A/N: Thanks to Sawahii for being my Beta :3 and to Shiaori who keeps giving me such nice ideas.

I know I've rated this T, but this chapter is a leaning toward the M side, so if you value your sanity or have innocent sensitivities to M things then… yeah… you might want to skip this chapter.

Stealing Death

Crowe's body throbbed painfully and he groaned as his mind hazed back into the land of the living. His grey hued eyes opened slowly and he noticed that he was in a sitting position unable to move his arms, legs and most of his body. The shock realization of this made his mind jump awake and he now noticed he was tied down to a chair with quite a lot of dark red tape, and that he was still wearing the skin tight one piece swimsuit and stockings, minus the heels.

"Morning, Crowe." Arumat said amusedly, as he sat next to him in the rec. room, sipping from a green coffee mug that said 'Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough' in bold black lettering.

A lot of questions floated to the Earthlings mind and he wasn't sure which he wanted to ask first so he continued to sit there dazed and confused, wondering if perhaps he wasn't dreaming all this. This ludicrous situation he now found himself in was so bizarre it couldn't be possible and he would have pinched himself if he was capable of movement.

Arumat merely sat there with a smug look on his face, silently drinking from the captain's coffee mug. That wasn't the worst of it, as the Eldarian was dressed in a red saffron dress. Yes, the same dress Bacchus had made, the same dress Arumat had made the recipe card for and the very same one that Arumat stole. His mind refused to comprehend all this and his face echoed the insanity plainly.

"I'll throw candy at you until you go into insulin shock!" Crowe replied, not knowing why he said what he did. It really must be a dream, both seeing and saying such nonsensical things.

"I must have hit you harder than I thought." Arumat said seeing the man half crazed, and who wouldn't be, seeing him as he was now, clad in a red dress, black fishnet stockings and red heels.

"You drive me crazy…" Crowe added and remembered there was an Earth song that went something along those lines. "Like no one can… You drive me crazy and I just can't help myself~" He belted out in his soprano like voice.

"Clearly, it appears I've punched the sanity out of you, but I doubt you had it to begin with." Arumat replied finishing off the liquid in the cup and setting it back down. "Coffee has such a bitter aftertaste."

"Yeah, well… that's why mints were invented." Crowe replied then added as an afterthought. "And why people smoke American Spirit cigarettes after sex."

Arumat wasn't quite sure what a cigarette was, but if it was anything like coffee maybe he'd try it. Earth habits didn't seem terribly bad, even if they were stupidly pointless the majority of the time.

"So… ah… why am I tied to a chair, and why are you in a dress you refused to so adamantly wear?" Crowe asked getting to the important matters now, still unknowing if he were in a dream or not but it did make him want to try out all kinds of crazy things to see if he really was dreaming. However, he also didn't want a second helping of painful punch in the solar plexus if this was indeed reality.

"Payback." Arumat said simply as he cracked his knuckles, his golden eyes looking amusedly at the other. He was clearly having a good time tormenting the red-haired man, and he had just barely begun.

"For what!" Crowe asked testing the restraining red tape binding him. It was oddly strong for tape but not coarse enough to be rope, though the sturdiness of it was of the same.

"It's a long list, I'm sure you don't have to ask." Arumat whispered, and his voice was a mix of anger and awkwardness. "Though I don't suppose I entirely mind your little stunts as it took my mind off things."

"Yeah, I guess implying you're a virgin would rank up at the top of that." Crowe said offhandedly. "So… are you?" He continued and wished he had thought better of it. He really should learn to keep his mouth shut sometimes.

Arumat gave him an icy glare that could have frozen over the burning river of fire, Styx. Crowe decided to stay out of that issue and say no more about it.

"At the very least, you've gotten your little fantasy of seeing me in a dress." Arumat replied. "Enjoy it while you can."

Crowe opened his mouth to say something in the affirmative but then thought better of it, or at least the perverted comment he had wanted to say anyways. "It looks good on you."

"Would look even better on the floor, right?" Arumat said, catching on to how much of a pervert Crowe could be at times, but he had learned from Bacchus that Earth men his age were easily excitable when the correct method was used.

"It sounds so sinister when you say it." Crowe responded as Arumat had the uncanny sense to sound emotionless with most of his words, other than the times he was angrily shouting threats of death or irritating swears at people he dubbed as amateurs.

"Not as sinister as this." Arumat replied and bent down so that he could violently press his lips against the red-haired earth captains own.

Alarms, sirens, bells and whistles (and maybe even a slide whistle, because Crowe was just that insane) went off in the red-haired man's mind at the completely unexpected action. If it were at all possible he'd pass out, but his mind refused that, and continued to reel and twist around like a spiny top. He felt as if he couldn't breathe, but that was just Arumat's mouth on his, asphyxiating him.

The one thing Crowe would never be able to forget in his entire life, even if he became brainwashed by the Church of Sydonai, or took to spring cleaning his mind with dangerous chemicals, was the fact that Arumat kissed just as fervently as he would kill in battle.

It would be the first and probably only time Crowe would have absolutely nothing to say, the first and last time his mouth would hang open in utter flabbergasting shock. His lips tasting like bitter coffee, not at all like the kind he would make (and Arumat really had no idea how to work the machine at all in fact.)

"Now I've stolen something from you, so that makes us even." Arumat said trying to looking intimidating in a sexy red dress, fishnets and high heels which was short of impossible. He did look strangely sexy for a man in a dress however and even more so when he walked, the material flowing like a crimson river down the man's powerfully built body, and the way it swayed as he moved when he walked, making the slit in the side part, showing off the man's pale muscled leg.

Watching was the only thing Crowe could do as the Eldarian turned and walked away from him, his voice caught like a large lump in his throat, a ping-pong ball that he could not swallow and felt as if he were still unable to draw breath, the evenly said words not yet even registering in his dulled mind.

"Amateur." Arumat chuckled, walking the rest of the way out with more grace in heels then Crowe would ever be able to, almost as if the Eldarian had a habit of walking around in such things.

It had been a little over an hour since Crowe had been left in the room alone. His arms displaying deep red marks where he had violently struggled against the tape in order to free himself, his legs the same as well. It wasn't the struggle of escape. It was the struggle of a sexual frustrated young adult.

No matter what he tried to think of, the red-haired man could simply not get the prior event off his mind. The way it all had felt. Those pale lips crushing against his own, the powerful hand pressing down roughly on his upper thigh.

Such torture! He wanted to scream in agony of it all. Arumat was truly a cruel man, doing such a thing to him and then leaving with a sly grin on his face. Crowe was a straight man. Straight as an arrow! Yet… still… the memory of what happened continued to burned heatedly in his mind.

Worse yet, was the utter misfortune of wearing such a ridiculous outfit he had only planned to wear for such a short amount of time. It gave away a lot in the matter of how his body was feeling. He wasn't so much angry as he was merely frustrated, both types, the emotional and the physical as the swelling in his body refused to do anything but shout at him to remedy it.

It had to subside at some point, right? However many unsexy thoughts he tried to have it didn't seem to do a lick of good as he just found his mind rejecting horrifying ideas such as Bacchus having erotic attachments. Which lead to sex with his wife in some strange type of kinky porno and he was right back to being frustrated again.

Being on a spaceship with an all male crew was mostly likely similar to being stuck on a navy ship. A man has certain needs and as much as people tried to ignore the indecency of it all, there came a point where things happened behind closed doors that weren't always the best of ideas. Even being the talented SRF captain that he was, he was still just a young adult and that meant his body also needed some type of relief at times.

This wasn't exactly what he was planning for when he set out to make the Eldarian forget the troubles that seem likely to crush him under its weight. However, he did tend to have a big mouth and a bad sense of humor, and he wouldn't have dreamed it would get him into so much trouble.

He did have to laugh despite all this. Seeing the scary intimating figure of Arumat in a sexy red dress, something that would have been highly unlikely aside from losing a bet, was priceless. To him, it meant the man had granted him some measure of respect and possible friendship. While not being able to break the man of thinking he was death, at least he was able to break the hard cold shell around him, even if it was bit by bit.

He heard footfalls behind him and attempted to twist his head around toward the sound to see who it was approaching him.

"How do you like being my prey for a change?" The deep voice of the silver-haired Eldarian spoke up as he walked by the red-haired man and sat down across from him.

Arumat was dressed back in his usual Eldarian armor that displayed his chest in such an arousing manner he was surprised the man didn't have girls all over him. The fierce and frightening aura that seemed to always surround him might have something to do with that though.

"You're a very cruel man." Crowe replied and gave him a raspberry.

"Keep that tongue out and I might bite it off." Arumat joked, and seemed to be in a good, but dangerous mood.

That got Crowe to quietly glare at the older man, an oddity for sure, as Crowe never took to glaring or being unfriendly in hardly any case, even against foes. Eventually he took to biting his lip as Arumat continued to give him a disinterested look as if he were waiting for him to ask something.

"Just tell me already." Crowe groaned, buckling under the pressure of the man sitting there passively. "Because it looks like you're waiting for me to say something more and as you can see, I got nothing."

Arumat chuckled, something he rarely did. "Did I distract you that much?"

"What are you getting at?" Crowe asked raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"You stole my chance of death from me and I just stole your first kiss." Arumat replied back, emotionless as usual. How exactly he had known that was to anyone's guess, but there was a certain silver and green hued robotic entity that knew entirely too much about people and freely gave out information when asked.

"I wouldn't call that even, as I bet that was your first kiss too." Crowe said back not knowing if that was true or not. "Why… why did you do that, anyhow?"

"You're not the only one who knows a man's secrets." Arumat replied even toned.

"So, Bacchus has Earthling fetishes or something in that computer brain of his?" Crowe asked not really understanding what the Eldarian was planning in all of this.

"Something like that." Arumat replied being indirect on purpose.

"Say, do you like being stepped on with heels?" Crowe asked, changing the subject.

It was Arumat's turn to raise his brow in surprise. "No. Is that what you were planning with these things?"

The Eldarian wouldn't admit it out loud but he rose one of his feet in front of Crowe and he had seen the man's foot had swollen, making it near impossible to pry the shoe off. It must have been the material they were made of that gave the Eldarian some type of allergic reaction.

"I'd help but you sort of have me tied up at the moment." Crowe said as the man placed his foot back down. He almost wished he wasn't because he desperately needed to take a very long shower in which he would be shamelessly doing things to himself.

"I think I like you this way." Arumat replied, a small smile on his face.

"Oh no, whatever are you going to do to me, Aru-nii~" Crowe said, imitating a young girl's voice.

"Keep that up and I'll make sure you get even more frustrated then you already are." Arumat said grinning that sly smile of his again. Something about that look was awfully sinister and maybe Crowe should pick his words more carefully from now on as he wasn't exactly in the best of position to fight back.

"Eldarians are really… very strange." Crowe replied.

"I could say the same of your race." Arumat replied back. "An Earthling who likes to cross-dress and be stepped on with heels… among other things." The silver-haired man suggested as if he knew quite a bit about the other and would be shortly using these things against him.

"I never admitted to that." Crowe said almost crossly as he shook his head, his fire red hair blazing across his features, almost in a prelude to what his face would soon be like.

"You don't have to admit to anything." Arumat replied an amusement noticeable in his voice as he raised that heeled foot of his and placed it on the younger man's chest almost as if he were about to kick him over. "The answer is no, by the way."

"…No?" Crowe responded confused about what the Eldarian had meant by that, glaring at the offending heeled foot as it began to slowly inch down to a very dangerous place.

"Heels aren't my thing, but I have heard they are yours." Arumat replied dangerously, his foot gliding lower and lower until the top portion of the heel was pressed lightly in the center of a certain and very obviously aroused organ.

Crowe's eyes widened but he said nothing, holding his breath in a muted shriek at the sudden stimulated exhilaration of being caressed by a sexy heeled foot. He would have jumped if he had not been bound down to a chair.

Arumat snickered in a vindictive manner as he put pressure upon that portion of heel. Moving it forward in a fluid motion he received a shocked outcry. Then as he moved it backwards in the same slow, yet unrelenting way he received this time a heavy intake of air, almost like hissing sound.

Through his clenched teeth Crowe swore softly, then inhaled another deep breath, silencing yet another pleasured cry as Arumat continued to massage at the aroused organ with his heeled foot. The appendage being concealed and bound in that tight red outfit he wore, the feeling a bit subdued by this and mostly likely would have sent the red-haired man screaming over the edge by now.

"…Are you feeling frisky yet?" Arumat asked, darkness in his voice as if he were mocking him, and clearly he was as he tapped the jumpy appendage that seemed very pleased to meet with Arumat's heel.

"What sort of question is that!" Crowe asked trying to keep himself from screaming out. As it were, he was already panting in pleasured reaction to this unexpected happening.

"Are you?" Arumat asked again, pressing harder upon that delightful bit of flesh that responded so well back. "Well, are you?" Asking again and again adding more pressure upon him when he hadn't said anything.

"What do you think!" Crowe gasped out as if someone had just knocked the wind out of him. "No!" It was painfully obvious that this was, without a doubt, not the case. A certain part of him decided to thump up in protest from the lack of attention.

"Amateur." Arumat huffed, though clearly amused at how well Crowe was holding himself together.

"So says the sexually frustrated Eldarian virgin." Crowe hissed out, trying to keep his sanity together throughout all the vigorous movements he was being subjected to, both from himself and the other nudging at him continuously with his heel.

"This time, you're the sexually frustrated one." Arumat countered enjoying the torturous look on the man's face as well as the little sounds he was trying not to make.

"Ah-ah-Arumat!" Crowe cried angrily, not meaning to stammer his words like that, but with the increased movement and pressure being thrust upon him, it came out in a way that suggested he was enjoying it.

"I wonder… what other switches you have." Arumat pondered out loud figuring he had tortured the other man enough and stopped. Crowe gave out a heavily audible sigh of relief, even though relief was the furthest thing that was going on in the red-haired man's body.

"Argh! I think this is more than enough torture for what I've done to you." Crowe cried out in a pained puff of breath, but he was at least glad the grey-haired man had stopped. His sanity was the least of things he was about to lose a hold of.

"It's not torture, its surprise pain." Arumat replied grinning as he sat facing forward on the younger man's lap, knowing... or at least suspecting that Crowe had a fetish for closeness, even though he hated it himself, he'd suck it up and do it just to torment his prey further.

Seeing as he was nothing but a sitting duck he sighed in resignation. Bound up both in body and sexual longing, he was close to breaking down and pleading with the older to let him go, or at least… do something to help him unwind.

"What's next?" Crowe asked and would have shrugged if he could, pent up frustration and defeat in his voice.

"In a bit of a rush are we?" Arumat asked perceiving just how intensely bound up Crowe's body was at this moment. The deep intakes of breath and the way he was fighting not to heave his hips upward in raw, unbridled passion.

The Eldarian could only too easily sense those emotions in him, their race being empathic. Sometimes this was a good thing, other times, not so much. Arumat was impressed by how well restrained Crowe could be in such a situation, even being tied down as he was at the moment.

"Rather you just get on with it, you know…" Crowe replied trying to steady his breathing but it still came out rather raspy and breathless.

Rooting around in the item storage Arumat drew out a tube of ointment. "I heard that Earthlings use this substance to soothe sore muscles." Arumat said darkly. He brought the tube up to the red-haired man's face so that he could read the label. In red and blue letters it spelled out the words 'Icy-hot'.

The look of horror on Crowe's face said more than words. Not exactly sure how the stuff worked but knew the concept of what it was supposed to do, Arumat thought it would be a fitting punishment for him.

"Don't even think about it! Absolutely, positively… no way in hell…" Crowe began as he imagined just how excruciatingly painfully that would feel upon him and it was clear in his voice that it would be the last thing he would want.

"This or I can leave you here to… alleviate your own needs." Arumat replied, his voice full of a strange disconcerting enjoyment. It was now apparent in Crowe's mind what the Eldarian had meant when he had said 'surprise pain'.

Crowe groaned loudly, as he would really rather not be stuck tried to this chair, burning in unquenched desire any longer than he had to. "You're the Diet Coke of evil. Just 1 calorie. Not evil enough."

"I could do worse." Arumat replied calmly waving the tube around in the others face.

"This is highly unfair I'll have you know." Crowe replied pouting.

"About as unfair as you grabbing my ears, as you clearly know how frustrated I become after that." Arumat said as he unscrewed the cap from the ointment tube.

Crowe continued to pout in an overly cute way that Arumat tended to find adorable but would never admit to it.

"I also know you like to scream out my name out in the shower." Arumat said grinning and making Crowe burn a shade of deep crimson.

"I do no such thing!" Crowe protested adamantly trying to hide how embarrassed he was over that fact.

"You seem to forget, Mr. Captain of the Aquila, that one of your most recent crewmembers has incredible hearing." Arumat responded deeply, his voice whispering close to the man's ear as he squeezed the ointment out onto the palm of his hand.

"I am so going to die." Crowe responded back whimpering in defeat, a sudden lump in his throat.

- TBC