Aelias despised that name in the gazette.

His was one of many such names and titles bound to the library of his own mind. One made up of all like himself in Arune's fleet: names, deeds, all lingering overlong between the lines along Aelias' skin when it twisted in the strain of a lonesome, omnipresent frown when he was alone. The corners of his lips, torn and pale with scar tissue, twitched in furious contemplation when his single eye gazed back over the page.

The Tidal Gazette could not help itself to its arrogance. It was an article written and published just the morning before, seen in inky-black print on a creased, pale page. He thumbed a corner of the paper now and again, the parchment curling in distress.

Heroism and legend standing against the blackest maw of the Oraen, decorated as an inspiration to hundreds of men against the abyss' own jaws.

Aelias' shoulders, already slender, curled against himself in rigid defence against the parchment that stared back at him. And to where half of his face was marred and hidden in the room's shadow did he slide the paper furiously, his arm crossing in front of himself and over the gazette's surface as he imagined tearing it to pieces.

Aggressive with a wage, he knew this, a vessel of pale wine swilled in a moment's staccato when Aelias' fingers brushed the foot and slid it an inch from himself, his own body wilting in rage under his uniform. He had been ashore for just hours and here for almost as long: in the near-back of an innhouse, just a walk from the harbour and paved in darkwood for a familiarity on the eyes and soul.

He sat in the bowels of it, hunched over and rigid, with a uniform of dark teal and pale panelling and his coattails, knee-length and split, set behind him neatly. In a challenge of imbalance, the cuff of one sleeve was folded and fastened to a button reaching across his chest while the other hand, pale and weathered without a glove, curled in possession around his glass.

His body coiled with all the elegance of a slumbering creature until bristles stabbed through his nape and spine at the words. Captain Somerset, sir. Distant but near enough to feel on his tongue in bitter mirroring of what he'd read in the gazette. Elated. Proud. Had he done his Imperia well?

Aelias' eye flickers from the table and chair ahead of himself to the boarded floor feet from his own table, his mind furious at the din now while tendrils of the liquor began to coil near him.

He’d nowhere else to go. Flitting from invitation to awkward dismissal to invitation, Somerset always ended up back here, no real place to stay otherwise. He couldn’t decide between carefully nudging his way through, turning his face away, or extending his arm for the first man to catch his eyes with a clear invitation.

Aelias would surely hear what every good officer of Arune strove to hear—this time for Somerset. Raucous laughter erupted from nearby, muffled by bodies, soon split. Silence. And then, nudging up suddenly to his side—an arm circling upon the backrest at his shoulders—a warm presence carrying a dying laugh.

“There’s a dour look.” Somerset observed, his voice all playful lilt and little sympathy. He was first looking at Aelias Mynaard, whom he believes himself to recognise with a flick of his eyes. “Captain Mynaard,” he addressed lightly—setting his drink upon the table next to the gazette—and settled rather more closely than was entirely appropriate. “I see you’ve read it.” His tone was conspiratorial as he raps his fingers along the wooden backrest they both leaned upon. “But I’ve had my fill of revelry. Subsume me, please, in your eternally grim aura.” He says this with an almost theatrical sinking of his shoulders, head dipping forward as if in mock unconsciousness.

He was tipsy, that much was clear from a look. His shoulders just that bit looser with a smile that came just that bit easier. Somerset peers back up at him, attentive, begging him to tolerate the assault.

Somerset was never bequeathed of the most polite reputation.
“Why the look, Captain? Beset by the horrors?” He dares to squeeze the slighter man’s shoulders with a hand turning inwards then. “You look fresh off a voyage. I can smell it on you.”

Somerset was certainly close enough to claim so, head tilting just so as he inhales gently, arm outstretched to reclaim his drink.

It was in the afterglow of this revelry's assault that Aelias thought he wished to go, his fingers curling inwards around the foot of his glass with a mind severed from malice by anxiety alone. Perhaps envy also, suffocating and mad under the noise. It suffocated him, all these sounds and shadows. The ordered, wading silhouettes of men and boys obliterated his senses so used to numbness. It was in resentment that he welcomed such over-sensation, and laughing shadows on the darkwood blurred the recollection of his own intent here.

A weight found its way to him that Aelias could not ignore, the hairs on his arms and shoulders raising painfully against his linen undershirt. It was a presence white-hot in anathema, like a wave of great fire crashing over him while he had been unable to disobey it.

Captain Henry Somerset joints him, to his horror.

His grimace was too numb to respond to his surprise while his mind was forced to admire Somerset much more intimately. Handsome, weathered, with something dark behind the eye that withers instantly. Something glazing over the surface still that told him Somerset's own mind might have been preoccupied.

Thousands of needles felt to turn inwards against Aelias' spine and arms as the weight quickly came too close, lingering around him. His jaw clenches as the fresh breath of Somerset's dampening laugh reaches him and shrivels his back to arch in escape.

"There's a dour look."

He was no creature of antiquity or gilded marble, Somerset, but an infuriating, boyish flame of wildfire and stone. Aelias hated it. He hated the way his name lapped from the Captain's tongue. He does not answer him except with a frown.

Somerset simply kept talking.

The weight of him was too near, too heavy. The sight of the name on the gazette's page was a distant, sudden disturbance. Moments longer in thought ensnared Aelias' attention with horrendous possibility. He resented the rapping in time with his own heart and the way that smile slouched just before him. The look that begged him for something it deserved more.

"Why the look, Captain?--"

It would be a few more long moments before Aelias would speak, silence obliterating. The hand on him sends his mind into a frenzy and Somerset might feel him stiffen like stone suddenly, his shoulders lifting. The good pupil left of his contracts in horrendously intimate panic. Aelias' gaze breaks from the Captain's mouth to one of the arms outreached and one corner of his mouth lifts, tugged upwards by a string bound to his own mind.

"My gaze did flit over the page. It would be remiss of me not to read the tale told by all from the moment I came ashore." He answers, pointed, lips parting just slightly in reaction to take in this Captain's own scent between mismatched teeth.

He could say the same of Captain Somerset, couldn't he? That it would be so remiss of him also, to miss his own revelry. Remiss indeed...

Aelias shifts, struggling under the pressure of the hands, and his mind wanders as he looks back at his companion's gnawing theatrics, his own mind wrenched by horror as he felt the pressure of those fingers clamping down against his own shoulders. A breath hitches and then unfurls itself in the same instant, his hand reaching across the wood for the folded gazette.

He slides it to the far corner of the table, to where Somerset and his own drink remained. In effort, Aelias braces as his hand nudges the gazette the Captain's way where he might look far away from himself. Aelias could have smelled it on Somerset also: salt, the sea, and drink, then, all on his breath.

"Have you yet seen what they've said about you, Captain? That you saw oblivion itself beneath those waters and sailed through it too, with all hands? That is such a strange thing, to sail underwater." He asks, head and attention lilting towards the wayward glass with a brush of his own slender hand. "I should like to hear more about it from the hero's own mouth, and not the Tidal."

Have you yet seen-…-all hands?

Somerset’s eyes flicker downward as his manner quite immediately drifts into a sullen stretch of sea, as if a dozen sleepless nights quite suddenly caught up to him as his eyes flickered over the vellum. Instead of his drink, he collected the folded gazette and brought it near for minutes. He hadn’t looked—he hadn’t wanted to. Not all hands had made it back.

“Then,” Somerset’s voice was distant, distracted; several beats pass before he seems to spring back into the present. “You may languish in unknowing.” He smiles, turning his look back towards Aelias with a friendly lean against him. “If I wished to spend any longer with the thought, I’d be off now. Instead, I’d very much like to feel like a man again, not merely a Captain” His expression softened—not solemn, but thoughtful; His smile fades.

“Tell me, instead, of places you’ve been? I can smell rain upon you.” Somerset nearly whispers as he reclaims his drink and leans back with a conspiratorial simper, taking a swig. “How far aflow have you been?”

Aelias' hand lingers overlong by the paper before he takes it back to himself. In downcast silence, he produces a folded linen from his frock pocket and replaces his empty hand upon the table with it.

A quick exchange saw it, out of sight, brushing the rim of the glass and parting to allow a small, medicinal pill to slip into Somerset's vessel. Another idle brush of the linen folded it over the desk and over the side of the glass where condensation dampened the wood.

"Then,--"

Aelias eyes him, the glass, his own gaze unfocused in preparatory thought. Where he expected the goading jaunt of a legend's own words, he sweeps the linen across the table with a tight frown and wipes the rim of his own glass.

"You may languish in unknowing."

The smile reaches the dimples turning inwards on Aelias' cheeks, not further, as he relents thoughtfully. This was some surprise. Where he expected decorum, he was instead made to endure his own feverish curiosity kept aflame by all the envy he could hold for Somerset's name.

The closeness draws Aelias near in a horrifically uncomfortable, pining curiosity. His gaze contracts at an ask so flirtatious and it nudged his attention dissonantly once again. His own drink was taken at its foot, the linen discarded as he eyes Somerset's glass first, the way it raised to his mouth.

"Of course," he finally breathes, bristling as he presses a shoulder against the touch and sits back, languid, looking down at him with a mutter likewise. "You have been through much. I could indulge you in things a little less heroic."

Aelias, with nerves like spines, lets a breath escape himself and dare to brush against that gilded uniform of his companion.

"Uzuma. My Lord Factor's errand. Have you ever been?" He asks quietly, with a frown as he settles closer alongside Somerset in enraptured hesitation. A drink taken, and the sigh of relief that followed shared with him. A chord of sound almost manages to simper. "I suppose you would have. He sends me away often. I spend hardly any days at all in Arune now."

To talk about himself was not something he was ever asked. Days and weeks come to mind in cycles of jungle, volcanic beaches. Of privateers and petty engagements for his Lord Factor's frivolities. All that withered from the mind with drink and Somerset's attention with a contemplative grimace.

Aelias nods once at both their vessels and sips of his own, his elbow nudging itself between their bodies. He glances at Somerset, and then patiently at that glass of his- smelling the liquor on both their breaths so close.

"Are you staying somewhere tonight, Captain?" He whispers. "If you are not due flow-ward by another obligation, I could lull you with my wayward ventures from the comfort of a room..."

Uzuma.

“I knew it.” Somerset’s simper curls over the rim of the glass.

Have you ever been?

“Only seen at some distance. But I could never forget the scent of the jungle.” With that, Somerset turns his head a fraction more impolitely towards him—eyes downcast as he inhales with nose and mouth—Taking in the memory of rain-soaked leaves.

“I take it you were securing Naurawood for the Concord,” he diverts, eyes a little more lazily returning to where they should.

The elbow that nudged between them was taken as a subtle warning—One he graciously accepts with a gentle lean further from Aelias’ space though not with more. His expression softens as he felt a muzziness behind his ears, then. A familiar enough symptom of a night enjoyed but certainly far too soon. He clears his throat and tips his glass towards himself to peer at what had been offered to him just earlier. Perhaps the innkeep had procured something stronger than the usual. No matter.

His attention was on Aelias again, for he knew an invitation when he heard one.

And let his arm fall against Aelias’ shoulders as he tossed the rest of the drink back without much of a thought at all. He claps over the more elegant man’s back, the glass set down, and stands.

“Mmh.” He hums thoughtfully, swaying but otherwise perfectly controlled; A display of willpower otherwise under duress. His vision swam with a lazy current when he peered for the egress through the light crowd. He registers someone noticing, but doesn’t quite hear their words.

“Captain Mynaard.” He breathes, an easy smile downcast toward his companion. “I beg,” he reached to rest a hand upon him, “your assistance, please. Come.”

His sounds were noise to Aelias, who writhes under his grip and eyes him back, over the rim of his own glass. It was a courtship- or a likeness worming its way beneath Aelias' skin to bind them together. He sighs at him, liquor's scent turning his belly on itself more than any rough sea could in growing desire to destroy him.

"You are a terribly observant man." He only mutters with a frown.

In contradiction, it frustrates him when Somerset leans away. It frustrates him to see this Captain's form moving at all on the chair as they swayed with one another and Aelias watches, intent, as he downs the rest of the vessel's breath.

He drinks with him, his own half-full in an already-numb mind. One of several he had partaken of for himself in this past several, dark hours. And leaves the vessel half-full as it was slid to the centrepiece of the table, near a neglected candlewick.

The arm against him was a tremendous complaint against his muscles. The clap set his hairs on-end as he sought him with a look of violence. His eye, contracted in offense, lids uneasily as he stands after him in a image of stillness absolute beside him.

He would, taking a step forward for them both and severing them from the sights and sounds of wardroom noise, stuff away his linen and reach for Somerset with a grip not close enough to touch as he begged him. The sound sublime. His breaths and flirts so full of life as he was. The shrill concern of a lieutenant near them makes itself known and Aelias simply ignores it. You needn't worry, Lieutenant. Captain Somerset is due his rest after such a voyage, is that not right.

Aelias, willingly, curled his hand around the cuff of Somerset's sleeve outreached to him and pets along it with a bare palm. He could feel the sea's chill lingering still and takes him along with him.

"Stay close. I would hate to lose you so easily in here." He complains.

The innhouse was a wonderfully intimate thing with a wooden stairwell ascending from the back of the tavern to where several small rooms overlooked the harbour and the snickelway just behind, a blown glass window along the staircase allowing them to glance out into the lit dark. Floral motifs intertwined with ropes and anchors and drown-horses along the walls and down the lines of old carved wood made a sight that any other might have called pleasant.

The rooms here, compact and painted in whites, were watchful, waiting canvases to brutality. The gilded door of theirs unlocked easily with a small key and Somerset's presence hoisted within by the lone arm that follows him.

"I recall there only being one cot, Captain. If you don't mind."

Aelias, in admiration, feels his gut twist in pining as he pushes the door closed behind them both, the key set into place and securing the door quickly- remaining within the lock, the gate now impossible for any others to simply pass through.

He turns on a heel to face him, his frown twisting.

"You ought to sit down while I find my oils. You look a weary thing." says, as he encroaches on the space and reaches to push Somerset back, back with a hand to urge him simply deeper within.

Where many might have thought it a simple farce to steal away with another officer—for Somerset it was suddenly quite earnest. Getting him up the stairs and into the room was less of a battle, more of a slog while he tried to maintain some composure; Well enough aware of his faculties. He gave Aelias a genuine look, though bleary, with a hand bracing his way down the slender hall.

“Someone was,” an uncharacteristic pause, “overzealous in rewarding me, it seems. Have I become privy to the best in the house suddenly, I wonder?” It was a thing wondered in earnest, as he was secured in the room. When Aelias turned around, Somerset was already cornering him against the door with an intentional look.

“It’s hardly a matter, Captain,” Somerset purred. “I’ve my wits about me,” he half-lies, his vision clipped as though the world were frozen in moments for him every breath. His grip, although certain enough to very much suggest his intent, was gentle. Or too tight. He inhales at the Captain’s neck for a moment far too long, time suddenly meaningless as the drink took a firm hold of his mind.

“I’m quite sure,” he drawls, “that I—“ His brows furrow as his weight sank over Aelias. “Throne.” A word that was almost entirely air, spoken against the other’s neck.

Aelias' breath retreats back into his own mouth when he turns and sees Somerset there, a palm against his chest slower than he could stand in the after-dark of drink.

"You did not say no." He answers quickly, eye lidded in furious appraisal and nerves sharper for their nearness. Somerset, upon him, was not a weight he could simply remove. This he discovered too quickly, when he found that any push against the man's body hardly moved him at all.

Aelias braced his hand against him with a palm finding its way between the open lapels of Somerset's uniform, flexing to sever them from one another casually. He found himself with perhaps a greater strength than his peer. This he saw in the sway and complaints of the other's own wakefulness. He struggled. Aelias strained. The both of them knew one another's intentions, he thinks then in strain and panic rising.

The breath at his neck was a dizzying horror, liquor and something sweeter overwhelming.

"I'm quite sure that I--"

"Rather than make this difficult," he complains in exasperation, twisting his own neck away and intending to turn them both on his own heels with a reserved vestige of strength. "I suggest you relax. You'll be asleep soon, Captain."

Aelias, in exasperation, twists them both against the door and steps backwards to alleviate himself from the threshold- forearm and elbow fighting against withering purchase to shove him against the wood with a grip that lifts up against the Captain's neck.

He lifts it then, to Somerset's hair that he takes within a fist, a clump secured and pulling as he pants a buzzed, urgent breath at his throat.

"Set your wits down. I'll not marr that handsome face. Not if you behave for me." He complains, his own heart pounding in inebriated effort.

The hand in his hair lets go and cups Somerset's cheek and face quickly in tipsy imagination, thumbing a cheekbone roughly before exploring downwards in hurried wresting. He was pretty, rakish. Everything in class and fire that Aelias simply could not be.

Aelias closes the distance between them with a messy, hard kiss against his throat that ends in a rolling growl.

"You agreed to a fuck," he rasps, a thumb jamming itself deep into Somerset's own cheek. "You'll let me do such a thing."

Somerset registers his words with a delay, hearing Aelias speak as though underwater suddenly, his eyes a conflicted mix of alert and glassy at once. He was drunk, that much he could parse—and how—but no matter. He’d given other officers a night to remember with less clarity, he thinks to himself.

By the time he does, he’s looking at Aelias from a reversed position, a grip in his hair an unfamiliar declaration of intent. One that has him casting a bewildered, distant look at the other Captain as his own hands came up between them. His grip was a shadow in suggestion; and imprecise.

Not if you behave for me.

Somerset’s nape bristled, bleary gaze fixing suddenly on his companion’s one good eye as he makes a small sound. Something that sounded so much like surprise. “Behave—“ He gasped, “Hold, you—“

He grabs Aelias’ waist in a practised grip, twisting his head under the exploratory touch with a furrowing brow while he sank against the wall unsteadily. Aelias’ weight pins him under a hard kiss against his throat, earning a sound entirely unbecoming to his own ears. The wooden slats on the ceiling melt as his world spun from such a simple motion.

His fingers curl inwards, against the slender waist.

You agreed to a fuck.

His eyes roll slowly back down, delirious suddenly as he curls forward. “Damn you, sir,” he slurs, a little too slowly, “You’ll allow me to—“ Somerset panted, a deliberate step forward trying to bring Aelias with him, forwards, toward the bed. He’ll be damned if he failed to perform just from a heady drink.

“You needn’t—…” He began, grimacing suddenly as the other’s words finally breach past the drink and he reaches up to clasp around the thin wrist. Ineffectual. “No…No.” He assures him quietly. I can manage just fine. Give me a moment. Damn you.

Aelias saw Somerset within his gaze, coloured by panic, strain, rising complication as his own hand fondled him for purchase. Those hands of his emerging between them both draw a snarl onto Aelias' face as the lines of his expression creased in tipsy strain.

He was fading, just slightly. Not yet enough to lose his strength against one so willingly succumbing to his poisons. He felt his own hand unfamiliar to his gaze these days-- though coloured by blood it usually was. Unbecoming between two gentlemen of the Emperor's fleet, that would be.

"Behave-"

He frowns, his brow pinching in struggle against the weight of him as he closed the distance and kissed him. His jaw tenses as he does, teeth brushing furiously against the sounds.

The fingers on his waist make him writhe and he shoves the weakness, his body, hard, against the door with his forearm.

"You will not grip me, sir..." He rumbles, fighting then the weight of him as Somerset himself began to move. Towards the bed, into the emptiness between white walls that would have surely seen what lay under the men's flesh in viscera and blood on a worse night.

He couldn't simply take him to the bed and embarrass him anyway, surely. The thought brushes Aelias with panic as he grips him more fervently, pulled along anyway with the last of the Captain's own strength for just a moment as he presses his thumb into Somerset's cheek, against the mould that he could feel of perfect teeth within. The rest of his palm pressed to his jaw and neck as he held their gazes against each other.

"You needn't-...--"

"You ought to lie down, sir. I would hate to see you fall while we are both indisposed." Aelias growls as he steps with him almost clumsily.

The waning power against his own wrist, the step towards the cot, all dismissed. Somerset would find himself shoved hurriedly, by Aelias' hand, as the palm tears itself from Somerset's face and replaces itself across the sternum, across the mussed ruffles over it.

They will both go to bed, then, he thinks in rising alarm. Both of them sent towards the bed by their wresting, Aelias crossed a boot around Somerset's own in an effort to trip him over onto the cot as he chases him down with a desperate effort.

He felt him, as he forced him down: the entrapment of his strength and mind within his little prison of drugs.

"I'd hate to hurt this hero of the hour only to make him lay nicely, Captain," Aelias pants, his own hips finding Somerset's over the bed and pinning him with the weight of his own body. "Stay, or I just might do worse--"

Aelias collapsed over him, forced to lay flush while his hand fought to pin an arm awkwardly. His own eye flickers sidelong for his drawer and then back, down, towards waning struggle. Somerset would find the presence above entirely pervasive as Aelias closed their distance to breathe against his hair, through nose and mouth taking his scent. Salt, drink. His own inebriated breath goads him back and his eye lids.

"I won't be long." He breathes, panting against Somerset's neck as his hips test purchase with a rough, clothed thrust against his captive's own.

The demand certainly confused him. One moment he was taking a conquest to his rooms and the next, it was he with his back to the door being commanded? Their inelegant dance one of deep uncertainty. One he suddenly couldn’t find the words to correct.

Aelias’ not-so-uncertain order urged his compliance but… he was quite sure he wasn’t so eager to do so. Aelias trips him—a motion he misses entirely and assumes his own doing—winding up upon the modest bed with a groan, still clutching the other Captain’s slender shoulders. He notes how uneven the man’s weight was to his perception; expecting a second shoulder to grip onto and finding little more than folded sleeve.

“Captain—,” Somerset rumbled, gentle tone overcome by something much darker as he both looks—and doesn’t entirely—at Aelias with a clouded gaze. Aelias would find the wrist rather easy to pin, Somerset’s other hand braced at the elbow against the bed, fingers turned against the other’s chest. His look, wavering, was something he meant as a warning. His dark pupils contracting for just a moment across from Aelias’ lidded look.

I won’t be long.

He would find Somerset beholden to the drink with a lazy writhe under his hips, moaning deep in his throat for a solitary moment as a clumsy hand rose to rub his face, his hair back, before they parted.

“You’re mis—…Mmh.” Somerset breathed. As though it was some effort alone to stay conscious. Somewhere trapped behind his eyes was… Fear? He struggles to right himself, dragging with immense effort onto his side and pinning his hands to the bed with a weight he seemed to be unable to carry.

“If you’ll but… Give me a moment.” His voice sounded distant, even to him; pausing as though listening to himself to be sure it was his own voice as he fixes Aelias with a distracted glower that seemed to travel right through him.

"Captain--"

"No." Aelias warns, a breath against his throat in growing, dripping desperation. He was eager to have him- as he struggled with his own rising stupor and the roll of his hips in protest against the Captain's reluctance. His own gaze was honed on him with a darkness as he held him in place, attention wandering to below.

He plays at fucking him, the assurance lathered in a dry groan.

"I am not mistaking anything." He frowns, head tilting to match his gaze in new warning as Somerset's hand rose, the empty shoulder's socket lifting with a shrug beneath his uniform as though to shoulder him uselessly away. It was a gesture of panic easily found as the two of them braced and roiled against one another.

He did not struggle. He smelled the liquor and sweetness on Somerset's breaths and voice and grips him as he uses his own balled fist to sit himself up over the Captain's languid body. He heard the sleep on him already and- so soon, why was he still awake?- lifts a leg over him in preparation to get himself up.

"If you'll but...-"

"N-no. No more moments," Aelias protests, his hand coming up and over the Captain's mouth where he holds it as he postures himself overhead to leave him. He leans, near, pressing him into the bed for moments. "You'll sit for me, and wait for me to be done, and then I'll let you go."

Aelias leans over him, down, placing a kiss over the top of his own hand- over where he held Somerset. "Rest. I won't be long." He promises, glowering.

The next several moments were quick. Unfocused, Aelias pushes himself free from the both of them. He scrambles for oil from the drawer, then back for Somerset's breeches that he tugs at with what felt like a world of effort.

He tugs far enough to bare the man's hips and mid-thighs, fighting deadening weight to turn him onto his belly with a gasp.

"Hah.. you make this difficult. Won't even help yourself." Aelias complains, a warm hand swatting down a bared flank. He observes him as he moves over him to help himself be bared, unbuttoning the front of his own breeches and then, in effort, reaching for the oil. It leaked, the phial already uncorked for ease, and sputtered across Somerset's skin, his coattails brushed aside by a hurrying elbow.

Somerset would feel him with a rushed, messy hand, as Aelias leaned over him and simply soaked him with the phial. Fingers force their way within, a set of three digits parting him roughly with a shuddering, violent sigh.

Aelias doesn't fuck him overlong, letting himself smile lop-sided overhead as he spreads his fingers and pulls himself free from his warmth again in a rough motion.

It wasn't to assist him. Only to admire him, to assure the drugs had done their job, to express a better violence than that which he could get away with outside of this shared moment.

"You're handsome. A bit too friendly for me," he appraises, curling his fingers against the other's muscle before he pops himself back out in a hurry. "A bit too talkative."

All was said in a rasp surrendered to the air- he could not deceive of his hurry- as Aelias wets himself with those fingers and helps himself hastily within.

He gasps for a moment as he contended with his tightness- then fucks him roughly for several beats of maligned breath.

A tremor travels down Somerset’s spine, a terrified, conflicted thing as Aelias’ hand covers his mouth. He squirms for a moment, utterly ineffectual, peering at him with a brow hardened in profound concern. His mind was lagging far behind him—too far to be able to articulate his worries—but Aelias filled him with an unease he could not place.

His eyes lid in defeat and roll toward the ceiling. He suddenly hadn’t the strength to fight him as he allows his hands to fall away, chasing the other off with a small sound in his throat.

Even moments later, when the other Captain returned, he seemed worlds away. Aelias’ words were cotton in his ears and he, only after countless nights of clandestine meetings, recognised the familiar feeling of his breeches being undone. Though perhaps not removed. He quirks a brow lazily, eyes closing slowly and only opening again when he’s turned over. He rises with a complaint, barely, his body failing to answer to him. Distantly does he make note of his bared flanks, rolling his head against his own arm with a sharp, clipped breath and an attempt to peer over a slumped shoulder.

His eyes flicker over Aelias with a distracted saccade, failing to focus his look of despair over him entirely.

"You’re handsome. A bit too friendly for me,”

The voice came. He logs it away with a drunken groan, but could do little more than allow the appraisal, feeling suddenly like he was upon a butcher’s block. He attempts to brace against the bed as Aelias positioned himself over top his hips—a weight he found terrifying in the moment—and chokes back a groan as he felt something so akin to pain and pleasure all at once. “No,” He breathes, and seized under him, a motion delayed, his body protesting the intrusion as his hands found enough strength to suddenly grip the bedsheets.

Too inebriated to fight him off, not quite enough to sail through feeling unmolested, he curls his lip and hisses behind his teeth; raising an elbow to try and urge him off.

Aelias presided over him with the impatience of a beast as he slid himself within, pressing his hand to the small of Somerset's back in a rough petting. He admires the weight of him in a gluttonous moment under his hand as he stretches his fingers out across the Captain's spine, feeling for the buttons and fine linen of his uniform.

He sighs, as he fucks him, slowly at first. That sigh curls into a low growl when Somerset simply tightened beneath him- his body still in protest, recoiling under the duress of its own experience even while the Captain's mind was away. Aelias was familiar enough with his pills by now that he knew this to be something unnatural. They paralysed the body, to an extent. He had surely given him not enough or his own pill had been spiked by some ration of uselessness beside.

Aelias' brows furrow as he rolls his hips over him, his palm lifting over the line of Somerset's spine and bunching uniform with it.

"No,-"

"No?" He asks, in mad disbelief that he dared at all. His hips roll once, roughly, in claim over him as he lowers to Somerset's back, both their bodies flush. He smirks, his smile turning wide in play as he arches his own back to fuck him. Pointed, slow, his hips shuddering when he hilts him.

"You don't like this, Captain? But moments before, you were so flattered." He sighs, the hand pinning him down lifting to clasp Somerset by his neck and jaw. "If this wasn't what you wanted, then why did you trick me..?"

Somerset would feel himself lifted, angled at Aelias' behest between slender fingers to be poised for him as their eyes almost meet sidelong. Aelias, wishing furiously to hold him and grip him in both hands, presses their heads together and moans against Somerset's ear as he simply continues. He fills him roughly, pointedly, with a pleasured knitting of his brows heedless of the strain beneath himself.

He purrs a sound as he grips his jaw and kisses that ear, lifting himself away with an effort. "No matter." Despair ignored.

"I'll not be long. Stop fussing." Aelias assures, as he presses his hand flat between Somerset's shoulders once again and fucks him, hard, their flesh pounding easily against one another at Aelias' behest. His efforts were given in broken groans as he squirmed above him, back arching in an unhinged, practised elegance despite his state.

Somerset, for all his way away, was aware of their coupling. He felt so much like an observer, eyes rolling with a visible wince. He was pliant under Aelias, defeat felt in his shoulders and back as he panted—increasingly laboured—against the other Captain’s fingers where his hand held him pinned; a weak tremor his only protest that the touch was unwanted.

His eyes, dark as ebbward sea, flickered up at Aelias’ own pleasured expression as he neared, blown wide from drink, fear, and something else. A quiet, strained moan escapes him from deep in his chest. Far more vulnerable a sound than he would ever dare make else-wise when the other leans up, hand returning between his shoulders.

He followed Aelias with his eyes—slowly—his world drowned in a swell of deep sound and bleeding colour now. His body, a slave to a foreign and unwanted pleasure, a friction that left the edges of his mind in a fray of static. A sharp gasp preceded a gentle wail of despair, overwhelmed. Now, his mind simply begged for sleep, darkening at the limbs, but refused itself rest in his anxiety; a thing merely coiled in his core while the rest of him refused to obey.