Summary: Guilliman tests all his theoreticals, even those involving reports of his own death. (prequel to a punch-in-the-gut fic sirithy wrote back in the day about Thiel talking to Sigismund after hearing about Dorn’s death; Guilliman/Thiel, sfw, post-Heresy)

***

“My primarch didn’t like… surprises. Things he couldn’t predict. He liked facts, evidence, proof. Things he could control and therefore influence. He tested every theory he had, battled out every possible situation. The Codex wasn’t born from his imagination, you know. But he also…”

Thiel went silent for a while and for once, Sigismund had nothing clever to say.

“He also tested us. I was told later he chose me and my men because he assumed that of all his sons, I would react the most… reasonably to news of my primarch’s death.”

Sigismund watched silently as he poured more wine.

“I did. Barely. We were devastated, as you might have imagined. Men cried, battle-hardened veterans sobbing like babies. I have always wondered if the Iron Hands didn’t get, as grim as it is, the best deal of losing their father. They were in a battle. They could see him die, could channel their grief straight into avenging him, killing their enemies, and continue fighting until it no longer hurt.” He chuckled again, as dark as before. “Lord Guilliman considered it a valid theory. I was so proud. And the day he tested us, I cried along with everyone else. We carried on, enacted protocols, but not as efficiently enough as our lord would have wanted. He was… disappointed in us.”

Another laugh. “Like we cared, like that once we cared if we had upset him. Men knelt before him in droves, glad to accept any blame, any punishment, if it only came from him. I begged for his forgiveness myself.”

*

Thiel had never been more glad for a lifetime of stern disapproval and censure that had lead him to being able to bear his primarch’s displeasure this moment. ‘The fault is my own, my lord. I should have kept to protocol and set a better example for the men. I will accept any punishment you see fit. Demote me back to sergeant. Send me to burn squigs out of ork latrines on reclaimed planets. Let me–’

‘Oh shut up, Aeonid. I’m trying to be angry at you. You don’t have to sound so thrilled about it.’

But you’re alive. Alive to be angry at me. I’d accept anything just to hear it in your voice. Kneeling before his primarch, Thiel was too mature an officer to say that out loud, but he was doing a bad job of not having it written on his face.

‘I chose you and your men, Chapter Master, because I thought you would be the best. I am disappointed in you, and I expect you to be disappointed in yourself. Tell me what theoreticals you were using. When a test does not go as I’d anticipated, I need to know all the more.’

Thiel knew he should be. When he was thinking clearly, he took pride in his ability to see nothing but the clear, straight line between where he was and his goal and doing whatever needed to be done to get there. On the other hand, stealing a sword and a command weren’t the most well-adjusted of behaviours.

‘I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t even angry, then. I was so far beyond that. I didn’t feel anything, I told myself, though I could not stop weeping. I was light, free. Everything was simple. I wasn’t thinking either. I wasn’t applying practicals badly–I was not, consciously. There was no strategy, no Codex, nothing but me and the victory I saw in front of me.’

Guilliman nodded, acknowledgement not approval, and Thiel took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Because if I did anything but act on pure instinct, all I’d be able to see was you. I could only run forward, never dwell on it.’

‘And your instincts are to throw out the Codex entirely, and they border on suicidal.’

‘It is me, lord.’

‘You succeeded. That was never in doubt. You left yourself open for disastrous failure as well as brilliant success if you were wrong in any of your predictions. You were not, but that does not excuse your recklessness or your reliance on unexamined instincts. You made it personal.’

Guilliman fell silent for awhile to let his criticism sink in. ‘Are you done?’

‘For now.’

‘Good.’ Thiel leaned forward to rest his head against his primarch’s hip. After all the centuries of his life, he was occasionally able to recognise that his inclinations were socially unacceptable before doing them. Then he probably still did it anyway, so there was that. Personally, he considered himself very restrained to not have embraced his primarch immediately and not let go.

Guilliman sighed, rather melodramatically, but made no move to push him away or give him a stock speech on propriety. Thiel loved his primarch. No other could even compare. How dare the galaxy even contain the theoretical of him being dead? He gave himself over to the strength of his lord’s form, the cool metal against his skin, the low hum of servomotors, letting himself unwind until only the ceramite exoskeleton of his armour held him in place.

Eventually fingers descended to card his hair. He appreciated a man who could punch off heads and manipulate the fingers of a powerfist so finely as to press into his scalp without leaving a bruise. He wouldn’t have minded being slapped as long as it was by him, but he wasn’t some Imperial Fist to long for punishment to make him feel clean again. Being here, like this, exalted his soul.

‘I suppose I should see to the morale of your men before you take the field again.’ He did not apologise.

Just knowing he was alive had done enough, but Thiel was hardly going to deny the effect of his personal attention or so selfish to suggest denying it to others. ‘Practical: Puppy piles are indicated.’

‘A wild tangle of limbs and overlapping bodies, like a bunch of burned out World Eaters?’ he asked, allowing a hint of amusement in his voice.

‘When have I steered you wrong, my lord?’

‘You just want to get my shirt off.’

‘Well, yeah.’

Guilliman favoured him with a particularly affectionate pat and said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ watching every unconscious way Thiel leaned into it.

Thiel thought that meant yes. His primarch was really alive, and that was everything.

Prompt: So… space-wolfy-battle-brotherly-bonding just happens to involve them taking turns topping each other? (Let’s conveniently ignore the fact that in 40k, orgasms summon Slaanesh.) Group sex sessions where everyone gets pounded? A Space Wolf who has to train/mentor some Imperial Guardsmen strengthens unit cohesion by making them all line up and fuck him? Then he tenderly snuggle-fucks them right back (because macho dudes being tender is fucking hot)? (OMC/OMCs, nsfw)

***

Captain Katai left early with an announcement of ‘Still a lesbian.’ Which was presumably true as a general statement, but Dion had no idea what relevance it had to the situation. Maybe she meant she was still really missing Lieutenant Lanka after her latest long absence. Maybe she just couldn’t hold her liquor, which was also true, and wanted an excuse to leave.

He really wished she hadn’t though, or at least that she’d taken her friend along with her. It felt inadequate and vaguely treasonous to be thinking of a Space Marine as ‘the captain’s friend,’ but it was easier than actually looking at Olin Bonebreaker and acknowledging what he was and that he was right there. Maybe he could have just passed them off as giant space mutants (don’t say that, Imperials didn’t say that kind of thing casually), but he’d seen them fight too.

The Black Wolf had been chatting companionably with Katai in his consonant-heavy language that Dion didn’t have a word of. Bad enough he’d had to learn Gothic, were they all going to have to pick up this Fenrisian language too? When someone said ‘You know how your planet got annexed by the Imperium a couple years back? Well, now this Space Marine Chapter wants it. You belong to them now.’ you said ‘Yeah, sure.’

Now that the captain was gone, the Wolf was watching them as much as he was drinking. He’d lost his armour piece by piece earlier in what seemed to be a game of strip poker with the captain, so he looked less martial, but even in leathers and fur he might still be thinking about devouring them all.

Don’t start a fight, Dion prayed. You’ll win. Don’t be a bully. Come on. He was barely a solider; he was an enginseer, if an Epistophian engineer rather than one of those proper Imperial tech-priests. For crying out loud, this was the Pia Chiaroveggenti Auxiliary platoon of the Artillery company, the misfits and R&D department. Arius was another mechanic/scientist, Isadore played trumpet in the regimental band when he wasn’t sniping anything that got to close to the artillery, Zander was a medicae, and Vern in supply and logistics, of the guys still lying around.

Dion took another drink. Nothing could really hurt you if you were too wasted to notice it, right? That’s how he’d gotten through high school, after all.

Brother-Sergeant Olin reached over, slowly, deliberately slowly, and Dion swallowed hard in anticipation of getting picked up by the collar. Instead, the huge hand fell on the top of his head and ruffled his short military haircut. ‘Don’t be so tense, kid. We’re going to be working together a lot more from now on. We’ve got to enjoy drinking together if we’re going to fight together.’

That was true, though so far he’d only thought of it in terms of the paperwork nightmare the higher-ups were complaining about. Personally he’d rather fight tyranids with robot drones like the tau than fight together with anyone on the ground.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘I’m not going to bite. Unless you want me to.’

Dion choked. Arius explained, ‘That translates similar to a come-on in our language.’

‘And here I thought coming on to someone was universal.’

Dion coughed a couple times, and some of the other guys broke into coughs even though they weren’t drinking anything at the moment. ‘What?’

‘Fooling around is a great way to build brotherly bonds in your pack.’ He reminded himself ‘battle-brother’ was the honorary term Space Marines preferred, it wasn’t as strangely incestuous as it sounded. ‘Want to fuck?’

Dion sputtered. ‘You’ll kill me.’

Zandor added, ‘Captain Katai will yell at you.’ It was sad that it was both true she would and bizarrely true that that would genuinely be considered a deterrent, from what rumours he’d heard of her relationship with the Chapter. Not to mention she would do significantly more than that on behalf of her subordinates, but one did not speak of such things openly.

Olin laughed. ‘I wasn’t planning to top.’

His heart skipped a beat. This was not actually happening. He had passed out drunk awhile ago and was going to be woken in a couple hours by a cold bucket of water being upended on his face. ‘Where?’

‘Why would we have to go anywhere? You can all have a turn. I can take it.’

There was a not insignificant amount of face-palming. ‘If we start screaming bloody murder now, we can at least wake up the whole camp,’ Arius commented in their native language, which very few Imperials spoke.

‘Am I totally crazy to be turned on?’ Dion asked, too drunk to think before saying that that he really didn’t mean to say it out loud.

‘I dunno,’ Vern said. ‘Consider some of the people we know, and that doesn’t even register on the scale. Maybe they’re rubbing off.’

‘Space Marines can’t be genestealer hybrids, right? I wasn’t really listening to that lecture from the commissar,’ Isadore added unhelpfully.

‘I wouldn’t not do it,’ said Zander. ‘If the rest of you guys were going to. It’s guys helping each other out when we’re in the field, not anything outside the ordinary too much.’

Everyone kept looking at him, like it was his decision. He wasn’t an officer, damn it. Also, damn the officers for leaving them unsupervised; since when could they be trusted? Who had set them up, knowingly, for that matter.

The hand was still on his head, palm curling around almost to his ears. ‘Okay,’ he said back in Gothic. ‘How do you want me?’

His chin was lifted with one finger until he had to meet pale grey eyes. The Wolf leaned down and kissed his mouth, gentle but unchaste. He parted his lips and Olin licked into his mouth, stroking his tongue with his own, and Dion had to reach out and hold onto his shoulders at that. His beard and moustache were prickly. Everything was too prickly with heat.

An arm over his shoulder held him in place like a vice as Olin rolled over onto his back with Dion straddling his chest, and there was just so very much of him Dion was hardly touching the ground. He seemed happy with the whole affair by the deep rumble in his chest. ‘See, good company, good beer, a good night.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed, breathless, as a hand groped his ass through his uniform trousers and moved around to deal with the zipper. The huge, rough, and calloused fingers finding his bare skin felt nothing like his own hand or any other guy he’d done this with, but he wasn’t complaining.

Not at all, especially when Olin slid him further back on his thighs and got his trousers and underwear out of the way enough to guide him down between his legs. Olin had gotten some strange lube on his hand; it smelled bad but in an organic rather than industrial way, so hopefully it could be trusted, not like someone grabbing something toxic that belonged in one of his engines. He stroked Dion’s cock with it, then shifted his hips to accommodate him.

‘Don’t you…?’

‘I’ll be fine, laddie.’ He grinned and it didn’t waver at all as he was penetrated without preparation. ‘There you go.’

And damn did it feel good. He buried his face in Olin’s wool shirt and bit his lip to keep quiet. He went past strong into intensely solid, but the strength was carefully and effortlessly reigned in, so fucking him was smooth friction and heat. He moved his hips minutely with Dion to make them both groan, but let the Guardsman set the pace. Each thrust into that proffered body made his heart jump, as if he weren’t already too drunk to last long.

As he came, Dion closed his eyes and just concentrated on breathing, taking in the animal musk and the sweat that wasn’t quite right under the deeply masculine pheromones of lust. After a few seconds he realised he was still transfixed there, and scrambled to pull out and do his clothes back up and get away, which turned into half falling over and half scampering.

Olin smiled at him, not a wide grin but a slight quirk of his lips he could almost believe was affectionate rather than mocking. Then he turned his attention to the other guys and reached out an arm to draw Arius down to him.

Dion didn’t think he could move, and gave up on that quickly in favour of not blacking out. The ground felt perfectly fine under his back. He thought he shouldn’t stare, wasn’t sure if he wanted to or not, and could hear anyway and see out of the corner of his eyes, so it was something of a moot point.

He wasn’t unaware of the other guys–Zander going eagerly, Isadore looking overwhelmed, and so on–but mostly he had eyes for the Wolf. Olin looked powerful and totally in control, even on his back, and Dion thought bitterly that he’d never look like that, but mostly he appreciated the view. He wasn’t loud, but he gave a continued litany of approval and soft, contented noises when the angle must have been just right. He took them all on with the ease of an adult playing a simple game meant for children, and Dion felt more keenly than ever before the Imperial idea that Space Marines weren’t merely stronger or faster but something fundamentally other, a more advanced life form.

At some point he realised everyone else had had a turn, because Olin pulled Dion back to him, stripping him down to skin on skin again. He opened his mouth to protest that if he thought he was going to be able to go again that night he had some serious misconceptions about normal people’s stamina, but that wasn’t how they lined up.

Olin snuggled him into his chest and Dion could feel his erection pressing against his ass and the back of his legs like a length of lead pipe. With his head tangled in grey-streaked brown beard, he couldn’t look up to see facial expression properly.

It was warm to be held so closely, to be completely enveloped by another’s arms. He had always known he wanted a man like this, but long experience had told him they couldn’t be trusted. Yet here was a man for whom not hurting him must be a constant effort, and who would certainly be able to get away with it, but wasn’t. He was held strongly, firmly, yes, but tenderly.

He was hot and hard everywhere and Dion loved the friction of it and the purr of happiness in Olin’s chest as he rubbed himself against him in search of pleasure. Every appreciative hitch of breath made him giddy with the idea he had been the reason for it. He wanted to be able to please this amazing man in turn, wanted his attention and his embrace, Throne he’d let him fuck him if he wanted more than his thighs even though he knew that impulse would be getting into things far over his head. When he came, it filled the air with an animal musk so masculine he could have drowned on it.

His beard felt softer this time, maybe from one or both of their sweat. Such power constrained into a gentle kiss, by someone so totally aware of how delicate his movements needed to be, and who could have turned and ripped the head from a gargoyle with his bare hands had the need arisen. His hands were still around Dion, stroking his back soothingly, and he made a low, throaty chuckle that might have been condescending for all Dion knew but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

‘For making a mess, I’d offer you the use of my tent, if your brothers will carry word to your pack-leader if I don’t get you back before first muster.’

As if most anyone in the regiment, including Sergeant Palaiologou, all the way up to Colonel Ravenna, was going to argue with a Space Marine’s demands on his time.

‘Yeah,’ he said, even as he asked himself why him? Because of how deeply attracted he was despite everything telling him to be careful? Because he was the weak one who could be separated from the pack? ‘I’d like that.’

He let his worries and his hope this could mean anything more than this fall away, and followed with a light heart, not looking back.

Summary: Blurred vision and sinus massages. (No Nails AU, Sevatar/Thiel, while living together, sfw)

***

‘You know that thing, when you’re tired and your vision starts to blur?’

‘No, Sev, I don’t, because that doesn’t happen to Space Marines unless there’s something horribly wrong with us. But by all means continue what you were going to say while your brain bleeds out your ears.’

‘If this one were going to kill me, it’s sure taken its time.’

‘Wait, this is a regular, recurring thing for you?’ Sevatar shot Thiel what he’d learned to read as his Wait, is this not a normal thing for everyone? look. He couldn’t say Have you seen an Apothecary? or, perhaps, Have you spoken to a Librarian? Are you bleeding from anywhere? Everywhere? ‘Have you considered sleep? I hear it’s a thing, that people do.’

‘Ha ha,’ he drawled. He shook his head sharply, like he was in pain, and then like that hurt more, good job genius.

Theoretical: it hurts him. Why? Eyestrain? ‘Should I turn out all the lights?’ Curze’s chambers weren’t exactly lit at the best of times, but there were a few stray buttons that gave enough illumination for an Astartes to see by compared to the utter blackness of being in an air locked-sealed room in a space ship with no light being produced.

‘It’s not,’ Sevatar used a Nostraman word that had something to do with ‘light-knives slicing eyeballs’ when translated literally. ‘It’s under the cheekbone. The eyes are just the blurriness and spinning when there’s the vertigo. Think if I crack the bone apart it will stop?’

‘Let’s call that plan B. It’s… facial pressure? Oh my science, you’re having a sinus headache.’

‘I’m hardly being a baby about it.’

‘I don’t care. The fact you can even feel it is the issue. Come here.’

Sevatar took two steps closer but not far, and cocked his head to the side in question. Thiel pointed to the bed next to him. ‘We going to have a heart-to-heart?’ he asked as he sat.

‘Actually this would probably work better if you shut up for once.’

Thiel pulled Sevatar back, slowly enough to telegraph his actions, firmly but without any attempt to force or wrestle. Sevatar let him lower his head into his lap, but caught his hand as his thumbs approaching his face. An instinctive reaction; Night Lords would always go for the eye gouge.

‘Do you trust me?’

‘Signs point to yes,’ he began to say and he released his grip, but it was half swallowed in a sharp exhale as Thiel’s tattooed thumb and forefinger found his cheekbones. ‘Gonna rearrange my skull for me?’

Thiel was quite capable of recognising that for a sound of relief, not pain. He modulated his pressure carefully, though, as he dug circles into the edge of Sevatar’s eye sockets under tight-drawn skin.

He was still watchful, an animal’s wariness despite everything that told him to relax, as Thiel moved to the point between his eyes, his temples right below the hairline, in the hollows in front of his ears, rubbing gentle circles with his fingers.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Not vulnerability, but such total, utter confusion. Like Sev fundamentally could not understand a transhuman warrior (or anyone) having the barest scrap of empathy wired into them that urged to ease pain when it was in front of him, however ancient the instinct.

I… ‘Because I have to deal with you every night. Does that feel better?’

‘I knew I kept you around for a reason.’

‘Drink more water. Sleep more. We may be the best biotechnology has produced, but it needs some resources to work with.’ He knew there was a great deal more to the Prince of Crow’s body’s desire to fall apart around him than that. He could feel clots of dried blood in the mucus that drained from his nose when he sneezed, ever so politely onto Thiel’s arm. But he could pretend, with his lover’s head in his lap, that his intentions could help him too. It felt good to feel his tension and subtle twitches drain away despite himself. He could pretend he could chase away Sevatar’s pain and shout for all his daemons to hear that he was lo… not alone.

‘Maybe. Maybe I’ll settle for you.’ Sevatar did not speak of the things in his sleep or the voices that pressed in around him, living or dead. Thiel had never been unobservant.

Still… ‘That’s what I’m here for. That is literally what I’m here for, you idiot,’ he said, and laughed.

Summary: Ljufa of the Russ weaves fate, like a woman but also like a primarch. (fem!Russ, fem!Magnus, AU: the primarchs are genderswapped but no one else is, sfw)

***

Magda was mad at her and Ljufa was trying not to be mad back. She’d tried to explain, damn it! Maybe Magda was right that the problem existed only in her head, but when they were talking about mind over matter that was rather important.

She liked the gift, really she did. The threads were fine and smooth and the colours brighter than any dye on Fenris. She wasn’t an idiot; she could see the benefits of post-Industrial Revolution machine-craftsmanship. It would made fine garments, or machines could make those too, but it was useless for magic.

Magda said You don’t need that metaphor, but she did. There were things she could do without her distaff, certainly, but if she was going to make coats that turned aside bullets as well as armour or cloaks of invisibility, she needed to have carded and spun the wool herself. She appreciated the spinning wheel compared to a hand-spindle, she appreciated a flying shuttle compared to the hand-thrown shuttle on her old looms.

So like Magda. Always so eager to replace everything with something better, faster, more efficient that she neglected the soul. Sloppy. She had the brute force to get away with it, but… She thought she could take from daemons. They understood better on Fenris. It was submitting, as a woman did to a man, which was why only a woman could practice such a thing and only a wise woman could gain power from it, as a wife did from her husband, all those things men would never speak of even if they noticed.

Ljufa’s magic was hers all the way through. Her sheep were kept and fed and sheared within her own household and she turned the wool into cloth with her own hands every step of the way, as did her ladies who were sorceresses like proper women rather than sword-maidens.

Her hands were moving in familiar patterns across the loom, and she’d rather they weren’t. She’d rather be making something practical, though if she made a mistake in her distraction she’d have to go back and untangle it and weaken the flow of the magic. Better to weave something useful if unimportant for her household than more dangerous magics.

The danger made her nostrils flare and all her senses sharper. Her anger sharpened, but it wasn’t really directed at Magda anymore.

They were doomed. She had always known, since she had met her father. She saw the pattern of fate clearly, a war almost won but descending into a snarl of knots at the last moment because the weaver had gotten careless and lost sight of the overall pattern. The whole tapestry would be ruined because Magda–and people like her–would be careless, would lose sight of threads and think they didn’t matter, wouldn’t put in place now all the strands that would be needed for later, and Ljufa wanted to save her from that more than anything.

Her adopted mother had been a wise woman, but Ljufa Eirsdóttir was still a wild and feckless girl who didn’t understand her. She didn’t understand why women would wait at home for their fates to be decided by their men on a distant battlefield; she would take up the sword. She didn’t understand why men found it romantic to say ‘If this be my fate, then I am doomed. To side idly by would be shameful.’ A woman could see wyrd. It was only the thread spun by the norns. A woman could grasp it and weave it in her own tapestry instead, if she dared.

Ljufa knew she was being reckless too. Men would disapprove, of course, but that was why these were the secret and sacred mysteries of women, not the honour of the battlefield. It was that for all she was a skilled seðkoner, she feared she too was relying on power over wisdom. A woman knew how to endure. She knew how to use wise counsel at the right moment. She knew when to let nature run its course. Ljufa didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing, only what she wanted to. She was a primarch: she was made so that imposing her will on the world around her was easy.

The pattern grew on her loom. She could see what was already done and what would happen next as clearly, magic moving with her shuttle as easily as the weft threads through the warp. She could see the pattern that wanted to form, but she wouldn’t let it. Her hands. Her loom. She would weave her will and make it so.

Summary: Sevatar is not a nice person and Thiel knows. (No Nails AU, Sevatar/Thiel, early in their acquaintance, PG-13)

***

Should I even bother? Is it worth fighting over? Is it futile? Should I just let it go and be glad it’s nothing anything worse to take the edge off? Thiel thought, all belatedly, after saying, ‘Stop.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re hurting it.’

‘I noticed.’ Sevatar smirked. ‘My gallant hero, you know who I am.’

It was true. Thiel knew, and he knew he preferred to look away.

The moth fluttered weakly and in circles. Its left wing wasn’t catching the air right, due to the long, thin tears in the delicate tissue.

‘Listen.’ Sevatar caught it again, with gentle fine control. ‘Not even the finest rice paper comes apart this softly.’

He could hear the tissue separate with Astartes hearing. Sevatar batted at it as it slowly fell, prolonging it as the breeze generated lifted it again, like a cat amusing himself. Back when Sevatar had originally courted him with dead small animals, he had been more worried about his own life and confused by the weirdness than to appreciate the giant cat. And cats were cruel.

He stepped towards Sevatar, crushing the moth under his boot. Putting it out of its misery. He’d been on the battlefield before, heard the screams of the dying. Astartes were made for war and exulted in killing, but… ‘Don’t.’

‘Will you fight me over it?’

‘I’ll lose,’ Thiel didn’t hesitate to admit. ‘But fight me away. Watch me not be strong enough to stop you from doing anything you want to. Watch me be helpless and angry and hate you for it. Keep your eyes on me.’

‘You can keep me interested?’

Every movement of Sevatar’s was quick and predatory, a reminder he was strictly better and they both knew it. Thiel didn’t flinch or step back.

‘I will.’ Everything could be a weapon.

Warhammer 40K Pizza AU

Space Marines: The equivalent of Pizza Hut: nothing truly outrageous, but a variety of flavors and combinations so that you can find your desired favorite.
Imperial Guard: Mass-produced but affordable while still being tasty. They have some specialties that most people don’t order anymore but a few still like them.
Adepta Sororitas: Strictly orthodox cheese+sauce+crust and maybe a topping or two. Pineapple is considered heresy.
Deathwatch: Started off like the Space Marines but along the way someone gave them sriracha sauce, ghost peppers, pineapple, and exotic sausages. Now they’re the place with odd combinations that somehow are really tasty.
Eldar: Super-artsy artisanal pizza with white sauce, olive oil drizzle, six kinds of goat cheese, and herbs baked into the crust.
Dark Eldar: Every sauce is actually maximum-strength sriracha. They do bizarre “acquired taste” specialties involving stuff like stuffed peppers and organ meats and ingredients that nobody knows how to pronounce.
Orks: Massive deep-dish monstrosities that are more like meat pies than pizza. Nobody complains though because the owners are boisterous and friendly and always give you tons of food.
Tau: You go in and order and they give you not one pizza but five mini-pizzas, each with a different topping. Eating each one individually tastes alright, but if you combine them they make really interesting and delicious gourmet combinations. The hipster pizza place.
Chaos: That one scuzzy-looking place that you’re pretty sure is a front for something but the pizza is still good. Really likes their meats, and everything comes smothered in red pepper flakes. SAUCE FOR THE SAUCE GOD!
Necrons: The oldest building in town that stone-grinds its own flour, bakes everything in brick ovens, and ages its own cheese. Still somehow manages to crank out huge quantities, but they don’t do specialty stuff.
Tyranids: Literally just sauce and a pile of toppings dumped on a crust, thrown in the oven, and devoured as messily as possible.

Summary: Leman is an embarrassment to be around, but sometimes Luther can’t bring himself to mind. (homeworld-swap AU, Leman/Luther, PG-13)

***

Leman devoured a huge leg of roast turkey with his teeth, while Luther pinched off mouthfuls with his fingers to eat, like a civilised person. Not that that was enough to satisfy Leman, no, he had to lean over every few minutes and persuade Luther to feed him some tidbit. Luther had tried to teach Leman many things over the years and some had taken, but table manners had not been among them.

Of course it was mostly an excuse to lick Luther’s fingers. To Luther’s annoyance, the supplicants who served the knights while they feasted were putting seconds on Luther’s plate rather than Leman’s, as if they had forgotten which of them was a giant who ate three times as much as an ordinary man. As if they weren’t giggling to each other as soon as the eyes of their elders were no longer on them. The less discrete of the full knights were eyeing the two of them, more of them indulgent than disapproving.

He would rather have been treated with respect, dignity, and obedience, but he was sure he could look nothing but ridiculous with Leman’s arm over his shoulder. His clever tongue traced hints of grease from Luther’s fingers, obscene with promise, and Luther tried not to show any reaction.

Leman grinned at him, and Luther couldn’t hold onto his anger at Leman making a fool of him, because Leman was so obviously, radiantly, unselfconsciously happy, and Luther did want that for him so much. He tried not to smile like too much of an idiot, he tried not to blush, he tried not to…

‘Grand Master, Sar Luther,’ a voice interrupted them. It was Zahariel, one of the up-and-coming young knights newly inducted into the Order. He wouldn’t look directly at them, but spoke as if honour-bound to continue whatever his personal feelings. ‘I have been nominated by our brothers to deliver this message: “Get a room.”’

Leman broke into gaffes, and Luther had to grin as well, his good humour restored to be so teased by their brothers. Luther dismissed the boy, letting him know he bore him no ill-will for daring to speak such words to his elders, for Leman had eyes only for him.

‘Shall we take our leave before our brothers get deeper in their cups, and upset your dignity more?’

‘More than you have already managed? I don’t know if they’re up for it.’ Still, he nodded, staring at Leman like a moth caught by a flame.

Leman pushed away from the shredded remains of their meal and swept Luther up in his arms, like a man with a new bride. Luther, the diplomat of the two, reacted how he thought best: laughing like this was a joke or a prank, something to cover the depth of the truth there, and waved off the cheer from the more playful of their fellow knights.

In Leman’s bed–in their bed–his laughter continued, breathless, true, as Leman showed off more uses he’d found for his tongue and Luther’s flesh.

Summary: Two brief snippets of the Atramentar talking about Thiel and Sevatar. (No Nails AU, Sevatar/Thiel, PG-13)

***

The Atramentar loved their captain dearly, but there was just no denying the fact he could be really, really strange.

‘Why is he fucking that Ultramarine?’

‘It’s Sev,’ Vraal said dismissively, as if that explained everything. What it explained was that the best answer anyone was going to be able to come up with with any surety was Who knows? ‘Maybe he was trying to figure out why the primarch’s doing it, and decided the hand-on approach was the easiest method?’

‘But why that one?’ Etzlin muttered. Not that he held a grudge or anything, it had been a perfectly good brawl and he wouldn’t deny playing any roll in starting it. It had been kind of funny to see the momentary look of horror on the Ultramarine’s face when he’d realised what he’d gotten himself into, but he and his brothers had put up an enjoyable fight, for a casual go between Astartes.

‘Did he have a nice ass?’

‘I have no idea. I wasn’t in armour but he was.’

‘Too bad.’

‘It’s one thing for the captain to have fucked him once. I mean, what the hell, why not? But why’d he do it again? How’s some Ultramarine that good?’

‘Hey Sev,’ Jakresh, the traitor, called over as he walked in to the practice room the Atramentar were sparring in. ‘Etzlin’s way too interested in your new boy-toy. He thinks he could do better.’

‘Jealous? If you want me that much, you could just ask. Try on your knees.’

The thing was, if he went along with it, Sevatar really would fuck him. He made things into jokes because he thought that was just how life was scripted, but he said plenty of things he meant too, if anyone were to call him on it, especially to his company brothers. They’d done it before and it had been perfectly fine. But he really was quite happy not being Sev’s bed-warmer.

‘Hey asshole,’ he shot back at Jakresh. ‘I’d rather duel you than try to upstage Sev’s new girlfriend. Sometimes shooting fish in a barrel just gets boring.’

‘Yeah, yeah, you can suck my dick after I kick your ass.’

‘In your dreams.’

*

‘How do you think he is?’ Thiel snapped, and Etzlin remembered hearing before how this wasn’t anyone with a brain-to-mouth filter at all. ‘His primarch just told him that he wasn’t worth living for.’

‘Are you bad-mouthing my primarch?’ His lightning claws crackled a bit at the spike in his combat hormones triggered their systems to come out of hibernation.

‘Of course I am, what does it sound like? I don’t care about your primarch in the least. I care about his effect on Sevatar, and it’s bad. If I were less angry, maybe I could be fair, but right now I’m not expecting to ever forgive him for that.’

‘Your father’s dead too,’ he muttered, because while he wouldn’t have thought to put it that way, it probably had been an accurate description of the last conversation Sevatar and their sire had had.

‘Yes, he is, but he didn’t choose to leave us.’

‘What should we do then, if you’re so wise?’

‘Be there for him. He needs the Atramentar to anchor him. He needs your brotherhood to have any chance of being what your Legion needs.’

Because Sev loved their father and had never stopped trying to save him, even back before the rebellion when everything had seen futile, and was his favourite in turn; yet he would go beyond death, it had always seemed, for his Atramentar brothers. Because Sev didn’t show easily that he was devastated, didn’t weep or rage. He smiled a fake, fake smile, and made bad, impulsive decisions.

‘Yeah, well, I was going to do that anyway,’ Etzlin muttered. Didn’t need someone to tell him that.

This was an Ultramarine, not one of them. But he was willing to die for the Atramentar’s beloved captain, and when times were rough you realised what really counted.

Summary: Lyra wears her hair down these days. (AU: everyone is genderswapped, fem!Lion/fem!Luther, fem!Guilliman, sfw, UE-era and post-Heresy)

***

‘I could do yours too,’ Guilliman offered politely.

‘What?’ asked the Lioness.

‘Your hair is very pretty, but I imagine it must blow in your face sometimes,’ she said, sliding a last pin into place about her head by muscle memory.

Guilliman didn’t have hair that people could wax poetry about without lying. It was blonde, too pale to be called brown instead. Lyra had hair that got called a waterfall of spun gold or sunlight on fall leaves or whatever metaphor seemed most artistic at the moment.

Guilliman’s hair curled more than hers did, and it made her braid look a bit messy after a long day, so she’d rebraided it and pinned it back. Those were probably the traditional braid patterns of the Battle-Queens of Macragge.

On cue, Guilliman added, ‘I only know how to do the traditional braid patterns of the Battle-Queens of Macragge, but if you don’t mind.’

‘No,’ said Lyra sharply. Sharper than she’d intended, more than she’d meant to give away.

Guilliman eyed her, surprised by her vehemence. ‘That was a no, you don’t want me to, not a you don’t mind,’ she said, though she left a hint of uncertainty in her tone, in case the Lioness wanted to tell her she’d made a mistake. ‘May I ask why?’

None of her business. ‘That’s not how things are done on Sycorax,’ she lied.

It was, in fact, exactly how things were done on Sycorax. A child or young maiden would wear her hair loose, or an old woman who no longer fought in the forests, but a knight in the prime of her life preferred braids. She had worn them, until… until there was no one to do them up for her. Like a widow, some whispered, but they quickly learned not to do so in her presence, for she would not tolerate even indirect acknowledgement of that missing person at her side, and that hadn’t been what happened.

(Hands in her hair, brushing it out, as firm and purposeful as when she swung a sword. Lyra would force herself still, avoid showing weakness or impropriety beside the respect of a knight for her closest sister who was aiding her. She’d been taught better than this. She must not lean into it or sigh, or she might stop–)

But Guilliman wouldn’t know. Her style had since become popular in her Legion, those children who had been supplicants too young for an adult’s braid before becoming transhumans.

‘I’m fine, Robouta,’ she added. ‘It won’t matter in the least if I put my helmet on.’

‘Alright then.’

She wondered how their mother had made them. The Lioness had been first. A prototype of a design she had improved later? Did the Empress regret how she had made her first daughter–was she only a flawed creation who could fight any war but could not inspire love or loyalty? Was that why each sister was so different than the one who came before?

The Lioness only knew she had never wanted to be beautiful, except when Lucille told her she was.

*

‘Foolish girl,’ Lucille said, Lyra’s head pulled down into the crook of her neck. The primarch didn’t lean down to accommodate her, but slumped bonelessly, a creature that could not support her own weight. ‘How ever did you manage without me? Couldn’t save your mother or your planet or your Legion. Couldn’t even braid your own hair without me to do it, could you? Have you been wearing it down ever since?’

Lyra did not respond.

‘I’ll fix it for you. Then you’ll be presentable. I always told you you had to look your station, when you would have chopped it off like a drudge or a man. You’re too beautiful to not be ready to pose for a war banner at any moment, I said. You look pretty and I’ll do the talking.’

Lyra’s hair wasn’t clean and that should be fixed first, but Lucille would just have to make do, wouldn’t she? Each movement of her hands through Lyra’s hair left new streaks of blood in it, red on gold. Lyra’s blood. She couldn’t drop her, she had to keep her here on her shoulder, or she’d sink into an entire pool of it. It would be alright. The blood wouldn’t stop flowing, but her tears wouldn’t stop coming either, and, eventually, enough of them would wash it away.

‘I’m sorry, Lyra. I should have taught you to do it yourself, but I thought I’d always be there. I’ll show you, okay? When you wake up.’