[Guilty Gear] Left of Right
This is not what I should be working on. But here, have it anyway.
Title: Left of Right
Fandom: Guilty Gear
Pairing: Sol/Ky
Rating: R
Warnings: Swearing, sex
Notes: Set between Three Degrees and everything leading up to Record, but can be read as a stand-alone.
Summary: Wings, tails, and scales, and what that means after the fallout has settled.
Left of Right
It was weird to suddenly stop hanging out in the kid's tent.
Not too long ago, he'd still been treating it as an extension of his own space, lounging, snoring, plonking his feet on the desk, drawing obscenities on the paper meant for the reports. Taking care of any conspicuous 'gifts' bestowed upon the High Commander, like bottles of one hundred-year-old brandy or the sort of expensive chocolates in red velvet wrapping that made him wonder just what kinds of favors they were meant to buy. He'd down the former and use the latter to wave them in front of the kid's nose until Ky, frustrated to no end, would lunge to snatch them back and get cracking on the box himself.
If Sol was perfectly honest, and he tried not to be as often as possible, he'd have to admit that he'd practically been a permanent fixture, and would, in fact, go out of his way to find an excuse to crash there and be massively annoying. No sense in slinking back to his own cot in the middle of the night, even if they weren't screwing nearly as often as most of the camp liked to believe, or even half as often as certain parts of him would have liked.
More often than not, he'd spend time napping or devising creative ways to be a nuisance, while the kid was working away at his desk, the very picture of self-sacrificial diligence. Sometimes, there was conversation, Ky muttering choice words about people whom he couldn't call a selfish bastard to their face without losing important funding, or poring over maps until the early hours of the morning, and if Sol was feeling charitable, he'd offer a backrub instead of trying to bodily cart the kid off to bed.
It was a comfortable arrangement, though neither of them had ever explicitly arranged anything. It was more that he'd been dead set on pestering the kid into incoherent sputtering at every possible opportunity, and the kid, in his mildly masochistic way, resolved to ignore him whenever it was convenient, to the point of not even caring whether or not Sol got an eyeful, and being treated as part of the wallpaper shouldn't have been as hot as it was.
He'd never thought about it too closely, why the kid'd picked him. Not exactly a sensible choice, objectively speaking, when half the army would have been lining up if news got out that the kid was in the market for a bed warmer. Most of them would - again, objectively speaking - probably be more inclined to keep the reprehensible behavior down to a minimum, and another good portion was likely to fit the criteria for the sort of person someone like the kid would actually get attached to.
Sol refused to take the blame for it, though; he'd spent enough time arguing about it with the voices in his head, how he'd maybe messed up the kid for life, making him think that punches and insults were something to look for in a relationship. He wasn't enough of a dick not to consider it because hell, the kid was someone who adamantly refused to believe that his ass was getting the same amount of respect as his face, and they both had enough on their own platter to deal with as it was. No sense in upsetting the delicate balance of sheer and utter fuckedness in their lives.
Still, you'd think the kid would have started looking for a replacement by now.
There wasn't any reason not to. Having your personal heater grow a pair of wings and develop a taste for raw meat wasn't the sort of thing people generally took very well. It didn't really matter that Ky had said he knew, Ky said a lot of things when the day was long, and he knew the kid well enough to take his capacity for rolling with the punches into consideration, for just going along with any weird, cracked-out, batshit insane situation if it meant seeing the sun rise again. And if that meant holding hands with a half-dead monster in a pit in the middle of fucking Moscow, then the kid would be the one to do it.
Plus, Ky was the one who was big on the whole honor and solidarity and IOU-for-not-eating-me deal, it was who he was, and that was more or less the only reason Sol wasn't currently busy being dead thanks to lightning to the face (he'd vowed not to think of the alternative ever again), or being chased around the countryside by an army of... well, no, the Order didn't really do pitchforks.
None of this meant that Ky was keen on getting laid by a Gear, the technicalities of Sol's existence be damned. Barring the possibility that Ky's little Sherlock moment had simply been the most amazing arsepull in the history of strategic thinking, knowing about something and actually seeing it were two kettle of carp with several hundred miles of distance between them, sort of like the difference between sketching out a bomb on paper and seeing the fiery ball of death go up over a city of half a million.
If he'd been any sort of responsible person, Sol knew, he would have stayed away right from the beginning, hormones and dick-logic be damned, it didn't matter if he was missing out on the bribery leftovers or the first semi-constant intelligent company in forever or blowing the prettiest fucking thing of the century. If he'd been any sort of decent person, he'd have spared the kid some grief over the thought of giving it up for a monster, and himself approximately one migraine every five hours from having to listen to the long, drawn-out wailings of protest coming from the idiot parts of his brain.
But the parallel universe in which Sol Badguy led a life governed by sensible choices had exploded from contradiction, so all that was left was this. All he could do, he figured, was to review the trail of the mess he'd made, resolve not to do it again, and give the kid some space to do the same.
In a way, it was kind of a relief to take on the assignment up north, three weeks of hunting Gears in the marshes in shit weather with shit visibility and dealing with the shit demands of a town lord who couldn't be assed to care about a couple of newly homeless villagers. At least it kept Sol from thinking about the situation too much, and he figured the kid was glad to have him gone for the same reasons, would use those three weeks to rattle off approximately five hundred Hail Marys, find a nice, house-trained, unfanged stand-in, and then life would be better for everyone involved.
The Gear side of his brain, of course, didn't support this scenario at all, was on the lookout for it from the moment Sol set foot back into base camp, and gleefully chose to inform him that no, the shiny pretty thing still didn't smell like anybody else, barring the blood of about fifty kills or so that he hadn't managed to wash off yet.
It didn't help that the shiny pretty thing spotted him about thirty seconds into this observation and chose to make a detour, wiping at the splatters of dirt on his cheeks as he went. He didn't stop, just made sure to brush past Sol and say, "Two-hundred seventy-six," in a tone that would have been a swagger on anybody else, as if everything was normal, as if nothing had changed.
"'Least double that," Sol shot back, falling back into the old body count game before he even noticed what he was doing.
"Oh, yeah?" Ky said, waving a salute at a platoon of soldiers who stopped to let him pass. "Sounds like a busy time."
"And you'll be expecting to read it all in a report, yeah, yeah."
"You know what I like," the kid said brightly, and Sol's subconscious took that opening to put in that the shiny pretty thing wasn't sad, angry or sick, but was, in fact, quite happy to see him. It was times like this that he was ready to consider taking a stray Megadeath up on its offer of free frontal lobotomies.
He didn't even realize he was following the kid around for no particular reason, trotting after him like some kind of dog on a trail, until he was confronted with tent-flap-to-the-face.
"Sorry, I thought you got it."
The kid stuck his head back out in time to catch him with a stupidly self-conscious expression on his face, still trying to figure out how he'd gotten here and why in the blazes the kid was being so cozy. He'd have voted blow to the head, but Ky didn't seem injured beyond several layers of blood that wasn't his own.
Ky quirked an eyebrow. "In or out, but make sure to close it. It's cold."
Then, he disappeared again, leaving Sol to realize he'd grabbed a hold of the flap like an indecisive moron. What the hell. He shook his head, and stepped through. If the kid was willing to be civil, there was no reason he couldn't try just this once, either. He kind of owed it, razor-sharp claws and all that.
The showers weren't so much showers as they were a tent with a couple of water barrels inside and a small fire sphere sitting on a staff in the corner to keep the contents from freezing solid as soon as the frost set in. Ky was making his way to the back area, already in the process of stripping off his gloves, where a cloud of steam was rising steadily from behind a couple of empty barrels, a little pseudo-cubicle for the more self-conscious people.
Sol didn't even need to see his face to know he was lighting up at the prospect of not being reduced to hasty ablutions with ice-cold river water.
"Oh, lucky."
"Right," Sol said, once again not sure if the kid was faking it or if he was actually dense enough to believe that a barrel of hot water would be randomly sitting around like that, when the far more obvious scenario was that a fire mage with too much time on his hands had happened to overhear the esteemed Commander's plan of hitting the showers and thought to provide a little special service. The fact that the place was completely empty was speaking for itself.
"So, I take it things went well?" Ky asked, peeling off his dirt-soaked coat and shirt, and leaning over to splash some water on his face.
"What makes you think they did," Sol said, but then the kid turned to give him a look, and he realized that coming here had been a really, really bad idea. In fact, thinking he'd be able to carry on a conversation with a wet half-naked Ky seemed like a plan that had been doomed from the start, as certain parts of him were about as evolved as they had been in the Cretaceous, and were eagerly cataloguing the droplets collecting in the hollow of Ky's throat.
"Oh, I don't know. You're here, you're in one piece, you didn't give me the finger as soon as we met..." Ky shrugged, reaching for his washcloth and the bar of soap, and started scrubbing at his arms. "I'm just extrapolating."
Sol scoffed. "Lost us six platoons, if that's what you mean. Strung an asshole up by his balls. Could've been worse."
The kid tilted his head back to look at him, a half-amused, half-contemplative look sliding across his features. If it had been anyone, anyone else, Sol could have sworn he was posing, all loose pants and damp skin and that lazy 'I totally know what you did' expression that would have irked him otherwise, if his brain hadn't been slipping into that special state of dumbness where it was ready to label anything Ky did as 'hot'.
"Was that asshole anyone important?"
"Maybe."
"By his balls, really?" Ky asked, rinsing off the newly blood-pink foam and revealing that he hadn't come out of the battles nearly as unscathed as Sol had first assumed, an array of nasty purple bruises blooming along his stomach and left side.
"No, by his underwear. From the clock tower. He really was an asshole."
"Let's hope he doesn't know anyone too far up. I'm running out of ways to apologize for you."
"You could always just stop," Sol suggested, not quite sure he liked how his mind was automatically doing a memory sweep, matching up the bruises with past injuries and concluding that no, it couldn't be the ribs, wasn't he glad about that, it would mean no sitting out tonight, and surely he wasn't going to pass that up. "I don't think anyone still expects you to control me."
Rubbing the towel through his hair, the kid allowed himself a smirk at the ridiculousness of the thought. "Indeed not. I just have to make it look like I know ways to discipline you."
Again, with anyone else, Sol would have assumed a hidden meaning. The innuendo was quite blatant, the sort of thing you didn't just bust out in a normal conversation without giggling internally at some kind of mental image involving collars and chains, but this was the kid, who blushed red to his ears at any kind of dirty talk, and on whom most innuendo was lost more thoroughly than on your average choir boy.
It was probably just the idiot's doing. Had to be. Putting suggestions in Sol's head, refusing to see people as complex and his own existence as a big mess, and bloody insistent on the matter that what he was smelling wasn't just the last vestiges of an adrenaline rush, the shiny pretty thing really was happy to see him.
Ky had tilted his head again in a mildly questioning gesture, apparently done with washing but not really moving to get dressed or give his uniform a soak, either, and still looking absurdly inviting.
It was starting to piss him off.
"How long are you going to keep standing there?"
"Don't know," Ky said, a spark dancing in his eyes as he dragged the towel across his neck. "How long are you going to wait before you take advantage of me?"
It really was too bad that it was the middle of November and the kid still hadn't moved, or he could have blamed the sudden tingliness on several thousand volts of thunderstorm. Heaven help anyone if the kid actually started figuring out that he was capable of seduction, when a mere invitation was enough to strike Sol dumb.
...And there was really no reason to get all warmfuzzy about it, because things were obviously not going how they were meant to go. The kid wasn't supposed to be offering him sex in a public place, the kid was supposed to be mad or discomfited or anything that would justify Sol's contemplations about apologizing for growing scales on his dick. He hadn't really calculated for the kid going so deep into denial that he'd want to give it another go.
"You don't mean that."
"Funny, you seem to know what I don't mean a lot recently," Ky said, and though his tone was still light, still amicable, there was a silent warning in there, too, the polite version of 'don't fucking tell me what I am allowed to want' hovering unspoken in the background.
If he'd been any sort of sensible person, Sol would have turned on his heel and stalked out the exit. If he'd been any sort of sensible person, he never would have come inside in the first place. What had he thought was going to happen, really, had he just been hoping to catch a nice good glimpse of what he'd be missing out on and then calmly shuffle outside to take a dip between the ice floes?
It's safe to say you're a phenomenal idiot.
Ky's expression seemed to agree with him, because he gave Sol a smile, the stupidly reassuring kind of smile reserved for soldiers having a freak-out right before their first battle, the kind that seemed like it should be followed by a string of gentle, understanding words, and if there was one thing he did not need in this world, it was for the kid to pat him on the head and tell him it was okay to screw him.
"Stop looking at me like that," he growled, taking a step closer.
"Like what?" Ky asked quietly, taking a step back.
"Like that." Another step closer.
"I'm sure you know ways to get me to stop," Ky said, his voice barely above a whisper now, and then his back hit the barrel and that was that.
It was going to be truly satisfying, Sol thought, in the split second before he grabbed a hold of the hair at the nape of the kid's neck and moved in for the kill, to stomp out that annoyingly empathetic know-it-all look. For his part, Ky didn't seem too inclined to hang on to it, eyes fluttering shut and practically leaning into the kiss, and damn if the happy little noise he made didn't travel straight down south.
At the back of his head, the moron was basking in his own smugness, feeling superior in his sagely wisdom concerning the shiny pretty thing, but Sol resolved to ignore him. For one, he'd get bored with gloating soon enough, and for another, it was really kind of difficult to get into a slap fight with himself when the kid had just decided to slip him the tongue.
Sol shivered, already laughably worked up at that little bit of titillation, and then Ky hooked his fingers into the belt hoops and drew him flush against him. The barrel sloshed, his stomach did the kind of pleasant flip-flop it should have grown out of back in college, and Sol decided that if the kid was going to get worried about his immortal soul later, he could damn well do it alone. He'd been trying to be nice and considerate for once, and look how that turned out. If the kid was- okay, if the kid was going to be groping his ass like that, fingers digging in as if that'd help to meld their pants together, it really was not his responsibility to stop him anymore.
Breaking the kiss, he turned his attention lower, briefly stopping to deliver a nip to Ky's collarbone and hear his breath stutter, tracing his tongue along Ky's pecs to feel him squirm. Funny, how he always managed to forget that, how damn good the kid could smell when he was all rearing to go, the scent of pheromones and battle ozone enough to make him mildly dizzy.
If he paid close attention, he was still able to taste a hint of blood under all the soap-salt-water, and the realization that he was getting a go not three hours after a fight, when the entire story was still fresh on Ky's skin, yeah... that idea had something going for it.
Ky jerked when Sol hit the bruises, fingers twining in his hair. Not tight enough to hurt, the kid was always too polite to give him a good yank when he wasn't pissed or close to losing it, just tight enough to let him know that he'd like to move on to other things, please. One of these days, Sol was going to get him to just give him a shove, all that snappy authority couldn't possibly be day-job only, but for now, this was good, too.
"...what?" he breathed, teeth grazing skin and feeling the muscles jump. Would've been nice to spend more time playing with his own personal catnip, but then again, he wasn't really in a state to, either.
Ky didn't say anything, fingers kneading against his scalp.
"Here?"
A sharp nod.
"Someone might come in."
"A little... little late to worry about that."
"Just thought I should ask," Sol murmured into his stomach, "'s not like I have a reputation to lose or anything."
Giving his hair a displeased tug, Ky craned his neck to peer around the stack of barrels the best he could. "I don't think anyone can see.... from there. And... we'll be quiet, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we can do that," Sol said, way too into the idea to pull out any witticisms about the undiscovered kinkiness of Saint Kiske the Savior, and well aware that the kid could be stone-cold quiet when he thought there was even the slightest chance of anyone hearing any undue noise. As for himself... well, he didn't think noise would still be a problem in a little while.
"Alright?"
No answer, just Ky closing his eyes and leaning back, and he figured the go-ahead wasn't going to get any more explicit.
It was kind of a shame that neither of them had a stop-watch at hand, as he was pretty sure he'd just managed to set a new record for getting the damnable belt-zipper combo out of the way. He hit the ground too fast, his knees giving a little twinge of protest, but the rest of him was more concerned with enjoying the triumph of finding Ky already hard, feeling the full-body shudder when Sol pushed his underwear out of the way.
Blowing someone wasn't something he'd ever particularly cared about, but then again, what had he particularly cared about in the handful of encounters able to fit into the space between being busy pretending that the outside world didn't exist and the beginning of the apocalypse?
Not much, that was for sure.
This was nice, though, very nice, especially because Ky was still sort of getting into it, didn't agree to it all that often because it made him sleepy when he wasn't already half-out, anyway, and Ky had these weird hang-ups about not owing any debts. How anyone could consider a blowjob indebting was a mystery for the ages, especially with Ky so quietly, rigidly intense, just waiting for Sol to finally lean in and take him in his mouth.
He'd wanted to take it slow this time, savor the impression of soft skin and scent and the tightness of Ky's muscles, but it figured that'd all go flying out the window at the first touch of his tongue. Ky gave a choked, startled moan, hips snapping forward, and just the feel of finding himself with more than he'd planned to take, the sudden, painfully tight grip on his hair - yeah, no, no fucking way was he going to stand waiting until the kid was done.
Shoving a hand down his own pants, Sol started going about it in earnest - no stalling, no fancy tricks, just the kind of good, hard sucking that made his own jaw hurt and Ky's fingers scrabble and clench helplessly. He could feel the tension all the way into his mouth, every muscle in Ky's body straining with the effort of holding still, of not doing it again... and there might have been a "sorry" escaping with the kid's next breath, too reserved to ever consider fucking Sol's mouth, to just hold him down and do it, and damn if that thought wasn't hot as hell.
One of these days. One of these days he might actually coax Ky far enough, get him to try some of the approximately half a billion dirty things his mind had taken to thinking up unbidden, but for now, it was the best goddamn thing to just do this, to feel Ky getting closer, whole body growing taut, fingers flexing as if he was reaching for it- and then the sudden, perfect stillness as he let go.
Sol coughed, swallowing awkwardly, pulling away to push his nose into the fine hair at the base of Ky's cock, soaking up the trembling heat of his thighs as he jerked himself off.
"Hey," Ky mumbled, "hey, you're-" and he might have managed a "shut up" somewhere in there, absolutely not in the mood for any complicated arguments about who should do what, but then Ky's knuckles carefully brushed along the side of his throat in that odd half-apology, half thank-you way, and for some reason it was this - just being touched there, attentively, like any of that was anything special - that was enough to finish him off. He groaned, burying his face in Ky's lap, and then he was coming all over his own hand just from having the kid scritch his fucking neck.
"...You okay?"
"Yeah," Sol breathed, "yeah, I'm good," - fantastic - dazed and not entirely sure anymore why he'd thought this would be a bad idea. He'd remember soon enough, but for now, it was nice to stay here, with the idiot thankfully blissed out in the back of his skull, and feel like he could nuzzle Ky into next week.
Unfortunately, because Ky was Ky and Ky was still open for business, afterglow lasted about as long as you'd expect.
"We should get cleaned up," the kid murmured, twitching when Sol tried to bite his thigh.
"Mhmm."
"I know you can hear me."
"Mhmm. Line's experiencing technical difficulties. Please hang up and don't call back."
A tug, too half-hearted to be pissed but too insistent to be ignored. He allowed himself to be pulled up, knees protesting the move, and, because the contentment hadn't been entirely hassled into evaporation yet, took a moment to get a good look at the kid's face, his flushed cheeks and the slight haze in his eyes that meant he wasn't all there yet, either, and the odd little twist of his mouth that meant he was satisfied with the results in a way that had nothing to do with making out in the bath.
Internally, Sol shook his head. Yeah, no. Not his responsibility. Fuck it if he was meant to start feeling guilty over getting laid. It'd been the kid's idea anyhow. If Ky didn't feel like acknowledging that he was having sex with a Gear, then hell, why not go along with it.
"You know, " Ky said, fishing for his clothes, "before you start thinking you're off the hook..."
Huh?!
"...I'm still expecting that report." He smiled, expression just a little too guileless to make Sol believe the word choice had been an accident.
"Figures," he groused.
"Well," Ky said, loosely tugging his coat closed to avoid the streaks of half-dried blood. "Depending on how fast you do it, we might have time for the debriefing later."
"Debriefing, huh."
Ky merely shrugged, the motion an easy, relaxed roll of his shoulders that was more enticing than anything else, and Sol figured this was as good an invitation as he was going to get.
-Fin-
------
A/N: I didn't really expect Three Degrees to become a sort of background basis for Going off the Record, but what can you do? Apparently write a fic to show what the "big reveal" of Sol's extra appendages means for their relationship, because yes, I do like the idea that they were together before then. XD Thoughts and comments are much appreciated, as always.
- Yes, I'm terribly fond of giving Sol's Gear side a say (kind of like an infernal fizzgig).
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Title: Left of Right
Fandom: Guilty Gear
Pairing: Sol/Ky
Rating: R
Warnings: Swearing, sex
Notes: Set between Three Degrees and everything leading up to Record, but can be read as a stand-alone.
Summary: Wings, tails, and scales, and what that means after the fallout has settled.
Left of Right
It was weird to suddenly stop hanging out in the kid's tent.
Not too long ago, he'd still been treating it as an extension of his own space, lounging, snoring, plonking his feet on the desk, drawing obscenities on the paper meant for the reports. Taking care of any conspicuous 'gifts' bestowed upon the High Commander, like bottles of one hundred-year-old brandy or the sort of expensive chocolates in red velvet wrapping that made him wonder just what kinds of favors they were meant to buy. He'd down the former and use the latter to wave them in front of the kid's nose until Ky, frustrated to no end, would lunge to snatch them back and get cracking on the box himself.
If Sol was perfectly honest, and he tried not to be as often as possible, he'd have to admit that he'd practically been a permanent fixture, and would, in fact, go out of his way to find an excuse to crash there and be massively annoying. No sense in slinking back to his own cot in the middle of the night, even if they weren't screwing nearly as often as most of the camp liked to believe, or even half as often as certain parts of him would have liked.
More often than not, he'd spend time napping or devising creative ways to be a nuisance, while the kid was working away at his desk, the very picture of self-sacrificial diligence. Sometimes, there was conversation, Ky muttering choice words about people whom he couldn't call a selfish bastard to their face without losing important funding, or poring over maps until the early hours of the morning, and if Sol was feeling charitable, he'd offer a backrub instead of trying to bodily cart the kid off to bed.
It was a comfortable arrangement, though neither of them had ever explicitly arranged anything. It was more that he'd been dead set on pestering the kid into incoherent sputtering at every possible opportunity, and the kid, in his mildly masochistic way, resolved to ignore him whenever it was convenient, to the point of not even caring whether or not Sol got an eyeful, and being treated as part of the wallpaper shouldn't have been as hot as it was.
He'd never thought about it too closely, why the kid'd picked him. Not exactly a sensible choice, objectively speaking, when half the army would have been lining up if news got out that the kid was in the market for a bed warmer. Most of them would - again, objectively speaking - probably be more inclined to keep the reprehensible behavior down to a minimum, and another good portion was likely to fit the criteria for the sort of person someone like the kid would actually get attached to.
Sol refused to take the blame for it, though; he'd spent enough time arguing about it with the voices in his head, how he'd maybe messed up the kid for life, making him think that punches and insults were something to look for in a relationship. He wasn't enough of a dick not to consider it because hell, the kid was someone who adamantly refused to believe that his ass was getting the same amount of respect as his face, and they both had enough on their own platter to deal with as it was. No sense in upsetting the delicate balance of sheer and utter fuckedness in their lives.
Still, you'd think the kid would have started looking for a replacement by now.
There wasn't any reason not to. Having your personal heater grow a pair of wings and develop a taste for raw meat wasn't the sort of thing people generally took very well. It didn't really matter that Ky had said he knew, Ky said a lot of things when the day was long, and he knew the kid well enough to take his capacity for rolling with the punches into consideration, for just going along with any weird, cracked-out, batshit insane situation if it meant seeing the sun rise again. And if that meant holding hands with a half-dead monster in a pit in the middle of fucking Moscow, then the kid would be the one to do it.
Plus, Ky was the one who was big on the whole honor and solidarity and IOU-for-not-eating-me deal, it was who he was, and that was more or less the only reason Sol wasn't currently busy being dead thanks to lightning to the face (he'd vowed not to think of the alternative ever again), or being chased around the countryside by an army of... well, no, the Order didn't really do pitchforks.
None of this meant that Ky was keen on getting laid by a Gear, the technicalities of Sol's existence be damned. Barring the possibility that Ky's little Sherlock moment had simply been the most amazing arsepull in the history of strategic thinking, knowing about something and actually seeing it were two kettle of carp with several hundred miles of distance between them, sort of like the difference between sketching out a bomb on paper and seeing the fiery ball of death go up over a city of half a million.
If he'd been any sort of responsible person, Sol knew, he would have stayed away right from the beginning, hormones and dick-logic be damned, it didn't matter if he was missing out on the bribery leftovers or the first semi-constant intelligent company in forever or blowing the prettiest fucking thing of the century. If he'd been any sort of decent person, he'd have spared the kid some grief over the thought of giving it up for a monster, and himself approximately one migraine every five hours from having to listen to the long, drawn-out wailings of protest coming from the idiot parts of his brain.
But the parallel universe in which Sol Badguy led a life governed by sensible choices had exploded from contradiction, so all that was left was this. All he could do, he figured, was to review the trail of the mess he'd made, resolve not to do it again, and give the kid some space to do the same.
In a way, it was kind of a relief to take on the assignment up north, three weeks of hunting Gears in the marshes in shit weather with shit visibility and dealing with the shit demands of a town lord who couldn't be assed to care about a couple of newly homeless villagers. At least it kept Sol from thinking about the situation too much, and he figured the kid was glad to have him gone for the same reasons, would use those three weeks to rattle off approximately five hundred Hail Marys, find a nice, house-trained, unfanged stand-in, and then life would be better for everyone involved.
The Gear side of his brain, of course, didn't support this scenario at all, was on the lookout for it from the moment Sol set foot back into base camp, and gleefully chose to inform him that no, the shiny pretty thing still didn't smell like anybody else, barring the blood of about fifty kills or so that he hadn't managed to wash off yet.
It didn't help that the shiny pretty thing spotted him about thirty seconds into this observation and chose to make a detour, wiping at the splatters of dirt on his cheeks as he went. He didn't stop, just made sure to brush past Sol and say, "Two-hundred seventy-six," in a tone that would have been a swagger on anybody else, as if everything was normal, as if nothing had changed.
"'Least double that," Sol shot back, falling back into the old body count game before he even noticed what he was doing.
"Oh, yeah?" Ky said, waving a salute at a platoon of soldiers who stopped to let him pass. "Sounds like a busy time."
"And you'll be expecting to read it all in a report, yeah, yeah."
"You know what I like," the kid said brightly, and Sol's subconscious took that opening to put in that the shiny pretty thing wasn't sad, angry or sick, but was, in fact, quite happy to see him. It was times like this that he was ready to consider taking a stray Megadeath up on its offer of free frontal lobotomies.
He didn't even realize he was following the kid around for no particular reason, trotting after him like some kind of dog on a trail, until he was confronted with tent-flap-to-the-face.
"Sorry, I thought you got it."
The kid stuck his head back out in time to catch him with a stupidly self-conscious expression on his face, still trying to figure out how he'd gotten here and why in the blazes the kid was being so cozy. He'd have voted blow to the head, but Ky didn't seem injured beyond several layers of blood that wasn't his own.
Ky quirked an eyebrow. "In or out, but make sure to close it. It's cold."
Then, he disappeared again, leaving Sol to realize he'd grabbed a hold of the flap like an indecisive moron. What the hell. He shook his head, and stepped through. If the kid was willing to be civil, there was no reason he couldn't try just this once, either. He kind of owed it, razor-sharp claws and all that.
The showers weren't so much showers as they were a tent with a couple of water barrels inside and a small fire sphere sitting on a staff in the corner to keep the contents from freezing solid as soon as the frost set in. Ky was making his way to the back area, already in the process of stripping off his gloves, where a cloud of steam was rising steadily from behind a couple of empty barrels, a little pseudo-cubicle for the more self-conscious people.
Sol didn't even need to see his face to know he was lighting up at the prospect of not being reduced to hasty ablutions with ice-cold river water.
"Oh, lucky."
"Right," Sol said, once again not sure if the kid was faking it or if he was actually dense enough to believe that a barrel of hot water would be randomly sitting around like that, when the far more obvious scenario was that a fire mage with too much time on his hands had happened to overhear the esteemed Commander's plan of hitting the showers and thought to provide a little special service. The fact that the place was completely empty was speaking for itself.
"So, I take it things went well?" Ky asked, peeling off his dirt-soaked coat and shirt, and leaning over to splash some water on his face.
"What makes you think they did," Sol said, but then the kid turned to give him a look, and he realized that coming here had been a really, really bad idea. In fact, thinking he'd be able to carry on a conversation with a wet half-naked Ky seemed like a plan that had been doomed from the start, as certain parts of him were about as evolved as they had been in the Cretaceous, and were eagerly cataloguing the droplets collecting in the hollow of Ky's throat.
"Oh, I don't know. You're here, you're in one piece, you didn't give me the finger as soon as we met..." Ky shrugged, reaching for his washcloth and the bar of soap, and started scrubbing at his arms. "I'm just extrapolating."
Sol scoffed. "Lost us six platoons, if that's what you mean. Strung an asshole up by his balls. Could've been worse."
The kid tilted his head back to look at him, a half-amused, half-contemplative look sliding across his features. If it had been anyone, anyone else, Sol could have sworn he was posing, all loose pants and damp skin and that lazy 'I totally know what you did' expression that would have irked him otherwise, if his brain hadn't been slipping into that special state of dumbness where it was ready to label anything Ky did as 'hot'.
"Was that asshole anyone important?"
"Maybe."
"By his balls, really?" Ky asked, rinsing off the newly blood-pink foam and revealing that he hadn't come out of the battles nearly as unscathed as Sol had first assumed, an array of nasty purple bruises blooming along his stomach and left side.
"No, by his underwear. From the clock tower. He really was an asshole."
"Let's hope he doesn't know anyone too far up. I'm running out of ways to apologize for you."
"You could always just stop," Sol suggested, not quite sure he liked how his mind was automatically doing a memory sweep, matching up the bruises with past injuries and concluding that no, it couldn't be the ribs, wasn't he glad about that, it would mean no sitting out tonight, and surely he wasn't going to pass that up. "I don't think anyone still expects you to control me."
Rubbing the towel through his hair, the kid allowed himself a smirk at the ridiculousness of the thought. "Indeed not. I just have to make it look like I know ways to discipline you."
Again, with anyone else, Sol would have assumed a hidden meaning. The innuendo was quite blatant, the sort of thing you didn't just bust out in a normal conversation without giggling internally at some kind of mental image involving collars and chains, but this was the kid, who blushed red to his ears at any kind of dirty talk, and on whom most innuendo was lost more thoroughly than on your average choir boy.
It was probably just the idiot's doing. Had to be. Putting suggestions in Sol's head, refusing to see people as complex and his own existence as a big mess, and bloody insistent on the matter that what he was smelling wasn't just the last vestiges of an adrenaline rush, the shiny pretty thing really was happy to see him.
Ky had tilted his head again in a mildly questioning gesture, apparently done with washing but not really moving to get dressed or give his uniform a soak, either, and still looking absurdly inviting.
It was starting to piss him off.
"How long are you going to keep standing there?"
"Don't know," Ky said, a spark dancing in his eyes as he dragged the towel across his neck. "How long are you going to wait before you take advantage of me?"
It really was too bad that it was the middle of November and the kid still hadn't moved, or he could have blamed the sudden tingliness on several thousand volts of thunderstorm. Heaven help anyone if the kid actually started figuring out that he was capable of seduction, when a mere invitation was enough to strike Sol dumb.
...And there was really no reason to get all warmfuzzy about it, because things were obviously not going how they were meant to go. The kid wasn't supposed to be offering him sex in a public place, the kid was supposed to be mad or discomfited or anything that would justify Sol's contemplations about apologizing for growing scales on his dick. He hadn't really calculated for the kid going so deep into denial that he'd want to give it another go.
"You don't mean that."
"Funny, you seem to know what I don't mean a lot recently," Ky said, and though his tone was still light, still amicable, there was a silent warning in there, too, the polite version of 'don't fucking tell me what I am allowed to want' hovering unspoken in the background.
If he'd been any sort of sensible person, Sol would have turned on his heel and stalked out the exit. If he'd been any sort of sensible person, he never would have come inside in the first place. What had he thought was going to happen, really, had he just been hoping to catch a nice good glimpse of what he'd be missing out on and then calmly shuffle outside to take a dip between the ice floes?
It's safe to say you're a phenomenal idiot.
Ky's expression seemed to agree with him, because he gave Sol a smile, the stupidly reassuring kind of smile reserved for soldiers having a freak-out right before their first battle, the kind that seemed like it should be followed by a string of gentle, understanding words, and if there was one thing he did not need in this world, it was for the kid to pat him on the head and tell him it was okay to screw him.
"Stop looking at me like that," he growled, taking a step closer.
"Like what?" Ky asked quietly, taking a step back.
"Like that." Another step closer.
"I'm sure you know ways to get me to stop," Ky said, his voice barely above a whisper now, and then his back hit the barrel and that was that.
It was going to be truly satisfying, Sol thought, in the split second before he grabbed a hold of the hair at the nape of the kid's neck and moved in for the kill, to stomp out that annoyingly empathetic know-it-all look. For his part, Ky didn't seem too inclined to hang on to it, eyes fluttering shut and practically leaning into the kiss, and damn if the happy little noise he made didn't travel straight down south.
At the back of his head, the moron was basking in his own smugness, feeling superior in his sagely wisdom concerning the shiny pretty thing, but Sol resolved to ignore him. For one, he'd get bored with gloating soon enough, and for another, it was really kind of difficult to get into a slap fight with himself when the kid had just decided to slip him the tongue.
Sol shivered, already laughably worked up at that little bit of titillation, and then Ky hooked his fingers into the belt hoops and drew him flush against him. The barrel sloshed, his stomach did the kind of pleasant flip-flop it should have grown out of back in college, and Sol decided that if the kid was going to get worried about his immortal soul later, he could damn well do it alone. He'd been trying to be nice and considerate for once, and look how that turned out. If the kid was- okay, if the kid was going to be groping his ass like that, fingers digging in as if that'd help to meld their pants together, it really was not his responsibility to stop him anymore.
Breaking the kiss, he turned his attention lower, briefly stopping to deliver a nip to Ky's collarbone and hear his breath stutter, tracing his tongue along Ky's pecs to feel him squirm. Funny, how he always managed to forget that, how damn good the kid could smell when he was all rearing to go, the scent of pheromones and battle ozone enough to make him mildly dizzy.
If he paid close attention, he was still able to taste a hint of blood under all the soap-salt-water, and the realization that he was getting a go not three hours after a fight, when the entire story was still fresh on Ky's skin, yeah... that idea had something going for it.
Ky jerked when Sol hit the bruises, fingers twining in his hair. Not tight enough to hurt, the kid was always too polite to give him a good yank when he wasn't pissed or close to losing it, just tight enough to let him know that he'd like to move on to other things, please. One of these days, Sol was going to get him to just give him a shove, all that snappy authority couldn't possibly be day-job only, but for now, this was good, too.
"...what?" he breathed, teeth grazing skin and feeling the muscles jump. Would've been nice to spend more time playing with his own personal catnip, but then again, he wasn't really in a state to, either.
Ky didn't say anything, fingers kneading against his scalp.
"Here?"
A sharp nod.
"Someone might come in."
"A little... little late to worry about that."
"Just thought I should ask," Sol murmured into his stomach, "'s not like I have a reputation to lose or anything."
Giving his hair a displeased tug, Ky craned his neck to peer around the stack of barrels the best he could. "I don't think anyone can see.... from there. And... we'll be quiet, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we can do that," Sol said, way too into the idea to pull out any witticisms about the undiscovered kinkiness of Saint Kiske the Savior, and well aware that the kid could be stone-cold quiet when he thought there was even the slightest chance of anyone hearing any undue noise. As for himself... well, he didn't think noise would still be a problem in a little while.
"Alright?"
No answer, just Ky closing his eyes and leaning back, and he figured the go-ahead wasn't going to get any more explicit.
It was kind of a shame that neither of them had a stop-watch at hand, as he was pretty sure he'd just managed to set a new record for getting the damnable belt-zipper combo out of the way. He hit the ground too fast, his knees giving a little twinge of protest, but the rest of him was more concerned with enjoying the triumph of finding Ky already hard, feeling the full-body shudder when Sol pushed his underwear out of the way.
Blowing someone wasn't something he'd ever particularly cared about, but then again, what had he particularly cared about in the handful of encounters able to fit into the space between being busy pretending that the outside world didn't exist and the beginning of the apocalypse?
Not much, that was for sure.
This was nice, though, very nice, especially because Ky was still sort of getting into it, didn't agree to it all that often because it made him sleepy when he wasn't already half-out, anyway, and Ky had these weird hang-ups about not owing any debts. How anyone could consider a blowjob indebting was a mystery for the ages, especially with Ky so quietly, rigidly intense, just waiting for Sol to finally lean in and take him in his mouth.
He'd wanted to take it slow this time, savor the impression of soft skin and scent and the tightness of Ky's muscles, but it figured that'd all go flying out the window at the first touch of his tongue. Ky gave a choked, startled moan, hips snapping forward, and just the feel of finding himself with more than he'd planned to take, the sudden, painfully tight grip on his hair - yeah, no, no fucking way was he going to stand waiting until the kid was done.
Shoving a hand down his own pants, Sol started going about it in earnest - no stalling, no fancy tricks, just the kind of good, hard sucking that made his own jaw hurt and Ky's fingers scrabble and clench helplessly. He could feel the tension all the way into his mouth, every muscle in Ky's body straining with the effort of holding still, of not doing it again... and there might have been a "sorry" escaping with the kid's next breath, too reserved to ever consider fucking Sol's mouth, to just hold him down and do it, and damn if that thought wasn't hot as hell.
One of these days. One of these days he might actually coax Ky far enough, get him to try some of the approximately half a billion dirty things his mind had taken to thinking up unbidden, but for now, it was the best goddamn thing to just do this, to feel Ky getting closer, whole body growing taut, fingers flexing as if he was reaching for it- and then the sudden, perfect stillness as he let go.
Sol coughed, swallowing awkwardly, pulling away to push his nose into the fine hair at the base of Ky's cock, soaking up the trembling heat of his thighs as he jerked himself off.
"Hey," Ky mumbled, "hey, you're-" and he might have managed a "shut up" somewhere in there, absolutely not in the mood for any complicated arguments about who should do what, but then Ky's knuckles carefully brushed along the side of his throat in that odd half-apology, half thank-you way, and for some reason it was this - just being touched there, attentively, like any of that was anything special - that was enough to finish him off. He groaned, burying his face in Ky's lap, and then he was coming all over his own hand just from having the kid scritch his fucking neck.
"...You okay?"
"Yeah," Sol breathed, "yeah, I'm good," - fantastic - dazed and not entirely sure anymore why he'd thought this would be a bad idea. He'd remember soon enough, but for now, it was nice to stay here, with the idiot thankfully blissed out in the back of his skull, and feel like he could nuzzle Ky into next week.
Unfortunately, because Ky was Ky and Ky was still open for business, afterglow lasted about as long as you'd expect.
"We should get cleaned up," the kid murmured, twitching when Sol tried to bite his thigh.
"Mhmm."
"I know you can hear me."
"Mhmm. Line's experiencing technical difficulties. Please hang up and don't call back."
A tug, too half-hearted to be pissed but too insistent to be ignored. He allowed himself to be pulled up, knees protesting the move, and, because the contentment hadn't been entirely hassled into evaporation yet, took a moment to get a good look at the kid's face, his flushed cheeks and the slight haze in his eyes that meant he wasn't all there yet, either, and the odd little twist of his mouth that meant he was satisfied with the results in a way that had nothing to do with making out in the bath.
Internally, Sol shook his head. Yeah, no. Not his responsibility. Fuck it if he was meant to start feeling guilty over getting laid. It'd been the kid's idea anyhow. If Ky didn't feel like acknowledging that he was having sex with a Gear, then hell, why not go along with it.
"You know, " Ky said, fishing for his clothes, "before you start thinking you're off the hook..."
Huh?!
"...I'm still expecting that report." He smiled, expression just a little too guileless to make Sol believe the word choice had been an accident.
"Figures," he groused.
"Well," Ky said, loosely tugging his coat closed to avoid the streaks of half-dried blood. "Depending on how fast you do it, we might have time for the debriefing later."
"Debriefing, huh."
Ky merely shrugged, the motion an easy, relaxed roll of his shoulders that was more enticing than anything else, and Sol figured this was as good an invitation as he was going to get.
-Fin-
------
A/N: I didn't really expect Three Degrees to become a sort of background basis for Going off the Record, but what can you do? Apparently write a fic to show what the "big reveal" of Sol's extra appendages means for their relationship, because yes, I do like the idea that they were together before then. XD Thoughts and comments are much appreciated, as always.
- Yes, I'm terribly fond of giving Sol's Gear side a say (kind of like an infernal fizzgig).
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