Original A/N: Wrote this up from an idea I came across about Space Marines and Eldar Exarchs being really pretty similar. Decided against making the Eldar an actual Exarch, but still an Aspect Warrior who is solidly on the Path.
Now this is smut, and no mistake. It has a long burn to get to the porn, but the porn is porn. See I like rationale and a reason for the porn to make sense, usually, and I especially want it to be at least slightly believable for a Space Marine to just go to bone town when all their depictions have them as super sexless. I'm no psychopath who's just going to go from zero to Sanguinius sounding Horus while Ferrus eats his asshole, y'know? No thanks.
Anyway, this is a story about your standard autist space marine who is a fucking genius when it comes to the rooty tooty point n shooty but knows nothing at all outside of that hanging around with an Eldar who isn't a stunted overgrown child with hypnoconditioning. Hopefully I was successful in capturing a nearly hundred year old man who has never had a single sexual thought in his life suddenly learning what cock is for.
Did it work? Did it suck?
Did it make you launch your drop pods?
Only you can find out!
FFNET A/N: So this story has already been around. Ao3, Pastebin, /wst/ but I figured I'd post it on too. There's not enough warhammer here. There's definitely some hardcore in it, but all told despite starting as more of a smut story it's not really that anymore. Consider it like an HBO show.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: DOUBT FORMS THE PATH TO DAMNATION
THE ELDAR – the xeno – was humming under its breath, running lithe hands across the cracked surface of its rifle. He hated it. The sound of it. The fact of it. Watching the jagged tear in the crystalline material slowly pull together at the suggestion of the xeno's voice. It had blocked a cleaving strike from a tyranid bioform with the body of the gun, saving itself at the expense of the functionality of the weapon. Its voice pulled at his focus, the lilting, half-heard tones that plucked at the skein of reality as it rewove its weapon. His bolter, by contrast, was still in perfect working order. He had no rounds, granted, but the machine-spirit was fiery and unharmed with the frame clean of any deformation or damage beyond simple cosmetic damage.
Time and again, dealing with the eldar – the xeno – he felt the same indescribable sensation. A strange, intrusive desire to violence yet was distinctly separate from the bloodlust he felt in the din of combat. It was a directionless irritation, one that he found he could not vent nor scratch through repeated battle drills that left him slathered in sweat and panting. He had spent hours in form practices, chainsword deactivated but slashing through each combat style he knew. Again and again and again until even his genenhanced physique was pushed to its limits. For a time he would be centered, focused only on action and reaction, on the feel of his Emperor-given frame running hot and sure.
And yet, around the eldar, the itch returned. It made his hands flex, his blood heat, the moisture in his mouth flee as he looked at it.
It made no sense.
It had to be some effect of its witch-powers. It was no true psyker like others of its benighted race. That was clear. It was too physical, too practical. Many times a burst of witch-fire or unnatural incantations would have saved them both from injury or ambush, yet never had it manifested such. The limits of its warp-touch seemed to be its strange control over what it called 'wraithbone', the osseous material that made up its armor and arms. Tricks and techniques gleaned from its mother, it had mentioned.
This had to be some other hidden talent. It was getting inside his head, or trying to. Trying to corrupt him, or turn him. Or just simply distract him.
That had to be the case.
He sneered at the idea. He was Astartes, forged of far sterner stuff than the slender alien. Let it try, let it batter itself to exhaustion against the steel bars of his mind. His Wayfarer, both more than a Chaplain and less, would be proud. He had the rituals of Choroct in mind, the mantras of focus and calm to call upon. His mind was steel, the eldar a feather.
Indeed: he eldar were ever crafty and duplicitous, always scheming and plotting ten steps ahead. It behooved him to think similarly.
They needed each other now, for the moment, but when they no longer did?
The eldar was clearly planting the seeds it would harvest when that time would come. He had not missed its own appraisal of him from time to time, when it thought he was not looking. The way it would examine his armor, the way its eyes would hunt for the joints and seams where a blade might find purchase. Several times he had turned and caught it quickly glancing away, pretending to not have been eyeing his back. Surely sizing up where it might sink a dagger.
He was especially careful when he would, rare though it may be, bathe. Despite his augmentations and their ability to cleanse his body, still would gore, dirt and sweat accumulate. One must always maintain their weapons, and his body was the greatest the Emperor had blessed him with. He ensured the eldar was well aside when he would be at his most vulnerable (though the thought of ever being truly 'vulnerable' was laughable), keeping always his chainsword close at hand.
For now, both of them alone and marooned in this vision of primeval hell, a second pair of eyes, of arms, no matter the source, was necessary to escape.
He had saved the eldar many times, interceding to deflect blows that would have claimed its head or ambushes that would have shredded its fragile body. In its own turn, the eldar, as much as he was loathe to admit it, had saved him. When he had slipped into a sus-an coma, purging violent toxins from his body after a vicious bite, the eldar had guarded his insensate form for two days. He still mistrusted its promise that it had not touched nor examined his wargear.
Their goals aligned, for now.
But what it was doing to him.
He would catch himself watching it. Out of the corner of his eye, as it would rehearse combat stances. As it would meditate he would find himself examining its form, cataloguing the shape of its limbs. For no reason that he could discern, and always the feeling would build, the directionless need for violence.
Was that it, perhaps?
Was it the innate hypnoconditioning from his youth? Was it the knowledge that he was, by small measures, betraying his oaths? Suffer not the alien to live, nor the witch, the mutant.
Yet he had suffered this eldar. This xeno.
Perhaps it was that reflexive implanted guideline, buried beneath his iron resolve and mental discipline that was percolating up through his consciousness.
But for his Chapter, the Jade Host, the eldar had never been a great threat. The orks, the greenskins: they were the hated foe of his Chapter. For a moment he imagined if this eldar was a greenskin instead, and nearly laughed at the thought of working alongside such a beast.
The eldar at least had a concept of civilization and honor, warped though it may be in their alien minds. He was sure his khan would understand.
But it bothered him. Niggled.
A distraction.
All of it.
He snarled, and took up his chainsword. Meditation in motion would put it aside.
It did not. Never permanently. Many days later and many many kilometers behind them, he and the eldar sat in a deep cave, the entrance hidden by cunningly arranged branches and deadfalls. It had aided him as he hauled stumps and bracken and obliterated their trail, showing an unexpected knowledge and experience with fieldcraft. He recognized strength in the thin limbs of the alien, strength enough to perhaps not match but vie with his own Emperor-given musculature.
And now they sat to either side of the cave, a dim lamp between them. He had hazarded the item from his pack, needing at least some light in order to clean and replace the teeth of his chainsword. He had been forced to hack into the dense carapace of a tyranid creature the day before, sawing and chewing into the meat of the creature to finally slay it. Two dozen loosened teeth and a further dozen snapped free had robbed his blade of much of its sting.
Across from him the eldar was helmetless again, letting its long hair rest unbound across its shoulders in a flow of dark waves that blended into the deep shadows. It was meditating, a common action for it, sitting with legs folded across one another, palms resting in its lap. Utterly at ease, apparently, and secure. It twisted at him that this alien could feel so safe here – surely it knew it was ultimately a foe of mankind, proscribed by the Imperium. His eyes scoured the relaxed shape of its face, the thin brows arced over shuttered eyes, thin nose, the angular curve of its jaw that elongated and stretched its face beyond human norm. The strange eyes, nearly devoured by dark pupils. The familiar irritation and restlessness grew in his breast.
Ignoring it, he narrowed his eyes, musing on the incongruity of their partnership. Of the circumstances.
He was clad in what could only generously be called half his armor now. From the waist up it was merely his bodysuit, ripped in a dozen places to expose the still-healing wounds beneath. He had grudgingly abandoned his carapace after an encounter with a carnifex. The eldar had argued with him long, ridiculing his 'sentimentality' and gesturing at the enormous gaping holes in his chestpiece where the creature had bitten and lifted him clean from the ground.
In the end he'd agreed, and refusing the eldar's help, had disengaged the chest piece and related armor panels, reverently placing them in a glade and kneeling to thank the machine spirit for its unflagging service, and saving his life one final time. It had done its job, keeping the probing teeth from biting too deeply into his body. He had bled freely, gashed down to his fused ribcage, but no deeper.
The reactor was thankfully undamaged, and so he managed for a time in a cut-down harness.
Then he had lost one pauldron to a ripper swarm, and then the other to an unexpected ravener.
He'd finally had to leave the reactor behind when it, punctured through by venom-spitters, threatened overload.
More and more armor followed over the days, and weeks. The eldar was not spared either – the greaves and thighplate of its left leg had been hurriedly stripped off after a splash of caustic acids nearly ate through to its flesh in seconds.
This world was consuming them, in little bits, cracking open their armored shells first.
Next would be the slow erosion of their flesh.
There was no thought of giving up. His Chapter would find him.
What drove the eldar he did not know, but it seemed as unflagging as he, loathe as he was to lay any praise on it.
Now he had but his greaves and boots, along with a makeshift harness rig to carry his weapons and supplies. The eldar retained its helmet and chestpiece and one gauntlet, but little else. It too had rigged a harness of tattered material from its ragged skirt, a sling to carry its shuriken rifle. He had no bolts and his plasma pistol retained at best two full-power shots. His chainsword that he labored over had but a few remaining replacement teeth. The eldar's shuriken cannon, luckily repaired, still seemed to have enough ammunition. Its own powered blade was long since lost, cracked in two. Now it sported a long claw from a deathleaper, the joint cracked off and wrapped in leather for grip. The tyranid blade proved as adept against its own kin as it did against the swarm's foes.
Food was in no supply, but he was Astartes. He ate what he needed – leaves, the flesh of hunted animals. The tyranid infestation here, the dregs from the broken tendril, had not subsumed the local wildlife and plantlife. Perhaps they would in time but this world was hardy. The eldar seemed able to sustain itself on gathered roots and similar, but he had spared little thought to its needs. It had accepted some meat from him in the past, though.
He slotted another tooth into place, locking it in position, running a tattered oilcloth across the workings. Soon he too would be reduced to scavenged weapons, and rude, makeshift clubs. His Chapter would find him.
The eldar continued to meditate. It did that often, given the opportunity. It would seemingly withdraw into itself, distancing from the world.
His fists flexed, reflexively, grabbing at nothing as he ran his eyes over the alien again. For reasons he could not identify, there was something that simply kept drawing his attention back. Perhaps it was a weakness he had not noticed. Some flaw in the form of the alien that he could not pin down. That would be worthy to determine – some unknown physical flaw or malformation in the eldar. Perhaps such knowledge would make this entire ordeal worthwhile.
So he had played at scrutiny.
There was nothing he could note, beyond the obvious. Not as strong nor massive as an Astartes (and for good reason, for blessed was he by the Emperor and his Primarch). Much more nimble and lithe, though, comparatively, and stronger indeed than a baseline human. But nothing glaring, no true critical flaws. No Akilluys' Heel to exploit. It was not that then, that drew his attention time and again.
What then?
He clenched his teeth and tore his gaze away, feeling his secondary heart slowly beat harder, as if preparing for combat.
With practiced focus, he schooled it back into subdued functioning. Another tooth slotted home. Another pass of the tattered cloth.
What was it?
He wanted to look back at the eldar. Wanted to not. It was like the ache of a missing tooth. A cog slipped in the machine that clicked when it should have clacked and was impossible to ignore. An oddity in a world he understood that he couldn't put aside.
His fingers itched as if for the hilt of his chainsword or grip of his bolter, but neither quite slotted home in his mind. His pulse elevated again, as if for combat, and he tamped it down.
He was…agitated.
Almost as if it felt his attention upon it, its almond eyes cracked open, green meeting directly his brown, a brief slow smile creasing its lips. Unwilling to back down from a challenge, he glowered back at it, willing it to feel his irritation. A strange spark of adrenaline he ignored, letting his body quickly filter out the chemical. As he expected, the alien could not hold his stare and returned to its meditation, eyes sliding shut again, though a ghost of the smile remained.
Ridiculous, but it gave him an idea. The sudden burst of adrenaline, the challenge-
Perhaps…
Perhaps that was it.
He had not fought the eldar.
Their pact had been made upon initial meeting, months ago.
The tyranid swarms, broken, leaderless, were still deadly beyond reckoning. Gone to ground on the feudal world of Incandry's Rest, he and the rest of his squad had been deployed to secure a critical Imperial asset. A relic of the Chapter, left within a shrine in the principle city, the only urban concession on the world. The tyranid survivors from the breaking of the splinter fleet were not supposed to divert so unexpectedly. It was critical to retrieve it before they would, in their bestial rampage, tarnish the reputation of his Chapter. They had been unable to deploy into the capital due to the rain of infestor pods. Many had been intercepted and shot down, but still more made landfall and the capital had become a hunting ground.
His squad had landed in the outskirts, many kilometers away.
Shortly after, the vox-net had collapsed and all word from orbit was lost. It was the last they had seen any Imperial presence.
The tyranids had been unrelenting in their hunt as if driven mad and determined to gain their revenge by the slaughter of his brothers. His arbana had fallen, in a brutal, tearing skirmish that drug on for hours and hours as they tried to fall back to the foothills, to establish a strong point. Until in the end only he remained.
That was when they had met. The eldar, alone as well, last of its kind on the world, had ambushed the ambushers. It felled a lictor and another in as many seconds. He had exploited the opening, charging the alpha of the pack and bearing it down in a brutal brawl.
They had agreed in that glade. Their causes aligned. The eldar had business on Incandry's Rest as well, business that was parallel but not opposed to the Imperium. Two goals that might be achieved as one.
So they had never fought. Perhaps that was it. He had spent months in the presence of another warrior, a fierce one, he could admit, but they had not drawn blades against one another. Not tested the other, personally. He felt a need toward…violence, perhaps, but not death. Directed toward the eldar. Perhaps that was it.
They needed to fight.
'I must fight you.' The eldar looked up from its project, mending a tear in its makeshift harness. The strange, slanted, almond shaped eyes were too large to be human but too human to be truly alien. Was there no part of this xeno that did not unsettle him?
'Speak sense,' it said, a frown drawing down the soft ends of its brows, the slightest of creases in the smooth skin of its forehead.
'I cannot concentrate around you. There is…tension. I must fight you.' He tossed down its makeshift blade. 'First blood, no farther.'
'You…wish to duel. Now.'
'I said I cannot concentrate. I admit weakness to an alien. Do not question me.' He growled, rolling his shoulders. Looking down at the eldar, its face upturned to look up at him pushed the feeling higher. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, not knowing what to do. He felt the need to reach out, to enfold its neck with his hands. To…he clenched his teeth again, because it ded not make sense.
The eldar looked him over, slowly, petulantly, from his boots to his hair, much longer now and tied back in a knot. Slowly it rose to its feet, one hand wrapped about the claw. He found he could not look away from the motion, jaw clenched. At full height, the eldar was scarcely a head shorter than he, taller indeed than most humans.
Face-to-face, his secondary heart kicked up again. Only a foot of space separated them and he looked over the inhuman architecture of the eldar. Its lips pressed together, brow furrowed. On a human, this would be suspicion or confusion. He was not sure what it meant on an eldar. Its hair was long and black, loose where his was tied. Its eyes were darting back and forth, as if searching his face for something. Its eyes, incidentally, he finally saw had a thin rim of iris about the broad pupuls: deep green with…blue. Perhaps. He was frozen, realizing he had never been this close to an alien before – at least, not one that was not imminently dead.
He was not sure how to feel about it.
'I think you are lying, mon'keigh, and I do not think you realize that you are.' He bared his teeth, bringing up one hand to plant on the eldar's chest and shoved it back. To its credit, it simply took a long, smooth stride backward, otherwise unfazed.
'You dare? You question my honor?" He ignores the after-shock in his hand, the feeling of the eldar beneath his palm lingering strangely. How could it declare him a liar? What could he be lying about? What could it even think, in that demented, twisted alien mind, that he would be lying about?
He was not certain that they needed to duel, to fight. But he was certain that he must try, for his own sanity. That was no lie.
It cast aspersions, and he should not be surprised. The eldar ran a hand along the flat of the claw, not looking away from him.
'My apologies, I do not mean offense. Our languages are different. There can be mistakes. Let us duel then, and restore your balance.' He nodded, willing to accept the excuse for what it was, but not forgetting the words.
The duel did not help.
For a time, they moved about each other. He held his deactivated chainsword in one hand, the other loose and free. In contrast, the eldar takes the claw in a two-handed, sure grip. They circled and the motion felt strange in his cobbled together demi-armor. The eldar had not replaced its helmet. He missed his qua din, left behind on the strike cruiser. The longer length and perfect balance of the polearm would have served him better, here.
They each made short, probing strikes. Measuring the other, gauging responses and the quickness of reflex. He found the eldar quick, as he knew it to be, but it seemed to be something else when it was directed toward him. Its legs were in constant motion, shifting weight, seeming to never come to a full rest. The claw waved and nodded, weaving in the air between them, long by half than his chainsword. A greater reach, but not a greater strength.
The probing gave way to heavier strikes as he pushed to batter down his opponent's guard. It was quicker but he was stronger, and that would be key. But the eldar would melt away, letting the claw slide the strike aside just enough to miss. Then the return slice would be unexpectedly high, or dart daringly low to skim the dirt floor of the cave. In the dim light, their fuzzed shadows danced against the walls, the darkness an added element to the duel. Outside was night, and no doubt horde of malignant creatures hungering for their deaths, but his focus tunneled into the alien within blade range, but not an 'enemy'. The strikes sped up, ripostes and parries and lunges blending together into nearly a fluid dance of motion. He realized as they spun and struck that they had learned each other's forms and styles through the months of endless pursuit.
It had become complementary. Two parts to a whole.
With a start, as he reflexively dodged past a swing, he realized there was a synchronicity here that he had not felt outside of his brothers. Moments in their long trek flashed through his mind – the eldar crouching low as he swung, full strength, chainsword whistling just above its head to cleave a ripper. The eldar springing past him, using his larger size and mass as a springboard to vault onto a thickly armored tyranid and punch through its braincase with two precise shots.
It was jarring enough and dangerous enough to his self-image to shock him out of his focus, slowing his feet, and the eldar's claw scored a long red line across his chest.
He dimly heard the eldar's exclamation, loud and unrestrained as it planted the claw in the loam, too spun up in his thoughts for it to register it or the already-fading sting on his chest.
This alien and he.
A partnership.
A mutual trust and understanding.
Like his brothers.
Impossible.
Impossible.
He wanted to rip the thoughts from his brain, to reach his fingers into the treacherous meat of his mind and excise the very concept of such a thing.
It could not be. It could never be! Suffer not the alien to live! His hearts hammered, cold sweat prickling across his body beneath his bodysuit.
Through the haze of his shock and horror he saw the eldar advance toward him, empty handed. There was an odd motion to its steps, one he had not seen, a fluidity that spoke of something other than war. Its eyes were searching again, scanning across his face and chest as it came closer.
'Stop-' he choked out, barely trusting his tongue to work. 'No closer. No closer!' The eldar paused, hands outstretched, palms up.
'Do you understand? I do not deny it. I cannot.'
The words made no sense. It knew his thoughts? It could see the impossibility of their comradeship?
'I do not…I cannot. I cannot- How can this be? How?' He dropped to a knee, legs suddenly and inexplicably unstrung. He was Astartes. Geneforged. A true son of his Chapter, as loyal as any brother to wear the colors. Nothing in the galaxy could match him.
How could this alien?
How could it…how could he…the synergy. The eldar crouched before him, reaching out a gentle hand to place on his broad shoulder. He could feel its touch, even through the two layers of bodyglove. The heat of the eldar's hand on his trapezius, the strange tension that spread throughout him.
'What have you done to me? What have you done?'
It had to be its fault. Its witchery. Some manner of…of corruption. It did this. It reached into his head. It twisted his thoughts and unmanned his surety. He was Astartes. Geneforged.
'I have done nothing. You do not understand. I sense it. There is so much you do not know. There is so much that is lost for who you are. What you are.' He looked up to meet its eyes, his soft brown irises to its electric-green. 'I can explain.'
He reached out, clasping a hand to the back of its neck, holding it in place. Through the eldar's bodysuit he could feel the muscle, the little bump of vertebrae. If he squeezed. If he but squeezed. It twitched under his touch, a full body ripple.
'You will explain, and you will explain now what you have done to me.' The eldar nodded, restricted by the hand at the nape of its neck. It knelt too, slowly, avoiding any sudden motion, until they were face to face.
'My people – we have a war-mask.' Its voice was husky and low, not a whisper. 'In battle, we let the war-mask take us. It becomes all we are. All other cares, concerns – they are gone. Eaten by the war-mask, or held hidden and at bay until the battle is done. All that matters is battle. Death. We feel nothing else. But it does not mean those feelings are gone. Just…pushed aside.' The eldar pressed a hand to his chest, right above his heart.
'You have never put aside your war-mask. You are your war-mask, but it can never be all you are. It can only suppress, but not hide.'
'Speak sense-' he growled, a lecture on eldar culture the farthest thing from his mind at the moment.
'I am speaking sense, if you would listen,' the eldar hissed through its teeth. 'I am saying that your war-mask is receding and you are feeling things it had hidden. You do not understand them, so you only view them as you had all things before. In terms of combat. War.' He exerts the slightest pressure on the eldar's neck, and its eyes narrow in irritation, shoulders twitching as if to throw him off. What he was feeling? What could it possibly know or understand about what he was feeling, about this endless agitation he felt around it and how – how he had allowed himself to trust the alien, to let down his guard, to-
'I am saying that I understand you because I feel the same, mon'keigh, though I cannot understand why.'
His surprise released his grip on the eldar's neck as he recoiled.
What?
It felt the same way? It was as shocked and disturbed by trusting him as he was of trusting it?
'And if you will not listen when I try to speak then I will – I will -' its nostrils flared as it sucked in a breath 'nh'ain sae inthaim – find another way.' The eldar darted forward, simultaneously pulling on his shoulder. He started at the sudden, swift motion, surely an attack, but it was quick, quicker than he and –
The eldar pressed its lips against his.
For a very long, frozen moment, the all he could see was the eldar's closed eyes, the loose strands of hair dangling across its face. All he could feel was its nose alongside his, the pressure of soft lips against his own.
Every thought slammed to halt.
He had no frame for this.
No reference, no understanding.
Was it attacking? Was this some form of assault he had never seen? Abstractly, distantly, he was aware of this action among humans. He had seen guardsmen embrace and cheer, he had seen their faces pressed together when he and his brothers had broken through ork lines, when they had cracked the back of a waaugh and reinforced the hive city on Itram. He hadn't quite understood the meaning then, and simply marked it as an unexplained cultural thing. The eldar was doing it to him.
And…and…
There was something that stopped him from shoving it away. That held his hands loose and open at his sides, achingly empty, utterly lost. Its lips parted around his, the warmth of them embracing his lower lip and tugging, even as something soft and wet seemed to flit out and touch his mouth- And then the eldar retreated, opening its eyes and licking its lips. Its pupils were surprisingly wide, irises retreating before them, an odd coloration rising across its nose and cheeks.
'Do you still not understand?'
His mouth worked, lips moving, tingling from the recent touch (poison?), but no words seemed to shake free from his brain.
The eldar took one of his hands in both of its own, raising it to its face and pressing lips to his palm.
'You are attracted to me. But your war-mask does not understand. That is why you are cannot focus. It cannot describe what you feel.'
He tore his hand free and fled deeper in to the cave, away from the dim lamp and the kneeling eldar and all the confusing, contradictory thoughts that remained.
In the depths of the cave, where the ceiling finally ran down to meet the welcoming floor, he sat. Leaning against the wall, feeling the tickle of roots poking through the shale.
You are attracted to me.
He didn't understand what that meant. 'Attracted'. He knew the word, yes, but the context –
It was…accurate? But the meaning was insufficient. Yes. He was attracted to the eldar. The alien drew his attention frequently. That was the whole root of the issue! It was no revelation he was attracted to the eldar, it was precisely what he knew to be the problem!
And the thing with the lips – what did that mean? He rubbed a thick thumb against his lips, feeling the dry skin, the ridges of mostly-healed splits. He could still feel a ghost of the warmth and softness of the eldar's there. Why?
And his hand. He raised his other, his right hand, flexing it, looking down at his palm. A broad scar ran the length of it, shiny and bright. An overheated plasma pistol coil, when he had slapped it aside before it could kill him. Burned right through the ceramite, melted it to him. Years and years ago. The nerves had mostly grown back, but he felt as if he could tell the exact dimensions of the eldar's lips on his palm.
Why?
And with distance between them, many many meters of distance and darkness besides – the tension had not vanished. Still both hearts thundered and a tension filled his chest. Were his augmentations failing? Some poison, some virus of the tyranids slowly chewing into him? What was this?
In a flash of anger he clenched a fist and hammered it into the wall, thuncking into the shale and sending flakes flying and soil spuming. The sharp edged shards barely pricked his dense flesh, yet the contrast – the softest touch of the eldar and still he felt its lips on his! What had it done to him!
He growled, bassy and deep in his chest, shut his eyes, and began to recite litanies.
Two nights later, still in the same cave, he studied the eldar. It was sleeping this time and they had not spoken since he returned many hours later. It simply appraised him, before shaking its head and turning away. The eldar lay stretched out on its side, head pillowed on an arm, the wan light of the lume casting long shadows. The tyranids were still beyond, and in silence by the exit he had lain for hours and listened to them searching. Hunting. Yet they had not found the cave and so it remained a refuge for now. It galled him, hiding underground, but his mission was more important. Reach the capital. Reclaim the relic. Find his Chapter.
He could not fail, not after everything.
He studied the eldar. Its armor was neatly organized in a pile, leaving it in a bodyglove, same as he. The likeness to humanity was jarring. His eyes followed the shape of its body, from shoulder to hip to toe. The familiar agitation built again, the memory of its lips on his returning as he studied.
It was because it was vulnerable, it had to be. He was being told to kill it. End it.
Kill it and stop all the confusion, remove the problem. He was Astartes. Geneforged. He did not need to rely on another, let alone a xeno. The trust they had was false. A sham. Kill it.
He pinched his eyes shut, gritting teeth, and behind his lids he saw it decapitate a lictor that was poised to jump atop his back. He saw it spin and unleash a storm of projectiles that reduced a ripper swarm to so much mulch, giving him a much needed reprieve to reload his bolter and send three bolts downrange to put down a biovore.
He saw the eldar as they dueled the carnifex. How it danced around the beast's claws, how it evaded massive jaws and leapt above the scything tail. He saw the eldar as it hacked at the carnifex's limbs, freeing him from its jaws before they could clamp down. He saw it toss him his last melta charge, so that he could punch it down the beast's throat. He saw himself grab the eldar by the waist and bodily sling it behind a tree as the carnifex detonated messily, hurling chitin plates with enough force to ping off his armor.
He saw it save him half a hundred times, and he saw himself save it the same number.
No. If he was going to kill the eldar it would be awake and it would have a weapon in hand. He owed it that much.
'This is foolish.' The eldar sighed, as they replaced their armor. For him, simply his greaves and boots and makeshift harness. For the eldar, the chestplate and gauntlet and tall helmet.
'No, the main force has moved on. We will only face the remnants.'
'That is not what I am speaking of,' the alien sighed, slinging its rifle over a shoulder. He ignored it and led the way from the cave, shoving the trunks and brambles aside.
They reached the capital a week later.
All was ruins.
As a feudal world, Incandry's Rest had but a single city remotely worthy of the name. Seat of the Imperial Governor and the sole reliable spaceport, the capital of Weatherheart was a village compared to the mighty hives of other worlds. The largest buildings, a scant dozen stories, were piles of rubble and shattered duracrete. There were no bodies as they walked the streets, a grim fact of the invaders. The devourer earned its name well.
'The Shrine is at the city's center. We make for there.' The eldar shrugged, picking around the acid-smoothed puddles of metal that were makeshift barricades and Guard strongpoints.
'My task draws me there all the same.'
'You have not spoken of it. Of what brings eldar to a world of the Imperium.'
'A simple matter. Nothing that threatens you or your kind. It might even help you.' He grunted, keeping up the pace. At least the eldar, unlike mortal humans, could keep up with the pace of an Astartes.
'Ware our flanks. This city is not yet dead.'
But nothing emerged to challenge them. They stalked down empty streets, the flattop cracked and weeds left unchecked for many weeks already poking through. He knew from the lack of dust and small debris that the capital had fallen months previous. Whatever defense had been mustered had been unable to withstand the onslaught of the tyranids.
Without the guiding force of their tendril fleet, the tyranids here were more bestial, less driven. They were not attempting to strip all consumable matter – they were hunting and breeding like beasts. He saw vestiges of spawning pools, dried up and abandoned. A handful of Leman Russ from the Governor's barracks. The sunlight shone through the gaping holes burned in their armor by acid and claw, drawing strange patterns on the streets. No bones, no bodies. Just empty silence and the wind through the ruins.
'Perhaps they have moved on. Gone into the jungles in search of more prey. We encountered enough there to support the theory.' The eldar was striding backwards with remarkable alacrity, each footfall finding sure support despite the crumbling nature of the roadway. Its own steps were silent, in contrast to the low thudding of his booted tread.
'Or the Devourer is lying in wait. Vigilance, xeno. Always vigilance.' The words rang hollow in his mind, though, directed as they were to an alien he took as ally.
Another night passed in the depths of an abandoned warehouse. Once more he had his lume set up, the dull orange light thrown across the moldering papers and plaster fragments shaken loose from the ceiling. The eldar was meditating, as usual, though he had noted its frequent glances his way throughout the day. It was growing more and more common, its appraisal of him. Bolder, less hidden.
With their final goals nearly in reach, it had to be planning its betrayal.
Sizing him up, preparing.
The tension and agitation he felt around it had only worsened. Now he constantly found himself gazing at the eldar, all thoughts fled. The strange desire for directionless violence never waned, never went away. The sense-memory of the eldar's lips constantly returned, as did the sensation of its hand on his shoulder.
He was clearly going mad.
'How many more nights must we endure like this?' The eldar spoke suddenly, fracturing the silence. He twitched, realizing once again he had been staring at the motionless xeno for a time untold.
'The shrine cannot be farther. Whatever goal you have must be near enough as well.'
'That is not what I meant.' The eldar sighed, uncrossing its legs and shifting to kneel, hands on knees. 'I speak of the constant denial of what we cannot deny. This is exhausting, mon'keigh.'
'I have no idea of what you speak.'
'Truly you do not? I think you lie again.' This time its imprecation did not phase him.
'We have spoken of questioning my honor. Watch your tongue, xeno.' It rolled its eyes, gathering its long legs beneath it before standing. With him sitting, cross-legged, the eldar for once looked down on him from across the lume.
'You are as a clueless child. Isha preserve me.' It advanced around the lume, until it stood just before him, looking down the length of its body to him. He made no move to stand or respond, curious as to what strange thoughts were driving it. Clearly, something gnawed at the alien just as it did him, and despite his exasperation at even the slightest implication of similarity, he had to admit interest. Then, like the other night many days ago, the eldar did something he entirely did not expect.
It dropped into his lap.
Knees to either side of his hips, it knelt in his lap, resting on his crossed legs. His hands immediately lashed out, grabbing its shoulders, ready to throw it away. To so boldly and so fearlessly intrude on his person – To dare to touch him so blithely –
But the touch of the eldar, the weight of it on his thighs, something stayed his hands. And so he was frozen, his hands engulfing its slim but muscular shoulders. The feel of its body through the bodyglove – his mind ran in circles, shouting to crush it, demanding him to – to –
'What is the meaning of this, xeno? Why do you intrude on my person?' Irritatingly, it simply shushed him, placing its hands on his chest, the surprising feeling of the long fingers against his bodyglove loosening the tension in his arms, holding the alien at bay.
'I am curious,' it whispered, 'Our end is in sight, and if luck holds we may soon be parted. I will not have regrets.'
Exploiting the opening as if in a duel, the eldar leaned in, and pressed its lips to his again.
And once again he was transfixed by the sensation as if all feeling had vanished from his body save for the warm and soft touch on his mouth. Like before he felt the wetness of its tongue flick against his unmoving lips, before the eldar withdrew to look him in the eyes.
'It is a kiss, mon'keigh. A kiss, to show interest. Do you not know it?' Its voice was husky, almost hoarse, and he felt the gust of its breath across his cheeks. His mind spinning, confused, warring emotions and impulses tearing through him, he could only murmur in confusion: 'I do not.'
'Then pay attention.' It leaned in again, capturing his mouth with its own, and he felt the way its lips moved against his, how they embraced and moved, how they entreated with his own, motionless. Almost..questioning. Probing. The eldar retreated again, gaze searching over his face, flicking down at his lips and back up, over and over.
'So lost. Your war-mask is strong.' It leaned in again, and as its warm lips found his he found himself attempting to match the motion. He was Astartes, and he would not be bested by some xeno, even if he did not understand the action. His mouth opened to meet the eldar, and to his surprise he felt and heard a low grown from the alien as their mouths met, finally both in motion and reciprocating. Its tongue flicked against his lips, wetting them with foreign saliva, the taste strange and unexpected. As if by reflex, he tasted his lips, his own tongue leaving the confines of his mouth and – the eldar grasped it, the tip of it, between its lips.
His secondary heart beat faster, spinning up as if in combat. He felt the flush of energy along his limbs, but could not discern the source. He was simply sitting, with an alien in his lap enacting some strange ritual. With a nibble of its teeth against his lower lip (which drew a surprised grunt from him), the eldar again drew back.
'You are learning. Clearly your kind are not as simple as you seem.' It seemed almost amused by the insult, the corners of its mouth quirking in a gesture that, in a human, might be a smirk.
'I still do not understand. What is the purpose of this, of this…this.' The eldar sighed, closing its eyes and shaking its head, hair rippling. 'I sense no threat but – I cannot find the purpose.'
'Trust me. I will lead, you will see.
It went against every fiber of his being, every tenet of his teachings. Yet after so many months, no matter his reservations, he had to admit that if the eldar truly wanted him dead (outside of future betrayal), it could have done so several times. And much more directly than some convoluted plot that had it easily within reach of him, vulnerable and unarmored. And he had to admit his own curiosity.
'I would not be called ignorant.' He muttered, irritated to have found a gap in his knowledge that this alien knew instead.
'Good,' the eldar whispered, and the brush of its exhalation across his skin was strange but…not unwelcome as it leaned back in.
For a time its lips explored his, and he clumsy reciprocated. Curious as to the action, driven too by the odd pull that seemed to well up in him to match the motion. He bit at its own lip, worrying the lower between his teeth. Lightly – he meant no injury, and catalogued the eldar's reaction: a hiss and redoubled intensity of its 'kiss'. All the while a strange pressure grew and grew in the back of his mind, a cloudiness that sunk into his limbs and left him oddly lethargic.
Not for the first time did he wonder about poison, but the symptoms did not align.
Mouth wet and open, the elder leaned back, the feeling of its rear against his thighs, the pressure and weight of its body drew a curious sense of satisfaction that he could not identify. The softness of its body through the smoothness of its bodysuit, the flex of muscles as it shifted. It had begun slowly rocking in place as their mouths had explored each other's. He remembered it mentioned feeling the same agitation as he, and wondered if this inability to sit still was an aspect of it. Some manner of relief.
'You learn quickly,' the eldar mused, and reached out to run a warm finger down his cheek, to rest against his lower lip. An odd impulse took him, and he sucked it into his mouth, tasting the digit and running his tongue along it. The eldar's skin, was, in comparison to its lips, mostly tasteless, and he felt the ridges of its fingertip on his tongue.
'Very quickly,' it murmured, rocking in his lap even more. The pressure in the rear of his mind was almost painful now, yet he did not shy away nor fear it.
He was Astartes. Any trial he could overcome.
He released its finger as it withdrew with a soft pop, a trail of saliva connecting them. Oddly, it took its finger into its own mouth, as if to reciprocate the experience.
'Touch me, mon'keigh.' Not quite understandind, he frowned.
'I already have. Several times.'
The eldar rolled its eyes again and he felt a flash of irritation at its constant haughty superiority before it reached out, taking his right wrist in both hands, and placing his hand on its chest. Through the silken bodyglove, he could feel the hammering heart of the eldar: a rapid staccato beat. Much quicker and softer than his own duotone, thudding counterpart. The flesh was beneath soft, supple, molding around his broad fingers as he pressed against it. Even through the bodyglove it was remarkable in its texture, like nothing living he had encountered before. An odd desire to feel it, skin-to-skin, drifted through his head.
Curious – he knew of the differences between male and female mortals yet it had always been a passing thing. The difference in dress noted as simple fact akin to the number of exits in a room or the disposition of an enemy deployment. Females generally emphasized their chest, drawing attention there with garments and adornments. Necklaces and chains and the like, draping across the exposed skin. He had once seen an aquila pendant nearly lost in the considerable breasts of an Inquisitor and had been curious as to the purpose if the icon was not clearly visible. It had not been his place to ask, however. With his hand pressed now to the eldar's chest, watching its lidded eyes as he gently pressed and examined the softness of its breast, he suspected he could formulate a hypothesis.
'This feels…pleasant, to you.'
'It does,' the eldar said, 'is it not pleasant for you?'
'I admit it is…intriguing.' He reached up, taking the other breast in hand and pushed them toward and apart from each other, seeing the bodyglove bunch and conform to the shifting flesh beneath it. The eldar hummed deep in its throat as he did so, leaning and arching its back to grant him better access. It truly was intriguing. It felt…strangely right, in the same way the well-worn grip of his bolter did, or the satisfying heft of a power sword did. He cupped both in his palms, feeling the surprising weight.
'It is as I said. Your war-mask is not all you are.'
Beneath the bodyglove, he felt two harder points, rigid protrusions in an otherwise soft and yielding expanse. He pinched at one with clumsy fingers, the bodyglove too sleek to allow for grasp, and it slid beneath his grasp. He cocked an eyebrow, recognizing it likely as a nipple, being in a similar place as it would on a human, and stroked his thumbs across both breasts, over the visible bumps on its suit. The eldar trembled, a full body quiver that set his secondary heart beating faster. The pressure behind his eyes deepened, like a tensing band drawing to its limits.
And he realized the itch was gone – the itch that made him clench his fists every time he looked at the eldar, that drove him to distraction with fleeting desires for violence. Having the eldar beneath his touch, running his hands over its body – he stroked his right hand down from its breast, feeling the transition from pliable to the harder expanse of its abdominals.
Why was that what satisfied his agitation?
His musing was interrupted as the eldar reached behind itself, shoulders rolling to puff out its chest farther (displaying more openly the mounds of its breasts, a sight that he discovered was distracting), as it worked at something. Then its bodyglove fluffed and relaxed, baggy and loose and it shrugged both arms free of the sleeves. Then it rolled it down, both breasts bouncing free to stand tall against its ribs. The sight of its naked torso drew his eyes in a way he could not describe, even as his breaths came shorter and mouth dried. The overpowering pressure in his head yet still mounted but he pushed it aside roughly, biting down at the growing pain behind his eyes as he reached out, abnormally delicately, to stroke his fingers from collarbone down to the peaked points of its nipples, straining outward atop each breast. He…needed to continue, for reasons he could not explain. Even through the building headache, whatever it meant.
He noted a large gemstone, glowing from within, that nestled between its breasts, on a long golden chain. For a moment he almost laughed, remembering the aquila necklace. He stroked fingers across the defined abdominals, watching as they twitched and flexed under his ministrations, stroked along the velvet skin of her waist back up to cup its breasts, fingers sinking into the soft and pliable shapes. A thumb dipped into the cavity of its navel. Its skin was remarkably soft and sleek, and he could not quite cease his motions.
The eldar groaned, shifting its hips to press its groin flush against his and he felt an unexpected shift and throb from between his legs. This time, skin-to-skin, the eldar felt almost feverishly hot under his touch. It was immensely more gratifying to massage and feel its breasts directly, though why this was mystified him. Physical contact held very little for him, in all his years. Never had touching another felt so…true. So right, somehow. The alien was clearly enjoying the attention, and the shifting between his legs intensified as the eldar, using its leverage in his lap, ground its hips down against his.
He realized the source – his penis was pulsing in time with his heartbeat, lengthening and straining within the confines of his tight bodyglove. He had never felt similar before, and dropped his hands to press one to his crotch in surprise, indeed confirming the hardened length there.
'What is-' the eldar laughed at his confusion, a high, bright sound, and leaned in to press its lips to his again. Another kiss. A thin hand joined his at his groin, wrapping around his bigger digits to draw him reluctantly away, then the eldar's other fingers dug into his bodysuit directly over his shaft, and he gasped aloud at a sudden jolt of unexpected sensation.
And the pressure in his head, in his mind, the drawn-tight strand finally pulled to its ultimate length and snapped, almost a physical crack behind the eyes and he saw stars, gasping, before a flood of emotion he did not understand broke across him. The eldar's hands at his crotch became…necessary, as critical to his being as a bolter in his hand. The sight of its breasts swaying before him was as enticing as an ork with its back turned. And the wide eyed, flushed expression written across its angular face fed some primordial urge inside him.
Whatever change occurred must have been visible, because the eldar licked her lips, a slow smile spreading across her face.
'There. The war-mask is gone. You are a man.'
'I have always been a man-'
'You were a space marine: the man hidden beneath but the desire for a woman runs strong.' She smirked and clenched fingers around his shaft. Even through the thick bodysuit he wanted to shout at the foreign feeling.
'I…I want you, but I do not know how. Or why. There is…it is not violence but it is, it is not – I wish to lay hands on you, but I do not wish your death.' A growl forced its way from his chest, irritation at the inability to find words boiling over.
'Lust, mon'keigh', the eldar hissed. 'It is lust. Let me teach you it.'
This time when her mouth found his, tongue exploring, he met her with an unrestrained ardour that saw their tongues clash and teeth find purchase, biting and teething just shy of damaging. It felt like a battle, he realized, seeking to overcome the other, to establish a form of dominance. That he understood.
He did not back down from battles, nor lose them. And he learned quickly the rules of every engagement.
When he grasped the eldar by her hair, fingers twining in the roots to yank her head to the side, burying his face against her skin and biting down at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, he was rewarded with a quiver that ran from her toes to her fingers and a deep whine that boiled from her throat. That he took note of. The primal noise pleased some confusing part of him, and he did it again, leaving red marks on the porcelain skin where his teeth found her.
When she rose on her knees, bringing her breasts to dangle before him, he buried his face in the soft mounds, licking and tasting the flesh, judging his success by the response of the alien in his arms. When he tongue a nipple into his mouth, stroking it with his tongue, tasting the salty sweat and skin he noted again the shiver of the alien in his arms.
He was caught up, swept away, as engaged as he was in any life-or-death duel. He sucked on the nipple in his mouth, drawing back and pulling her breast taut before letting it free with a moist pop, grinning ferally at the sight of the bounce back against her ribs. He did not know why this energized him so, or what the ultimate purpose was, but found he had no wish to stop. That too he noted.
How long they continued like this he could not say: their mouths exploring the other, him lavishing attention on her bare chest before he found her hands worrying at his bodyglove, tugging and pulling.
'I would see your body,' the eldar said with a fixed intensity and he did not think to deny or question. He disengaged his suit from the black carapace, detaching several ports, before stripping off the panels cleanly and tossing them aside. Already she was naked and vulnerable before him, and he was beyond confident to handle a single, weaponless alien should treachery rear its head.
The eldar seemed enraptured by his revealed body, running fingers along the chiseled architecture of his muscles, stroking along the ridges and valleys, running across his broad pectorals.
The feeling was pleasant, though the pressure his penis was exerting was growing painful.
So he stripped off the rest of his bodyglove, an eyebrow raising in curiosity as his shaft bounced free, nodding and standing tall and larger than he expected. Her hands immediately found it, wrapping around his shaft in a soft and hot touch that had him unconsciously bucking his hips into her grasp.
'That is-'
'Pleasant?' the eldar murmured, stroking her fingers from the base of his penis to the tip, sliding the skin back and forth. A warm fingertip stroked beneath the loose flesh, rubbing across the slick head of his penis. He groaned at the sensation – a previously unknown pleasure that he could not describe. It felt…right, like cleansing after a long mission, but far more intense and personal, in a way. All in all, he did not wish it to cease.
But the eldar had other plans in mind, releasing his shaft with one final squeeze that left him twitching before lifting herself from his lap to stand over him. He took the opportunity to adjust himself, shifting to lean against the wall, legs outstretched and separated. He watched, oddly amused, as his penis bounced in the air, a sheen of liquid gathering at the tip. Then he noticed what the eldar was doing and for a moment his tertiary lung inflated for he had ceased breathing.
She had rolled her bodyglove down her long legs and kicked it away, leaving her body bare before him.
He had seen nakedness before. Chaos cultists often exulted in their natural form, befouling themselves and eschewing covering to ensure all saw their depravity. He had seen baseline humans, slain and stripped of their gear for use by the living. He knew of the human body, male and female, at least – in abstract. Yet, something about the naked body of this eldar was different.
She stood before him, looking down, bare and softly backlit by the lume. He found he could not look away, fascinated by her form. The paleness of her skin, creased here and there by old scars. The gooseflesh that pebbled across her body. The way her hair fell loose to tickle at her breasts, which themselves reared proud and firm from her ribs. The ripples of firm muscles down her stomach, leading into an arc from hips that joined together in the curious hollow between her legs. It was an absence, a concavity from what he was most familiar with, made all the more fascinating by the flow of lines from hip to groin and the arc of thighs that framed it. He had never cared to study the female form but now it felt as if a vast and important knowledge had been hidden from him.
A little fold of flesh nestled in that absence, at the apex of her legs, and it was to this that all his attention was drawn like a moth to flame. He wanted her closer, now, with a sudden and unexpected force that almost lifted him from his seated position. The slightest sheen of lume-light reflecting from dampness along her inner thighs brought a rush of saliva to his mouth and his penis twitched in the cold air.
As if she sensed his urgency, she strode back over (and he found the motion of her legs mesmerizing, watching the slide of thighs past one another) and straddled him, lowering herself to once again sit in his lap. His penis caught between her thighs, pressed against her taut stomach. The feeling of her skin against his shaft stoked a fire in his guts, strange urges and desires churning and conflicting. He watched, fascinated, as his penis jumped and trembled, pulsing in time with each pound of his hearts. The liquid that dribbled from the tip (curious, as he felt no urge to urinate) smeared against her skin, sticky.
The overwhelming urge to strike her filled him, but it made no sense – he didn't desire her harm, not right now. But it circled him, urging him to action even as he tamped it down.
'This; this is what we both wanted.'
What emerged from his mouth was not words, per se, but a growl of intention and desire, as his hands found her waist, encircling her almost entirely, so slim was she and so broad his hands. The eldar inhaled a deep breath, rising a little above him so that his penis slid free, throbbing in the void between her thighs. A breathless anticipation struck him, like the time right before a drop, locked up in the dark of a droppod, waiting for the kinetic bang of the impellers -
'I will lead. You are of…formidable size.' Her hands grasped his shaft, slowly stroking up and down as she adjusted her body above him and he let her guide, hating to be led but also hungry to know the answer then – then – His eyes nearly bulged from his head as she slid the tip of his penis into the junction of her legs, an incomparable softness and wetness pressing against him before she bore down.
Soft, hot, wet flesh parted around him as she ground down her hips, his penis pressing into her in a way he could not quite see, not from his vantage, but with an all-encompassing shock that threatened to black out his sight. Her descent was slow and each grasping centimeter that slid along his shaft, pulling him deeper inside picked apart layers of his mental control until he could bear it no longer and hauled her down bodily. His fingers squeezed so tight into her hips that her skin bulged between his grasp but he was beyond notice.
He hilted himself inside her in one quick, sudden motion, shouting aloud at the clenching tunnel that enfolded every inch of his penis, eyes pinched shut at the overpowering pleasure, hearing her harsh cries at the sudden intrusion and feeling the scrabble of her hands on his chest. He felt the weight and cleft of her buttocks pressing against his testicles, felt the clenching of her muscles about his length. For a long moment neither moved as he reveled in the sensation of her around him, squeezing and tight. Such a feeling he had no idea could exist.
It was so perfectly right, so proper, so natural this action, like every part of him sighed a deep gasp of relief at the fulfilling of a desire never even understood until now. When she started to move on him, shifting her hips and stirring him inside her, he opened his eyes again to meet her flushed stare, mouth open and panting. Her entire body was shaking, head to toes, little trembles that he found oddly endearing.
'I-I said,' she stammered, voice cracking, 'mon'keigh, that I would lead. This can be…painful, for me.'
Strangely concerned, he asked if it was.
'No. But do not be too harsh. I will lead.'
And she did, lifting a little at a time and pressing back down. He kept his hands on her, gripping her hips to help lift her body up and press back down before sliding back to knead the elastic meat and dense muscle of her rear. With each thrust and stroke her body pulled against him, as if unwilling to let him free. The pleasure built and built, the driving urge to violence finally making sense: it cohered into a desire to thrust, to penetrate her, again and again, to take her with force unrelenting. To what end…eluded him. Simply for the act itself?
The urge to grip tight her waist and with his greater strength pound at this enticing hole was strong but he tamped it down. This eldar - she was sharing something with him, something that he had never known and his sense of honor despite her alien nature held strong.
The sight of her writhing on him, body undulating smoothly and languidly, pulling almost off his shaft before sliding back down to the very base: breasts bouncing and swaying, rose-colored flush spreading across her chest and shoulders satisfied an immensely and particularly male part of him that he had not known he had.
The hitch and quiver of her breathing as she gasped and moaned little noises with each deep penetration stoked fires in his own chest until he was growling counterpart, grunting with each thrust, hands digging into her backside to grind her hips against his. The urge to press deeper, ever deeper, to fill every possible inch of her and more was almost overwhelming. Another pressure built in him, but this time swelling about the base of his penis, welling up like molten fury from somewhere deep inside him, his testicles nearly aching under the strain, his penis feeling like velvet shod iron, so stiff it was. It felt almost akin to an urgent and nearly painful need to urinate yet promising an infinitely more satisfying relief. Another sensation he had never known but was hungry to experience.
The eldar was louder now, vocalizing in her strange language, mouth falling open with great sighs and gasps, eyes pulled shut in ecstasy. She moaned in her lyrical tongue, a hand sinking between them to caress her body, just above where they joined, stroking and rubbing at apex of the lips spread wide about his girth. Dimly he noted the action as well as her deep-throated purr that followed. The feeling built and built, coiling like a spring, packing pressure into his groin as the overpowering urge to push himself as deeply into this clenching tunnel as he could slowly overrode his control.
He felt himself approaching some precipice, some final point that he could not describe, the urge to urinate-but-not overpowering and his control finally snapped. He clenched both hands about her buttocks, relishing at how they filled his palms, and started hammering his hips upward, yanking her down in a rapid staccato to meet his rising penis.
She shouted aloud but did not combat him, simply digging her nails into his chest, anchoring herself to his broad pectorals as he wildly pounded into her. Sweat poured from him, unexpected for such short exertion, and he felt a wash of sticky fluids trickling down his shaft to soak his testicles as he thrust.
In and out, in and out, drawing his penis free until but the head remained within her delicious heat before plunging back, slapping his hips to hers, hilted to the base as his testicles pressed into the crease of her rear. Each moist slap of their bodies only stoked him higher, rapidly reaching out for that precipice even as he desired for the sensation to last forever until-
Shouting and swearing, bellowing oaths he felt a great explosion that ripped down his penis, like his spine itself liquefied and tried to burst free, white-hot and physical, and he thrust up into her one final time, his addled mind trying to practically clamber inside the warm body he nestled within. His entire body bowed, hips surging for the ceiling. He crushed her to his chest with both arms, enfolding her and howling at the ceiling as he came, over and over, feeling almost as if he everted deep into the slick prison his penis was wedged within.
Dimly he heard her counterpart exclamation, feeling a spark of pain at one shoulder, but he was lost in the overpowering sensation of his very first orgasm in seventy-seven years. It seemed to last forever, each contraction tugging a groan deep in his chest. It was beyond pleasure, beyond reason – cathartic and all-encompassing, he saw shatters of light behind clenched shut eyes and every fractured facet of his psyche existed in each burst from him. She shuddered and flexed around him, almost painfully tight and with rhythmic strokes that seemed to haul more and more from the depths of his testicles with each clenching, straining flex of his glutes.
Until he fell boneless and relaxed, still embedded within the eldar with her limp and quivering body sprawled against him.
He lay there on the dirty floor, forgotten papers beneath him as he panted and twitched, penis still occasionally jerking-halfheartedly in response to unexpected soft tremors that ran through his partner's body. Absentmindedly he stroked along her back, enjoying the appealing sweat-soaked skin and firm bands of muscle. She nuzzled closer, burying her face against his chest, lank and tangled hair tickling his overheated skin.
His mind was…not a single coherent thought could accrete. It was the most satisfied and content he had felt in…perhaps years, or more. Not since he had been personally commended by his company's Wayfarer and honored by the Laurel had he felt even close to this at peace and centered. Yet in this moment it was entirely different. The feeling of the eldar – of a distinctly and very soft female body sprawled on him, breasts squashed against his broad chest, smooth thighs spread with his penis nestled between – touched him on some primal level. The way she moulded against him was like a hidden piece of a puzzle just now discovered and so perfectly did it fit.
What he had just done, what they had just done – was it heresy?
Was it a betrayal of all he was?
What even had they done?
Nothing in his decades, centuries even, of service could explain this.
Nothing his Wayfarer ever spoke of could answer this.
To abhor the heretic, to sanction the witch, to stand against the xeno.
Yet he had accepted this eldar's aid for so many months. Necessity had driven him to it, and he knew that no fault could be found in such an alliance of necessity. It was indeed not unheard of. Unpleasant, unnatural, and unwanted yes – but not entirely unheard of. There were whispers that even the Lord Commander, Roboute Guilliman, returned after ten thousand years, had accepted the aid of the eldar. So this – was this acceptable as well?
This intensely physical, unexpectedly pleasurable action. Was it no different than, say, a particularly strange and unconventional duel between allies? Then the eldar stirred in his arms, whimpering as she trembled, to gaze up at him. The look in her eyes, almost colorless and huge, the sweat that plastered her hair across her forehead and face wildly, swollen lips and bright red flush –
His penis stirred inside her, and he realized it had not softened nor returned to form. His hands found her rear again, taking a cheek in each palm, and he gently and delicately rolled her hips, just barely shifting her up and down on him. She shuddered, eyes fluttering shut, sucking her lower lip into her mouth to nibble at it.
The yearning to use her came again and this time he did not push it away. Instead he shoved aside his confusion, his concerns, and simply chose to act. To let instinct and desire guide him.
In a flash he had her on her back instead, staring up at him, a surprised gasp escaping her mouth as he flipped their positions so quickly. Both legs he gathered up in his arms, pressing them back to hook heels against his shoulders, stretching the long muscles along her thighs and calves. With her legs pressed together like this and elevated he realized she was tighter, more constricting, clinging more desperately to his penis as he slowly began to pull back and thrust forward again. It was perhaps even better than before, the anticipation of release now egging him on.
Before long he was flush against her, pressing her knees to her chest, snapping hips forward to sink home again and again, grunting and snarling at the intensity of feeling that yanked sparks from behind his eyes. The eldar could but ride out his lust. Her smaller body rocked and shook with each heavy stroke, unintelligible and broken syllables and stumbled words spilling from her lips as her eyes rolled back under heavy lids and she clenched hard and long around him. With his head pressed into the crook of her neck, inhaling deep the musk and aroma of her sweat and skin, he felt the constant tickle of her long, thin ears as he thrust. Unthinking he raised his head, snaring the tip in his lips and running his tongue along its lower edge.
The way her entire body tensed told him he had found some weakness and he nibbled with the lightest of care at the tip of her ear. The eldar shrieked under him, suddenly erupting in spasms, not just meeting his thrusts but wildly rolling her hips as best she could to devour his penis with her body, practically begging him with her actions to go deeper, harder. Unintelligible words flowed endlessly from her gasping lips, spilling out as she bucked against him. Finding it impossible to be focus, he simply took as much of her ear into his mouth as he could, stroking his tongue along the crease and arc of it.
'More,' she moaned, her command of Gothic nearly lost, 'mo-o-o-re…' Each thrust hitched her voice, forcing out the moaned demand. He obliged, worrying her ear with his mouth, pressing her body into the ground with his and ravaging without end.
He peaked another two times within her, that same erupting burst that ripped its way free of him as his testicles heaved and tightened.
By the third time he ached, feeling overdrawn and spent and he slumped back from her, releasing her body to slide free of his penis with a sodden sound. He panted, kneeling over her, one fist planted by her side to hold himself upright. She trembled on the floor as he groaned around the final few contractions that launched strings of cloudy liquid free of him to splatter across her sweat-painted abdominals and breasts covered in red marks from fingers and teeth. Between her legs she dribbled a large amount of the same liquid, flowing free from what he now properly saw as a soft hole hidden by pink folds, now flushed, swollen and dripping with their combined emissions. Thick and milky-white it crept out with each clench and roll of her hips.
Curious, he stroked a finger through the streaks on her chest and brought it to his mouth, tasting it.
Salty and slightly bitter; his enhanced senses found sugars and protein.
Every muscle burned, secondary heart still pounding, and he groaned as he laid himself down next to the eldar, oddly desiring to remain close to her. He propped himself on one elbow, looking over her nude and disheveled form. He coughed to clear his throat, before murmuring low.
'Are you well, eldar?' She did not respond, eyes still closed, hips slowly rotating in little circles, fingers clenched into fists. Her abs still twitched now and then, a smooth undulation. She seemed utterly boneless, legs and arms strewn haphazardly still where he released them and for a moment he was concerned he had lost control too much and permanently damaged the alien.
Then she groaned, reaching out with a shaking hand to feel for him before slapping against his side.
'Mharahi raen'lar yai,' she muttered, 'come closer.' Rather than adjust himself, he simply reached out and hauled her closer, settling her smaller form against him, nestled in the curve of his body.
'Better.' She looked up at him, blinking, and he felt the curious urge to kiss her.
So he did.
She reciprocated, but it was much calmer, far less frenetic meeting than before. A press of lips, a brush of tongue and they parted.
'I admit,' she smiled, 'I cannot walk. Or move altogether, I suspect.'
'I am sorry, if I caused injury.' Her free hand gently rubbing across his chest, she shook her head.
'You have much to learn. You caused no harm. But rather much pleasure. Much. I was…I was not expecting such vigor.'
'Then it was pleasant for you.' She gestured at herself.
'Wonderfully so,' she admitted, 'though perhaps next time I will lead. As I had intended.'
'It was difficult to resist. This – the feeling I had not expected.'
'Then you have not done this before?'
'This? Whatever it was? No.'
''Whatever it is'?' she quoted back at him, a smirk teasing her features. 'You do not know mating? Truly?' He frowned. Mating, yes. Sex, in the abstract. Procreation. Mortals did it and the new generation was the result. The specifics never mattered nor the mechanics.
'Mating is for procreation. I am Astartes, you are-' she cut him off.
'Mating is for many things, Astartes. Children are only one purpose. Pleasure is another. Bonding. Sharing of trust.'
'Then what we did-'
'Lust as well. The want for another's body. I grew attracted to you over these months. So too did you for me. The difference is I understood the feelings.' He nodded, mulling over her explanation. Mating for the purpose of pleasure and trust. A strange idea and one that did not gel entirely with him. She had to be leaving something out – he knew mating was between a male and a female, yet for these purposes other than procreation – surely that then did not preclude other pairings? Yet he admitted the unexpected interest he found in the eldar was solely due to her female attributes. The softness of her skin, even over the taut muscles: shape of her breasts, the sweetness of her mouth, the incandescent sensations found between her legs.
She was not explaining everything but he accepted it for now.
'You have shown me much, eldar. And I have much to consider. Perhaps we should speak…further. Later.' Her eyes slid shut, and she nestled closer. He let his head drop, pillowed on one arm. The stark hardness of the tile floor beneath them did not register to him, having endured and slept in far, far worse conditions. It did not appear to concern the eldar either.
'A fine idea.' Already her voice was muzzy and slow, and he felt her breathing grow rhythmic and deeper as she slipped into slumber.
He allowed himself to slide into rest too, segments of his mind turning off as he drifted, always staying semi-aware but allowing each part of his brain to power down and recuperate.
Always he was aware of the presence of the eldar against him. Her soft body, warm skin and long, relaxed breaths. The beat of her heart.
It was…
Good.