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Content Warning: Light BDSM (Choking; Rough)
“It sounds like a dreadful planet.” Ezrihel was little more than a dismissive grouch at the tentative news that Aurora Meng was sharing with him and the other commanders on behalf of Grand Admiral Stratos.
“General Althaus, it would be a good idea to give the crew a bit of a break from the inside of this ship.” She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, rigid as ever as she addressed him with exquisite mannerisms.
“On that wretched place? Remind me what you said about it then, please darling.” Meng was a woman of uncertain pedigree but of unquestionable loyalty, skill and tact. The nobleman found that he was quickly surrounding himself with deeply interesting people in this armada. She was promising.
“Opealon is an ocean planet. Its skies are dotted with numerous floating islands varying in size. The biggest of these floating islands house large, technologically advanced, cities. From the reports I’ve seen they seem to have a cultural divide-”
“Althaus, is it really necessary that we re-listen to what Commander Meng reported again?” Tzalel von Saerhaus, lord of the long running and uniquely blessed House of the Night Gods, was rapidly running out of patience. He sat beside his sister Ruedlen, a shrewd and blunt woman who sought no solace and gave equally little to her foes, a beautifully efficient warrior who kept her composure no matter the suffering.
“Yes, my dearest Tzalel~”
Ruedlen rolled her eyes, “and why is that then, Althaus?”
“Lord Althaus, General Althaus, B-less’ed Paladin of the Sacred Living Flame, Keeper of the True Ways, Light of Anva, Beautiful Psion of Vadehi... Bastard Rakefiend, Corruptor of Minds, Accursed King of the Forsaken... You and your ilk could use any of my bastard titles but you use nothing but my last name, oh you wound me so much with your cruelties.” The noble swished his lithe fingers through the air and spoke as if he were endlessly bored of them all.
Matron banged her armored paw palm down on the table. “Quit playing around, what’s your game Ezrihel?”
He scoffed, “Meng, sweetie, one more time?”
The room groaned as Aurora followed her orders, again Matron erupted, “Ezrihel!”
“What?” His hissed answer had the hulking soldier grinding her jaw, but remaining silent. The blonde took the chance to continue talking, his rich voice dominating the enclosed space of the room.
“Did you all forget the obvious, glaring issue with Opealon? Tell me that I am not the only one of my kind annoyed and worried about the idea of being around crumbly-wumbly ledges floating an entire half kilometer above an abyssal ocean! I mean we all know that Andromedas are chronically un-good at swimming-”
“Althaus-” Tzalel attempted, pinching his dark brows. The aristocrat had a habit of getting on tangents and derailing things for what felt like hours or days if he didn’t like the topic.
“And I for one do not want to make a week long marathon jaunt across the abyssal plane of some backwater world’s awful ocean-
“Althaus!” Ruedlen asserted her loss of grace. He loved that fire in her, wanted to catch it on her lips and tame her nature.
“Look I don’t want to get chewed on by whatever is down there. I don’t like the deep dark cold ocean. That’s reasonable given the circumstance.” He dramatically rubbed his arms as if to warm himself up.
“We can not expect to sacrifice the comfort of the entire armada because one man worries.” Meng had spoken up, out of turn. How uncharacteristic of the semi-mousey woman, he thought. How interesting and bold of her to talk up and push her own morality in a room of nobility and power. How bold of her to dare to be right in such a way in front of him.
He smirked. “No? What if that man thinks that he knows best, Meng?”
“Then I would have to say that he’s wrong.” The Saerhaus duo watched with bated breath as the drama began to unfold.
“How do you know who’s right or wrong? You have lived the blink of an eye compared to me. Your wealth of knowledge is a single coin to a treasury.”
“What good is wealth if it’s locked away where no one can use it?” Isra interjected. He’d been watching silently from the shadows of the sidelines after having stepped back in. “Do you have a reason besides being scared of deep water?”
Ruedlen laughed, her short dark curls bouncing, “if that’s your only reservation then you can stay on the ship. I'd be happy to jump in the ocean if it meant taking a break from this boring grey place.”
Ez scrunched his nose. He hated that she had a point, and he loved that she talked back, but he felt a sore annoyance that she seemed to enjoy mocking him in front of Isra. Ruedlen was an obnoxious, complicated hot mess. She was a beautiful disaster in his heart and mind. He sighed and groaned in his labored exasperation before conceding with, “this ship does boast the most awful interior decorating I’ve seen in a while, nothing but grey. And white.”
“Yes yes, truly dreadful- but have we come to an agreement, Althaus?” Tzalel’s dark eyes studied the blonde with a keen focus.
Ez rolled his eyes. “Ugh, I guess if it will make you all quit interrupting my conversations then yes. Yes, I give my approval. You can have fun on your clammy, wet, miserable little beach planet. You are dismissed.” A sudden ease came over the room, as if grateful he’d finally given ground. It didn’t escape him that he could be a total pain in the ass, or that he had a reputation for being tedious.
He just didn’t care.
He was tired of caring about other people and their irrelevant opinions and feelings.
The man kept his cloak of boredom about him as his peers filed out of the meeting room. No one could understand the weight of the burden resting on his shoulders. No one else had their bloodline marked for executive eradication. They couldn’t possibly understand the suffering he’d experienced.
It’s not like they wanted to, either.
His keen green eyes snapped up to the last person to leave the room: Ruedlen.
Beautiful, coarse Ruedlen Saerhaus, she was like an uncut gemstone- full of jagged edges and sharp to the touch. He didn’t mind bleeding, it made him feel something. “Saerhaus.”
“Yeah Althaus?” She paused before the doorway and cast a look down her nose at him from across the empty room.
“Do you get off on disrespecting me in front of our peers?”
A smirk played on her black lips. “I’m not sure what you mean, General.” Of course she played coy with a backhanded show of respect, he expected no less. In a flash he was in front of her, a hand on the wall to either side of her pretty head. He leaned in close as she stared up at him, her excitement was palpable in the air.
“I don’t have the patience to play coy games with you, Ruedlen.” His voice was firm and low, but not exactly dangerous. There was a certain, different, threatening edge to it.
“What do you have the patience for th-” Her grin widened with the taunt before it was silenced with his mouth on hers. Her breath was audible as he pulled away, a fire in her eye.
“I have patience for nothing, especially when it taunts me.”
She grinned up at him and bit her bottom lip, “you have no temperance, Ezrihel? How unbecoming of an aristocrat like yourself. I thought you had better breeding and manners than a common barfly.”
He caught her pointed chin in his hand and brushed his gloved thumb over her full lips. “Manners and temperance will be the last things on your mind with me, I promise my lovely Rue. You already know that though.” He pulled her back in and punctuated his intentions with another kiss, this time deeper and more needy, more excitedly as she reciprocated by leaning into him.
She twined her arms around him as he lavished fluttering kisses and nips on her long neck. He could feel the steady beating pulse of her heart rushing just under her marless skin, she was filled to the brim with life and positively humming with warmth. His fingers snaked through her short curly black hair and yanked her head back to inspect her dreamy expression.
How satisfying. She complied with his roughness like he owned her and he felt a wicked grin pull at his maw. In one smooth motion his hands trailed down from her head until he cupped her firm rear and hoisted her onto his lap, letting her long legs wrap around his waist.
They were a beautiful disaster together. They always had been. The two of them pulled each other back and forth in a crashing sway of need and passion. They clashed like opposing waves because she was an imperfect fit for what he craved. He respected her wit and ability to play games with him, respected her audacity to stand up and challenge him, her bravery to burn him when he played with her fire for far too long.
She was breathy as she gave encouragement, her quiet affirmations seeming deafeningly loud in the stillness of the grey room. It was only after her robes slipped down her toned arms that she said anything substantial.
“We’re going to your office, right?” There was a slight apprehension in her tone, a reservation at the idea of this particular indulgence, and she was only rewarded with a snorted chuckle from her paramour as he set to giving her chest his attention.
“What if someone comes in?” She gasped between words. He loved to hear her composure slipping away before that burning desire. He wished that he could drink her down in all her vulnerable weakness but he knew he’d never feel sated. “Ezrihel- I’m a noble-”
“Let them see then.” He groaned dismissively, hands working over her in place of his mouth he’d freed to answer her keening.
“I don’t think the scandal-” The aristocrat silenced her concern with a welcomed rough kiss and a hand clamped under her jaw just hard enough to cut her off. He was tired of talking and worrying and stressing. He was over the constant, dreadful tension of every waking moment. He was sick of being alone.
“Darling I live for the scandal! I’d love to see someone try to interrupt.” His voice growled with hot-blooded desire before it softened playfully. “What, what happened to all your fire and flame, love~? I thought you liked being put in your place~”
Ez’s murmur cut straight to the core of her truth, and she found herself nodding in agreement with his lovely words. She loved his stern arrogance, his haughty ambition and flaring temper. She loved prodding the sleeping dragon and feeling the sting of his punishment in penance.
Ruedlen constantly walked a razor edge between the living and the dead; pain helped her remember where she was.
He let up off her throat and she sucked a breath in, panting with soft huffs of indignancy as he pulled away. “Then why don’t you be a good girl and get ready for me on the table.”
~ * * * ~
Israphael was consumed by a spread of holographic screens littering the archive table before him. Ezrihel had, for once, made an actual point deserving of serious consideration. Taking a fall from a floating island into an ocean (who knows how many kilometers deep) would be more risk than worth for any andromedan incompetent enough to wander near a thin ledge or suffer a tragic accident.
As a medic it was his duty to keep his fellow soldiers alive and well. He didn’t like the idea of having absolutely no real safeguard. He found himself deep in the archival sector of the armada’s fragmented database, scanning for whatever entries he could get his hands on.
To no great surprise, it was apparent that his people disliked settling ocean worlds. There were hardly any records of cities or battles on any such planet, and he held little in terms of personal memory. Often they skirted past water worlds, avoiding them outright. Often they weren’t worth the risk, especially if any inhabitant species present lacked space-fairing capabilities.
Water worlds were tedious to extract materials from, his research had led him to believe. A long line of shallow scout reports indicated how boring and tedious his people had found the endeavor in other prior attempts.
They also didn’t know if they were still being tracked, though Isra had heard no more new updates on that front. He wasn’t Information, or Communications, or a Commanding Officer of any relevance to such intel. If it didn’t concern him and he had no use for knowing, he didn’t tend to stick his nose where it didn’t belong. He enjoyed his life more when it lacked the exhaustion of dramatics and silly court-ordered hand-slappings.
His blue eyes scanned over another line of text.
Isra needed to find a solution for the problem before it ate him up. Why couldn’t his ancestors have engineered them to be less dense?
He took a moment to glance down at the sleek communicator on his forearm. He blissfully noted the lack of any medical alerts stacked on his home screen, and the silence of its pager in his pointed ears reassured him that he was relatively free to continue his studies.
Dhir’lous preserve him, he hoped he’d be left alone until they arrived.
He swiped across a hologram in front of him and pulled up what he could about this Opealon planet that Meng had informed them of earlier. It was a beautiful blue orb marbled with striking swaths of cotton white clouds and blotted with relatively large splatters of vibrant green. He assumed the green was the aforementioned floating islands and spun the diagram around to study it in closer detail.
What a beautiful world.
“I thought that I’d find you here, Isra.”
The raven haired man nearly jolted out of his skin in surprise at the familiar voice. He turned to see Meng standing at the end of his table (how long had she been standing there? Time must’ve slipped away from me in my focus), holding a few archival discs in her hand. (Perhaps the presentation and data from earlier? Those would be useful if they were about this Opealon place.)
“Ah, Meng. What are you doing here?” He was careful to soften his tone. He wanted to show that he liked and respected her well enough to be nice. Maybe she would notice and appreciate the gesture and approve.
“I’m returning a few entries I used for the presentation today.”
He cocked an eyebrow and raised two fingers in a point, “that, actually, would be very useful for me. If they aren’t classified information above my security grade, that is.”
She looked him over keenly and rolled her eyes, giving a soft scoff before handing the copies over to the man. She did her best to hide the small smile she felt on the furthest edges of her lips as he thanked her. He was always buried in his work or his projects, she’d been very quick to find out. The intelligent doctor had a mind that never seemed to rest, a mind that raced and tended to strike as true as any academy trained marksman.
Aurora could appreciate the determination and drive, she figured. He was also handsome... If not overly formal, though she could hardly blame him for his endless talent towards professionalism... She just found herself wondering if the dry and sarcastic man was actually capable of having fun, because she swore that every single bone in his body was gravely serious.
She liked how sharp he looked, with his military jacket hanging off his shoulders like a cape and his sleeves rolled up in neat, pressed folds. Simple and immaculate, there was an easy pleasure in embracing such an aesthetic.
Then she realized she’d been staring at him, and knew that he’d noticed because he asked, “... um, yes, Meng?”
Her skin blushed a pale purple as she quickly averted her eyes. “Ah, I’m sorry for staring. How rude of me... I should-”
“You’re fine, Meng. I just uh... I’m trying to figure something out about this ocean planet we’re going to be landing on.” He gestured to an empty seat across from him. “If you’re not preoccupied I could appreciate another set of sharp eyes and ears.”
She moved to sit in the chair and folded her hands on the table, looking at the holograms he had open. “What are you trying to figure out about Opealon? Everything that I know is on those two archives I gave you.”
He smirked, “my eyes aren’t perfect, I’ll admit. I just want to make sure I’m not missing anything... Helps to talk stuff out like this sometimes I think. Four eyes are better than two, hm?”