Reading the preceding story 'At Peak Efficiency' isn't necessary to understand this. If you want to, go for it, I'll wait. If you don't, the pertinent info from that one is: the warrior in these stories is a big, sith pureblood juggernaut, he's good at reading emotions, can manipulate the Force into temporary, solid objects, and he and Quinn aren't an item but they've done the do before. Everything else is just in-game knowledge.
And this is the longest sex scene I've ever written. Go me. Enjoy~
By all accounts it should have worked. The two war droids should have shot the Sith full of holes within seconds; a quick and merciful if somewhat messy death. But the droids hadn't won. They were strewn about Quinn's feet, reduced to sparking wrecks; chunks of durasteel and melted electronics littered the floor emitting a stench of ozone and burning plastics. He had gone into this mission from Lord Baras knowing that if his calculations weren't flawless it would spell the end for him. Either struck down by Amon for the betrayal, or by Baras for the failure.
He hadn't wanted to do this. Not only for the fact that Quinn admired Lord Amon's immense physical power, or that Amon had his lips to enough ears that it wouldn't be in error to call him influential, or that he was capable of making immense strides for the Empire in his own strange way, but because he was one of the very few people Quinn would actually want to call a friend. That made this whole thing that much more distasteful. But the regret hadn't made him hold back in any way. He had personally programmed and modified the two droids, utilizing every bit of combat data he'd gleaned from observing Lord Amon's fighting skills. And he'd also been there himself to back them up, dodging and sprinting and firing streams of bolts right alongside theirs.
And it still hadn't been enough. Here he stood, panting open-mouthed over the smoking remains of his well-tuned droids, hair plastered wetly to his forehead, and right hand still barely clinging to the grip of his blaster. It was over, and all he could feel was that cold, hollow, absolutely wretched feeling when you've done something wrong and all that's left is for the consequences to come home.
He was dead.
He knew it with complete certainty as Amon finally lifted his head and opened his eyes on Quinn, unerringly locating him without the need to search.
At first he'd thought it strange that Amon would remain kneeling in front of him after the droids had been dispatched, pressing a large hand to his side where he'd received his only injury from them and letting his attention drift from Quinn as he caught his breath. But as that golden gaze fell upon him again, he realized with a chill that he had never truly been a threat to the Sith. The droids had been an annoyance, and Quinn himself a mere distraction. At no point had he had a chance against the Emperor's Wrath, and as the thought settled, it came with some small measure of comfort to know that he was wholly outmatched and everything was completely out of his hands. This gamble was lost, and all that was left was to wait. But that couldn't stop the involuntary shudder that ran through him as Amon stood and drew himself up to his full, terrifying height and simply watched him from across the deck.
Lord Amon was friendly to nearly everyone he met; smiled and laughed frequently; preferred listening and asking over talking; kept track of his strange, mismatched crew's favorite drinks and equipment preferences. Considerate, in a word. He was quiet and well-read and liked collecting exotic flowers, of all things. Which was why it was so easy, at times, to forget that beneath all of that he was a brutal and efficient killer with a taste for scaring the daylights out of his enemies. And now the beam of that insane energy had turned onto him, and it was incredibly difficult to not just re-cloak, turn, and try to run. He might have if he'd thought it would do any good.
The Sith took a step toward him, his boots loud on the polished metal floor. A dreamy sort of paralysis fell over him; Quinn relaxed his body, dropped his arms fully to his side, and tilted his head back in a subtle display of his throat. Trying to appear as defenseless as possible. He prayed his death wouldn't be too horribly painful, but wasn't really expecting any kind of mercy after what he'd done. Tried to do.
Amon spoke a single, soft word as he stalked across the room to grab him by the front of his jacket.
"Quinn."
He could feel every ounce of anger and disappointment in that one utterance. Amon twitched a finger to the side and Quinn felt his blaster rip out of his hand and clatter across the floor.
"You're in an awful lot of trouble," Amon growled as his claws twisted through Quinn's clothes and scraped across his chest in burning lines. The Sith was immensely bigger than he was and he was using his size to his full advantage right now; standing close enough for Quinn to smell the fragrant oils in his long hair and to see the ooze of dark blood under the cracked part of his chest armor. That one, single place where one of the droid's bolts had punched through his shield. He craned down over Quinn, practically enveloping him as he roughly jerked him even closer. Quinn's heart jolted and he took a quick breath, both drowning in fear and intensely aware of how his body was being drawn up against the Sith's.
"Do you remember what I said to you after you knocked out Pierce?" Amon jerked his head backwards to the large lump of unconscious man still lying on the floor far behind them.
Quinn nodded after a brief pause.
"Why don't you remind me what it was?"
Quinn's eyes closed to briefly shut out the baleful gaze that was boring into him. He could recall it, just not with that look focused on him. "You said, 'You'd better hope your calculations are perfect, Captain. Because if these things don't kill me, I'm going to rip you apart.'" By the time he finished speaking, his voice was a horrified whisper.
"That's exactly right, good memory."
And now he was being lifted into the air, a firm, invisible pressure around his neck and chest keeping him suspended at eye-level to Amon with the tips of his boots dangling a little more than a foot off the ground. Another rush of pointless adrenaline and fear washed through him as he anticipated what being dismembered by a Sith might feel like. How many limbs he could lose before he would pass out from shock and blood-loss. He swallowed. Or perhaps Amon would keep his severed veins and arteries pinched closed so he'd be alive and conscious far past when he should be. Nearly panicking, and wasn't that a rare occurrence, he tried to move against the Force restraints and found he couldn't. Couldn't do much of anything besides hang there and stare wide-eyed at the yellow eyes and sharp, white teeth in front of his face.
"Maybe I should. Or maybe I should just tear out an eye so you can't shoot right anymore. Crush these talented hands so you can never backstab anyone again. Rip your jaw out so you won't even have that handsome face to fall back on." Amon reached out and ran his fingertips along Quinn's cheek, just as gentle as if he were about to kiss him instead of maim him.
"Please," Quinn panted. It was ugly but he couldn't keep it from spilling out. "Please don't."
Amon ignored him. "Then I could send you back to your master. Let Baras decide what he wants to do with you when you're mangled and useless and defeated." His eyes darkened and his lips lifted in an angry snarl. The pressure surrounding Quinn's torso doubled down into a rib-cracking clench and he screamed out, expelling his breath and then unable to draw it back in. His head swam and pulsed with the blood trapped there and his vision began fading away in big black swathes. There was a dizzy moment to think that, considering every tool in Amon's arsenal, this might not be such a bad way to go before everything snapped back and he dropped down to the floor. He landed awkwardly on one foot, almost falling but for Amon grabbing him around the waist and shoulder; their bodies pressed together in some odd parody of a pair of slowdancers.
One clawed hand lifted up and Quinn flinched away as it moved toward his face, thinking Amon meant to fulfill his threat of gouging out his eye, but it settled softly against his forehead instead. The fingers drew up, brushing his damp hair back away from his face and then slid down his cheek to his neck where they briefly rubbed across the delicate skin over his carotid artery. Quinn's breathing hitched, but the motion didn't seem meant to hurt him. Not yet anyway. What was he waiting for? Was he just going to keep scaring him until he dropped dead of a coronary?
"This is unbearably cliché, but I have to ask. Why?" Amon asked. The hand released him with a light shove and Quinn took a few steps back, automatically probing over his sternum and ribs to feel around for anything broken or fractured. A funny habit to indulge now. "Why would you choose to side with Baras?"
Ah. 'Why?' might be cliché, but it was for a reason: it was a good question, and one he felt Amon deserved an answer to. Although for this situation, Quinn felt his why was incredibly lackluster. He didn't have a good reason for betraying a Sith Lord he liked at the command of one that he didn't. It may have made sense, but it wasn't good.
"I felt I had to," Quinn said quietly. "I've been under Lord Baras's command for a very long time and he's given me everything I have." A pause. "Even my position here with you was more his decision than yours or mine. He has had complete control of my military career for years… without him, I would be nothing. No one else cared in all that time."
Within those years he hadn't been advanced hardly at all and hadn't been able to do anything that really, truly mattered, but the alternative had seemed far, far worse. An easy if boring stationing on Balmorra was preferable to an unfair court-martial led by Broysc or whoever he could bully into doing it for him. If that had been allowed to happen he would have likely ended up completely stripped of any sort of rank and permanently exiled to an abhorrent planet like Exigar or Geonosis. Living out the rest of his days as some inconsequent physician for whatever village might take him in. Quinn frowned at the grey flooring between them.
"...And if I defied him now, with all that I owe him, powerful as he is, he would either ruin me or kill me as easily as thinking. I had to take my chances with this, even if I was opposed to it."
"Mmm. I can appreciate that."
Quinn's eyes snapped up to Lord Amon's, wondering what on Kaas that meant.
"You aren't giving yourself enough credit again, Quinn. But yes, you're right, he does have considerably more political pull than I do. He won't though, not for long." Amon turned his face away and unhooked his saber hilt from his belt, bouncing it in his palm as he stared off. And then he slowly clenched his fist around it. "I'm going to kill him, Quinn. I'm going to bury my saber into that ridiculous mask he wears and either destroy or take everything he has for myself."
On the word "kill", he'd thumbed the button to ignite the blade and the harsh yellow glow fell over both of them, beating out the red aura from the room's lights. Quinn had asked about it once, curious if the color of a lightsaber crystal signified anything about the user. Amon, a much happier version of him, had laughed and winked at the time, saying that he was sure it did to most people, but for him, he just liked yellow because it brought out his eyes. It did now, bringing the mellow gold shine of them up to a ferocious glitter. Quinn felt lost in them, unable to look away, even with the deadly heat of the ignited saber mere feet away from him.
Amon turned his gaze back from his blade to refocus on Quinn. The look was smoldering with rage and possessiveness and it sent an uncomfortable chill down Quinn's back. His breath came in shallow and quick as he waited for the arm to rise, the body to lunge, and the beam of light to slice down and neatly bisect him.
And then Amon smiled. A cynical ghost of the cheerful, carefree smile he usually had. "And that includes you, Captain. Lucky for you, I have a little bit better appreciation for my associates than Baras does. I don't throw away useful people on some half-baked assassination plot or paranoid fantasy at the first chance I get. I'm going to transform the Empire and you… are going to come with me."
The relief that flooded through Quinn was nearly embarrassing in how overwhelming it was. But who wouldn't feel this way? Certain death after likely torture turning around to what sounded like, if not actual forgiveness, at least a chance at something. Some way to maybe earn his way back. And, gods, that feeling of being wanted. His throat clicked.
"If, Quinn." The slight smile was gone now.
Quinn raised his eyebrows, barely breathing.
"If nothing like this ever happens again. I believe in second chances, but that's my limit." He lowered his saber and held it at his side. "I also believe in choice. So, tell me: are you going to come back my side or would you rather return to Baras? I won't stop you if you truly want to leave. But if you go now, you aren't coming back. And you can believe me when I say I'm going to do my utmost to ruin the little empire Baras has built up and everything in it."
Trepidation and remorse and fear and some kind of blind, screaming elation were twisting through his chest and head, but Quinn managed his voice into something calm and collected. "I will stay. It's far more than I deserve, my lord, thank you. And if it's worth anything, I entirely regret doing this to you." He hoped he sounded sincere. He was.
Amon looked like he was about to speak, but Quinn's holocommunicator chose that moment to trill out its incoming call tone. At a gesture from Amon, he pulled the device from his ripped coat and thumbed through the display, reading the string of digits that appeared.
"It's Baras," he said.
The saber snapped off and Amon's face grew even more serious than it had been. "Well, here's where it begins, Quinn. How are you going to spin this to my advantage?"
Quinn's mind raced as he went through several different scenarios and finally settled on one that Baras might be likely to accept, if only because he wanted it to be true so badly. Now that he'd heard Lord Amon's words and had a few moments to think it over… this entire situation seemed like a set-up. Not only for Amon, for him as well. A lone officer and two war droids against a full-fledged Sith Lord with a powerful command of the Force could only come out one way, now that he truly thought about it without Baras's words of encouragement and bravado ringing in his head.
And even so, the droids hadn't performed nearly as well as they should have. The initial data given to him by Baras had been faulty, he'd been too distracted to look into it further, and the result had been catastrophic failure. Anger flared within him at the knowledge, and disgust at himself for being so thoroughly duped. There had definitely been a pattern of Baras expending his agents like this and it had been happening with a much higher frequency of late. He'd somehow thought himself immune to it, perhaps due to just how long they had worked together and his exemplary performance on all things required. More fool him.
"I will appear to be severely injured and tell him it was a close thing but his plan was successful, that you've been killed and I am dying. This may possibly give us some breathing room in the future, or even the element of surprise if you'd like to go on the offensive. He may be a little wary but I believe I can be convincing enough."
Amon nodded. "Do it," he said, and quickly backed away out of the holo's pickup range, striding over to where Lieutenant Pierce lay in a heap. Probably to begin coaxing him back to consciousness.
It made him sick to address Baras as 'my lord' now, but he did it anyway for consistency's sake. As he suspected, Baras seemed surprised to see Quinn alive at all though he hid it well. Quinn kept catching minor things he would say or not say that revealed how he hadn't planned on needing to bother with him again. He spun his story to Baras; holding his hand over what he hoped looked like a mortal wound and, for once, thankful for the low-resolution projection generated by the holo. He breathed long and ragged as he told Baras how he'd poisoned Amon and then caught him completely off-guard with the droids but had gotten a saber through the gut in the end. He allowed a small measure of offense to seep through when Baras questioned if he was sure Amon was dead or not, somewhat insulted at the thought that as a field medic he wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a corpse and a live body. The call ended with a smug and rote-sounding you've-done-your-duty-for-the-Empire farewell from Baras. It left a sour feeling in Quinn's stomach.
"Nice work." Amon was lurking to his side, only now approaching as the holo flickered off. Pierce seemed to be awake now, sitting leaned against the wall with his head between his knees and his eyes scrunched shut.
Quinn locked and pocketed his holo and pulled at his jacket, still trying and failing to straighten the tattered cloth out. "Thank you, my lord."
The Sith stood in front of him again, cutting off his view of Pierce now angrily drinking a bottle of something. One of his hands gripped Quinn by the chin, forcing him to look up. Even if his face didn't show it, Amon was still incredibly angry. Quinn could feel it in his grasp, and though he wasn't Force sensitive at all, could still feel the oppressive cloud of fury hanging around him. Not only that, but the feeling of possessiveness was back in full effect. Everything in his posture shouted 'You are mine', and Quinn had to hold back a shiver.
"Alright, Captain. This is what's going to happen. The three of us are going back to the ship, and you are going to to issue a very personal apology to myself and Lieutenant Pierce. Do you understand me?" As he asked, his thumb brushed over Quinn's lower lip.
It wasn't something that could be easily misinterpreted. He nodded, unable to stop his tongue from nervously darting out to run over where he'd been touched. "Perfectly, my lord."
"Good. You always were quick, Quinn." Amon leaned down and kissed Quinn's mouth, licking over where Quinn's tongue had dampened it. The aura of dread and the feeling of Amon's lips on his forced a low moan out and he had to refrain from grasping the black breastplate in front of him for balance. He felt dizzy and deeply uneasy, but the feeling of gratefulness won out over everything else. There was a chance still, to prove himself back onto the crew he'd nearly thrown away.
Amon drew back, eyes slanted down at him. "If you do well, it'll be a good start. Think of it as both a punishment and a team-building exercise. See you aboard, Captain."
And then he slipped into darkness.