I like to think they did.
Someone best be drawing this already!
Russ was clearly late to that meeting….
You take that back! It’s excellent camouflage on Fenris I’ll have you know! 😂
Sanguinius: YEah my name is literally ‘bloody guy’ and my legion is the ‘blood angels’ it’s not like I’m gonna pick yellow.
Dorn: You’re not? Score!
Roboute: I think a muted color that blends into a lot of different environments would be best. A drab green, perhaps, or-
Horus: Too late, loser, I’m the Warmaster and I call fuckin’ DIBS on drab green.
Roboute: You- fine. My legion will wear blue and white and GOLD. We will stand out EVERYWHERE. We will kick ass and look GOOD
Fulgrim: Not bad, Rob, but not far enough. PURPLE and gold and white is where it’s at.
Perturabo: Who gives a fuck. I’m not going to paint it at all. Whatever, we all die, nothing matters.
Corvus: Black.
Leman: You can’t just choose black, you have to choose a real color with a shade and-
Corvus: Black.
Ferrus: No, see, you’re not listening, we’re all choosing-
Corvus: Black.
Fulgrim: You can’t just choose black, you need something to pick out the details.
Corvus…Black, with white details.
Fulgrim: But-
Horus: NEVER MIND, he’s going with Black, moving on.
Mortarion: Wh-
Jaghatai: WHITE! Ha, too slow!
Mortarion: But I-
Jaghatai: I called it first!
Mortarion: Fine, the colour of white underwear that’s been worn every day but never washed.
Fulgrim: I think I’m going to be sick.
Russ: The same colour as the skies of Fenris, to symbolize the raging temperament and fierce joy of my sons. The colour of the mighty mountain-ranges of my home, to symbolize the solid core of all my warriors. The colour of–
Magnus: So grey, then.
Russ: FUCK OFF CYCLOPS
Lion el’Jonson: Black and—
Corax: Don’t you DARE—
The Lion: —silver. Jeez, I could be green instead if it’s so important to you.
Horus: I’m already being green.
Fulgrim: Horus …
Horus: I mean, I was going to be white with black, but since you all want to squabble over it I decided to be generous and switch to seafoam green.
Vulkan: I’m going to be emerald green!
Horus: I GUESS???Manus Ferrus: Black.
Everyone: Seriously?
Manus Ferrus: …Fine. I’ll take brownish black with green splotches.
Fulgrm: What?
Manus Ferrus: With silver trim.
Summary: Comfort in the Siege. (Khan/Dorn/Sanguinius, nsfw)
***
Dorn slept best under both of them, the solid weight of their bodies providing for him some of the reassurance his fortress brought them, the shelter of Sanguinius’ wings spread over them as a sanctuary. It worked best for all of them. Sanguinius needed to be on top to be comfortable and to have a lot of space to sprawl all six of his limbs over. Jaghatai needed to know he always had a clear path to move at a moment’s notice, but he could press against his brothers on his other sides.
Their father could hardly be unaware of this going on in His domain, and approved, as far as Jaghatai could tell, of the comfort they offered each other.
Other comforts too. ‘Would you?’ Sanguinius asked, flashing fang to explain his reluctance to take Dorn in his mouth when he woke hard and aching from the press of their bodies and the hormones in their systems, and Jaghatai did. Stroking Sanguinius’ back and wings as he pressed into Dorn, then taking a turn between the Wall’s spread legs as well. The soft sounds, almost sobs, Dorn made as he came.
Looking to the sky, they could only hope other loyalists would appear. Even more so that they would be in time, not after besieged Terra had become a cinder. Guilliman with all the forces of Ultramar, the Lion with his knights, Russ and his wolves, Vulkan returned to them, Corax from the shadows. But here, now, in the Palace and under fire, they only had each other.
Summary: Guilliman’s on edge from having to deal with Lorgar and Thiel offers to help. (A/B/O, alpha!Guilliman/beta!Thiel, background alpha!Guilliman/omega!Lorgar, nsfw, I have no idea why I wrote this since I don’t even like a/b/o very much as a trope so it’s more sex pollen than anything)
***
Thiel was a beta and awfully glad of it. Alphas were disproportionally represented in the Legion command structure, but it was betas who made up the backbone of the bonds of brotherhood that made the Legionnes Astartes what they were, while the alphas had their dick-measuring contests and the omegas their special-snowflake specialist roles nurturing neophytes or machine-spirits or whatnot.
‘Tell me if my theoretical’s wrong: You don’t want an omega, because you want an omega too much, and no omega’s going to be able to get anywhere near you without their biology taking over. Any alpha in the Legion would present for you too, you’re you, but it would play havoc with their systems. Both you and them would be getting the wrong signals the whole time and compensating for that would miss the point of trying to slip your control. You still want someone to take the edge off. Practical: I’m a beta. I want this.’
He should probably, he decided, have tried to sound a little more dignified and less desperate, but he’d wanted to get across that he was more than reluctantly giving consent to something that was the best tactical option.
‘What I would like is for my brother to not inconvenience others by putting them in such a situation,” Guilliman said acidly, gracing Thiel with such an admittance. Not that anyone could have missed Guilliman’s feelings about Lorgar. “I have no intention of treating him in the disgraceful way I want to respond, let alone anyone else.’
‘I trust you, sir.’
Guilliman nodded, with a hint of irony. ‘Good. I didn’t give you permission to do otherwise.’
Thiel took the direct approach. He had a certain tendency to leap before he looked. ‘If anyone can give meaningful consent here, it’s me.’
He reached out to touch and only afterwards realised he should have asked permission to dare lay hands on his primarch’s august person even under other circumstances. Well, already in too deep, so he might as well do what he wanted and continue. He lifted his hand from his lord’s chest armour and reached up to touch his cool gauntlet to his bare cheek. Primarchs really were unnecessarily tall.
Whether his lord took what was offered or threw him out on his ass, he felt no fear, and not just because it had been genhanced out of him. It was total trust.
Guilliman watched him appraisingly from level blue eyes, despite the widening of his pupils from the heat of his rut. He had a primarch’s peerless mind, but he took his own damn time. He refused to be rushed or to be hasty.
He closed his own hand over Thiel’s gently, with the fine dexterity with which he could pick up an egg with his gauntlets without breaking it.
*
It took all his control to hold back, but Roboute Guilliman would never allow less from himself. As a warlord, he had hurt many, many people, but on his honour, when he did it, it would be on purpose.
Instead, he indulged by imagining how Thiel was going to look when he fucked him. That it would happen was no longer in any doubt. How his skin would feel rather than the cool ceramite of his armour, though the latter did feel good against his heated flesh. How he’d beg for him without hesitation or shame, and his mouth would surely be filthy, forgetting entirely it wasn’t proper to talk in gutter-argot around his primarch.
He leaned down and captured Thiel’s lips in a possessive kiss, arm around his waist drawing him close with a clatter of armour and holding him steady against his unyielding strength.
Thiel moaned into his mouth, eyes closing for a moment, then snapping back open to take in every detail of his face hungrily.
Guilliman had better poise, but he was hardly less affected. He wanted. His erection throbbed beneath his armour, painfully hard and aching for release. Thiel wasn’t giving back the proper omega signals that the alpha part of his brain wanted, but the smell of Lorgar’s heat had already raised his rut quite well and Thiel he wanted. Thiel wasn’t an omega, but, as he’d said, primarchs who were alphas could make betas feel like omegas around them, ordinary alpha too. It was hardly unusual for an alpha to be only attracted to omegas (he could recall the approximate statistics from Macragge) and some cultures he’d encountered considered other pairings to be obscene. Guilliman’s natural inclination was a preference for omegas, but he wasn’t so exclusive, especially when his mind was attracted even if his hormones needed a push.
‘Strip,’ he ordered, and for once Thiel rushed to obey without arguing or reinterpreting his command.
Thiel wasn’t handsome, not in the way of the Emperor’s Children for instance, but he was solid in the Ultramarine way. Guilliman liked him for his glorious disaster of a personality and the way he looked at him with unabashed eagerness and lust anyway.
Thiel didn’t wait for permission to start on his own armour when he stood naked before him. His disregard of protocol made Guilliman smile, though he understood why formality existed for social functioning and he had mandated it himself. His smile became more of a smirk as Thiel stole kisses against his skin as he worked. ‘Brat.’
‘Even your geneseed couldn’t fix that, lord.’
He pulled Thiel close, feeling the length of his body against his own, the texture of Astartes skin and muscle. ‘Then we must have some things in common.’ Sitting back on his desk, he pulled Thiel into his lap and kissed him breathless.
Then he leaned down and bit his neck, hard enough to bruise but not quite break the skin. Thiel groaned in pleasure and unconsciously mumbled a couple words most of his Legion would blush to hear. Mine, Guilliman thought.
With a free hand, he retrieved a bottle of lube from exactly where he kept it in his desk. His other hand moved between Thiel’s legs as the other man straddled his hips, squeezing his arse, rolling his balls between his fingers, stroking his cock. His instincts hated the delay of foreplay, but it was necessary. Even with an omega it would have been necessary, unless that individual had also been a primarch. He refused to do Thiel the disservice of letting his mind linger overlong on the thought of taking Lorgar without holding back, or even Dorn, who was at least agreeable.
Roboute Guilliman liked to think he was a good alpha. When he was with an omega, he took care of them, gave them what they needed. He made sure of his partner’s pleasure, told them what to do and pushed them down as easily as breathing but made sure it was what they were aching for, something that wouldn’t hurt or shame them later, when the heat was over. He didn’t ignore how own rut making him want, but he wanted to do things right even more than he wanted to be inside the warm, begging body under him right that moment.
Then there was Lorgar.
Lorgar made him want for his brother to be someone other than who he was. Since that was not true or going to be, Guilliman was stuck dealing with the brother he had and wished he didn’t. Some part of him insisted that if he just got Lorgar to submit hard enough, to do what he was told and be still and listen, then everything would be right in the galaxy and between them. The other part of him just wanted Lorgar to submit.
He didn’t want to be the sort of person who didn’t care what Lorgar wanted or how much he hurt him, yet his brother brought that out in him. Lorgar being spiteful and irresponsible and not taking his damn suppressants and going around the fleet in heat like a biohazard of omega pheromones with primarch intensity was not helping.
Focus. He wasn’t Lorgar. He was stronger than his instincts. Even if he hadn’t intended for his body to be in this state of arousal, he would decide what he did with it. He was in control. Of the various practicals open to him, he had chosen to be here, now, with this impulsive Astartes who wanted him. Who had chosen him, as freely as was possible when he was a primarch with all the complications of aura and chain-of-command inherent in that.
‘Please, lord, fuck that’s good, deeper, fuck,’ Thiel was muttering into his chest as Guilliman’s fingers moved inside him, squirming against him, which made Guilliman smile.
Rubbing lube onto his cock, letting Thiel feel it between his thighs, he commented, ‘That’s only my fingers, you know.’
‘That has come to my attention, Throne you’re huge, feels so good already but I want you in me, I can take it, want you to like it.’
Guilliman grinned, already enjoying himself. He kept scissoring his fingers in Thiel and worked his cock in firm, sure strokes with the other hand. ‘I’m not getting inside you until you’ve had at least one orgasm to help you relax. Come for me, Aeonid.’
It turned out that Thiel could follow orders, with enough motivation. Guilliman kissed him long and slow and deep to express his approval, once the string of profanity had slowed down, and Thiel melted against him. ‘Good boy.’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘We’re just getting started.’
‘Oh good.’ The spark in Thiel’s eyes spoke to the idea that this had not been nearly enough to tire out an Astartes. ‘Please fuck me,’ he begged before Guilliman needed to ask him anything.
Guilliman rolled them over so that Thiel was sitting on his desk and he was leaning over him. Slowly, carefully, finally, he pushed inside him.
Thiel breathed in sharply as he was penetrated and held it for a long time, and it was only when his moans and jumbled muttering resumed that Guilliman knew he could inch forward again. He couldn’t take him all the way, he couldn’t let himself off the leash, but it was good enough, would have to be. Thiel was tight and hot around him at least, shuddering and spasming with the effort of stretching to accommodate a primarch, but not backing down in the least.
Mine, he told himself as a distraction from impatience. My Legionnaire, my son, my lover. The man who’s not going to be able to walk straight tomorrow after I fuck him raw.
As Thiel adjusted, he pulled back and slid in again in one smooth stroke. Thiel searched for purchase on the desk, didn’t find any, and Guilliman said, ‘You can touch.’
‘Oh thank science.’ Thiel threw his arms around his waist to anchor himself and have something to hold onto, and Guilliman began fucking him in earnest.
The friction was glorious, the very act of having someone under him and taking him, moving inside a welcoming body. He jerked Thiel off again as he found a rhythm, his sweet body clenching around him with his orgasm and his gasps of shock at how good it felt. He fucked him until Thiel was an exhausted, whimpering, boneless mess against him, Guilliman holding him up to his chest to keep him from collapsing entirely. Mine, he thought with each thrust inside him, each mark he left on his skin with fingers and mouth, each gasp that fell from his lips. Mine, he thought as he found his own release, satiated with the idea he had thoroughly claimed him, body and mind.
Guilliman rolled them over again so that Thiel could curl against his chest without having to try to support his own weight. The Astartes cuddled with abandon, seeking his closeness, his warmth, his approval.
‘I almost want to thank your damn fool of a brother now. I mean… pretend whatever I said was more polite, my lord.’
Guilliman chuckled and stroked Thiel’s hair. ‘Never repeat this to him, but I almost agree.’
Summary: Magnus surrenders to Russ on Prospero. (Magnus, Russ, sfw, AU, WIP in the sense that this was originally intended to be a much longer thing but I have no memory of where I was going with it next)
***
Russ had said ‘please’. Under the dark cloud of the magnitude of his miscalculations, Magnus found it easier to say he didn’t understand his brother in the least. Every time he thought he’d gotten him figured out, and the crude barbarian really should have been easy to figure out, he did something entirely contrary to expectations or sense.
He had expected Russ to be gleeful, vindictive. He’d been waiting for an excuse all along, wanting this. He would rejoice at an opportunity to humiliate Magnus and his sons, heap insult and threats upon them and try to rile them up to fight so the full leasing of the Wolves could be blamed on their resistance. They were the Wolves of Fenris: like a storm, like a floodgate; they were the Emperor’s Executioners, who embraced their duty; they were superstitious barbarians ready to shout ‘witch’ at anything they didn’t understand.
He had never seen Russ so… not apologetic, not tentative, not hesitant, so… subdued. Careful. Tightly contained. He was boisterous with those he liked, Magnus had heard, as loud as his volcanic temper with those he quarrelled with. This Russ was quiet, spare with words.
It went against their nature for one primarch to submit to another in any way–perhaps that was the source of much that had happened since Ullanor–but… Magnus could almost pretend he was an honoured guest aboard Russ’ flagship as they returned to Terra.
Maybe he was misinterpreting them again, but he didn’t think so. What little he’d seen of Russ hadn’t been filled with scorn or posturing. His brother, he’d called him carefully, was his guest until they reached Terra as well as his prisoner, words fraught with meaning. Prospero was under blockade and Magnus had ordered his sons to stand down, but Russ had too, to wait and watch and fight no wars without him unless against a new enemy. He’d growled deep in his throat at a casual insult to the XVth, and at that sign of his displeasure Magnus hadn’t heard another since, though the Wolves spoke to him little.
Russ didn’t impose his presence on Magnus’ borrowed space, but that was almost worse. It made Magnus want to go to him, but he had to resist that. This was not the sort of brother he could unburden himself to. He knew from Nikaea and Ahriman’s rage at betrayal that anything he said would be used against him. Yet they had gone so long brooding over each other with no dialogue between them until, well, until moments like this.
Perhaps they would have reached Terra in such an unresolved and precarious state, but things were not to be that simple.
‘Calm the storm,’ the Navigator demanded. Lady Belisarius moved with the predatory stalk of the Wolves, feral and aggressive. No delicate noblewoman of the Terran court for Russ. Powerful for a Navigator, he’d never met one so strong in raw power and so sloppy in its use, but of course no threat to him, even if her gifts hadn’t been so single-purpose.
‘You think I went along with you because I intended for this ship to never reach Terra?’
Actually, none of the conspiracy theories in her mind were so well-formed. Just an all consuming anger that the Immaterium might try to shape itself to act against her and her ship, a violent desire to go for the throat of an abstract concept, but Leman had called for him. She didn’t know either if that was in blame, but she assumed.
Magnus followed the woman to the bridge of the Hrafnkel half from curiosity, half from a desire to make his brother not try to make something of it by dragging him there. Russ intercepted them just outside, though, giving Magnus only a brief glimpse of the iridescent colours distorting reality around the battle-barge.
Seemingly ignoring Magnus, he and the Navigator conversed animatedly in one of his Fenrisian tongues. He didn’t need the specific words to follow the general idea that she was insisting she could power through and he was refusing to her arrogant assertions, not with his pack at stake, not with her well-being. He would, if he needed to, he was a warlord of ice and blood, but not yet.
He sent her on to the command deck, and turned back to the other primarch. ‘We need to talk.’
He had been expecting this and dreading this, and now they were to be distracted by yet another misunderstanding between them.
Russ lead them to a currently unused chamber. It lacked the personal intimacy of being Russ’ own chambers or other space particular to him, but it had the usual reek of stale dog and dander that went wherever the Wolves did, their crude decorations and trash of old rag and pelt and rotting chunks of food that had gotten stuck in one crevice or another.
‘I didn’t–’
‘Send away your fleet in order to lure and ambush us here?’
‘Yes,’ he said, which sounded rather stupid and unbelievable for its flatness as an answer.
‘I believe you.’
‘I–What?’
‘I can smell the truth on you.’
Of all the ridiculous, imagined…
As if he had heard him begin to speak, Russ replied, ‘You think me a fool. Don’t deny it–I know, and I know I’ve encouraged it, too much perhaps. I am not. I am a primarch. I see a trap not of my making and I dislike it.’
It was his mistakes and his debt come due. ‘I did not cause it, but it is because of me. I cannot be allowed to reach Terra.’
‘Why? What did you do? What are you going to do?’
‘You would not understand and I cannot be allowed to explain to any who would.’
‘I don’t need a confession of guilt. I know you’re guilty, and I know you know. You did not back down to move the battlefield and crossfire from your home to here. You did not submit to me from politics. You knew I was coming. You know why the order was given, and you agree.’
He had expected to die. He had been ready to die, ready to let it happen. ‘You were supposed to remove me.’
‘Constantin Valdor was sent with me to speak with the voice of the Emperor.’ Magnus started, wondering why he hadn’t seen him, before Russ continued, ‘He lied to me and I killed him.’
That was Russ, so utterly sure of himself to make that sound casual. It wasn’t even a confession made to draw out some dark secret of Magnus’ in turn; it was, to all indications, something he planned to announce before the Golden Throne at the first opportunity and in almost those words.
‘Magnus, I need to know. What was worth that? What is trying so hard to turn us against each other? What wants us to be the weapon wielded against each other?’
Alone with his brother, together as they had never been meant to be, Magnus found himself with one final chance to make his words heard. Too late, too late almost certainly, but… ‘There is ruinous power in the Warp, brother, and it has me, but not completely yet. It has me, and it has Horus.’
Chaos Space Marines by: Piotr Chrzanowski
—–
Empyrean Arts: showcasing artists in the Sci Fi and Fantasy genres. Follow for daily cyber-updates
Summary: ‘Sevatar has psychic troubles’ isn’t quite as useful to say as ‘Sevatar is a psychic trouble.’ Thiel deals. (No Nails AU, Sevatar/Thiel, PG-13, while living together)
***
The headache hit Aeonid Thiel like a powerfist crushing his skull, and he had no idea why.
He considered. Was he in combat? No. He was on the Nightfall. Everyone was ignoring him. The sensors in his armour informed him, when he inquired with a blink-click, that his hormones that had cascaded in automatic response to that. No sign of why his body had randomly misfired, just the secondary consequences of that.
Ah, he realised. I am under psychic attack.
With the sharpness his combat hormones granted him, he glanced around. There was no reason any enemy psyker would need to be within his line of sight, but he could determine how generalised the attack was.
There was no panic around him, no screams or clawing at eyes. Specific then. Why? Why him? There would be negative consequences if he died, but there were better targets. If the Imperials launched another attack on the heart of Ultramar, he would not be at the top of their hit list, and besides there were Magnus and the Thousand Sons in system.
One of the Atramentar shook his head. Another shuffled his feet, a gesture never casual in terminator armour.
Ah, he concluded. Sevatar.
Pushing the pain aside, he went over to the nearest terminator. ‘Vox whoever’s with Sevatar.’
The man (what was this one’s name? Sistin) moved his head minutely as he spoke to someone. Then he voxed Thiel on his armour’s internal systems. ‘He had a seizure a minute ago.’
Theoreticals: This could be an external attack or an internal problem. It was centred around Sevatar. (He could see two other people he knew to have psyker talent who seemed unaffected.) Whatever the cause, it was bleeding over onto those closest to the First Captain.
Practical: ‘Get–’ No, Apothecary Ahriman was too busy. His primarch needed him more. Not until he had more information and knew if he was absolutely indispensable for victory. ‘Get Valzen. Get him to the Apothecarium, but keep it quiet. Come on.’
The Night Lords didn’t take his orders as a general statement, but just now they made an exception. Someone needed to give orders and they sounded like good ones. They were Atramentar. They weren’t going to be stubborn when their captain was at risk.
He swapped to the Atramentar private channels as they walked. He wasn’t a member of their brotherhood, but they tolerated him at their edges to some extent because Sevatar had put him there. Some reported symptoms they were having too–headaches, dizziness, seeing auras and hearing scattered thoughts, and their confusion about it. All asked after their captain. ‘I’m working on it,’ Thiel said amidst the vox chatter. That was not sufficient to quiet them, but it was accepted without him being told to shut up.
Valzen did not bother to look up at Thiel as he walked in, but did volunteer, ‘Physically, there is nothing wrong with him that won’t heal. He’s having a seizure approximately every forty seconds. The Geller fields are up at full power. No one senses anything but the Atramentar.’
‘So it’s him?’
‘Most likely.’
Thiel sighed. ‘Make him comfortable. I’d prefer he damage as few of his remaining brain cells as possible, should he ever decide to use them. I’ll figure something out.’
Valzen and his orderlies saw to their work. They hadn’t needed him to tell them how to do their job. Yet, they trusted him. He was an Ultramarine. An Ultramarine. Surely that meant he would succeed.
About the only thing he’d done in life that Thiel was proud of was being decreed worthy of becoming a Space Marine. People had told him they had been mistaken ever since. But he refused to fail the man who had chosen him and he had chosen in turn, the man who needed him.
Extracted from his armour, Sevatar didn’t look remotely like he was asleep. He seemed peaceful when he slept, when Thiel held him at least. Right now he looked like he was having a seizure.
Thiel mopped a wet cloth across his brow as he alternately sweated and shook with chills. Antsy, fidgeting, how unsuitable for a Space Marine. The Atramentar that Valzen hadn’t kicked out of the Apothecarium didn’t say anything.
Think. He had to think. He had to ignore the pain in his head. No, wait. If Sevatar wasn’t under the influence of anything external, then why was Thiel being attacked psychically? There was only one plausible source.
It had to be him, then. Thinking Night Lords were weak-willed or not aside, they had lack of mental stability written into their gene-code. He didn’t.
Thiel concentrated on the pain. The specifics of it–the sharp stabs in his temples, the pressure in the bridge of his nose and under his cheekbones, the dull ache at the back of his skull. He owned the pain and isolated it from himself.
Then he stripped off his red helmet and gauntlets, took Sevatar’s hand in his tattooed ones, and imagined poking that ball of pain inside his mind as forcefully as he could.
It rebounded like a boot to the gut. He staggered mentally but stubbornly refused to fall. Sevatar!
Another attack. From behind, like a cat pouncing on its prey and going for the back of the neck. He imagined a shield on his arm as he spun, emblazoned with the symbol of Ultramar.
Sevatar, it’s me. Don’t you dare ignore me.
He sensed recognition from the dark, painful thing. In his mind and Sevatar’s rose the shared memories of all the hours over the last few years they had spent together, Thiel talking and Sevatar listening, drinking him in. Yes, Sevatar knew that voice, that mind.
You’re hurt, Sev. Come on, let’s get out of here. Follow my lead, damn you.
Even an animal understood that if it hurt here, you should go somewhere else.
They were in their quarters–Curze’s quarters–but they were wrong, too large, there certainly hadn’t been a sparring ring there yesterday, the way dreams were wrong. We’re inside my mind, Thiel reasoned. And this is where we go together.
Sevatar was there too. He didn’t quite fit his outline, crackling with shadow and electricity. His mouth was not so much a grin as a slash wider than his face.
He looked a monster. Thiel put his hands on his hips and said, ‘Wake up. You’re hurting yourself.’
‘I do that. Maybe I want to hurt you too.’
Sevatar swung his glaive at Thiel, who blocked with a powersword he imagined in his hand. A fine pugio appeared in his other hand as he spun into a counter-attack. He wasn’t a psyker, but he wasn’t an idiot. The most important elements of mental combat were will and creativity anyway.
‘Liar. You lashed out at your allies, not your enemies. Hurting us was only a side effect. You reached for us because you panicked. Sevatar, the sociopathic loner, asking for help.’
Thiel was an exceptional fighter, even among the Legiones Astartes, but he wasn’t on Sevatar’s level and never would be, just like Sevatar would never be better than Sigismund. They had sparred regularly their whole acquaintance, so he could hold his own, but he couldn’t count on winning through force of arms. Time to change the playing field.
Sevatar stumbled as the floor became quicksand. Thiel got a bone-cracking punch in that left the lenses of his helmet shattered and leaking blood.
Still, he could see Sevatar watch him, see that Thiel was unaffected by the illusion of poor footing, and adapt. He tossed missiles at Thiel with his mind–rocks, bolt rounds, falling girders from above. Thiel imagined shields and refused to stagger under any of the impacts. His shield was his honour, his duty, his purpose, and these darts would not touch him.
He made himself faster, as fast as he needed to be, as fast as he could think, and covered distance by removing the space between rather than crossing it. He forced the attack on Sevatar, getting too close for him to put his glaive to its full use. It cut a jagged gash into his thigh, but he got a much more solid hit on Sevatar’s chest with his pugio, slicing through armour, rib, and one of his lungs.
‘Why shouldn’t I? You’re mine, Aeonid.’
Thiel was distracted a moment by the possessiveness of it, the unselfconscious selfish want, and something he unconsciously shied away from naming or acknowledging, and took a solid hit from the haft of the glaive that cracked his chestplate and clavicle.
He repaired himself with a thought, not so much healing, which he was no expert in, as returning to his idealised mental image of himself. ‘Yeah, I’m yours.’
Sevatar came in for another attack, and Thiel dropped his weapons. They dissolved into smoke before they hit the deck. He stood still but dignified, at parade rest. He held the gaze of the murderer before him unflinchingly. Not trust. Not resignation. Surrender. Choice.
Did you really think I would give less than I promised? he said in his own mind. Did I not say my life was yours?
The chainglaive came to rest at his throat, the blow pulled at the last possible second. He could feel its sharpness under his torn gorget, the trickle of blood from his neck that would have instantly clotted in real life but he allowed to drip down the blade.
Sevatar pulled back, eventually. ‘I do learn new tricks whenever I spar with you, but I don’t think I’ll employ that one. I do prefer your method of using this world to Ahriman’s, though.’
‘Awh shucks, I love sparring with you too, Sev.’
Sevatar imitated Thiel in healing himself, and Thiel wondered if he really understood what the method constituted. It was–Thiel imagined, but this was his mind–not just becoming hale and hearty, but filling those broken places with pure ideation. Becoming a little more the person he wanted to be, the person he imagined himself as. He wondered if Sevatar knew he looked more real, more like himself in the real world, than the manifestation of his damaged mind.
‘There are easier ways to ask me to work off steam with you. Now you’re going to have to endure being fussed over by your mother-hens in terminator armour.’
‘I have no idea how to wake up,’ Sevatar said matter-of-factly.
‘Hm,’ said Thiel. He wasn’t the psyker here, but magical theory was intuitive–almost by definition, how it seemed like things should work was how they did. ‘I do. I will save the day once again.’
Sevatar rolled his eyes, and Thiel willed himself awake, which was easy for him.
He wondered how long had passed, and concluded not long enough to change anything important. There was Sevatar, there were the Atramentar standing sentinel, the Nightfall wasn’t on fire.
Seeing no reason to second-guess himself, he leaned across Sevatar and kissed him on the mouth.
Sevatar didn’t respond at first, then his lips moved clumsily, then, as far as Thiel could tell, he returned to his body to get his mouth to move the way he had intended it to. Some of the Atramentar wolf-whistled, just to be helpful.
‘I knew you were good for something.’
‘It is ironic I’m better than you at what should be your thing, not mine.’
‘I’d trade you.’
He’d take it if he could. Better for operational efficiency. Better to spend his pool of sanity points than to continue to drain Sevatar’s depleted allowance. Better because of the natural human instinct that didn’t want to see someone he cared about hurt. ‘Settle for listening to me.’ He caught the Corona Nox that one of the Atramentar tossed him out of the air and put it on Sevatar’s head. ‘And wear this.’
Summary: Guilliman meets Russ again, after the fall. (sequel to this, Guilliman/Russ/Faffnr+his pack, post-Heresy, nsfw, WIP)
***
He’d hardly been oblivious to the insinuations involved when Russ muttered, ‘You smell good’ while embracing him, but his brother hadn’t pressed further at the time. He’d wondered if that had been general purpose flirting about him that the Wolves were prone to, or a statement about what he smelled on him. He had showered a couple times since last he’d been in bed with the pack, wrapped around each other against the words ‘too late’ in their ears.
He didn’t mind finding it surprising to later discover Russ in his quarters without further warning. It was worth being surprised over. He wasn’t sure what else he was feeling, other than that he probably shouldn’t be. They weren’t ‘his’ pack; he had no claim over them really–if anything Russ did. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen them with primarchs other than himself, though he really didn’t want to think of that, didn’t want to be reminded with an intensity that called up memories even when his conscious mind and willpower said not to.
‘You could have gone somewhere else or asked before inviting yourself in,’ he said instead.
Russ didn’t turn back to look at him, though he did pull his teeth back from Faffnr’s throat enough to speak. ‘That was rude of me. I assumed the invitation was to the pack, not individuals, and I would not have left your bed cold and empty, not now.’
It was not like Russ to apologise, but from what Guilliman knew of Fenrisian hospitality law, it was a serious matter and he’d be entirely in the right taking insult from it. He didn’t, really. Not now. His practicals for the theoretical ‘now that Russ is here on Terra they’ll leave and go back to their own kind’ had all been deeply unsatisfying, but he’d been prepared for it, just one more loneliness in a galaxy that seemed devoid of anything but.
‘Make it up to me,’ he said, because going through his mind was, Theoretical: I want to forget. No, I want none of this to have ever happened. I don’t want the weight of the galaxy to rest of my shoulders, or to likely as not start another war when my remaining brothers think I’m setting myself over them. But I will because someone has to and I don’t trust anyone but me to do it right, so I will give up ever last bond of friendship and brotherhood I have left. That is the undeniable ‘what is’ and what I have been pushed to. Practical: I want Russ to hold me. Just this once. I want to pretend and to have a memory for all those nights where it might be more of a comfort to replay than a source of pain.
Russ grinned because it was his habit to grin and the gesture came easily to his face, however much it didn’t reach his eyes, not anymore. ‘Make yourself at home. I thought these boys deserved a reward after having to deal with you for so long.’
It was easy to slip into the banter of Wolves. ‘I like to think I’ve taught them well. See for yourself.’
Bo Soren punched his shoulder affectionately, and Russ replied, ‘They’re blood of my blood. I wouldn’t expect less.’
They looked good together, Guilliman had to admit. All the small details he’d never noticed before until he had something to contrast it with, the sheer rightness of how they fit together. While he’d certainly gotten the pack whimpering and begging before, it was a different sort of submission than how Faffnr offered his throat up to Russ now. There was the obvious affection and trust there, yet he was absolutely sure the pack-leader would fight with his primarch as surely as he had Guilliman or any other if they had a disagreement until matters were settled.
Russ returned to what he’d been doing because he was hardly going to be so rude as to do otherwise, leaving Guilliman to strip down and make himself at home among the pack and their usual games of elbowing and licking. He watched Russ with Kuro Jjordrovk sucking on his shoulders (and watching over them) and Malmur’s wet mouth between his legs. He stroked Malmur’s hair appreciatively to show he was still paying attention, but everything faded to a prelude to Russ’ touch. He was too much a primarch to be overwhelmed by the presence of another one, but he wanted it, wanted it like he wanted back the touches of those he was never going to see again in this life and wanted it even if it came to the same end.
Summary: He didn’t want to think of his wife, not now. She had died during the birth of their first child, along with their daughter, just two years after their nupitals. Half a year later, Luther had stumbled upon a feral boy in the forest. What might have happened, had the Lion been raised with a mother and sister? Possibility. They had plagued his thoughts of late. (Lion/Luther/Fyona, nsfw)
***
‘Why is she crying?’ the boy asked. The wild boy Luther had brought home was intense. He hadn’t spoken for a long time, but when he had started it had been in full sentences. It made it difficult to judge his age, his origin, his intent.
‘Because she’s unhappy,’ Fyona told him patiently.
‘But why? Her diaper’s dry, she ate, she had her nap, she’s not cold…’ He looked to her for answers with complete loss that the list he’d been given was not producing results.
‘Lion, child, sometimes babies cry for no reason anyone else can figure out. You know the important thing?’
‘No.’
‘That even if you don’t know why someone’s crying, you try to make it better. You keep trying until they stop. Okay?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ The Lion nodded solemnly, like he was making an oath. He looked less pained for it, his inability to understand no longer weighing on him. If he could only make his baby sister stop crying, then it didn’t matter what he was or what set him apart from all other men.
‘Hold her closer to your chest, yes, like that. Do you know any lullabies? I’ll teach you one she likes.’
The boy had a voice that could break hearts and leave a soul shaken and quiet a crying child.
*
The Lion was taller than Luther now, Fyona noted as she made a mark on the wall. Lyssa toddled after him everywhere, and it became his reflex to snatch her out of the way of knights or from under the hooves of horses without even needing to look down. Yet, while he could be callous at times, when he wasn’t thinking of it, at others he doted on her. If he goal was to make her smile, he would win.
‘He hardly seems like her brother,’ Luther commented.
‘More like her father?’ She asked, because she knew her Luther. ‘My dear, he is not our son. We did not have the measure of him. If he is your brother, then a good brother he has grown to be. He’s still our family.’
‘I suppose you’re right. I have nothing to regret. He is a great man. Greater than I, I warrant.’
‘Luther.’
‘I expect he’ll outgrow more than my armour soon.’
‘We’ll make a bigger space for him, then. Hearts grow. If he is a giant, or a forest spirit, or a lord of lords, we’ll make room for him.’
‘I’m glad he has you, and her. I’m grateful to be beside him too. He’s as lost as we are, I know, and unsure of his place. If I could give him everything, well… I want to.’
*
It was up in the air who would crack first.
Would it be the Lion? He didn’t understand people, and it scared him to think that others might understand him better than he did himself, so better that they knew nothing. But he was good with Lyssa, and she with him, and the way he glanced at Luther out of the corner of his eye when she asked if she should say he was her big brother or her uncle or her other father spoke volumes to Fyona. He wanted to make the people close to him happy, he had been taught that was what you did, but he didn’t know how.
Would it be Luther? He was no liar, but there was a tension in him, of knowing that where he stood was not quite where it should be. He supported the Lion, put him forward, talked with him for hours about the Great Hunt or explained to obvious things about knights they’d known for years without shaming the Lion for not having noticed them. But sometimes he stared at him behind his back with all sorts of things he’d never said aloud.
Would it be Fyona herself? She knew. Whether it was too much or not enough that she knew, only time would tell. She saw the bounds between them and the shadows, and wondered how much they understood it. She saw how Luther looked between her and the Lion, how his daze darkened then. It was so much more complicated to see when she was too close. She knew her own heart, but not the Lion’s in this regard and she feared for all of them if they got this wrong. It couldn’t last like this forever, that much was sure.
‘I couldn’t blame you,’ Luther told her. ‘He is beautiful, glorious, the strongest knight and the greatest leader Caliban has ever known. How could you not love him?’
‘Do you think I’d rather him for a husband than you?’
‘How could you not?’
‘You say that because you love him too.’
Luther closed his eyes, pained by his admission and her implied one. ‘I wish you two the best. I intend to turn mastery of the Order over to him. Do not feel bound by our vows made before he came among us. There’s always divorce. You, like the Order, can do better now, and I’ll step aside.’
‘You fool,’ she told her husband affectionately. ‘I do love him, but I have never stopped loving you. He is great, but you are no less for it in my eyes. I do not know if he loves me, but I know he loves you. You love him, it’s plain as day. I’m the one who would give you my blessing to do together in the forest anything knights might do in the forest when wives aren’t around to see, if it made you happy.’
‘Fyona, I…’ He embraced her, warm, awed, desperate. ‘I don’t want to lose either of you.’
‘Nor do I. Be patient, my love. We’re family, all of us. We’ll figure something out if we don’t forget that. Think of this as a quest, and remember you’re the best tacticians on all Caliban.’
*
Lyssa had little interest in knights, and laughed at the Lion when he asked her if she wanted to be one, but horses were a different matter. Lion would need a good horse to carry someone as heavy as him, she teased, but she took it seriously. He would need one to stay side by side with Father. If that meant spending all night in the stables with a mare that might foal at any moment, then she would, and she was hardly too young for the responsibility by the harsh ways of Caliban.
Raising a child meant rarely getting a house to yourself. Fyona regretted sometimes the difficult childbirth that had meant no more children after her firstborn, but at least with one rather than a whole brood you knew you’d have some privacy when you knew where she was.
Fyona kissed the Lion’s shoulder, charmed by how he shut his eyes and bit his lip to try to keep control. Luther was not so otherworldly as he, but he looked beautiful too as they moved together. He didn’t seek to hurt his dearest brother, but he held nothing back, giving him everything he could in the hope of being enough for him.
The Lion couldn’t do that–he had learned all his life, from when he had first come into their home, how to be careful with fragile things and fragile people, to bring joy not hurt, and it was too hard a habit to break. So they learned to make do: heavy chains and solid stone anchoring to hold his hands, touching him even if he could not touch them with abandon, bringing him to the edge slowly but surely until he could come apart between them. They’d had the years of making sure there would be no other children to learn other ways to please each other, and the Lion was only a new challenge.
The Lion arched his back as Luther found just the right angle inside him, and shuddered at Fyona’s kisses on his throat. He was too much a man who hunted beasts to not react to teeth against his neck, teeth that could come away red and leave him bleeding out, but that was his gift to them: this vulnerability. That was what you did for people you loved: you gave them everything and left yourself open to be hurt. But you did it, because you didn’t want to see them cry, and trusted they felt the same for you, even if you had to do it blindly.
The Lion whimpered, pleas he’d never put into words on his tongue, and Fyona kissed him and spoke words of affection in his ear. He strained against his bonds, not truly trying to break them, but a body that knew how to respond warring with a mind that did not. If he had no words to return, he could at least whisper their names in awe and reverence for these feelings they brought up in him. They felt like drowning, but he’d been told were called love.
*
It would have surprised most of those who’d met the Lion to see the techpriest run into him without pause, and even more that his features broke into a slight smile rather than his usual brooding lack of facial expression.
The red hood had fallen back to reveal a young, dark-haired woman, still mostly human other than the mechandrites coming from her back. ‘Lion!’
‘Lyssa,’ he said, meeting her embrace and sweeping her up in his arms. ‘Little sister.’
‘Father told me what those melta bombs did to your Land Raider. I saw the mess the poor tank was in. Are you alright?’
‘Perfectly fine. It would take more than that to injure a primarch.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise. I had Luther at my side. The xenos had no hope of victory.’ She nodded, accepting that. The Lion might not understand her need for reassurance after he’d been in battle, but it was a familiar ritual. If this was what his baby sister needed to not fret, then he would do it for her. ‘The Apothecaries have already checked me over. See to the Land Raiders, sister. The sooner they’re in working order, the sooner my Angels can take to the field again.’
She nodded again and remembered to make the sign of the aquila before fluttering off to minister to the poor machine-spirits. The Lion watched her go before he turned back to his duties and hid the smile away.
Summary: Guilliman doesn’t know exactly what’s going on between Dorn and Sigimund, but it means yet another thing for him to run interference on. (sequel to this, Guilliman/Dorn, Guilliman/Sigismund, Dorn/Sigismund, PG-13)
***
‘I had sex with Sigismund.’
Dorn, stoic, self-contained Dorn, winced in a whole body motion, despite himself. ‘I can’t believe you felt the need to say that to me, Roboute.’
‘Would you please,’ Guilliman used the better position he had purposefully made sure he was in to hold Dorn back from reaching for his pants and picking himself up from his bed, ‘give me the benefit of the doubt that I didn’t say that for the purpose of hurting you. I knew it would, but did it anyway.’
‘You do that,’ Dorn said, because there could never be a lack of bitterness between them, never be what there was that one moment when they clasped hands after Terra but before Guilliman’s usurpation, let alone before anything ever happened to their family.
‘I thought of not telling you. You hate the idea of living happily in ignorance, but I considered not respecting that. Eventually I decided you should know, or I’d have accomplished only half of my goals.’
Through gritted teeth, Dorn asked, ‘Then why did you do it? Wasn’t it enough you already stole my… Legion?’
‘I didn’t steal your favourite son. It was never me he wanted, not more than a little, but you. I did what I could because you could not.’
‘Do you know why?’ Dorn’s voice was low, a whisper, a growl.
‘He didn’t tell me, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t want to know, because I’d rather avoid another civil war over difference in opinion.’
‘You think my reasons foolish, whatever they are?’
Guilliman nodded, gravely, honestly, against his shoulder. ‘We are not nearly as much alike as some would make us out to be.’
‘Why then? Why tell me?’
‘Because you love him. Because you want him to be happy. I wanted you to know that just for a moment, even without your forgiveness, he could be, though it was a pale imitation.’
Dorn breathed deeply, his eyes closed. Guilliman knew him too well, knew the power of honesty upon him, and his inability to deny what he wanted so much to, even to himself. Inhale, exhale. Filling his lungs and returning to break the stillness of the dark.
‘Do you expect me to thank you?’ he asked finally.
‘No. I wanted you to know that good things can exist, still. That I can give you, when I can’t wrap you in my arms like I did him, brother.’ Which seemed an odd thing to say when they were naked in his bed, but it was true. They were both primarchs and there was too much between them for Dorn to give him the submission he craved, which was the most natural thing in the world from an Astartes to a primarch, or take a full measure of the comfort he needed. ‘When you can’t hold him like you both need.’
‘Stop.’
‘No. He shook to not buckle under the weight of wanting to be perfect enough to be worthy of you, but even broken he’s so strong and so beautiful. He makes war with the righteous fury of the Emperor’s Champion, but nothing else compared to seeing, for a moment, him not regret being alive. I have many sons I can take pride in, but none who cast such a shadow on reality as the Black Knight. I envy you for being the one he loves.’
Another ‘stop’ caught in Dorn’s throat, because he did not think he could say it without it coming out as a plea.
‘I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable with the sordid details, but it was almost like seeing him as he once was, while he was enjoying himself.’ What a thing to worry about when they were in bed together, but it reflected the heart of the matter. What he and Roboute had done had been physically gratifying, but not more so than what they did in the practice cages. Just thinking about what ‘sordid details’ might be with Sigismund involved made him hot and cold all over. Imagining how beautiful Sigismund must have looked spread out under Roboute, moaning and shivering with ecstasy. How he would glow if Dorn had been the one touching him. Throne, he’d always wanted to touch him, had never stopped, had never been able to stop. ‘I don’t regret pleasing him or, I hope, you.’
‘You always think you know better, don’t you?’
‘Get your own house in order and we can talk.’ No pity, no regret. Guilliman did not reach out and try to touch him or hold him for comfort, because that wasn’t what they did and not something he would have allowed. Only in this second-hand way could they reach each other, Guilliman caring for the thing he loved most in the world.
‘It’s not up to you to judge me.’
‘No,’ he said, and said no more to Dorn, not of condemnation or forgiveness.
because by fate even the gods are cast down 