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Late in September, beneath a celeste blue sky, fruits are splattered, broken open and mashed. They are Dogwood berries, cornus kousa, red, spherical, covered in small protrusions. Berries that might have survived the fall had they not been trampled underfoot—left under the sun to deliquesce into the sickly sweet pulp of rotting flesh.
When ripened to perfection these globular berries are custardy, creamy and rich with a fragrant persimmon-like taste. If you hurry, catching them on a bright September’s day before they split upon the pavement, you could press them together between your hands, drown them in cool, sweet water, and wait for them to ferment into a luscious crimson wine.
There is a little death in all things deciduous. The wine is lightly flavored, gentle on the tongue, and yet, it still remembers how it felt to rot.
—In Spring white flowers will bloom in the shape of four point stars—
The Maru rumbles on around them, a cacophony of sound and noise and Christmas light consoles blinking against the sprawl of the star field.
Just him and Tyr aboard. Just waiting.
“Care for a drink?”
“I do not. Alcohol poisons the body and dulls the mind.” Tyr rounds the pilot’s seat where Harper’s slouched, his spines flexing in an undulating rhythm as he stretches out his hands. Forms a fist. Stretches again. “I would be more careful with it if I were you.”
Harper tips his stolen bottle of Weissbrau, watching the amber liquid catch the starlight as it sloshes around inside the glass. He’s gone all warm, horniness lingering at the outskirts of his awareness as he absently grinds down against the zipper in his pants. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Your relative intelligence is your one and only asset.” Tyr gestures to him, the subtle twitching of his mouth the only indication of the true depth of his distain.
Harper’s seen that look a million times on a hundred different Nietzscheans—it’s saved his ass that many times, too, marking him as too flawed to be of use to the slavers, too small and sickly and irritating, too challenging of their narrow, wretched worldview.
Right now, though, he’s drunk, and that look only makes him want to roundhouse kick Tyr right in the face, until his boot distorts the deceptive gentleness of those big, dark eyes.
His leg does actually move, but he only manages to tap Tyr on the hip, scuffed chromexcel creaking against the shiny, well oiled leather of Tyr’s pants. “Fuck you.”
“I wouldn’t waste my time.”
“More like your precious seed, you mean, right? What’s the matter, big guy? Huh? Don’t wanna risk knocking me up?”
Tyr leans down, in and in and in, six and a half feet of muscle suddenly crowding him into the chair, pressing himself back as far as the unyielding metal will go. Those big, dark eyes look down the length of his body. Back up. “I would think you would be equally adverse to that possibility.”
“Right you are,” he says, and he’s hoping for it to come off light-hearted but it’s just quiet and slurred. “Still, uh, a guy likes to feel appreciated, you know. It’s always nice to be wanted.”
Tyr doesn’t break that fucking eye contact. His forearms flex with his inhale, brushing the tips of his spikes against Harper’s shoulders. “First Captain Valentine, and now you. Tell me, are all humans this pathetic, or is it just this crew?”
“I am not pathetic.” He wriggles, ducking out from under Tyr’s arm and sliding to his knees, scrambling for purchase as his world begins to tilt. “And—And neither is Beka, by the way.”
“Stop.”
He really, really isn’t going to, but Tyr’s hand wraps around his wrist, and the grip is iron-like; he tries to pull away, but all he succeeds in doing is hurting himself. Dropping his Weissbrau on the floor, watching the bottle roll along the grate before it bumps into the chair’s footplate. “Let go.”
“No. Now you listen to me. It’s true, I wouldn’t waste my precious DNA on a human, especially not on you.”
“You really suck at the whole pep talk thing, in case you were wondering.”
“However, I refuse to spend the entire time we wait for the Andromeda to rendezvous with us listening to you drink and whine while you rut into your trousers like an animal.”
“Then kindly fuck off, as I am going to be drinking and whining and rutting for as long as I please, right here in the cockpit, thank you very much.” Harper considers spitting in Tyr’s face—he might, actually, if his mouth wasn’t suddenly so dry.
“You could do that. Or, you could sit your ass back down and let me make you feel good.”
Harper freezes.
Tyr’s spoken in that vehement, every word a whole speech kind of way, emphatic and definitely not kidding, even though he should be, because what he’s suggesting is absurd—no, insane—better yet, impossible.
But the grip on his wrist is loosening, those fingers just hanging there, warm and sturdy against the rapid fire pulse of his veins, and Harper, never known for making good decisions, finally looks up at Tyr and says, “I thought I wasn’t worth your time.”
“It is in my best interests to keep both of us as sane as possible until we get off this ship. If getting you off is the only way to do it, then believe me when I say that I will blow your mind.”
“Fine, then!” He’s laughing, hysterical and shrill and definitely, definitely stupid, tossing his free arm out in wild acquiescence. “Go on. Blow me.”
Tyr instantly twists, sitting in the pilot’s chair and dragging Harper along with him, down into his lap, shoving one large hand into Harper’s pants before he has time to process the body-warm chainmail pressing into his back. “How’s this instead?”
Two fingers circle his clit, demanding, just hard enough to make him feel the friction all the way up into his teeth, pleasure cutting through all that Weissbrau.
And then Tyr’s kissing down the side of his neck, over where the port is, soft lips pressing hot and confusing over where his nervous system opens to the world, distracting him from how Tyr’s fingers have begun to drift lower until he’s pushing into Harper’s cunt the way a pilot enters slipstream; suddenly and in defiance of the very fabric of the universe. Touching some bright tangle of pleasure that wasn’t made to be touched.
Harper arches, choking on his own noise of surprise, feeling himself clench down on Tyr’s hand, his legs shaking with the strain of how his body has gone stiff, scrambling for purchase on the grate floor, grinding his clit into Tyr’s palm with his squirming.
Fuck! “Get out!”
Tyr’s arm snakes around his waist, dragging him to sit properly, forcing him further down onto Tyr’s fingers splitting him open, shame and pain and pleasure rising up through him in spacesick waves.
He wrangles his tongue, shrieking into the endless night across the Maru’s bow. “For the love of god, stop!”
“You would rather be fucked like a man, is that it?”
Humiliation steals his fight from it, made infinitely worse by how noticeably his cunt spasms and grows wetter, soaking the front of his pants. “That’s not fair,” he whines, split in half just on Tyr’s two fingers, his hands clutching at Tyr’s forearms until the spikes begin to dig into his palms.
“I never said it was. Here. Have your New Bayern Weissbrau.”
Tyr pushes the bottle back into Harper’s hands, and it’s a miracle he manages to lift it, shaking as he tries to drink.
“If there’s one thing that horrid stuff is good for, it’s getting you to shut up.”
He chokes, coughing against the burning in his throat as he says, “You—You could just focus on my dick, you know.” Which is a very polite way of saying get out of my cunt before I start to scream. Again.
“I could. But if I have to do this—“
“You really, really don’t.”
“Then I might as well get to watch you squirm.”
Before he can formulate any sort of reply to that, Tyr pushes another finger inside of him, and it hurts so deliriously that all Harper can do is moan, tipping his bottle back and shutting himself up on the burning lip of it.
A part of him afraid he might start begging.
He must hit some internal threshold, then, because it seems like his only options have become either give up or give in, and he’d rather cum than die so he just goes limp, rocking with the motions of Tyr’s hands and grinding his ass back against the unmistakable boner in Tyr’s pants.
It must be obvious that Harper’s done struggling because Tyr finally stops pinning him down, instead using the hand that isn’t halfway inside him to rub at his clit again, and fuck if it doesn’t feel good.
Damn Nietzscheans—they must be born with that innate sense of ruthless precision. Tyr’s pace doesn’t stutter once he sets it, working Harper’s body into a fever pitch.
So maybe it’s been a while.
Turns out it’s a lot harder to get laid when you’re trying to save the universe.
(Okay, and maybe Dylan said absolutely no hookers, and just maybe that’s a rule he knows Rommie would enforce.)
He tosses his head back onto Tyr’s shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut until he sees the star field inside his head, burst and crackling like Weissbrau on his tongue and Tyr in his cunt and the unrelenting exactness of the fingers on his dick and—
Harper cums with a little sob.
His legs flail out like a dying bug, shaking and scrambling again, overstimulated before he’s even finished cumming, turning his teeth to Tyr’s neck in a last ditch warning.
Let me fucking go!
There’s no way to know if that’s what does it, or if Tyr just decides he’s already secured his own self preservation, but he pulls away all at once, dropping Harper, still-twitching, to the floor.
When he looks up, his vision blurry and wet and slipstreaming away from him, he sees Tyr’s hands glisten in the onboards. Catching all the stars and the control lights and the warm orange LEDs of the Maru. Refracting in his cum and moving in liquid patterns over the strained front of Tyr’s shiny leather crotch.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Tyr says, and his mouth is bent down into that disdainful line again. “I have to go scrub myself down.”
That’s where he leaves Harper, on his knees braced against the pilot’s seat, his pants undone and uncomfortably wet, his mouth open and panting into the cockpit.
Salivating for something he’ll never earn.