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Martin shut the door to his room and sighed. There was a time, shortly after he'd arrived at Cloud Ruler Temple, when he'd found the enormous Emperor's bedchamber oppressive; rife with hundreds of years of history and expectations. Now, he was simply glad to have somewhere to escape to where no one could follow him and he was assured total privacy. Well, except for the Blades standing guard outside the door, but he was getting good at pretending they weren't there.
He felt exhausted and sick – another long day with the Mysterium Xarxes, and the Daedric artifact wasn't magically making any more sense. Thank the Nine for Alix, is all he could say. His lover had been riding around the country, gathering people with skills he thought were missing in the Blades, and bringing them to serve him. There were now other mages and priests in the fortress; as well as Sinderion, the slightly insane Altmer alchemist that he'd met on his first night away from Kvatch. It meant that he didn't have to worry about keeping up the protective wards that stood between him and insanity, or loss of his soul to Mehrunes Dagon; a team of other mages surrounded him, leaving him free to occupy his mind solely with the translation.
At the thought of Alix, out there somewhere alone in Cyrodiil, Martin dropped to his knees in prayer. He didn't have enough concentration span to pray for as long as he usually liked to, but he asked the gods to keep everyone he cared about safe, to protect everyone who was facing the forces of evil, and for the strength for them all to keep going. He knew that Akatosh loved him and blessed him regardless of whether he spent five minutes or five hours a day in prayer, but he liked to talk to his god for the peace it usually brought him. Today though, his head was filled with Daedric horrors from a particularly alarming piece of the book, and there was only one thing likely to relax him enough for sleep.
Martin undressed hurriedly and blew out all but one of the candles lighting the room. Slipping between the sheets, he rolled around for a few moments, trying to get the bed warm – or at least, the patch of it immediately underneath his body. Then he closed his eyes, running well-practised hands down his torso. Picturing his partner in his mind's eye, he reached between his legs.
Tierra started at a soft cry from the Emperor's bedchamber. Baurus put his hand on her arm. "Should we... investigate that?" she asked him, looking rather concerned.
"No." Baurus shook his head at the new Blade-recruit, smiling to make it clear that he wasn't criticising her. "One of the things you learn pretty quickly as the Emperor's Bodyguard is what sort of noises are worrying. That was pleasure."
"Huh." His fellow Redguard blushed as deeply as her dark skin would allow. Baurus thought it looked awfully fetching on her. His own skin was a similar shade of brown, but he was sure he'd never looked that fine. Of all the waifs and strays that Alix had brought back to Cloud Ruler Temple to serve Martin, Tierra was by far the most attractive. She had left Kvatch, saying there was nothing left for her there, desperate to fight against the evil that had destroyed her hometown.
She was also a damned good soldier. Fierce in battle, determined to protect her Emperor and fellow Blades, while dealing as much damage to the enemy as possible. Honestly, every single one of Alix's recruits had proven worth their weight in gold. Even the mages - usually unruly, argumentative, and ill-disciplined at the best of times - were sensible and helpful. Baurus wasn't sure whether the boy had a talent for picking personnel, was very good at persuasion, or could somehow see into people's hearts; and he wasn't sure how to find out.
The other thing he didn't know, and was much more anxious to discover, was whether Tierra had lost anyone special in the fall of her city. If she had, he would need to proceed much more slowly than if not; give her space to grieve her lover as well as the town itself. Well. Worry about that later. For the moment, he had more Blades wisdom to impart.
"You have to learn to give the Emperor an illusion of privacy when you're standing right outside his door. Pretend you don't know what he's been doing. It's not like ribbing your friend in the next bunk when he jerks off too loudly. Sex and prayer – they're the only private times the poor sod gets."
Tierra nodded. "And Martin would be horrified if he knew how much we could hear out here."
"Talos, yes. You want to hear what it's like when he's got Alix in there with him. The two of them together – even when they're obviously trying to be quiet...! Some of the other fellows are so embarrassed they won't even take these shifts!" Baurus grinned.
"It's weird for me anyway, because I knew him before..."
This was the first that Baurus had heard about her life in Kvatch, and he was burning to hear more. "What was he like back then?"
"Hmm. Not that different. He has more self-confidence now. But it's strange. I keep thinking about him being heir to the throne, and being amazed that we couldn't see it before. I mean, he always had this sort of leadership potential..."
"Go on?" This was interesting.
"Well, he was the sort of person who asked you to do something, and you'd do it. Simply because it seemed like the right thing to do. I used to think it was because he shone with the blessing of his god, but now I'm starting to wonder..." Tierra trailed off into introspection.
Baurus wanted to keep her talking. "I'm sure you're right. He gets frustrated at us using titles instead of his name, but I can't just call him 'Martin'. He thinks it's because we Blades are obsessed with Having An Emperor To Protect, but there's more to it than that. When I look at him, I swear I can see Akatosh looking back. And I don't have the words to tell him. The only person who really gets it is Alix."
"Honestly, Alix is the biggest surprise in all of this. I always thought that Martin was basically asexual."
"He didn't have a lover back in Kvatch?" Baurus knew he was pumping her for information, but he was too fascinated not to. The opportunity to find out more about his new liege-lord was oddly compelling. The man had appeared from nowhere and was shrouded in mystery. There were entire topics Not To Be Discussed – such as how exactly Martin was able to read the daedric script of the Mysterium Xarxes, and what he did after he left his parents' farm, before he was a priest. Some of the Blades were placing bets on his having worshipped one of the Daedric Princes, but Baurus thought that idea was ridiculous – he was so clearly possessed by the dragon god.
"No, nobody – female or male. I swear half the women in the city were in love with him, but he never even noticed."
"Were you one of them?"
Tierra laughed, tossing her long cornrows over her shoulder. "Probably. That's all irrelevant now. How about you? Do you have a lover?"
"Me?" Baurus blinked. "Not right now. I prefer women, and there haven't been too many of them around."
"Hmm. What are you planning after you get off-duty?" Her voice was rich, golden... seductive.
"I, uh, had been planning to go straight to bed." He shuffled his feet, a little uncertain of what she was getting at.
"Sounds perfect." She smiled broadly, and a little suggestively.
Now it was Baurus's turn to blush, and he wasn't sure why. Wasn't this proposition exactly what he wanted? Ah, but he wasn't used to women being quite so upfront with him.
Tierra giggled. "Oh, Baurus. You forget that I've been a soldier for years. We have to take our comfort where we can and when we can, for tomorrow we might all be dead. I've lost enough people I cared about recently. I don't want to lose any more – and I certainly don't want to lose you before I've shown you how I feel."
"When you put it like that, it's remarkably tempting. But I think if we're going to have our full attention on guarding the Emperor, one or other of us needs to wait further down the stairs."
The recruit nodded. "Of course. And I know you don't like to stray too far from him. I'll be at the bottom of the staircase, listening out from there. Yell if you need me."
She sashayed down the stairs, which should have been impossible considering her heavy Blades armour, stopping halfway down to blow him a kiss. Damn her! Now he was going to be distracted by improper thoughts and a feeling of being trapped under his steel plate.
The Emperor cried out again, and his bodyguard resigned himself to a very uncomfortable few hours until the end of his shift.
Martin gave a long, shuddering breath as he touched himself. It had been too long. The past few nights, he'd been too exhausted to do anything other than crawl into bed; even though he'd then woken up multiple times in the night, screaming and thrashing about from dreams he only half-remembered. He wasn't sure if the Septim "gift" of prophecy was truly a gift, or a curse – since he could no longer tell the difference between ordinary, anxiety-induced dreams, and dreams of things that were fated to happen. Only the night before, he'd seen Alix mixing up bottle after bottle of poison, then drinking them all; and it had taken both his bodyguards to calm him and reassure him that Alix was too good an alchemist to do that by accident, and there was no reason he could be trying to kill himself. He still felt nauseated from the memory, and needed something joyful to replace it.
He sucked the fingers of his right hand into his mouth. Sometimes he'd jerk off dry, other times he'd use oil; but this time he really wanted to imagine his lover's mouth upon him. He ran his tongue along each finger and flicked it between them – it didn't work as well as if someone else was doing it to him, but it was still a turn-on. He spat on his palm and rubbed his thumb in it, trying to get it as wet as possible. Then he stroked his thumb under his cock head, around the ridge where it joined the shaft, hissing with pleasure.
What would Alix be doing to him? He'd be propped between his parted legs, grinning down at him, brown eyes full of mischief. His wet tongue would circle the head just like that, drawing the sensation out as Martin begged him for more; until either Alix took pity and sucked the whole of his shaft into his mouth, or Martin lost patience and forced his head down. He didn't like to do that – it felt too non-consensual, and his time worshipping Sanguine had left him extremely uncomfortable with anything that reeked of dubious consent. Though he knew Alix didn't mind – he was never surprised, never choked, and his eyes flared with lust when it happened.
Gods. The two things he was most grateful of in all this... sudden promotion business were both to do with his partner. Firstly that the person sent to rescue him from Kvatch had been a man who liked men, and cared for him enough to provide him with physical relief. He wouldn't have minded a woman who liked men either, but he would have felt even more guilty about sending her out on missions than he did about Alix. Maybe that was sexist: the Breton was so small that there was no reason why a female warrior or mage couldn't have as much - or more - power and strength than he did. But he would worry about the things that gangs of physically strong men might try with a lone woman they saw as weak and unprotected.
The second thing to be grateful for was that not only did Alix like men, he wasn't a virgin. He had plenty of experience and knew his way around another man's body. That meant that Martin only had to teach him the specific things he liked, rather than everything to know about making love to males. What that boy did with his mouth – Divines! He would flick his tongue around Martin's cock, making it even wetter than it got by itself. He would lick the small hole in the top, devouring the fluids that leaked out; sometimes coating his hand in them before stroking up and down Martin's shaft while still tonguing the head. He would swallow the whole of Martin's erection, suppressing his gag reflex, letting his lover thrust deeply into his throat. His fingers would gently stroke Martin's balls, massaging his perineum, as his lips grinned around his partner's cock.
Martin's right hand hadn't stopped moving during his reverie. Nor had his left, which was busy tweaking and tugging on his nipples, fingernails digging in and pulling hard. But now he found that he wanted more. It wasn't enough to think of Alix's mouth. He wanted to think about the boy's fingers parting his cheeks, teasing him as they trailed around his asshole, until he pleaded for mercy. He wanted to be fucked, which was hard to achieve on his own, but he'd do the best he could.
He rolled over, mounding up the many pillows on the bed to give him something to hug. They were cold, unlike his Breton lover who was always warm, burning with the ferocity of a Fire mage. He put a towel on the bed, knowing that he'd need it, feeling faintly sorry for whoever did the laundry in Cloud Ruler Temple. When he'd been a priest, he'd washed his own sheets, so never needed to feel guilty about come splattered over the bed. He'd just have to hope the Blades took it as a sign of virility, his eventual ability to sire an heir once this crisis was over. Then he reached for the bottle of oil that only ever left the bedside table to be refilled, coating a couple of fingers.
Martin couldn't tease himself the way Alix could. He needed to come too badly: to reach orgasm so his body flooded with endorphins and he could finally relax. He knew without even touching it that his asshole was gaping open, demanding penetration by... something. One finger was barely enough, he was so horny, so a second quickly slid in. He gasped, twisting his wrist in an attempt to hit his own prostate, while desperately humping the pillows on the bed. He wanted Alix so badly, the young man leaning over him, cock in his arse; lying on top with the full weight of his body pressing him into the mattress, skin to skin contact all the way down. He wanted the boy's fingers on his nipples, or cupping and playing with his balls, teeth biting into his shoulder while he fucked Martin harder than he'd ever been fucked before. Martin's breath came in sobs, three fingers in his arse now, the other hand providing friction for his cock, balancing on a pile of pillows and biting one to try to muffle the sound of his excitement.
He wanted... he needed... release. Martin threw his head back and howled as he came, hot fluids spurting over his fingers. He lay very still for a moment, before slowly pulling his hand out of his arse. His wrist was sore, but he didn't care. Rolling onto his back, he tasted his own come, imagining that he'd reached orgasm in Alix's mouth and the mage was kissing him before swallowing. Martin thought he'd known about all his kinks already, but that was a new one to him, thanks to his gorgeous, innovative, perverted lover. Gods. He could only hope that the Breton would be back soon, since the only thing better than sex was falling asleep with his arms and legs entangled around the boy, holding him tightly as a barrier against the nightmares.
Martin wiped his hands and belly on the towel, then tossed it onto the floor. As he blew out the last candle, he offered another prayer to Akatosh, this time for the safe and rapid return of his fiery lover. The gods had given him Alix for his sanity, and he was damned if he'd let anything come between them. Though it had only been a few months, he loved his partner so hard he could barely imagine life without him. "Come back soon, love," he whispered, into the darkness as sleep claimed him.