Untitled Role Reversal

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"If that was a joke, your sense of humour is in need of maintenance. Not to mention your timing." Hugo comes to an abrupt and infuriating halt, mid-thrust and on the brink. His racing pulse and heavy breathing having as much to do with fury as it does with arousal is not unusual, but the audaciousness of Gabriel's dirty talk has truly knocked the wind out of him this time.

"Seems like you don't hate the idea that much. Still wet enough after all." Gab braces against the solid carved timbers of the Squall that serve as a headboard, attempting to push himself back onto Hugo's strap despite the bruising grip Hugo has on him, flesh and metal alike indenting his ample hips and holding him at bay. The rounding of his bearded cheek suggests a smirk hidden behind the curve of his shoulder. "How about you finish, then we can talk it over properly."

Hugo leans over him, spreading his artificed hand over the ink of his back and pinning him down with his weight. "I won't kneel for her," he snarls into Gab's ear, punctuating each word with a punishing thrust, and he doesn't know if it's Gab's frantic laughter that brings him off, or his own soaring affront.

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"And then the merchant squares up to me, all piss and wind—you know how they've been gettin' these days—so I let them know the deal. Drop of the salt price, hand on the skull, show 'em around the depths."

Slung sideways in his wing chair with one massive calf dangling over the arm, Gab interrupts his own anecdote to belt back his drink. A squat bottle of whiskey sits on the floor between them, a third down. Warmth suffuses itself through Hugo's post-fuck contentedness: part alcohol, part violent affection for the way Gab gestures as he talks, the glint of his rings and piercings in the potbelly stove's firelight, the scrunch of his nose.

"Anyways, they couldn't hack it, spiritually or—" His bright eyes widen, grin dimpling his cheeks, and he mimes an explosive nosebleed complete with sounds. "The old girl wasn't impressed neither, so I emptied their coffers for 'em and sent them on their merry way."

"'Old girl'?" Hugo slouches in his chair, legs crossed at his bare ankles. His boots are still in a heap with his coat and pistols and sword-belt, where they'd been flung shortly after he'd arrived. With the warmth of the stove, he hasn't felt the need to reinstate his shirt. "Such words of veneration for your goddess."

Gab lifts a finger from his glass to point. "Listen, I ain't taking that kind of criticism from a man who backtalks every deity he runs across."

"A fair objection." Hugo lifts his tumbler, covering his smile with a sip. The whiskey tastes like the air smells after a round of cannonfire, and burns the same.

Humming in agreement, Gab stretches out his foot to nudge Hugo's knee. "Speaking of objections, I wasn't joking before. Figured I'd run it by you while you were balls deep, since I knew you wouldn't be agreeable to the idea otherwise."

"I admire the creativity of your ploy, in theory if not in practice. It wasn't a success."

"Yeah, I'm picking up on that. Aurele already renewed the accord we have with the Honoured Demise. You really gonna be more difficult about it than xe was?"

"By far."

Hugo polishes off his drink and reaches for the bottle, but Gab swipes it out from under him.

"From where I'm sitting," he says, topping his own drink up with a generous pour. "It's a move in your favour, diplomatically speaking. Your Forswornlings are multiplyin' faster than a gaggle of frisky shipcats, and I doubt your new friends in Cairon are gonna take kindly to being overrun. They need other places they can call a safe port, and the Eye is the obvious choice. The rest of the fold'll heed my word and all, but if I want them to trust you and yours, feel it right here" —Gab makes a fist and thumps his chest— "and welcome them truly, then you're gonna have to demonstrate your allegiance. Politics, Hugo. I know you know 'em."

"... Forswornlings."

"All you gotta do is show my people you ain't got any more double-crosses up your fancy sleeves, since they ain't privy to all the vigorous laying bare you and me have been doing. Fifteen minutes at Xeheia's altar. That's all I ask."

Hugo gets up, one hand on Gab's shoulder to reappropriate the bottle from him despite his teasing attempts to keep it out of reach. "Out of the question. I am not kneeling for fifteen minutes."

He carefully pours himself a measure, his artificed fingers grasping his tumbler securely; it's an improvement on previous iterations, where a glass would crack in his grip or slip right through it. It still takes focus with the whiskey doing its work, which leaves his tongue free to foolishly add, "One minute."

Gab perks up, swinging both feet to the floor. "Ten."

"One."

"Five."

"One."

Gab rasps air through his lips. "This ain't how you parley."

"It's precisely how I parley," Hugo counters. "However long you need for the inevitable overblown ceremony of it, and one minute on my knees. Not a second longer. Final offer."

With a put-upon sigh, Gab stands and spits in his palm. "I suppose I gotta make do with that, huh? Deal, I guess."

"Deal."

They shake on it, though not without much eye-rolling on Gab's part, obvious even through their divine glow. "Never anything less than an entire son of a bitch."

"As well you know."

Gab offers a snort at that, but instead of letting go, he strokes his hand along Hugo's metal forearm, sliding over its strap and buckle fastenings and then into the crook of his elbow. The impression of his caress blooms into true sensation as his fingers carry on over Hugo's biceps, thumb tracing the thick twists of scarring there. The spear of heat that drives itself into Hugo's gut informs him that it's not too soon for round two.

"So I'm thinking," Gab says, drawing Hugo in by the upper arms to better scrape his teeth over the lacework of lightning scars beneath his collarbone, sending an entirely different electric thrill through him. "We're gonna need to run you through some protocol before the main event, since I know you ain't practised at this particular aspect of it."

"Oh?" Hugo says in mingled amusement and irritation, it being immediately clear what Gab's angling for.

"Yep. And I reckon there's no time like the present to get to grips with it, so." He nips at Hugo's jaw. "How about you get on your knees, Sea-Trader Melançon."

Such words evoke a shiver of pleasure in some people, stirring up some erotic desire or other. It gets them hot to think about it, and they submit because they like it. Or so Hugo assumes. It's unlikely that whatever gratification is to be found in being wrangled like this will reveal itself to him, but he can enjoy the back and forth for now.

"That's Captain Melançon to you," he says.

"Yeah, if you like. On your knees, Captain."

Amiable in the face of Hugo's obstinance, Gab takes his shoulders in his big hands, exerting a pressure that only hints at the storm of power at his beck, a strength that could floor Hugo in an instant if that was the way he wanted to do it. In some respects, he'd prefer it if Gab did try to force his point.

"I don't think so," Hugo says.

Gab pouts. "Stick your godsdamned arm in a deity for me, but you won't do this?"

"I did that because it needed to be done."

It's a mild prevarication, but one closely entwined to the secret Hugo gave to Vidakai; a fount of magic shudders through him as a result, crisp and bolstering like a bittersweet tonic. He pulls a sour face despite himself.

"Hells, I almost felt that one." Gab laughs, kissing Hugo like he intends to lick the truth from his mouth, hands cupping his face and tongue teasing past his lips, pulling an even deeper shiver from Hugo's bones. "Now, I ain't gonna beg, so don't hold out if that's what you're hopin' for."

"Maybe something to consider if you expect to see any progress here."

"C'mon, it's not like I'm asking you to kiss my feet." A contemplative expression settles across Gab's face. "Although..."

"Keep pushing your luck, Berthelot, see what it gets you."

Gab's laughter this time is full-throated, ringing off the walls of the cabin. "C'mon, Hugo," he says, apparently dispensing with the negotiations and opting to cajole instead. "Enough of the abjurin'. How can I trust you're gonna kneel at the Eye if you can't do it for me?"

"I'm sure you know I'm quite capable. Just as I'm sure you know I don't want to."

"Please." Gab draws the word out long and low and with a flourish of mirth, almost certainly meaning it to sound like a moan, but all Hugo wants to succumb to is the frustration it provokes. He wants to wrest Gab by the hair and put him on his knees. The more he pushes, the more stridently Hugo wants to deny him, though his ends aren't the same as Gab's usually are in this regard. He finds little pleasure in being upbraided, nor catharsis in any struggle that ends in his surrender.

But when Gab is set and determined, not much can steer him from his course. Hugo may have to meet him halfway on this. Somewhere out there, a fundamental aspect of the universe throws up its hands in defeat.

One gods-bedamned minute, then.

"You're very—very—lucky that I," he says hotly, an unfinishable sentiment that's more consolation than curse in this instance. Begrudgingly, he goes to his knees. First one and then the other, slowly and with as much contempt as he can muster, which has precisely zero impact on Gab's avid satisfaction.

It's hardly enlightening. The Squall's deckboards are unyielding and the decades in his joints take some offence. His resentment comes to a rolling boil.

Gab stands over him, the lush thickness of his belly and chest more pronounced at this angle, a delta of blond hair trailing from pierced navel to below his slops. At least the view is stirring even if nothing else is.

"There. Wasn't so hard, was it?" Gab says.

"Go to all seven hells at once," Hugo says mildly. He could try to find some pleasure in how pleased Gab is at this turnabout, but he is, as ever, being far too smug about it.

"All right, don't get your sheets in a snarl." Grinning widely, Gab runs his fingers through Hugo's hair, gently tugging. It’s not always so obnoxious. Hugo tosses his head in a bid to dislodge him, but Gab holds him fast. "Steady," he says.

Then, appallingly, presses Hugo's face into the crotch of his slops.

"I'm going to hurt you later," Hugo promises, regretting his sharp inhale of indignation. Gab's heat against his cheek, the scent of him filling his nose—as brazen a ploy as his first. "I'll enjoy it."

"Probably as much as I'm about to enjoy this," Gab says, utterly unrepentant even as Hugo viciously pinches the back of his knee and tries to bring him down on his level. "Now, seein' as we've got the kneeling all figured out, how about you and me talk worship next?"

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