Calix stood in practised stillness at the decorative rail, gaze fixed on the flow of pedestrians just below. He needn’t turn to understand where the oppressive feeling of closeness came from. He’d… Arrived with Aezhyrrael, who stood always near enough that his pressure- become not entirely unpleasant- was constant. His scent, exotic, dangerous, also constant.

“What did you order, again?” He asks quietly, chin lifting above his ruminations just slightly, eyes lifting to the bright horizon distant.

Aezhyrrael detested the daylight- the glitter of Theastone sunflares to his vision. Closeness to Calix was in tolerance of opalescent cages and in a simple desire to come with him on his days out. His head dips behind Calix all the while, tolerance in eyes pinched closed as they overlooked sea and thoroughfare.

Silence for moments. His lip curling as he dips his chin and presses it to the top of Calix's head with claws hooking at the sides of his shirt and tugging. Gaze tugged open and down in turn.

"Midnight tide." He breathes, wrapping a slender arm over the muscled waist and to the front of his shirt. "You told me it was a simple thing. A black coffee, wasn't it."

A nail taps a button.

He feels a slender chin tap the top of his head and his eyes lid as he exhales. Could he call such a thing… Cute? Such gestures remind him why he… Had agreed to such senseless fraternisation. Why he didn’t simply kill him. Call someone. Something bade him to send the text almost every throne-damned night.

“Yes. The cold rests at the bottom in a layer. Like the deep sea. I thought you may…” His voice trails off in some distraction as a claw circles to his front. “…Like that.” His eyes flicker down. He wished to reach for him in turn but they were in public. Again with the pawing.

"I cannot deny the imagination of mroth'fli." Aezhyrrael admires under a breath.

It inspired him to be thought of also. Discerning as easily that Calix had made some effort to liken him to hyuron beverages and decide for him something he could have seldom known himself. Would it belittle them both to call him cute? Wretched, thoughtful gauri.

"And you? What was your order? All words I hardly understand." He purrs into his hair. Mischief returned as gaunt fingers pull over the linen and tug it in effort to hide themselves from the sun, brushing his palm over his creature's sternum to the top button. Unfastened first, and then the second below it with claws plucking between the linen for the fur beneath.

Eyes flickering predatory to the movement below were scrutinised by the light of Asra back to his gauri.

“My order…” Calix’s nape bristled, though not in fear, when Aezhyrrael’s breath shifted a lock of his hair. He was distracted by the touch he was trying to ignore. Foolish.

“Harbour Mist. A black lifted by steam.” He swallows. “Light as my mood today.” He relents more poetically than he’d meant it. When the first button released, he took a sharp breath.

“Aezhyrrael.” He breathes, almost warning, head turning just barely.

Aezhyrrael's breath stills to hear it, an inhale possessing Calix's scent when those around them drew out the desire for possession in waiting. Not distracting but gripping. A little more languid than usual. Warmer than usual, comfortably uncomfortably.

"Ohn? Pretty words, gauri..." Aezhyrrael sighs, lip curling. "All to say you are feeling well."

His claws brace against the breath. He hears it instantly, as the first button releases. Aezhyrrael. The shift heralding a small hiss and fingers rolling over the second button to nudge it free also. He looks down at Calix with a gaunt smirk.

"Calix." He answers, claw wandering to the third button.

“I suppose.” Calix’s face warmed. It was pointless, after all, to declare. Something about Aezhyrrael elicited a desire to share- something. But perhaps not this yet. Not here, he tells himself.

The second button is freed and his lips tighten nervously. He can feel Aezhyrrael’s eyes on him but he’s not quite ready to show him his own just yet.

Calix.

So he was deliberately not getting the hint. “This venue…” Perhaps a hint of strain was audible upon his level voice. “It is… Unsuitable for…”

This venue...-

Talons coil in thrill abeyant and Aezhyrrael clutches him nearer still, waiting for him to finish that he might capture him anyway. Keep him for himself. A purr rasps in Aezhyrrael's throat strangled when Calix mumbles again.

-It is... unsuitable for...

The third button, gripped, tugged, is pulled free and claws pause their playing to reach his hand over the warm flesh. Insatiable warmth and soft fur warmer still in Asra's light.

"I make my possession known wheresoever I please. Over coffee or otherwise." He growls into an ear, pulling fabric apart.

Aezhyrrael’s talons only clutch him harder, undoing the next of his buttons. As the claws met his flesh beneath, a choked sound caught in Calix’s throat. His breath hitched. This was exhibition. Possession displayed for any passing glance. His primal fear. Impropriety or loss of control, both warred with the arcelectric path Aezhyrrael’s touch now traced over his skin.

I make my possession known wheresoever I please.

Calix shuddered, a reaction he could not suppress. His eyes close briefly, fighting for control, fighting the heat pooling low in his belly. The calculated cruelty, the possessiveness - It was infuriating, terrifying, and deeply, dangerously arousing. He could feel the faint thrumming in his own blood, the tell-tail sign of his control fraying under intense stimulus, psychic or otherwise. He hated it. He craved it.

“Your decorum,” he managed, the words clipped, “is, as ever, nonexistent.”

Ownership over that which was his to have- in blood and the thrumming of destruction within both their veins. Aezhyrrael felt it in all of its adored violence. His claw wanders over a pectoral, across split-colour fur, and over a nipple in relaxed curiosity. Thoughts mirrored in exhibition, display. His beast to own. That all who might contest them should be obliterated for it.

Except a wayward barista. How long would it be before their drinks were ready? Morning mist subsumed in abyssal sea content over the railings instead.

How long had it also been since Calix had last taken his medication? Possibly days now. All the same to Aezhyrrael in the blinding inconvenience of coastal mornings.

Your decorum,-

Aezhyrrael clasps him with a growl lingering near his ear as the thrumming warbled within his own mind, his other hand dipping lower to clasp Calix's opposite hip.

"These are not the words you say within our nest..." He mutters as he holds him to himself then, pressing him against the rail with a roll of an elegant spine. The hand at Calix's waist thumbs the lip of his pants apart from his hip and slides against his skin easily.

These are not the words you say within our nest…

Of course they weren’t—? Calix’s breath hitched. Aezhyrrael was deliberately attempting to destabilise him. And it did work. Aezhyrrael’s voice rich with that dark amusement that always brought him to self consciousness.

“Perhaps… such displays… are best reserved.” For said nest. The claws on his hip brought memories of nights shared. He didn’t stop him, for fear that reaching up to fix his gaping shirt would draw someone’s eye. The simple touch ignited a wave of heat he fought with eyes narrowing at the ocean horizon.

A claw thumbs the hem of his trousers to lift them, dive under.

“Aezhyrrael… Please…” The plea was fractured. Ambiguous. Please stop? Please, somewhere private? Please continue? He wasn’t sure himself anymore.

Perhaps... such displays...-

"I cannot show off that which is mine? Nnnnh." Aezhyrrael sighs under a breath given against his ear as he fondles him. Claws holding beneath them flesh scarred over and healed again. Marks no others would see bound to Calix's own soul.

He, petting his bare thigh, could guess at stiff regiment always offered when it concerned others. That which was normalcy to his kind. That which frayed the threads of his mind over a lifetime of slavery beneath the Spectra. Nothing to Aezhyrrael. His blood froze at the thought.

Aezhyrrael… please...

Please stop? Please continue? Aezhyrrael grips his bare thigh, the muscle dense. The fondling over bare skin a display for those below. Delectable if they saw dignity like rae Fellner's clasped between talons. Allow me to claw this flesh, thought in as much frustration as his fingers curl over the hidden skin. His other hand's mussing through fur arousing himself to sensation.

Aezhyrrael laps at his ear, fangs craving to be near as he growls at him. Oho, or perhaps... Eyes roll as he plays at fucking Calix once, so languidly.

I cannot show off that which is mine?

Calix’s leg was tight under the palming at first. The release of his hip near-imperceptible as he shifts his weight. This was anathema.

“Mnnh- stop…” He whispers. “Someone will see.” The protest came weak, breathless. Mere regiment over a voice losing its crisp edges, thickening with arousal and desperation. His carefully constructed composure was crumbling rapidly. The hand on his thigh squeezed again and he tilted his head back fractionally and exposed the line of a straining neck.

Aezhyrrael’s tongue laps at his ear and a fluid motion at his hips suggested so much more. Calix’s eyes roll as he trembled openly now. Caught in a crossfire of ingrained taboo, rising panic and… Overwhelming physical… Response.

His head tilted back, eyes closed, breath coming in short, sharp pants. The careful control was gone, replaced by raw sensation and the terrifying proximity to the very loss his people abhorred. He made a small, desperate sound, almost a whimper. His hand lifted, not to push Aezhyrrael away, but to weakly grip the arm pinning him, fingers tightening convulsively.

Words are not the same as the desires of the soul, gauri. Aezhyrrael's body bound to his in roiling satisfaction as he assists in further thawing the layer of practised ice over the mind. The tilting of the other's head draws a shudder from Aezhyrrael's spine as he reciprocates with a craning of the neck- a desperate kiss given to the open throat.

"Let them see...they are beneath us--" A sigh as he imagines fucking him before their coffees were finished at all, mind slightly blank in pleasure. "Of course, I will leave you to suffer once our beverages arrive..."

Boiling ice beneath struggling, he could feel it. So near and so sufferingly desperate. The desperation of the soul begging in some fear while the rest craved to be consumed. This Aezhyrrael felt at once beneath such tremendously thick frost. Melting, yet. Melting inside himself as he struggled to restrain his desire to be within him- the hand at Calix's thigh pawing a little desperately as it skitters closer to the inner thigh. He could pull him open, split him with fingers and satisfy them both..?

The hand at Calix's nipples returns to the fur and rubs as Aezhyrrael brings him to his own chest, throat scraped by eldar teeth- movements deliberate. Slow. In some awareness suddenly of beasts beneath them both. The petting over Calix's trembling flesh met with these nasty little kisses and then a giggle strangled into breath.

"I would shave your throat soon... perhaps tonight, mmh? Before I sleep..." Aezhyrrael whispers, chuckles reduced to sharpened breaths as he pins Calix with both claws and licks the stubbled neck.

Let them see…

Calix could not see the way his own pupils contracted in his focus, his fixation. Aezhyrrael’s possession awoke something laying deep in the forest of his mind. He leaned heavily against the rail, panting into the salt-air. He would do nothing to stop the hands under his clothes now, shifting his weight to allow the Eldar to hold them together. Oh, fire. Blinding fire.

Teeth at his neck draw another strangled breath from his throat and his gaze was no longer on passersby.

Somehow Aezhyrrael’s offer was both thoughtful promise and threat. A dichotomy that had come to thrill him each and every time. His tension crescendos with the tongue, not even hot, upon his own neck aflame, and he moans openly. Loudly.

Coincided by the clink of approaching glassware as his veins were fit to burst in his head, the signal of an approaching server. It sent a jolt of pure panic through him, momentarily overriding the insistent heat. He pulled himself forward, away from Aezhyrrael. Enough to seem merely close rather than overtly intimate, even if his thoughts were now held captive by him.

Aezhyrrael presses his body to Calix in desperate pleasure writhing to tear his flesh. Begging with pawing fangs and kneading claws to allow him closer with a nape bristled to obsession with the breathing. Mortal aether burning ice in the mind and the flesh. He could take him now and satisfy them both...

A violet tongue drags over the stubble in desperately seeking release.

The moan traps him in a ball of anxiety to leap upon him suddenly and he feels the same insatiable rush as each time he could break the thick ocean of ice to the whore-beast beneath. All moments savoured. The sound. Aezhyrrael growls against his flesh and--

Fangs pulling away in surprise mirrored- startled by the distraction in aether beneath him. The sound of glasses.

Aezhyrrael's claws hook when they think the threat a promise for moments- before the steps of small hyuron heels up the stairs grip him. Thought so consume that it shocks him to be pulled away, forcing his eyes open- blinded- into the superficial, slightly darker comfort of the bistro. Claws forced to unhook and tug his clothes possessively closed as an insatiable kiss- a nip of fangs- against Calix's head heralds his parting.

A growl against his scalp inconvenienced affection for a mortal moment. I will satisfy us after this.

Bluefeather was a place of lovely darkwood and gilding like the ship interiors of Arunean old. This floor was also empty for them where Blufeather's other patrons bathed in the sun downstairs, on tables decorated along the thoroughfare and beneath the sunsails. Where the sea and plants breathed in the blinding Asran day. Its waiters wore their little uniforms in silver and deep blue and he sees this first as she ascends into the open café.

"One harbour mist and one midnight tide..?" She asks, chipper, hesitating. The sight as terrifying as it was familiar on every shift of hers after their fifth visit at usually the same time.