Jedao still isn't doing well, especially after the difficulty of talking with Fives. There's almost nothing Jedao can or can't do that doesn't feel like he's making it worse. But there's an alchemy of anticipation: just knowing something is coming and not knowing what exactly pricks deep old battle instincts, forces a little of the emotional miasma to make room for the new priority, a glimmer of what real war used to give him. He flies through his lunch shift, pouring himself into the tasks of his hands to keep from wondering and worrying and wondering.
He bolts down a solid meal at the beginning of the shift, plain fare that will carry him a long time, so that it's well settled by the time he gets off. He manages to dawdle all of five minutes. He leaves all of his weapons in his own room, feeling unbearably exposed for it in a way he never does for mere nakedness. He feels like he can suddenly feel every inch of his skin. He debates removing, but ultimately keeps, the Martian military-issue emergency chemical light that Holden gave him, currently unactivated, a slim and subtle bracelet tucked just under his uniform sleeve cuff.
He does knock, once and briskly, it feels polite to give Quentin that momentary alert before the action, but steps in after two seconds whether he hears a response or not. He keeps his breathing even, and thinks wildly that's another reason he shouldn't have picked pistol grip for the hand sign - he's doing it reflexively now. He really needs to work on that tell. But not today.
He forces himself not to look for Quentin, to stare and scour him for clues. He'll find out soon. Jedao turns his back on him, closes the door, and throws the lock.
Quentin has spent the entire afternoon upping his own strength and speed and perception of the passage of time. Even the air in the room is a little richer. He crosses the space between them in a single leap, grabs him by the shoulder with one hand, the hair at the nape of his neck with the other, and drags him back and away from the exit like he's a ragdoll.
Quentin minds his neck, but definitely throws him down onto the bed, all without a word.
Jedao is - fast, not as fast as Quentin but nearly as fast as a human can be, automatically moving backward into the pull to get his feet under him, trying to turn enough to shove his shoulder against Quentin's sternum, throwing up an arm to loop through Quentin's and break his wrist - but Quentin is too strong for any of those reflexive defenses to matter, and Jedao lands on the bed seconds later just the same.
Quentin told him it would be like this. Jedao would have laid down for him for the asking, but this is - maybe better. Or maybe it's just want Quentin needs. Jedao watches him with dark eyes, keeps still instead of surging up to fight again, now that his initial automatic resistance is over, and chooses not to worry about it.
He helps settle him on his back on the bed, reaches to stroke his face, once, with the palm of one hand, then to press, four points, his forearms, his calves, adhering them down to the mattress with impossible force. He could pull hard enough that the bed should break, but he'll remain right where he is in space.
Quentin's eyes are black, where the iris should be, to the whites, everything dark and inky and all the more startling because he has white eyelashes. He spins his fingertips in the air, hands forming complex vortices.
"Show me the hand gesture." He says, and his voice is odd too, vibrates a little, comes from somewhere off and deeper. "You can make it from this angle? Your arm isn't too tight."
He should have told Quentin to wear colors, he thinks distantly. He is so beautiful, but the monochrome is - evocative. He wonders if he should have asked for this. But Quentin turned him away when he was drunk, and Quentin asked for aftercare later, and Jedao just has to trust that he knows what he can handle, and what he needs.
He wiggles a little, back and shoulders finding their minute range against the fulcrum points in his forearms. He makes the grip. He nods.
"I'm going to work with your chest. That means taking your uniform jacket off. I'm also going to take off your boots. Then I'm going to gag you, and you won't be able to offer me any specifics."
He tilts his head into Quentin's hand during the brief moment of possibility. Then he meets Quentin's eyes and nods. He's not smiling, but he's not afraid, either. Nervousness and hope are both - held away from him, a little bit, in abeyance. Now is not the time for expectations. Now he will take what he is given.
That does make Jedao smile, a little, soft and fond. Why shouldn't he be, he thinks, wanting to say thank you for taking care of me.
He hasn't been gagged yet. But Quentin said he might need the quiet. Jedao ducks his head forward, enough to press a kiss to Quentin's fingers. There's nothing especially seductive or even sensual about it, saving perhaps Jedao's standing feelings about hands. But it's more sweetness, dry and light, a token of the things he isn't saying.
He strips him shirtless, and makes a quick pass over him with his hands, stroking his skin, settling them both, before sliding down his body to go to his boots.
Nothing strikes Quentin as more vulnerable than the soles of a pair of bare feet.
From there, he goes for the gag he has ready- just a tie he never wears, but it's soft and silky and a fetching red, that he likes with Jedao's skin. He rubs his thumb over his bottom lip, to coax his mouth to open for it.
Jedao doesn't have the same automatic associations, but he's well-trained enough to know the ways in which it's true. There's so many nerves there, and so little vital to life. Much can be prolonged.
He curls and uncurls his toes.
He kisses Quentin's thumb, too, just the same way, breathes carefully, and opens his mouth obligingly.
Quentin lifts his head up gently, ties the silk off behind him his head, adjusts it gently so he doesn't cut too much into the corner of his mouth. He bends down and kisses his forehead, then reaches and rubs his thumb lightly over the ulnar nerve.
His touch is light at first, and then is beneath his skin, on top of it, underneath it at once. He lifts the sensation, up and out of his body, hanging a glowing nerve between them in the air. He reaches his fingertips under the filament, teasing it up, along, down, drawing a controlled sensation up and out. It sticks, around the shoulderblade, and he gives it a tug sideways, out and around something internal.
Quentin has experimented on himself today, knows he doesn't even need to touch to start with, that the strange, wrong, exposure of it is a trip just to start.
Jedao feels very exposed indeed. He doesn't need his feet, not the way he needs to be able to shoot, and the strangeness of it reminds him, sideways, of more than one recuperation when he had to have nerves regrown, spitting out nonsense signals as they did so.
He also doesn't know if he likes it. There's something about the bodilessness of it that treads near the cradle - but Jedao still feels. It isn't bodiless, really, just - disjunction. The tug makes his eyes widen, makes him breathe sharply into the gag. He watches the gleaming line in Quentin's fingers, and waits.
He hums, and inches his way inwards, towards his heart- too much pain to near the shoulder and he won't be able to use his arm to safe signal.
Once he's happy with the little piece of him he has, he shifts the finger underneath it, hooking upwards with the nail instead, and drawing upwards, a first slicing line of pain, right along his entire chest, sharpest where Quentin has him but pooling through him.
He eases back, holding it with the pad of his fingertip again, tugging a little more so he can get two fingers beneath it now, translating a tight, twitching pain right through his torso.
"If I knot you off I think I could lock you in a spasm for as long as I want." He admits, a little shocked, too, at himself. "I could pull you all out of yourself and play cats cradle with you. But all I want to do right now is unspool you just enough to bite."
He jerks, as much as he can in the absolute restraints, his eyes going a little bit unfocused, although he doesn't make a noise, not yet. The sharpness is perfect, and in a few places the flaring sensation is the most he's felt since the burrower was chewing its way through him - it was inching toward his heart too, Jedao thinks, almost imagines he can taste the blood, although when he tongues his cheek, he hasn't bitten himself yet.
He shivers for the new flick of pain, gaze leaping back to meet Quentin's as he talks. His teeth bite down a little more sharply on the gag, a contortion of his face that would have been a savage, slanted smile without it.
Quentin goes focused, now. Not sadistic exactly, but meticulous and technical, wanting to know what it looks like to locate the fine filaments of sensation, how he twitches when each one is plucked, or pinched between two fingernails where sensation throbs under his skin. He slides down, going over the ribs opposite the damage, then sliding in over his sternum.
He does it here, bends down and bites into all of the feeling in Jedao's core, where it's gathered up in his fingers, raw and possessive and low.
He yells roughly into the gag, inarticulate urgent sound, the muscles of his abdomen taut and trembling. He blinks fast, panting into the gag after. It hurts, bright and deep at once, and it doesn't feel good, exactly, but it feels right, a strange and vicious relief. His hands curl into fists and then release as he sinks into the feeling, hungers for more of it.
He tips his head back on the bed and closes his eyes, giving himself over to Quentin's teeth.
He arches his back, and Jedao himself couldn't say if his body was trying to escape from the feeling or press closer. But it doesn't matter, because it's in him, perfectly inescapable.
Quentin builds up a rhythm, sliding back and forth across the bridge he's created, shoulder, to hip, to shoulder again, rocking pain back and forth across his body like he's panning for something under his skin. He gathers more filaments up with every pass, intensifying with each swipe.
He thinks of the shuttle on a loom as Quentin goes back and forth, the threads stretched out on their frame and then tightening together. He shudders and groans, his short muffled cries falling into longer whimpers, his body shifting from useless straining to sagging in his bonds, and back again.
It hurts but he can handle it, he just has to breathe, duck under it like a wave, except Quentin's hands are tangled into him, shockingly intimate, too visceral for his mind to slip away from. He lets the pain wash through him, but it keeps coming, or maybe ripples back, wave after wave commanded by the pull of Quentin's gravity.
He carries on until he's panting, too, looking now and again at his hand, at his expression, but he seems fine, seems perfect, seems right where he wants him. He gathers it all up to a point over his heart, and sinks his teeth into the knot he's holding, now straddling his hips, bending over him, and does what will be the last thing he does to him- lets him feel like Quentin is eating his heart, for ten long seconds, as long as he can stand.
You're dying, says a part of his brain that remembers the burrowers, bone-deep certainty forged on a far-away battlefield, waiting for hours, waiting for when it reaches your heart. It's a better relief than he'd imagined he could ask for, the rough-sharp tearing deep-down agony and the certainty that this is the end, this is the end, he did as much as he could and if he can't be forgiven, at least he can be done.
(The golden moment, when Horseriver stroked his fox's ears and walked away over the invisible precipice, the black minutes when they first met, snarling and feral, finding each other in the mirror, craving exactly this - oh, he can't bear it, he can't, the most baffling of all revelations, he's a stubborn ragged stupid animal and something in him still wants to live- )
Jedao can't sustain a scream, rides out his ten seconds in low, heavy sobs, blinded by the mess of tears he can't wipe away, can only let drip and run onto the bedding, his chest heaving even where his mind is certain it's cracked open.
When he lets him go, it doesn't end right away. Things go back easier than they came out, pushing down into his body under patient strokes of Quentin's fingers.
"You did so well," he murmurs, while he runs his hand along Jedao's chest, "you did amazingly, you are so strong and you are so good."
He's careful to put everything back with love, with devotion, making sure he feels not just okay, but better.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-08-05 01:19 pm (UTC)Things he wouldn't have thought he'd been doing, seven months ago.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-05 01:40 pm (UTC)He bolts down a solid meal at the beginning of the shift, plain fare that will carry him a long time, so that it's well settled by the time he gets off. He manages to dawdle all of five minutes. He leaves all of his weapons in his own room, feeling unbearably exposed for it in a way he never does for mere nakedness. He feels like he can suddenly feel every inch of his skin. He debates removing, but ultimately keeps, the Martian military-issue emergency chemical light that Holden gave him, currently unactivated, a slim and subtle bracelet tucked just under his uniform sleeve cuff.
He does knock, once and briskly, it feels polite to give Quentin that momentary alert before the action, but steps in after two seconds whether he hears a response or not. He keeps his breathing even, and thinks wildly that's another reason he shouldn't have picked pistol grip for the hand sign - he's doing it reflexively now. He really needs to work on that tell. But not today.
He forces himself not to look for Quentin, to stare and scour him for clues. He'll find out soon. Jedao turns his back on him, closes the door, and throws the lock.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-05 01:54 pm (UTC)Quentin minds his neck, but definitely throws him down onto the bed, all without a word.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-05 11:24 pm (UTC)Quentin told him it would be like this. Jedao would have laid down for him for the asking, but this is - maybe better. Or maybe it's just want Quentin needs. Jedao watches him with dark eyes, keeps still instead of surging up to fight again, now that his initial automatic resistance is over, and chooses not to worry about it.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 12:44 am (UTC)Quentin's eyes are black, where the iris should be, to the whites, everything dark and inky and all the more startling because he has white eyelashes. He spins his fingertips in the air, hands forming complex vortices.
"Show me the hand gesture." He says, and his voice is odd too, vibrates a little, comes from somewhere off and deeper. "You can make it from this angle? Your arm isn't too tight."
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 12:52 am (UTC)He wiggles a little, back and shoulders finding their minute range against the fulcrum points in his forearms. He makes the grip. He nods.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 01:43 am (UTC)Stroking Jedao's hair back, quick and soft.
"Nod you understand."
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Date: 2018-08-06 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 02:36 am (UTC)He agrees, and draws in a deep breath, then reaches for the gives on his uniform, using the system Jedao taught him, how to open it up.
"You're being very sweet."
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 02:48 am (UTC)He hasn't been gagged yet. But Quentin said he might need the quiet. Jedao ducks his head forward, enough to press a kiss to Quentin's fingers. There's nothing especially seductive or even sensual about it, saving perhaps Jedao's standing feelings about hands. But it's more sweetness, dry and light, a token of the things he isn't saying.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 02:54 am (UTC)Nothing strikes Quentin as more vulnerable than the soles of a pair of bare feet.
From there, he goes for the gag he has ready- just a tie he never wears, but it's soft and silky and a fetching red, that he likes with Jedao's skin. He rubs his thumb over his bottom lip, to coax his mouth to open for it.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 03:12 am (UTC)He curls and uncurls his toes.
He kisses Quentin's thumb, too, just the same way, breathes carefully, and opens his mouth obligingly.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 04:22 am (UTC)His touch is light at first, and then is beneath his skin, on top of it, underneath it at once. He lifts the sensation, up and out of his body, hanging a glowing nerve between them in the air. He reaches his fingertips under the filament, teasing it up, along, down, drawing a controlled sensation up and out. It sticks, around the shoulderblade, and he gives it a tug sideways, out and around something internal.
Quentin has experimented on himself today, knows he doesn't even need to touch to start with, that the strange, wrong, exposure of it is a trip just to start.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 04:31 am (UTC)He also doesn't know if he likes it. There's something about the bodilessness of it that treads near the cradle - but Jedao still feels. It isn't bodiless, really, just - disjunction. The tug makes his eyes widen, makes him breathe sharply into the gag. He watches the gleaming line in Quentin's fingers, and waits.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 04:48 am (UTC)Once he's happy with the little piece of him he has, he shifts the finger underneath it, hooking upwards with the nail instead, and drawing upwards, a first slicing line of pain, right along his entire chest, sharpest where Quentin has him but pooling through him.
He eases back, holding it with the pad of his fingertip again, tugging a little more so he can get two fingers beneath it now, translating a tight, twitching pain right through his torso.
"If I knot you off I think I could lock you in a spasm for as long as I want." He admits, a little shocked, too, at himself. "I could pull you all out of yourself and play cats cradle with you. But all I want to do right now is unspool you just enough to bite."
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 05:08 am (UTC)He shivers for the new flick of pain, gaze leaping back to meet Quentin's as he talks. His teeth bite down a little more sharply on the gag, a contortion of his face that would have been a savage, slanted smile without it.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 05:46 am (UTC)He does it here, bends down and bites into all of the feeling in Jedao's core, where it's gathered up in his fingers, raw and possessive and low.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 06:00 am (UTC)He tips his head back on the bed and closes his eyes, giving himself over to Quentin's teeth.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 06:11 am (UTC)He pulls along to his hipbone, working in a bright, icy slash across his centre, alternating nails and teeth and tongue.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 06:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 06:49 am (UTC)It hurts but he can handle it, he just has to breathe, duck under it like a wave, except Quentin's hands are tangled into him, shockingly intimate, too visceral for his mind to slip away from. He lets the pain wash through him, but it keeps coming, or maybe ripples back, wave after wave commanded by the pull of Quentin's gravity.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-06 08:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-07 04:10 am (UTC)(The golden moment, when Horseriver stroked his fox's ears and walked away over the invisible precipice, the black minutes when they first met, snarling and feral, finding each other in the mirror, craving exactly this - oh, he can't bear it, he can't, the most baffling of all revelations, he's a stubborn ragged stupid animal and something in him still wants to live- )
Jedao can't sustain a scream, rides out his ten seconds in low, heavy sobs, blinded by the mess of tears he can't wipe away, can only let drip and run onto the bedding, his chest heaving even where his mind is certain it's cracked open.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-07 04:21 am (UTC)"You did so well," he murmurs, while he runs his hand along Jedao's chest, "you did amazingly, you are so strong and you are so good."
He's careful to put everything back with love, with devotion, making sure he feels not just okay, but better.
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