
Telling them they were safe.
His Gallery was no more. So much beautiful agony lost when the crude loyalists rammed their ship. But as long as there were souls in the galaxy to mold like bloody clay, he could begin again.
He would come for you soon. Pull you back into his loving embrace. Let you watch as he transformed whoever had dared steal you into a glorious amalgamation of agony and ecstasy. The highlight of his new Gallery.
Perhaps he would then, finally, relieve you of the burden of sentience.
His plush lips pursed at that.
“No. Perhaps not.”
He liked you aware. He found few things lovelier than doomed resistance. It was why he’d chosen you in the first place, after all.
But that could wait. Grass withered beneath him as he slithered down the hillside toward the village.
For now, he saw a blank canvas in need of a Master’s hand.
On today’s episode of: Reddit Lads learning about the abyssal iceberg of fandom they’ve been placidly floating on blissfully unaware of what lay beneath! Installment # like…. 4 now I think? Lmao
I need to know how some of the yans would react to their darling becoming pregnant with their child. I dont care whoever else is in there as long as there is Tulio, Nubin and Zul.
Tulio could go two different ways
He did everything right (aka did it how he wanted ya know all proper like he's been going on about)
OR he's fucked up aka knocked her up
I'll eventually do one where he's done it all right but we support Astartes wrongs here!
tw: yandere, baby trapping, obsession, possession (normally I would tag Tulio but he's behaving)
Psychi trembled as she told him what he had already known. His companion that owns her heard the others in his employ speaking. Psychi was with child. That fact nearly sent Tulio into a paranoid fit as who else would have been able to do anything to her. But as she came and confessed to him the next thing dawned on him... she was with his child.
Rules and customs dictated that he had final say in what was going to happen to the child, if it lives or dies. It was a scandal... but Tulio knew this was something that could happen given how often he emptied inside of her. She stood there with her fingers laced as she tried not to wring her hands in fear. Tulio placed his hands on her shoulders, "How much are you worth." He asks gently.
Psychi's lip trembles as she finally tells him how much her contract was worth much to her shame. Tulio kisses her forehead as he cups her face, "I will take care of you Psychoula. Please don't cry." He says kissing away her tears as she holds his arms and cries partially out of shame and things just going wrong for her. This was not how it was suppose to go... he was suppose to marry her before he gave her a child... Tulio swallowed the panic and the worry as he held his Psychoula. Trying to calm her down as he had to remind her that she was giving him the best thing.
Bev head her head as the pregnancy test didn't lie... she was pregnant with Nubin's child. And given how old and well respect Nubin was... she sighs as Bev in the bitter part of her mind realized she was stuck with this child given who Nubin was of course most people thought the older Astartes couldn't be a father anymore but if a baseline in his 90s could then what's an Astartes in his 700s or 800s siring?
She walks down and just sits on the couch as Nubin looks at her frowning and sniffing the air. "What is it my Lord?" Bev said tiredly as she just lays down laying her head on his thigh.
"I might be wrong but I'm certain I should be smelling your bleeding." He says.
"Yeah I should be." She sits up and leans forward holding her face in her hands.
"Bev?" Nubin could feel the vile part of himself work and churn. He's not a neophyte or aspirant and Bev was hardly close to menopause... "Bev." He says killing the worry and the panic. He was not going to think about how this child might have been conceived...
"I'm pregnant my lord." She says with a sigh, "And I think we both know who the father is."
That mentally derailed the churning dragon within his mind... because of course who else was having intercourse with darling Bev besides him. He pulls her into his lap and rubs his cheek on the top of her head feeling her braids against his face. The Dragon was pleased that the Princess in his lair was heavy with his child...
Spaseniye was surprised that she was still pregnant. It had been four months since she realized she had missed her period. Five months since Zul and her had last had intercourse. And now only three hours till Zul returned to her side. She looked up at the massive decrepit superstructure in the sky that acted as the makeshift space port. She nervously ran her hand over her rounding stomach... there would be no way to hide this from him. Normally psyker pregnancies were always risky given the fluctuating hormones and other terrifying factors but since she hardly used her powers... well maybe she would be okay.
Still one of the sorcerer clans on the world knew of her pregnancy even as she kept it secret... they came around her second month and gave her crystals and other talasmains to keep her powers in check to not hurt the baby. But they were already wishing her a happy successful birth and how they were disappointed this one wasnt a psyker but that did not matter as she went to go prepare for the Warlord's return.
Zul was making a fast name for himself as his astartes broke away from him going to do what they wished to do post successful mission. For Zul he was on the hunt for his Spaseniye as the nails were too loud and to feel her hands on him... her body around his cock... her scent in his nose. Zul looked at the psyker as she bowed her head. Dressed in different flowing and formless robes. He pulls her into his arms and ignored her squirming and squeaking as he took a deep inhale of her sce-
Something was wrong. He sniffed her neck and she smelt off. She smelt wrong. Her body against him felt odd and he pulled open her billowing robed to see her breasts being larger but also her belly. But not in a way that she had gained weight... no it was a way he had seen a few times but never really cared about before but here he was... Khorne was whispering to him once again... Someone had touched his Spaseniye... someone had touched his Salvation. And that rage was rushing back in as blood dribbled out the corner of his mouth. "Who touched you." He says with a disturbed calm.
"No one Zul."
"Do not lie to me." He snarls, "They will not escape my wrath!"
"Zul please listen to me!"
He lashed out at the nearby wall needing to get his rage out anywhere but to her.
"Zul!" She cries out protecting her stomach.
"You don't need to protect them! I am here."
"Zul! It's yours. It's yours!" She says trying to calm him down and that rage evaporated.
"What."
"No one's touched me. Styx was very good at his job." She says smiling at the memories of the man that Zul made her guard after all... if someone was going to steal her he wanted someone who would either get her back or tell him who took her. "You were the last man who has touched me. Which means unless this is an warp conceived birth you are the father."
In this secluded area Zul dropped to his knees and hugged his Spaseniye. He was feeling many many emotions and he savored the fact that he could feel.
(Sorry if they feel a bit ooc. The Nubin and Zul fic have been written like a year plus after Tulio)
oh?? you thought it was gonna be the sev fic?? SIKE,,, anyways, this is a birthday present for the evil nord that i love to hate @yourlocalnautilus based off her (art) with gadriel lost in the sauce rawdogging an anon on a countertop, it's also set after both (Damocles/f!serf) and the sequel (Titus/f!serf) respectively. im still so bitter about Chairon dying off screen btw im gonna write Metaurus getting some as revenge for pookie. fuck you james workshop why is there only one black guy per company allowed. also come get ur tags!!! @sinistermojo @tanknode @grimdark-raccoon @kit-williams @undeaddream @thevoidscreams @beckyninja @bispecsual @ma1dmer @yestheantichrist @primarisly-marooned @justfreakynothingelse @lemon-russ @pluvio-tea @the-raven-lady @historitor-bookshelf @thunderhawk727 @ultramarenis if i forgot anyone or you want on or off tags let me know oouughhghgh adios enjoyyyyy!!!
———————————————————————————————————
The battle barge is a leviathan of a vessel—but certainly far, far less busy than the Flagship.
It has fewer mumbling serfs, drooling servitors, and binary-raving junior Mechanicus the halls.
You have grown to miss that lack of crowding, given the fact you're back in the hulking innards of a Gloriana-class ship. Truth be told, you liked the small rooms of the battle-barge, and the tiny cots, and how you had to cosy up close to your Lord in them. Because now, everything is too spacious.
Titus' new cot is so big, you can lay down and not even touch him on the same mattress. You can stand in his armoury. Yes, he has an armoury, now—it's huge. It's so tall that even he can't touch the ceiling. He even gets a bathing chamber. You hadn't seen one of those in a very long time. You remember what the Chapter-master's rooms were like, how grand the interlinked apartments were—and somehow Titus' quarters feel about the same.
They're very beautiful.
But... a bit too big.
That sentiment goes for the rest of the vessel, too.
There's too much compared to the little world in and of itself you'd had on the Second Company's barge. You had forgotten just how packed in everyone was here. The Macragge's Honour is a hive city in all but name, listing and rising on the waves of vast, empty space. You could walk a whole cycle and never see anything but humans. You could do the same a kilometre up in the hallowed halls and see nothing but Astartes. Below their echelons, in the mid-depths, there are some nooks and crannies that are less peopled—but it is usually for a reason.
Most of the time, it's simply a matter of differing shift allocation.
Sometimes, at least.
Other, quieter moments are unexplainable.
Just like they are now.
The nigh endless corridor feels hollow as you stare down it. There's not even a peep of natural sound, aside from the great vessel around you seemingly breathing. The ship knows you're here, the ship knows where everyone is. She is very old. She probably knows you were born within her halls. But that fact doesn't change the disquieting way her dark veins echo around you. Even if you know, on a primitive level, you're not really alone—there are always people on the Flagship. There's always someone. So, really—there's no reason to worry. The creaking of the decking a ways behind you is probably just another serf or two doing their labours nearby. It's nothing. Everything is just fine.
The sheer size of the bundle of sheets in your arms slows you a little, and adding to that is Titus' heavy linen rest clothes, which weigh a pretty decent amount.
It's improper that you're doing this laundry rather than a lesser menial—or servitor, even.
But it feels right to do it after all your habit on the Battle-barge, and your Lord has voiced no complaints thus far.
You had felt the eyes of others on your back as you descended each echelon, and eventually the gazes thinned out to nothing.
And so you walk in the half-light, through long, dark passages below the high halls of the God-Emperor's Angels.
Fear prickles up your spine with the feeling of being watched, worsened yet by a source beyond view.
It's pointless stress to carry on in such a way in a ship full of Astartes, and even more so Primaris, and... the Primarch, he is here too. The Avenging Son, how you would die to even glimpse his face once in your lifetime like your parents have... no, no—enough of that ditziness—point of fact, the chances of danger are low, but it is little harm in being cautious.
There's something to be said about the mind crafting horrors that pale reality in comparison, and whether or not the animal unease plaguing your subconscious is mere baseless anxiety.
The truth remains that it's still there.
It still sets your hair on end; it still quickens your pace.
And yet, you arrive at your destination unharmed and unmolested by whatever monster your brain swore was going to gobble you up.
The washing-room is one of thousands.
It is a tall-ceilinged hall littered with candles and idling red lamps, tiered into a lower chamber and a loft that sits at rim level to the huge, open vats of sloshing water, churning in slow, whirling efficiency. There are dozens upon dozens of them, their transparent panels revealing churning currents of fabric suspended in luminous fluid. Soft blue light pulses up at you from within them, signalling cycles of decontamination, stain dissolution, and readiness. The system wastes nothing, converting residue into energy or base compounds for other ship functions. Every part of the routine is utterly tireless, each attended to by... oh. No, they are... not being attended to. Where are the servitors? Where are the junior Mechanicus agents? Who is monitoring readouts on floating displays?
Ah, probably the shift change you were hypothesising earlier coming into effect. A correct guess, that—for a moment—makes you chuffed at your good intuition.
Then, the notion pointedly curdles in your mind.
You are alone in this dim, unpeopled place.
The air is somehow both cold and humid, with the faint metallic scent of recycled water and sterilising agents.
You look up and shiver nervously.
Overhead, articulated rails that ought to be operated by faceless Adeptus Mechanicus labourers are empty. There should be at least one of them, but where each cart is tagged and tracked and eventually taken to vast dryers—ensuring that an Astartes' robe and an officer's dress uniform are never confused—there is no one.
You wander to the far end of the chamber and find an entirely empty vat. There's nothing to be afraid of. If there's no one here, isn't that a good thing? Better that than just one other person. It's safer to be by yourself than lack the safety of a crowd against an individual.
It calms you just that little bit more as you remind yourself of your duty. which is as easy as a quick drag of your palm across a scanner propped up at the edge of the platform, and a green light flash to commence loading. There's complex machinery surrounding it; along with a broad, flat surface littered with lit-up cogitators. How the system within that huge countertop logs and informs the workers whose clothing is whose is certainly beyond you. All that matters is that the unclean fabric comes back clean.
Which it does, eventually.
You carefully lower Titus' tunic over the ledge into the water, and then one of your own, and you carry on your task until you start to tire and begin to lose all pretence of grace. You toss a towel, fling a fresher-cloth, and punt a pair of pants.
You send one of your dirty linens flying and huff at the splash it makes.
Then comes the bedding, which starts out easy enough.
Pillow cases go soaring into the swirling tide, and a bundled fitted sheet briefly unfurls in the air before it's quickly sucked into the vortex.
It's rather fun.
You usually don't get the opportunity to indulge in a bit of ruckus like this, obedient as you are. Not that Titus really minds. He's very forgiving, and you don't ever act out to begin with—but still, out of propriety, you try to keep most of your more... impulsive actions rather subdued.
But with no one around, and the luck of having the Captain of the Second Company as your master likely deterring any menial from raising a complaint, you decide this tiny amount of hooning around is an acceptable minor lapse of judgment.
Clumsily, your heel catches behind a large top-sheet as you try to spin and throw it far with your momentum, effectively snatching your own footing out from under you; falling forwards towards the twister of chemical-laden water.
You don't even get the chance to properly react.
It's suddenly apparent that you're no longer about to enter the slurry.
You're no longer even on the ground, either.
You look over your shoulder, and are met by a familiar face. Grey-blonde-haired and surprisingly close—you find Sergeant Gadriel, in all his bright-eyed glory.
It's hard to get out the next words in your shock, but you try, even if you stutter when you say, "I-I, uh... t-thank you, my Lord."
He's holding you aloft with two big hands around your midsection, and there's an awkward pause between him stepping back with you in his grasp and him putting you down, before he nods stiffly.
Gadriel sets you facing away from him and you turn, and an—agonisingly—real awkwardness deepens as he simply stays rooted to the spot staring at you.
Did he... see you acting a fool?
Is he going to mention it?
Are you in trouble?
"Was..." you start, shifting your weight between your feet. "Was there something I could be of assistance to you with, my Lord?"
The blink he gives you is clearly forced, like he's trying hard to centre himself from some faraway thought.
He swallows and all but blurts out, "No—no, not yet, serf."
What does he mean by that, you wonder—still, it is not your place to question—even if he sounds a little terse. So, you simply nod dumbly and stand there. He doesn't seem to have brought any linens to wash, nor does he seem to be looking for something. He's glued to the spot, almost like he's already found what he'd been after. There's a focused attention in his gaze, which is certainly intimidating. Is he scrutinising you? Is he going to discipline you for your lapse in behaviour? You have trouble tearing your eyes away from his then, because he's kept them stuck to yours the whole time; and you've only just realised the impropriety of the act... what he's seen and what you've done.
Impropriety, when there's far worse on your list of deeds. Far worse with him and his squad-mates. Throne of Terra—you're still a little green about the matter. It hasn't been helped by Titus' elevation in status. You imagine the Sergeant is surprised to see you here. Titus doesn't really have need of you to do such tasks when he's suddenly drowning in menial assistants, but he has been more than glad in humouring your continued existence. Much like all the Great Angels, actually. They are all surprisingly kindly in such matters, seeing as they largely ignore you—which is good.
You are seen, but not heard by the others, as you are wont to be. Or perhaps more accurately, another Astartes—other than Titus—sees you, and you only see his boots as you bow.
Well, that is... except for the Sergeant, currently. He's looking right at you, and you're looking right at him. Throne, you haven't even glanced him since your return to the flagship.
Until now, that is.
"How have you been faring, serf?"
It's completely out of the blue, and you react in accord, nervously wringing your hands.
"Well," you reply reflexively, "I've been well, Lord."
"You seem it," he breathes, and takes a step closer to you.
You try to maintain decorum and take a step back, but he follows—and swallows up the step with one large stride that probably accounts for three of your own. You're toe to toe briefly, before you scud on your heels and your back collides with the scanner's countertop.
"Don't be afraid," he rasps. "You know I mean you no harm, serf."
Ah, so he is aware you're terrified, despite the fact you know him. That is, to make the claim that having had someone inside you is a form of knowing them.
"O-Of course," you rush to say, "And... and what of you, Lord? How have you been?"
He moves in closer while you stammer.
Gadriel is now looming over you as the low, residual glow of the machinery and vats casts his face in a truly frightening light for a second. He's very much a Great Angel suddenly, very much a being made for war on a thousand worlds; and very much glaring at you like you're one of the many, many enemies he's no doubt cleaved through with ease.
Then Gadriel blinks again, ever so slowly, and you're reminded of the fact he's not really seeing you as a threat. He's probably not intentionally scaring you either; he's just... a bit strange, like they all are.
"I have been distracted as of late," he says softly.
You frown sincerely as you answer, "I am sorry to hear that, my Lord."
"You ought to be," he grumbles.
You're not sure what to do or say to that.
You haven't done anything to him, or at least, you don't think you have. Still, should you grovel just in case? Somehow you get the impression he's not actually angry... maybe he is making a joke? Astartes jokes are very strange, but they're not as rare as you'd once thought they were.
You look up at him and blink back, just as slow as he did.
It seems to be the correct response, because Gadriel takes a long breath in and appears to be satisfied. It's hard to tell, namely due to the fact that his mouth remains straight. But there's a crease on either side of his bright blue eyes that looks like he is trying not to smile openly.
You're glad it worked, you're glad he is appeased momentarily, you're—
You're not glad when he crouches down and lifts you up under the arms like a child's toy.
A yelp leaves you in surprise, and you flail wildly before you are suddenly back on something solid. He's seated you up on the countertop, and it's just as high up as you thought it'd be. The top of your head is level with his neck, and it's a little too familiar an angle of him. You try not to remember being held up with spread legs by Chairon and seeing the same thing.
He moves in near enough that you jump at the realisation his pelvis is almost at the same height as your hips, if not for your dangling legs being in the way.
You're well aware of the fact you're cornered—and that you're being fondled—for lack of a better word, as he leans in close enough that his head looms beside yours.
Big, calloused palms start to knead at your hips; taking an entire, single-handed grope of your outer thigh through your pant fabric and squeezing. It's going to bruise, it's going to be so tender later—and Titus is going to ask what happened—you won't even know how to begin to tell him. Something along the lines of 'Oh, Gadriel found me' and then he–he... he's reaching up under your tunic.
The hall's air is bitingly cold, but the big palm sliding up your flesh is so warm you can't help but sigh as they start to knead your breasts.
Afore you, the Sergeant's breathing is growing laboured.
He's huffing and puffing next to your ear, and you're stunned by the sheer volume of air that he can take in and expel. You'd been practically insensible the last time he'd been this close, so the realisation is a new, wry thing.
Something wet and scalding drags across the side of your gullet, and you abruptly figure out that he's—he's just licked you.
"You are still sweet," Gadriel heaves, and lathes his tongue on you again—but this time, up under your jaw. "Yes, this will suffice as an apology for distracting me."
You go rigid, unsure of how to answer once again and also quite frankly unseated by his sudden fixation. Perhaps him currently lapping at your skin like a starved animal should be a greater cause for concern. A wild, unbidden surge of fear seizes your mind. Do... the God Emperor's Angels eat people? No. No. They probably could, but surely they do not. You've never seen them eat anything other than their nutritional rations—sure, when you were young, you had seen the Chapter Master indulge beyond that. Sometimes in a glass or two—or ten—of amasec poured out by your father's hands, but the most far-fetched thing you've seen an Astartes put their mouth to in any sort of hunger is, well... you.
You shudder.
He brings his face close to yours, sharing the hot air of his breath.
Then, he moves even closer to you, smothering your cheek with his—before he decides to start tilting his head so your chin drags across his parted lips. You're extremely confused when Gadriel pulls away, only to repeat the gesture, except this time it's closer to him banging his forehead on you. His big nose jars against yours, and it stirs the distant urge to sneeze, although you manage to keep it together.
You're a little sore in the two places where his huge snout and reinforced skull made contact, and he reels back, seemingly as lost as you are.
"Is that not correct?" He asks, brows furrowing.
You blink a few times, "I-I'm not sure I understand?"
"Is that not a kiss?"
It's hard to believe the Sergeant even asked that, but it doesn't undo the fact that he just did.
"It's not... exactly," you flounder, "...m-my Lord."
You've noticed they've all got quirks. For example, when Titus is deep in thought or annoyed, he scrunches his nose and flares his nostrils; with Chairon, it's an absentminded biting at the inside of his cheeks—and now, you find that Gadriel chews his bottom lip. It's one of a panoply of little behaviours that make them seem less like angelic war-machines, and more like coltish men simply blown out to hulking proportion. It's so endearing it makes you a little giddy to linger on.
"Show me, then," he demands rather sharply, pouting at you.
You swallow and look away for a second before placing a hesitant hand on his shoulder.
Leaning up, you shut your eyes and press your lips against his. They're soft, and warm, and gentle despite the advances he makes forward.
It's a bit like kissing a slowly falling statue, at first. One that's breathing hard through its nose and trying to nuzzle into each peck. Your hand moves from his shoulder to the back of his neck, and you deliberately remember to card your fingers up, up, up through his hair to the crown.
Reliably, it gets the reaction you knew it would.
He moans as he leans in further, and your back slides down to meet the counter beneath you—then, his tongue peeks out. It's a surprisingly steady, natural escalation from Gadriel, all things considered. Namely because you're baffled he hasn't accidentally smothered you in his haste, yet. Still, you open your mouth and let him in, swallowing down the content rumble that leaves his throat.
As if by the whims of some cosmic, ironic pacing, he doubles down abruptly.
He's lapping at your tongue like a man dying of thirst, and you try to tug on his hair to get him to steady up.
It achieves the exact opposite, as you should've known.
Gadriel's rumbling becomes a long, cluttered mess of him alternating between panting into your open mouth and licking into it.
In his frenzy, you manage to turn your head away—but all it does it drive him to groan and tuck his face against your throat; lapping there, instead, and covering you in greedy bruises and saliva.
You keen loudly and wriggle, inundated with the full attention of the Sergeant trying to do as much as he can all at once.
That is, before he ducks down to your chest.
Your tunic is suddenly rucked up and bunched to your nose, blocking your sight. It's deeply unsettling having him fussing around where you can't fully see him.
Still, there's some comfort in the fact you can assume, largely, what Gadriel's doing by the groping of his huge hands and the drag of his tongue.
He's face-down against your chest, pressing your breasts together either side of his cheeks.
"How I've missed this," he moans, and the sound is scandalous.
He's been distracted by... lust? You thought Astartes disciplined nigh to death, not capable of pining. Titus certainly practises restraint when it comes to... these urges, but looking back—you're not too shocked the Sergeant is more gun-ho.
In your own distraction, you realise a little late you're half-off the counter. He's got your hips lifted in one huge hand.
"My Lord, p-please be careful—" you yelp loudly, and curl, not exactly fighting. It wouldn't do you much good. Gadriel is nothing if not persistent.
He's spreading and then releasing the underside flesh of your rear repeatedly. Only for him to decide thumbing one of your labia aside—and sighing to himself like he's misty-eyed with the delight of the view—is a good idea.
Unsettling, or more so jarring, really.
There's a very, very visceral memory of Lieutenant Titus' head between your thighs—and Gadriel's himself.
Bracing your elbows on the hard steel counter, you arch up slightly.
Truthfully, you can do little but watch as he then raises your hips even higher to pull your pants to your ankles.
He folds you up to your middle, and you lose sight of him briefly behind the pants stuck around your legs; the bunched-up fabric of your hooded robe around your chest only makes the whole endeavour even harder to see. You're being restrained and half-blinded by your own garb, and that's apparently working exactly in Gadriel's favour.
You hear him sigh contentedly again, and you just barely catch a glimpse of his big, trans-human tongue peeking out between your clothes as he licks his bottom lip.
The view is gone quickly, though, and hot air puffs against the tender skin between your legs.
"You are already wet," he rumbles slowly, focused.
You're genuinely stunned by the enormity of panic suddenly rattling about in your chest. So, you struggle to wolf down the saliva in your mouth around the lump in your throat and say, "I'm... uhm... sorry, L-Lord."
You don't know what else to offer him.
"Why?" Gadriel cuts in sharply as he promptly pulls your ass higher up, in a deep curve.
You don't know the correct answer to that, either.
With your cunt bared, the discomfort of open air on fresh, cooling saliva mixing with slick sits at the forefront of your focus. But Gadriel only makes a soft tutting sound as his big palm smooths down your sides; warm breath dancing across your inner thighs.
"W-Well, it's just that I... I..." you stammer, and immediately forget whatever excuse you had; replaced instead by the feeling of the flat of his tongue lathing a fat stripe over your entrance in one smooth motion, only to pull away, seemingly briefly appeased.
"You shouldn't be sorry," Gadriel offers at last, "I like tasting how much you enjoy this."
His words dumbfound you, but you don't get much time to think about that, considering you're not only being lifted higher; but also stunned by a boiling mouth latched squarely to your cunt.
He licks over your clit again, and again, and again, holding you fast by a single hand on your hip. God-Emperor have mercy, it is—it is utter torment. Each slow roll of that oversized, wet tongue against the bead of your clit makes your legs jolt. There's no possibility of canting yourself away, no repose, no chance of stemming the hot, thudding flush of sensations cloistering up—or is it down in this position—from your belly to your head. All you can do is let him gorge himself on your struggling as you moan frantically through the robes half-obscuring your face now; all thanks to the sharper incline of him bending your body.
Just barely, out of the corner of your eye, you can see how hard he's leaning against the counter-edge; craning down while his hand holds you up. And—oh, he's—he's got himself in his free hand. The Sergeant is touching himself to this. Throne, you can see the motion of him ruthlessly fucking into his own fist under the folds of his linens.
You moan, and he does too. It's always jarring how low an Astartes register is. You can feel the vibrations travel through your flesh like rolling thunder.
It's more than enough to make you squeal and buck against his mouth; more sucking you rather than licking, now, giving your poor clit not even a moment's reprieve.
He pulls away suddenly.
He's breathing hard as he lowers you down from his mouth, and pins your legs back against your front again. He's got you around the ankles, squeezing hard enough to bruise. Hard enough that not even the distraction of your dripping cunt can dampen the ache.
A fat, blunt tip prods at your entrance, and you freeze. The angle makes seeing it past your own shucked-up, baggy pants impossible. You can see him, you can see the lust blowing his blue eyes almost black, you can see the furrow on his brow, but you can't see when he's going to fill you. Your hands flail across the smooth surface around you, desperately trying to find a hold. He's going to jam himself in just like he had the first time, and start rutting into you like a very, very excited beast—and it's going to hurt—you're trying in vain to brace for the pain of a battering ram striking point blank. He's still palming himself, too worked up to stop. You can feel the head of him testing your warmth, circling your cunt, pressing in a little, edging closer—
You can't help the keening whine of both want and horror that rises up and finds freedom from your mouth.
For a second, you think it's an echo that a similar sound comes from in front of you. Some trick of resonance off the steel-plated walls and high ceilings, but that can't be right—your voice isn't that low, isn't that rough and rumbling—abruptly, something paints across your sex. It's hot and coming in thick, pent-up ropes.
Gadriel slumps forward, the hold on your ankles swapped for being pinned back by his chest. He catches himself on the hand he was holding them with, and you see just how beaded with sweat Gadriel's face is pink—a bright, rosy pink—as he opens his eyes and meets yours almost shyly.
That is to say, if a Great Angel could ever look shy.
"I did not mean to..." he starts to bumble out, but swallows midway through, apparently cotton-mouthed as he looks down at you. "Waste myself i-in such a manner."
You realise then that he's finished all over you.
There's no time to ruminate on that, though—because you're suddenly back to having something riling you up.
It's fingers—he's—oh, Throne. He's pressing into you with his fingers. A thumb rolls against your clit, and you buck, and then you're full of something—there's too much happening all at once. One hand's holding you steady, the other's got digits jamming into you like a machine.
"Do it," he grumbles as he somehow increases the speed of his fingers.
What? Do—Do what? What does he want now? You don't know what he's talking about. He's pressing his own spend into you, and it's—it's slimey, and slippery, and so, so satisfying knowing he's that desperate to fill you—and you're trying not to start crying at the rising crest that's hot on your heels.
"Mnnh–m-my Lord," you strain and try valiantly to get your words out over the distractingly sloppy sound of fingers fucking his cum into your cunt, "I don't understa—ah—and?"
"That wet gush you made when I had you for the first time," Gadriel rushes to say in a whiny, impatient tone rather unbecoming of his kind, but then again... nothing is really becoming of one of his kind in this situation, "Do it again, I want to see it properly."
"I d-don't—" you blubber, suffering through a heady throb of bliss that somehow almost hurts with how sharply it scorches your nerves. "I don't k-know how I... I d-did it, I don't—"
You're trying to give him what he wants, you really are; but you don't know how, and he's not going to stop unless you do. The pace of his scissoring at your walls is a brutal, stinging rush of pleasure. Your abdomen aches, instinctively trying to clench on the huge fingers playing you like some daft, mewling instrument.
It's too much. He's always too much too fast, and you can't help but whine and try to buck your hips away from the incessant bliss coiling in your core.
He stops, suddenly and you hear a heavy thud before you. You try to arch up, but any hope of getting to your haunches evaporates when a mouth latches at your clit.
You're so stunned you can't even manage a moan as he starts moving his fingers again.
The pressure builds and builds, hot and bloating in your loins and you feel like you're about to burst, drawn closer and closer to a damning end.
"Yes, that's it—" he groans, "That—that's exactly it, almost there," and quickly presses his face back in.
One long, luxuriant lick across your nub while he's knuckle deep undoes any restraint you have in a fraction of a second.
You squeal, scrambling at the counter anew—thighs shaking and trying to figure out how to do anything but squirt on his hand and chin.
It's no use, in the end.
You're a trembling, dripping wreck, and far too wrung-out to protest about the feeling of a big tongue lapping at your soaked inner thighs.
"So sweet," Gadriel mutters to himself, and stands.
You finally can see the entirety of him, though your vision is swimming. He's sucking at his own fingers, smiling that weird Astartes-smile all the while; and, for his part, he does look extremely happy about the matter.
You're boneless to the point he has to lift you clear off the counter for a moment to turn you over.
The steel is nice and cool on your overheated flesh, and you melt into it, panting.
"You did well, serf," he chuffs, as his large hands slide up the plane of your body, tug your tunic off you; and then trace back down the curves of either side. "Very, very well."
"Th-thank you, m'lord," you moan, only distantly aware of his palms coming to rest on the pant-covered meat just above your hip.
Then, his thumbs press into the dimples of your middle back, into some tender nerve centre deep under the muscle, immediately bringing a lulling ache to the light of day.
You take in a sharp breath and grit your teeth; wriggling as you bleat, "My Lord—?"
"I'm not trying to hurt you," he says, and the hands shift lower, pressing down on yet another unseen tension-point just above your pelvis.
He's being unbelievably gentle, for an Astartes; but what's even more unsettling is that the tenderness is also unbelievably uncharacteristic for Gadriel.
"I-I did not think you were, b-but it is—" you begin with a meek glance over your shoulder, "Titu—I mean... uh, the Captain doesn't really allow me to do much h-hard labour, so... there's no—ngh..." yet just as you did, the sudden drag of his fingers up the muscles astride the seam of your spine had you stifle a groan loudly. "No point t-t-to you debasing yourself doing this... truly."
The scalding pressure shifts into a dull warmth, roiling through your nerves sweetly; convincing you to arch your back. Your legs flex, and you feel your shucked-down pants falling all the way off one foot.
"You think my effort is pointless?" He supplies, a slight offence lacing his tone.
"N-No, Lord... I j-just..." you backpedal, and let out a short groan, lifting your hips a little. There goes the other pant leg, you suppose, as the fabric slides away. "Don't uh—understand."
"It feels pleasant, doesn't it?" He mumbles, one of his palms splaying out between your shoulders.
"Y-Yes," you whine.
"Then it is not without purpose," Gadriel began in a flat tone, looming close to your ear and letting his exhale taper off into a long, curious hum. "I am simply... rewarding you, for your work."
"You are, y-you certainly are," his fingers rolled over a pressure point and dug in, causing you to jerk, a shallow moan ripped out of you when your rear arches higher and bumps up against his groin.
You hear the Sergeant inhale sharply, his huge hands steadily sliding down, kneading your ass. He's surprisingly mindful to maintain a safe pressure as he digs into the tissue of your glutes.
He stops suddenly, and you're a bit upset about that because it actually felt really nice—but you're quickly reminded there's much lewder things he's more than happy to do.
A set of hips bumps against your rear, and you look over your shoulder to see him holding his tunic up. His cock's just as pretty as you remember it, and topped with the same colour grey-blonde hair as his head. It's flushed and leaking as he drags it back and forth against you.
"Why were you delivering used linens, serf?" Gadriel asks completely from left of the field, his erection sliding between the rounded cheeks of your rear, "There are other lesser menials that ought to do such tasks."
"Uh," you harrumph, a little taken a back by the sudden change of pace. Why is he asking this, now? Why is it suddenly important? Which all surmise into the thought of: why are Astartes like this?
"He shouldn't leave you to wander," he continues roughly while you dither, "You are too sweet, it is an invitation."
Try as you might to refute it in your head, the Sergeant's right about the notion it's probably a bad idea letting you freeroam. You hadn't even considered that you're probably a dangling treat to the Great Angels onboard. If Gadriel's like this, maybe—maybe the others are, too. If Titus, and Chairon, and Gadriel are all liable to desire, then how many others, too? Is it possible there's other serfs just like you, being... companionable? You can't even begin to imagine which ones would be, though. You wouldn't be able to tell. Maybe you've bumped shoulders with another in your exact situation, and had been none the wiser. Perhaps one of the young servant men and women, or one of the older serfs? There are pretty people on board everywhere you look, if you really think about it. Who knows who is closer to an Angel than they rightly ought to be? You pass by so many people day-to-day, it could be anyone. They could be a lord and a lady, one of the officers—even an ambassador. You should try watching closer. Maybe there's a tell? Surely, it can't be hidden entirely. You would like to see them, even if they probably won't really see you. You're invisible in your status. They wouldn't know if you stayed inside Titus' chambers or not.
Still, being cooped up and a layabout feels wrong. There is so much to do besides cuddle up, you should be helping Titus with more things—not just enjoying yourself, constantly; and you try, albeit rather poorly, to tell the Sergeant just that, "The C-Captain has many duties, now, and I still want to be useful, so—"
"If usefulness is your wish, you should always be like this," Gadriel hums, his free hand squeezing your ass while he rolls his hips again.
"Like w-what?"
"Wanting," he breathes.
"My Lord, t-that would not be... proper," you breathe, baffled at yourself that you're talking back to an Astartes.
"Why not? You like the attention well enough," Gadriel says tersely, and you turn away, trying not to tremble too obviously.
"I-I—" you stammer.
"We should breed you," he announces suddenly, and stops rolling his hips in favour of squeezing your ass with both hands, "How do I breed you?"
"I'm n-not sure that's a good i-idea—" you attempt to contend softly, surely shaking again, now.
"I want to try," he grumbles.
And it's readily apparent he's going to.
He's manhandling you onto your back, next; and your legs kick out in surprise.
You watch him fight his tunic over his head with a hurried grace, and pause momentarily to ogle the broad plane of muscle and scars bared to you.
He is still strikingly beautiful, battle-wounds and all. His ports catch the light like silver jewellery, almost. He's looking at you, too—pupils blown wide and pouting slightly. Throne, he's so pretty, you almost want to stare at him for hours.
You don't get much longer to simply bask in the view, though; because he leans back in and tries to bend you up under him like he had when his mouth'd been between your legs—you're worried if he folds you underneath himself too harshly, he'll snap you in two. And just as you think that, a muscle in your lower back smarts in pain seemingly proving your point.
A soft yelp leaves you, and it makes him hesitate.
Gadriel eyes you, clearly expecting you to speak.
"Mm... m'lord, please... wait—" you blubber, uneasy at the looming problem and your own attempt to address it under his gaze. "It'll be difficult like t-this."
He blinks slowly, "How can I make it better?"
"I-I," your mouth feels dry, "I really shouldn't be telling y-you to do things, my Lord—"
"Would you, if I order you to?"
You guess when he puts it like that, you don't really have an option.
"Maybe, p-perhaps... the former position would be less... daunting?"
"On your front?" He asks, sounding a tad disbelieving. "You'd prefer that?"
"Maybe on one of the sheets, t-too?"
"I can't see why not," he hums, and promptly leans back down to lift you clear off the counter.
You're lowered to the ground on shaking legs, but miraculously keep your footing when his support falls away and he reaches for what's left of your pile of unwashed bedding.
He pulls a large blanket out, sniffs, and makes a face with his top lip curled up.
"Lord?" You ask, unsettled by his reaction.
He doesn't answer immediately, and sniffs at it again, only to roll his tongue around his mouth and shallow snort.
"Smells like Titus," he notes flatly, "...and you."
There's probably more than a few stains of lascivious fluid on it. You're not exactly sure how many. Could be one, could be ten. Most of them are probably yours. Titus really does have a fixation on finishing you off as many times as he can, and definitely goes a fair number of rounds with you in tow—not that you're really complaining.
"Ah," you breathe, trying not to start stammering again under the Sergeant's scrutiny. "I-I suppose it would, my Lord..."
"He takes you this way as well?" Gadriel raises a grey-blonde brow and snorts again, turning to lay the fabric out across the counter with a quick flourish. Then, he lifts you back on to the sheet-covered counter with not even a hint of issue.
"S-Sometimes—He... knows I-I enjoy the heat," you force out, and settle against the familiar feeling of the blanket with a practised ease. Talking like this is much easier when you can't see him. Your nerves get too high when you're plainly aware he's looking. "You all run very hot, it's... nice, being close to."
"Is it not the size disparity that makes being mounted your favourite?" He asks sternly, but it's not really a question. It's the cutting remark of observation that only an Astartes could make so plainly. It's filth that sounds more like he's making a simple, casual comment about the time; and all it does is send your brain into spirals.
It is, it is, it is—you like it, you really, really like it because of that. You can't admit it, but you also can't even deny it for a fraction of a second. Throne, just the thought of feeling huge legs and cold ports against your ass and thighs makes you whine high in your throat. It makes you force your spine to arch hard despite the dangle; clenching your abdomen to try to lift yourself just that little bit to aptly present. Trying to give him a clear invitation to fill you.
Let him use you however long he wants, let him drain himself of all the hot spend he's got.
Titus always makes you wait, like this. Likes to lick, or stuff his fingers in. He makes a game of being sure you're so wound up you finish just as he slides in. You're hoping you can get a nice, streamlined version out of that out of the Sergeant.
Retrospectively, you note Titus' made a monster out of you, truly. A greedy monster. You're only a little serf, compared to all of them; and your tastes have been adjusted to the obscene. Now, you're all too keen to let anything twice your size in blue ceramite spill in your womb if only to please. You're not going to lie and say you're shameless, because by the God-Emperor, that you enjoy being used is mortifying—and you're no more confident around them because of it—yet it still doesn't change the fact.
Gadriel's response to your attempts to harry him is a choked, appreciative thing, followed by a laboured swallow.
He nudges your entrance without any preamble, and just that touch is so warm you shiver at the heat—but then it gets so, so much better.
He wraps a hand around your hip to keep you still, and presses forward.
It's depraved how easily he slides in, because you know it's solely due to how wet you are.
It doesn't negate how big he is, though. You're still much smaller. There's just no way to truly consolidate the Baseline-to-Astartes dimorphism, let alone with a Primaris like Gadriel.
You squeal when he jars himself against your cervix, and whine sourly when there's no familiar, divine press of hips flush to your ass.
Gadriel groans out a long, trying sigh, "I needed this so badly."
Any thought you have to respond to that disappears as he starts fucking into you with purpose.
It's so good you can't help but squirm, trying to fight for purchase on the surface. Your toes don't even skim the floor, even stretched as you are. To your brain, it feels like a great height, like dangling off a balcony, or a cliff with a sheer drop. And all the while, he's driving himself as deep as he can into you. Throne, the sounds you're only distantly aware you're making must be debauched.
"Keep making those noises, serf," Gadriel rasps, his voice heavy.
A big mitt smoothers down your back and the touch is so sudden you jerk, only for him to drive into you again, and again; and then that same huge, overwhelming hand is at your scruff, holding you down to the surface like a scared animal.
Panic immediately seizes you, even though you arch a little higher to let him rut deeper.
It would take a flex of those fingers to snap your neck—honestly, it'd take less than a mere twitch, at that.
A cry is all the response you can articulate, and you try, mindlessly, to lift yourself on two palms and fuck yourself back against him.
It's apparently not the reaction the Sergeant was after.
Seeing as, a moment later, his unoccupied hand is wrangling your arms behind yourself—holding them in place with a vice-like bracket about your wrist like some living pair of cuffs. The sheer strength in every aspect is dizzying, but you suppose it's an admirable consideration seeing as he's not yet accidentally broken anything of you.
Everything surely aches, but that is far exceeded by the blessed thud of sensation plaguing every nerve and synapse you have. You're melting, and he's so, so far in you. You're certain he's bullied your insides into allowing another inch to fit with his oversized cock. There's no other logical explanation as to the fact you can suddenly feel strong hips plastered flush to your rear; and a pair of balls snug against your clit.
Or the fact that your cervix feels like it's in your throat, of all places.
You'd never properly fitted him to the base, even with the extra stretching from Titus and Chairon before him.
He's seemingly well aware of the fact he has stuffed in all he can. Because the groan that echoes from above you all of a sudden when he rolls himself into you again is obscene. It's a wet, open-mouthed sounding thing, luxuriant and lazy.
"There, just... just like this is perfect," he pants.
His hips grind forward in slow, steady motions, rocking upward. The once rabid, almost hydraulic-press pace of his hips hammering into yours has completely dilapidated into sloppy humping, for lack of a better word.
Rather unsurprisingly, it's exactly enough of a change of pace to send you finishing on his cock.
"You're just so tight and warm... a-and..." he starts to say but your hearing rings out, and you lose the rest of his words to it. You can't help how your insides thud, and a surge of bliss chokes a garbled cry from your gullet. It's so quick but intense you grind your teeth, clenching hard but stilling fast.
And through it all, Gadriel rocks into you. More than happily letting you know he's enjoying your end with a long, self-satisfied groan. You can feel him filling you, too; a nice, hot load inside—it's gratifying knowing you feel this good, that he's enjoying it, even if you're so sensitive you're shaking.
But it's only a prelude—a short glimpse at a steeper, harder crest that'll come, which makes everything far worse; because there's pleasure still building just from having his cum heating your insides, let alone being ploughed into. The bliss doesn't blow away like dust; it stacks and stacks, and you know the next one will not be as easy to ride off.
You can hear him above you, panting, and a whine rises in your chest as he rasps, "You'll take another, won't y-you?"
Your hamstrings burn with the effort of your orgasm, core cinching and head pounding in unison with each rabid squeeze you make around him.
You're sobbing openly, vision half-blurred by tears you try blink away, "Y-uh-yes, m... m'lord."
Every part of you is so sensitive, it's almost dazzling feeling him shudder in delight atop you.
The hand scruffing the back of your neck moves to brace his own bulk, now flat and palm-down beside your head.
At that reprieve, your face turns until your cheek's nicely cooled by the steel. The sheet's been moved and jostled enough that it's slowly slipping back. The cold is pleasant, even if your insides still feel like superheated slag.
The shift allows you a skewed, tear-blurred glance upward, and you're graced by the sight of a drooling Sergeant.
Gadriel's face is banded across with a flush just like before, except he's keening, brows knitted almost as if in agony—salivating like a beast.
But your short time to watch him is quickly ripped away. Because, abruptly, Gadriel's entire weight presses against your back. For a brief instant, you feel every ounce of air drive out of you, but it's somehow remedied by him tugging you up against him.
Swooning, you let out a little mewl; over-full and over-hot with the sudden embracing. The Sergeant's like a furnace to the touch, you can't even wriggle enough to gain a millisecond of reprieve from being stuck in the iron-hard clutches of his huge arms. Stuck between him and the surface, he's more or less mounting you now, just like you asked, and you're stunned he hasn't shattered your spine. You can still feel your toes, and legs, and rear—but God Emperor help you, does your ass hurt. And so does your cunt, for that matter—even if every sloppy roll of his hips against you is absolutely sublime.
He's back to pounding the living daylights out of you, with not even a hint of thought towards the fact that he's only recently cum in you.
You gasp, half-stunned by the heady return of fresh pleasure to your senses.
But then his hold changes, and you're suddenly in a headlock.
It stifles you nigh instantly, and any loud, depraved noise he'd been fucking out of you tapers off to a hoarse keening.
Gadriel tips his chin down and rubs his cheek against the top of your head, nuzzling up while he's apparently completely oblivious to the fact he is starting to choke you.
He also doesn't seem to notice you scrambling at the forearm braced under your throat. And when he starts moving again, your head swims at the warm slide of him.
An agonising, weightless burst of lightning tramples through your nervous system and you cry out a noise closer to a hissed wheeze—desperately trying to figure out how to make the rush stop, or how to make it never stop—something, anything.
But you can't disengage him; he's too much.
"Why aren't you moaning?" Gadriel rasps between heaving breaths, still rutting forward, "Is... is this not good? I'm t-trying to be good."
Something in you twists into a knot and unwinds with a snap, mere seconds later. You can't help but whinny in confusion, shaking beneath him. Your orgasm feels like a death throw. It may as well be, as speckles of black and static edge your vision. Phantom lights of colour burr across your sight, and—
The vice under your gullet abruptly lifts away and you cough harshly, barely managing to wolf down air despite the mercy.
Your feather-light nerves feel a pulse-pulse-pulse between your thighs; the shudder of huge hips and an all too-familiar heat being spilt in your twitching cunt.
You look up through your tears and see Gadriel's face pinched up, he's gritting his teeth hard—and a sound like a broken piston leaves him. It's a shrill, keened whine up from his huge chest that vents out through his nose, tapering off to wild panting; he's straining through his own end while filling you up. It's so over-much that you can feel the warm-wet spill of what can't manage to stay in you dripping down your sex and thighs, in fat, milky ropes.
You can feel his thighs twitching against your own, and the errant, impulsive half-thrusts that he can't help.
Gadriel's... satisfied enough to calm for the moment, it seems.
You don't know how long you're simply gasping for air under him. The heat of him against your back is so nice you almost doze off, to say nothing of the bliss of having him still hard inside you. You're warm and content, and aching—and most of all, filled. It's sloppy and leaking where he's still buried inside you. He's done a thorough job of keeping it in, despite that. You're tempted to lazily rub yourself, even raw as your clit probably is, and let him bask in one more orgasm. Throne, you'd even let him have another round, if he wanted—you can think of how to explain taking so long to Titus, later.
But when you do regain higher thought, you realise you're drooling against the steel beneath you, and only really rouse when he says, "...serf?" in a very, very small voice for an Angel.
It's hard to talk when your body prefers hyperventilating, but you push through the urge to slump.
So, you groan instead.
"Are you alright?" He asks quietly.
You groan again, a little higher in pitch this time.
"Well... that's a good sign," he answers quickly.
A whine is all you can offer, as he rears up to his palm and looms over you.
"Gadriel," comes a gruff, familiar voice out of nowhere.
Belatedly, you flinch and try to rise—only to keen at the feeling of a cock still hilted in you.
"Titus?" Gadriel mumbles, confused, and you swear there's the smallest tremor to his voice as he adds, "I... I did not expect you here."
"Her access logs in the ship's system," Titus rumbles sternly, "As does yours."
Gadriel's pulling out of you, suddenly, and you whine—it's uncomfortable, losing the warmth and the fullness so quickly. But Titus' here, and that's good. You can't turn to see him, stuck on your belly as you are, but you're glad to see him. He's always so much softer. It'd be a nice change of pace. Maybe it'll be like the battle-barge, and you'll get spoiled with more.
You almost start drooling again.
You try to rise again, wanting to greet Titus as you ought, but your limbs are like wet rations. You can't even muster up the strength to even start to lift yourself off your front, especially not with your legs dangling.
Gadriel rolls you onto your back and carefully strokes your side. It's nice, and you blink up at Titus standing next to him. He's in his tunic, with his soft blue robe pulled over the top. You're very happy to see him, even if there's a harshness to the lines on his forehead that entails a very poor mood.
Somehow, you drag yourself up to a sitting position, and the room spins for a moment with a queasy tilt.
"Careful, careful," Titus' hand comes to rest against your bicep, steadying you while you regain your bearings. "Not so fast."
When you're finally settled, you peek up at him and huff softly, which earns his palm coming up to your cheek—or more accurately—against the side of your head.
You reach up to place your hand over the top of his, content and deeply, deeply exhausted but still wanting to at least try to cheer him up. He's probably just been concerned. But you're alright, and you know exactly how to prove it.
"M'okay," you slur, and paw at Titus' large forearm with your other hand until you find the port on the interior. You circle it softly, and he sighs again.
He likes it when you do this, so it's no harm to try to at least show you still have some sense.
Titus' face creases as he looks down at you, "You've made a mess."
You frown sadly, and turn your face into his hand more as the disapproval stings, "Mm... m'sorry, Titus."
"You don't have to apologise," he tuts, and his thumb starts making slow circles against your temple, "I am talking to him."
You look from your Lord to the Sergeant as he says it, and Gadriel winces.
"She enjoyed it," he offers in his defence, and his hand joins Titus' efforts, though not on your face. Instead, he's stroking your back; rubbing a little like he'd done earlier, "Didn't you, serf?"
You moan softly, basking in the warmth of hands on you.
"She's not to be trusted with metrics of enjoyment," Titus cuts in as he raises a dark brow and sets his mouth into a thin line, "She'd gladly let you break something. Look at her, she's covered in bruises, Gadriel."
"I-I'm a-alright," you affirm again, despite the mumbled hoarseness in your voice while looking up at them both. You're so tired that any reservation against the act doesn't even occur to you, because what's that supposed to mean?
Titus regards you with long, trying exhale before he abruptly says, "Yes, you're very tough—but I think you've had enough for a cycle," and pets you again; then he turns to Gadriel and flares his nostrils, "Not to mention, there are staff outside who are rather displeased about having their entry-clearance rescinded."
Gadriel pointedly looks at the floor, pulls his hand away from your back and clears his throat, "We were finished, anyway."
"Good," Titus harrumphs, "Then you won't mind if I clean up, will you?"
Gadriel doesn't have anything to say about the fact that it's his tunic that Titus then uses to wipe the cum dripping and smeared between your thighs.
Maybe with a human he's protecting or helping or something. I don't know darksiders in depth enough to do this myself, pls..... I need himb...... your old war fics are all that keep me going.....
Alternatively, Fury with a human in the maker's tree thing 💖
Thank you no pressure 💖
- Cat
Author's Note: Consolidating two since you both asked for fluffy War and, who am I to refuse such a thing.
Relationships: War/Fem!Reader (one usage of 'her')
Warnings: None really
"This is cruel and unusual punishment, i hope you know."
You cross your arms and stare at War, who only gives you his usual vaguely displeased neutral expression. It doesn't crack in the slightest, not even at your whining. You don't know much of what can crack that angelic visage of his.
"It is not."
The unintelligible noises of discontent that come out of your mouth are met with more unimpressed staring, and perhaps an eyeroll if you saw that right, and it wasn't just a trick of the light. War wasn't always what you'd call mature, even at his uncountable age. The bridge of his nose wrinkles with his brow as he looks at you.
"I am leaving you up there because then you cannot get down and find yourself more trouble."
Legs dangling far above the stirrups, Ruin's back is indeed high enough off the ground that getting down would take considerable effort, and even then still taking a big risk on a twisted ankle. And that's not considering that Ruin has a vested in interest in listening to his rider's instructions, and will at least threaten to bite you if you attempt an escape. Not as if you'd want to get bitten by any horse, but Ruin in particular; You'd be more likely to loose and entire arm, than a few fingers.
War looks away from you and to Ruin instead, pointing in his direction with his gauntlet. He's met with a gentle snort that blows a few embers in his general direction.
"Do not let her down."
The way Ruin eyes you after War speaks and your attempt to shimmy more to one side further reinforces that you are now quite literally stuck, unless you wanted to roll the dice on hurting yourself.
With that War proceeds to wander off, and you're stuck kicking your feet in boredom. Ruin doesn't prove to be the most entertaining babysitter in the slightest, and it feels more like you're stuck on a countertop too high for you than anything else. The only thing that breaks the illusion is the occasional indignant snort you get whenever you mumble to yourself.
You're not sure how much time passes in actuality, the sun never really seems to fully set around here which takes away your only real way of telling the passage of time. Perhaps it's by design, the angels love their light, are you are currently in one of their realms. For you however it really only gives you a bit of a headache. At least Ruin is firmly parked in the shade— not as if you could move him if he wasn't— so you didn't slowly heat up as the sun beat down on you.
When War returns, he makes a straight path towards you and Ruin and moves to grasp the saddle horn. When you don't show excitement at his return like usual— his hood is now down which gives you a full view of his long white hair and young face— he looks at you with a hint of suspicion and gives you an inquisitive 'hmm?'.
"No, I'm mad at you now. You made a horse babysit me."
War sighs. His jaw shifts unconsciously as he thinks on his words. For being usually so aloof, he can have a bit of a heavy tongue, at times. Usually to you; It's easy for him to speak to the other horsemen, it's harder for him to be so gruff and intimidating to someone he likes that height-wise, can barely reach his shoulders.
"Do not get yourself into trouble so often, and I would not need to." You quickly attempt to defend yourself and your voice raises in pitch.
"I do not get into that much trouble! You are," You're momentarily stopped when War grasps the saddle horn tighter and moves to heft himself onto Ruin behind you with a loud grunt, jostling you around enough that it cuts you off for a moment. "You are blowing one incident way out of proportion."
War, in a rare moment of letting his guard down, chuckles ever so slightly, and very knowingly. His chest solidly rests against your back.
"Am I?"
Your silence speaks for itself enough, and the argument ends. Perhaps you've learned a few lessons about touching things that looked very old. And wandering off too far.
i need data for a statistics project for school, so be my sample data, worms. i need thirty people minimum so if there aren't enough voters yet i'd love if you could help. thank you very much. worms.
take this test (https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/), then come back here:
what's your JND?
.00030-.00099
.0010-.0017
.0017-.0024
.0024-.0031
.0031-.0038
.0038-.0045
.0045-.0052
.0052-.0059
.0059-.0066
.0066-.0073
.0073-.0080
.0080 or greater
Voting ended onMay 13
it doesnt have to be a good score, you dont have to take it multiple times, you dont have to get on a good screen, etcetera. just gimme your score please this is my final project grade :)
Warnings: vaguely implied SA, (very) minor mention of blood
Description: Family ties strengthened. Family ties mourned. And family ties severed beyond all repair.
Find the previous parts of this series on my Masterlist, comment and ask to be added to/removed from my Taglist, and remember my Asks and DMs are always open!
Conrad swayed on his feet. In his haste to reach the hanger, he’d forgotten his crutch, and he felt his ankle swelling up again. To make things worse, the pain medications Brother Gerard had injected seemed to be wearing off. The throbbing in his upper arm soon threatened to overshadow that in his ankle.
By the Light, I’m a wreck.
He grimaced.
Nothing new there.
Across the wide metal grating stood half a dozen giants in blue. All of them leveling weapons at him. And all of them dwarfed by… by….
The Primarch.
The man, the being, the demi-god who’d fractured the bones in his upper left arm with barely a touch. Ice flooded Conrad’s gut at the sight. His eyes dropped to the floor. His narrow chest heaved and he fought back the urge to cough.
How in the Void did I manage to hold a conversation with… that… before?!
He blamed the exhaustion of the flight from TerraNova. Scrambling through tunnels beneath the Monastery as the Iron Bitch’s stormtroopers set it ablaze above their heads. Squeezing through half collapsed doorways and over piles of rubble as the stench of burning paper threatened to choke him. (The sharp sting in his ankle reminded him why that had been a bad idea.) By the time he and the surviving Brothers aboard their salvaged transport had searched out the Imperial Fleet, he hadn’t had more than a few hours sleep a night for weeks.
Apparently, being on the verge of collapse gave one courage.
Or simply dulled the self-preservation instinct. Didn’t Brother Minh write a thesis about the effect of sleep deprivation on cognitive- no, Conrad. Focus!
You’d spoken his name. He dared look at you, his little cousin, for the first time in nearly a decade.
Light… you’ve grown up.
A silly thought. Of course you’d grown up. And yet, part of him insisted you’d still be the thin, pale adolescent he’d caught rare glimpses of before he’d escaped into the Brotherhood. Creeping along behind your tutors. Dressed in tight, somber frocks like the doll of some particularly dour child.
Now, even cradled in the arms of a titan, nothing about you reminded him of a doll.
Oh Light, she’s the Matron now. I should kneel, right? Yes, kneeling. Down I go-
“Shit!”
Pain shot through his ankle and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground in a jumble of limbs. His damned spectacles skittered off who knows where. The blurred outlines of Imperial soldiers, the not-giant ones, regarded him in silence as he struggled to orient himself.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
Get up, damn it! Stop flopping about like a landed fish!
The patter of soft shoes met his ears. “Oh, Conrad. Here, take my hand.”
He stretched out blindly, fingers wrapping around yours as you guided him to his feet. He squinted in your direction.
“My apologies, um, Matron. My Matron. I, ah, seem to have lost my-” The cool frame of his spectacles settled on his face once more, and he blinked. “Oh. Thank you.”
You smiled at him. You were smiling at him.
Oh no. No. I don’t deserve that.
Panic flared hot in his stomach, and the words spilled forth.
“I know we haven’t spoken in- well. Ever. Not really. And I’ve been rather indisposed of late since my ankle, and my arm… I don’t blame your, er, very impressive fiance for that, by the way! Not at all! Perfectly understandable given the circumstances. And then I, well, a psychic amplifier, especially one of such age and questionable maintenance as the one you employed in Victor’s fortress, packs quite a punch for the recipient. It felt rather like I had an entire construction crew hammering away inside my skull for a bit. Oh, I don’t blame you for that either, of course! I applaud your resourcefulness, in fact. Father Gregory said the side effects would have been much worse had we not already been slightly psychically aligned due to our blood relation and-”
“Cousin.”
He came to a screeching halt. You looked at him with an expression that told him you were desperately trying not to laugh.
“Oh dear. I… I’m… sorry.”
His shoulder slumped. This had been a terrible idea.
“Useless child. Take him away.”
The only words he could remember Grandmother ever speaking to him. How accurate they’d been.
“I… should go.”
“Conrad.”
Your voice softened. You took his hand between yours. He gathered the courage to look at you again. You no longer looked like you wanted to laugh.
“It’s good to see you again. I can’t tell you how glad I was to learn you’d gotten off TerraNova alive.”
He blinked, old grief threatening to choke him. “So many didn’t. I don’t know why I-”
All of a sudden tears spilled down his cheeks. He pressed both hands to his mouth, trying to stifle the sobs that threatened to rip him apart from the inside out.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”
Your arms encircled his shoulders, hands pulling his head down to rest in the crook of your neck. After a moment’s paralysis, he returned the embrace. The urgency of his flight here faded. The armed Imperials, giant and otherwise, melted into the background.
Two survivors of a broken family clung to each other.
***
Guilliman watched you take your cousin’s hand in yours as he sat next to you on the Thunderhawk, the two of you comically small in seats meant for Astartes. He watched you smile at him. Listened to you laugh as he tripped over his own words.
His face remained carefully neutral.
Within, something dark attempted to rear its ugly head.
Your hands belonged in his. Your smiles were for him. His ears should be the only ones graced with your laughter.
He forced his gaze away. Three minutes until they docked with the Domina. Two minutes and fifty two seconds now. A trivial amount of time to feel like an eternity.
This is unworthy of me.
Your cousin, Conrad, the other cousin, had actually managed to impress him on their first meeting, he remembered. There had been a sincerity about him Guilliman had recognized even through the haze of his fury and desperation. He’d been firmly placed in the “non-threat” category within the Primarch’s mind.
Now, Guilliman could feel that categorization shifting. And not because of anything that could be described as rational.
Foolishness.
The pilot’s vox crackled to life.
“Imperial Thunderhawk, you are cleared for docking.”
You tensed.
Guilliman sensed more than saw it. He shifted toward you, ready to offer comfort.
Conrad was already there.
“I know.” He patted your hand awkwardly. “I… I know.”
The two of you exchanged a glance full of meaning and Guilliman felt… something he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
Memories flickered through his mind in quick succession:
Training with Corvus aboard the Macragge’s Honour.
Vulkan’s arm around his shoulders as they discussed rebuilding a war-torn world.
A cup of wine pushed into his hand by a smiling Sanguinius.
The feeling intensified. He refused to name it. Refused to walk down that path. Not now. Not when you needed him to be your place of safety and strength.
The Thunderhawk shook as it landed. He reached for you, steadying you, letting you use his gauntlet for support as you clambered off the seat. Your cousin struggled to do the same and, after a beseeching look from you, he offered him the same courtesy.
“Oh. Uh. Th-thank you, sir. My Lord. Patron.”
Guilliman frowned. “You were far more coherent during our first meeting.”
“Roboute….” Your voice held mild reproof.
Conrad ducked his head, face reddening. Guilliman said nothing as the ramp lowered.
Cato Sicarius strode out first, hand firmly placed on the Tempest Blade. Tarchus followed close behind.
“All clear, Lord Primarch.”
Guilliman reached down for you, but you placed a hand on his. “I need to stand on my own feet this time, Roboute.”
He thought he hid his disappointment well.
A woman in a void-dark uniform met them at the edge of the hanger. Gray colored her hair at the temples, matching the steel shade of her eyes. Her body trembled at his approach but, to Guilliman’s surprise, she remained on her feet, though he saw her jaw clench tight.
At his side, you hissed. “T.I.S.”
TerraNovan Intelligence Service.
He analyzed the careful blankness of the woman’s expression. The way her colorless eyes shifted from face to face, never still. Always calculating.
She has the look of an Inquisitor.
“Acting Captain Foster.” He spoke first, employing all three lungs as he did so.
The woman rocked slightly on her feet. “Lord Guilliman. Prince Conrad.” She paused. “Matron Uncrowned. Welcome aboard the Domina.”
“I would see my, our, grandmother at once.”
Your voice was clear and calm. But Guilliman heard the patter of your heart. Beside you, your cousin fiddled with the hem of his sleeve.
The gray woman gave a single nod. “If you will follow me, please.”
This ship had obviously been built on a grander scale than the other TerraNovan ships he’d seen. He found himself able to stand upright in the corridors and still have a few inches of space to spare. Yet again, the sleek lines and sheer newness of the infrastructure impressed themselves upon him. He inhaled icy air and wondered at its freshness.
Then there was the silence.
Even aboard the most meticulously maintained Imperial vessel, vents rattled. Machinery groaned. Techpriests chanted in binharic cadences. Ghoulish cherubs croaked praises to the Emperor. Servitors creaked along.
Not here.
Here, every hidden servo seemed to run with an efficiency that sparked his envy. Even the mortal crewmembers crept with soft steps. Most of them melted into side chambers or around corners upon their approach, eyes wary and lips thin.
He knew the look. He’d seen it on countless faces during the Great Crusade. Newly compliant populaces holding their breath as they waited for whatever came next.
Fear.
The narrow corridors did not allow for any to walk beside him, so you moved just ahead. Every step seemed to melt more of your confidence away. Though you struggled valiantly to conceal it, he watched your knuckles whiten.
Appearances be damned.
Half a stride and he could have you in his arms, where you belonged.
But again, your cousin anticipated him. Leaning as he was on his carven crutch, he managed to reach out and pat your shoulder with the same earnest awkwardness he’d shown on the Thunderhawk.
And yet again, Guilliman felt that same pang.
By the Throne, I am jealous….
He watched you and your cousin lean into each other, sharing familial support.
… but not for that reason.
***
“Granddaughter.”
The word slipped from Victoire’s mouth like a curse. She turned her head to regard the poor specimen of humanity standing next to you.
“Grandson.”
The boy flinched. Just as she knew he would.
“How… nice… of you to be so dutiful as to visit me.”
She’d known you would come. You had to. You would seek to follow the old laws, set down by ancestors who could never have imagined how inconvenient their outdated codes would become. No one but she had ever been able to see that.
She’d done her best to ready herself, smoothing her hair back in its accustomed bun. Wiping the blood from her palms, lips, and nostrils. Sitting upon the spartan cot as if it were her throne.
To a true Queen, any seat could be a throne. Another lesson you would never understand.
“Well. Speak.”
It pleased her to see you fight the urge to obey. Like a trained hound struggling against its leash. You opened your mouth, shut it, opened it again.
“Very well. If you prefer to continue your impression of a beached fish, I will do the speaking.”
She stood. They flinched back.
Oh, the power of it.
Victoire had many reasons to bless the height granted to her by her mother’s ancient Nordic blood. But never more so then now, as she cast her shadow over her disappointing children’s even more disappointing spawn.
“You think you’ve won.” She barked a single, dry laugh. “So did I, once.”
The memories came back as fresh as if they’d occurred yesterday. And not decades in the past.
“You think me a tyrant? You never knew your grandfather. Now, there was a tyrant.”
I was young then. Beautiful. Light, so beautiful. And such a fool.
“He seduced me, you know?” The words came easy, polished by long, tender hatred. “Waited until I was pregnant with your father, Conrad. Then forced me into marriage to hide the shame of it.”
How smug he’d been. How certain. She could still see the triumph in his piggish eyes. Still feel his bruising grip as he laughed in her face.
“But I had one virtue he did not. I was patient.”
She’d played the submissive little wife. And she’d poured wine and stronger intoxicants down his throat by the gallon. When he was good and addled, she brought vultures in the guises of people to his court. Made them his friends, his lovers, his treasured advisors. Then sat back and watched as they pushed him into decision after ruinous decision.
“I waited until the people could take no more. Until they turned to me in desperation. Much like they turn to you now.”
The revolt had been swift and bloody. Her sons she’d sent away for their own safety. But her daughter, her precious daughter, she’d kept strapped to her chest even as she plunged the knife into her husband’s chest. Over and over again. Until his blood spattered her baby’s face.
Victoire lifted her arms, eyes distant with the glories of the past.
“They screamed my name to the heavens that day. Called me savior, hero. They pledged their loyalty with tears of joy!” Her arms fell. “My one mistake? I believed them. I believed they’d love me forever. I believed my children would do the same.”
She pointed one long, bony finger at you, the nail still flecked with blood. “Look at me now, child of poisoned blood. And see your future.”
“See the utter ruin of our,” she laughed again then, high and wild, “our loving family.”
Imagine if a like 8 foot tall guy that looked kinda like an alien species just kinda showed up at the house you rent a room in and crashed on the couch and at first everyone hated him but you kinda just accepted this weird massive kinda-human alien species thing as a part of your group even though he's like twice the size of everyone else there
So there's two species of sea lion in North America: the California sea lion, ranging along California (including Baja) but not ranging into the north coast or into oregon
And the Stellar's sea lion, which are WAY bigger and live in Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska
A male Stellars sea lion showed up in SF like a month ago and just kinda. Didn't know what to do, and joined a colony of California sea lions, and is just kinda chilling there now.
Weird vagrant species happen from time to time, but this is just a particularly funny instance of a highly social species getting very lost, and just trying to blend in with its closest nearby relatives
Warnings: a whole lotta mental manipulation, folks! (and some suggestiveness)
Description: Sergeant Gadriel faces the daemon's temptations, and some very uncomfortable revelations are made.
Find the previous parts of this series on my Masterlist, comment and ask to be added to/removed from my Taglist, and remember my Asks and DMs are always open!
Atius tasted blood. It trickled from his nostrils, from the corners of his eyes, filling his mouth with the tang of iron. He saw only through a red tint as he stumbled down the corridor, one arm slung over the Apothecary’s shoulder.
“Faster,” he rasped. “Faster!”
At his side Apothecary Callistus only grunted. But he picked up the pace, all but dragging the Librarian along with him. Behind, Atius heard the heavy tramp of the rest of the squad. The Captain barked orders he couldn’t quite make out.
Something has gone very wrong.
Yet again, he tried to send his thoughts out. Tried to sense even one of the souls he’d sworn to help.
Yet again, his searching mind slammed up against a wall of razor blades and venom.
Blood spattered his breastplate as he coughed.
“It is here… and not here.” He heard himself ramble. “Without and within… around and inside….”
“Quiet, brother.”
The Apothecary’s voice was gruff. Yet it held a note of wariness. A wariness Atius had heard all his life since his induction into the Librarians.
He thinks me mad.
“A battle of the soul…,” he could not stop the words from coming, “illusions… the heart’s deepest desires….”
“Silence, Librarian!”
I must make them understand!
He forced the words through a thickening barrier of agony. “They. Must. Awaken!”
Or all is lost.
***
Valorem Gadriel’s knees buckled before the image of his Primarch. His template. The being who stood above every Ultramarine as a shining example of what they should all strive to be. Gadriel knew no deity, but if he did, it would be the cerulean and gold-clad titan before him.
“Well done, my son.”
An unfamiliar burning sensation built behind the Ultramarine’s eyes. The words, delivered with such pride, resonated inside his fused ribcage. No one had ever looked at him the way the Primarch looked at him now. Not his commanders. Not his battle brothers. Not even-
A memory slipped through the cracks in his mental conditioning. Another face, towering above him. A man. Smaller. Thinner. Features blurred, but full of disappointment.
Not smart enough.
Not strong enough.
Not enough.
It was his mantra when he made the pilgrimage to the Ultramarine fortress at ten years old. His mantra when conditioning sank his childhood beneath layers of doctrine. His mantra during every brutal day of training and enhancement, during every blood-soaked campaign that followed.
Not enough.
It drove him on, on, always on. Reaching. Straining to be better.
In the Codex he found the strength he needed. Mortals withered away, voidships disintegrated in plumes of fire, even his battle brothers fell to death.
But the Codex remained.
And now, finally, the Primarch himself was rewarding him for his adherence. Vindication swelled both of Gadriel’s hearts. His back straightened, chin lifting. Let the others scoff behind his back. Let them call him rigid, cold, obsessed. He was doing it right.
Their deviation had only brought them pain.
Had it not?
The entire Strategium of the Macragge’s Honour seemed to freeze in place. Doubt gnawed at him like a rodent from the lower decks. The Lieutenant’s face came to mind. The way his eyes softened when they looked upon the quiet little serf girl, the lines of centuries of toil in the Emperor’s name smoothing just slightly.
Peace.
He saw Chairon standing next to the annoyingly exuberant medica, mouth curved in a smile wider than any Gadriel had ever seen on a battle brother. Eyes alight with mirth… and something deeper.
Joy.
The concepts felt foreign. And yet, something buried deep inside him reached for them. A tugging at his very soul. The persistent whisper that his brothers, in deviating ever so slightly from the doctrine meant to be an Ultramarine’s lifeblood, had regained something.
Something Valorem Gadriel hadn’t realized was missing.
Lieutenant Titus. Chairon.
It took more effort than it should have to break away from his Primarch’s gaze and look around. He saw the Victrix Guard, led by Commander Cato Sicarius himself. He saw the Chapter Master, Marneus Calgar, standing at the Primarch’s side.
Where are my squadmates?
The Primarch’s voice boomed out again.
“Come, my son, and take your place at my side.”
Gadriel ached to obey. But….
“My squad… the Lieutenant, Brother Chairon… they should be here.”
A flash of purple in the corner of his eye. He snapped his head back to see the Primarch now directly in front of him, radiating a glow so bright it cast the rest of the Strategium into shadow.
“Why would you want to share your moment of triumph with the unworthy, my son?”
His words had grown softer, more coaxing. A great gauntlet landed upon Gadriel’s shoulder, its warmth seeping through his armor like spilled blood. His tongue grew thick and heavy in his mouth.
Still, he spoke.
“They are… my brothers.”
“They are NOTHING compared to you.”
The shadows beyond the two of them intensified until they stood suspended in a black void. Gadriel tried to pull away, tried to get a bearing on his surroundings, but the Primarch’s gauntlet held him immobile. When opalescent lightning spit the darkness he found he could not even close his eyes against the sting.
“Look at what you could become.”
The swirling illumination congealed into images that burned themselves into his retinas. Hundreds, no, thousands of Ultramarines marched by in perfect unison. The thunder of their sabatons rattled the teeth in his skull. The air they displaced rocked him on his feet.
Their armor shone like innumerable blue suns. Undamaged. Tabards utterly pristine. Weapons that looked fresh from the forge held at precision angles.
Not a Chapter. A Legion.
The image widened, revealing a vast field of these perfect brothers with their perfect armor arrayed in perfect formation. And all angled toward a figure nearly as resplendent as the Primarch himself, dripping in gilding and regalia, standing tall upon a pedestal.
A commander for the ages.
“Who is….”
The words died on his tongue as the figure turned and Gadriel beheld his own face staring back at him. His own face… and yet somehow not.
Gone was the scarring he’d borne for decades. His skin was clear as the statues of old heroes on Macragge. Every feature, from the set jawline to the pressed lips, carved like cold marble. The picture of stoic discipline.
The perfect Ultramarine.
“Yes.” The Primarch’s voice whispered directly into his ear. “Perfection. And it can all be yours.”
“I….”
He should want this. Surely this was what “enough” looked like. What he’d been striving for for so long. And yet, as he stared into the stony face, something struck him. The eyes. His eyes. Its eyes.
Hollow.
“I do not….”
“Ahhhh.” The Primarch’s voice moved closer. “You see it too. Perfect order. Perfect discipline. And yet, perhaps, not quite enough?”
The image vanished so quickly it sent Gadriel’s senses reeling. For a disorienting moment he felt weightless, careening through nothing. Blind and flailing.
The Primarch’s voice echoed through the emptiness.
“Your thoughts turn to your brothers, my son. What they possess.”
The scent hit him first. He’d smelled it before, upon the Lieutenant when he returned from his quarters. Upon Chairon when he returned from one of his many visits to the Apothecarion. Faint then, now it drowned him in its syrupy sweetness.
Then the sounds.
“My Lord….”
“So handsome… so strong….”
“Valorem… Valorem...”
“My love….”
The touches came next. He gasped aloud as cool hands pressed against his burning skin. Stroking down his chest, across his back, up his thighs. Fingers running through his hair and tracing the metal of his interface ports. Soft. Softer than anything he could remember.
A whine rose in the back of his throat as one of the unseen hands cupped his face. He couldn’t stop himself from pressing into it, a hunger like he’d never known clawing at his insides.
“Yessssss. This is what you hungered for.”
The Primarch’s voice. And not the Primarch’s voice. It had thinned, growing higher and smoother, every word ending on a breathy hiss.
“Look upon what you could have, oh deprived one.”
A pulsating, purple glow swirled around him. At first, he could only see vague outlines. Two bodies, small and mortal, entwined about him and each other. Their silky skin pressed against his scarred muscle. Their perfume filled his lungs to bursting.
“Touch them. Feel them.”
He could move his body again. Obeying some primal instinct, he grasped handfuls of plush flesh and squeezed, listening with dazed amazement to the resulting moans. The bodies moved faster against him, hands touching with greater intimacy.
Valorem Gadriel hardened for the first time.
A laugh like the clashing of blades rang out around him.
“So easy. So easy! Always the most disciplined ones hide the most delicious depravities.”
This was what his brothers had experienced. This is what they’d been keeping from him. Gadriel pressed his face into soft hair and inhaled.
“All that work crafting the image of the Perfect Ultramarine… and all you really desired was the pleasures of the flesh.” Another sharp laugh. “Just like the other one.”
Hot mouths against him. Tongues lapping at his skin. Pleasure rolled in waves through his body, and yet something about the words sparked unease.
“What other-”
“Look at them. Look at what I can give you!”
The hazy outlines solidified.
Red curls.
Dark waves.
Green and honey brown eyes, gazing up in vague adoration.
Gadriel froze. “No….”
“No? You wanted what your brothers possessed, yes? You can have them!”
“Valorem…,” Sera breathed, hands running over his chest.
“We love you…,” Vesta moaned, rocking her hips against his thigh.
“NO.”
He ripped himself away from the soft embraces of his brothers’ women. Their wounded cries almost pulled him back, but he refused, shaking his head. Light and sound and sensation fractured around him. He was falling.
“Fool!”
The hissing shriek drove nails into his skull. He heard himself make noises more suitable to an animal than a man.
“Surrender to me! And I will give you the power, the recognition, the love you crave!”
“Never!” He howled into the spinning void. “I will never betray them!”
“Then you doom yourself to an existence of starvation, hungering for the barest scrap of something you cannot even bring yourself to name!”
“Be silent!”
Mocking laughter tore his skull apart from the inside out.
“You live in the hope of recognition for your great restraint. It will never come! All your sacrifice means NOTHING.”
He thrashed wildly. “I am Valorem Gadriel. I am an Ultramarine. I am a Son of Guilliman!”
The voice sank to a low, poisonous whisper.
“And it is not enough, is it?”
He screamed denial as more laughter echoed from everywhere and nowhere, burning like acid on his skin. Direction meant nothing. Time meant nothing. He could feel his sanity fraying.
Then.
“Awaken.”
Another voice. Barely a whisper amidst the shredding cacophony. Somehow familiar.
“Awaken, brother.”
Memory flooded back. The trap set and sprung. The dark little room. The Warp rift. A point of light appeared, within the maelstrom or within his own mind, he could not tell. But he strained toward it with every fiber of his fragmenting soul.
“AWAKEN.”
“It… must… be… enough!”
The light engulfed him.
***
Brother Librarian Atius slipped from the Apothecary’s grasp, one knee hitting the metal grating with a resounding thud. Blood dripped from his face to spatter across the floor. But his lips twitched upward in satisfaction.
“One…,” he panted, “one soul freed.”
Callistus hauled him upright again with a growled oath. Around them, Captain Acheran and the rest of the squad filled the little room to capacity. The Captain was snarling more orders into his vox.
Atius could hear the tension in his voice.
The Librarian felt as though he’d been scraped raw. But he’d manage to break through the daemon’s barrier and pull one of his brothers out. Where Sergeant Gadriel was now, and in what state, he could not say. Nor could he dwell upon it.
His eyes locked on the scorched mark bisecting the room. Warp energy lay thick in the stale air. Closing his eyes, he sensed the daemon’s outrage at losing its prey. He also felt its renewed determination to cling to those that remained.
Everything I read about recovering from burnout is like “it takes months or even years to fully recover” and it’s like okay…. I have a weekend before I gotta clock in on Monday
