Tag: sevatar

Summary: Thiel and Sevatar go on vacation. (No Nails AU, Sevatar/Thiel, sfw, post-wedding)

***

‘We deserve a vacation.’

‘We need to get someone to feed the cat while we’re gone,’ Thiel said immediately.

‘I didn’t mean leaving right this moment.’

‘Yes you did.’

Sevatar shrugged. ‘I’ll let the cat out and tell our parents, and you do the research. It’s hardly fair they got to put us through so much shit and then go off on honeymoon. They’re back, so we should bugger off.’

‘I’m not arguing with you! No, wait, I am arguing with you making me do all the work. Sev, wait!’

*

They ended up travelling by Land Speeder, a compromise between his initial impulse to take two separate bikes and Sev’s to take a Land Raider.

‘I have the perfect thing,’ Sevatar said and two minutes later he had the Ultramarine vehicle blaring Nostraman death metal from its vox. For once Thiel regretted being able to understand the language, or it would have merely been unpleasant noise and screaming. Thiel rolled his eyes and resigned himself to shouting anything he needed to say, and Sevatar grinned, but seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself, tapping his fingers as well as taking in Thiel’s discomfort.

The wind felt good in his hair when he took off his helmet, the hills of rural Macragge spread out before them, the sun rising behind them.

‘Campaigning makes me forget how big planets can be. Drop in near some population centre, kill a few leaders or strategic placements, then leave. But we could fly for weeks and see a whole lot of nothing.’

Sevatar grunted, but Thiel could track the subtle movements of his helmet, watch him watching the grackles on fence-lines. He turned up the music, as if unaware that the quiet he was hearing was that of absence of minds around him the way they would be in Macragge Civitas or on the Nightfall. Thiel grinned.

*

They looped back around and reached the ocean a few hours later, around midday. Thiel explained, ‘This stretch of beach is restricted access because when they were landscaping it a few years back, they accidentally scooped up sand from where the Legion used to do aquatic training a century back. So be careful of unexploded ordinance. I’d hate for you to step on a landmine.’ Sevatar laughed. ‘Anyway, there’s a popular tourist destination a few kilometres south, though more so in the summer than now, so we’ll have some privacy without being totally cut-off.’

Abandoning their Land Speeder near the ecological station Thiel had found in his research (the students who often occupied it being up a river inland for some sort of fish spawning natural event), they abandoned their armour in the sand as well.

There weren’t such things as swimming trunks in their sizes, and their fatigue bottoms would get waterlogged and annoying and make this feel like training. So they were naked when Sevatar tackled him into the water. The cold was invigorating, not icy but the warmer jet stream from the tropics didn’t reach this far north this time of year. The water was salty and briny compared to the filtered and recycled water of a spaceship, but that gave it character and made it interesting, in Thiel’s opinion, like flavouring it with fruit or syrup. Eventually he had to bite Sevatar to get him let go so he could surface again and gulp in new air.

Then he threw a jellyfish at him, Sevatar blinked in confusion through the see-through creature covering his face and leaving acid stings behind, and Thiel jumped after it to wrestle him under the breakers.

*

‘I’m not sure I’ll survive. Tell Tovac he can have my skull collection. Valzen is welcome to dissect my corpse to study the cruel and unusual way I died. Vanek may want to duel you over my spear, but whichever of you wins can keep it.’

Thiel let the door swing closed behind him, his arms full of boxes of pizza and his other purchases from town. ‘Dictating your last will and testament?’

‘As I die a long and lingering death, I have nothing better to do with my time.’

The amount Sevatar could complain was inversely proportional to how much discomfort he was actually in (which, joking aside, also reflected a deep unwillingness to admit to weakness, and Thiel knew perfectly well that was warranted in the presence of Night Lords). Still, Thiel amused himself slapping him on the back and moving his hand up to pet the back of Sevatar’s hair. Sevatar winced and hissed in response, and Thiel grinned.

‘I admit, I have never seen such a bad sunburn in my life.’ He’d noticed the early warning signs of it earlier in the evening, but Sevatar’s normally white skin had gone an impressive lobster red while he’d been out shopping. His skin had the sense to tan to a healthy, warm gold. He retrieved a value-sized bottle of gel from one of his bags.

‘Why did you get so much lube? Going to take advantage of me in my infirmity?’

‘It’s aloe. “For external use only,” the label says.’

Sevatar made a pleased hum at Thiel’s tattooed hand rubbing the cool relief into his back and sprawled boneless across the floor, submitting to his ministrations.

(It made good lube too.)

*

‘If you think I’m going back out there, under the fiery death orb, again, you have something coming.’

‘That’s fine. Sun’s up: you take a nap, I have tactical simulations.’ Thiel waved a dataslate absently. ‘We can train on the beach and swim again tonight.’

‘Tactical simulations.’

‘Tactical simulations.’

‘That’s Pokémon Adamantium.’

‘I’m an Ultramarine.’

*

‘If you can wait to watch the fish slowly drown on dry land, you can wait for me to cook them.’

‘There’s entertainment and then there’s food.’

‘Your seagull friends will enjoy the entrails if you let me fillet them.’

Sevatar rolled his eyes. The effect was somewhat ruined by the fact it happened behind the largest, tackiest pair of rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses Thiel had managed to find, under a broad straw hat against the morning sun. Thiel didn’t look up from what he was doing with a bonfire and an industrial-sized tub of barbecue sauce.

+Mob him,+ he suggested to the gulls, helpfully.

‘I swear to science…! Get your birds off me or I’ll roast them instead.’

*

‘You have billions of bacteria in your intestines and I can hear all of them,’ Sevatar told him matter-of-factly.

‘Go back to sleep. We’re still on Macragge, not hundreds of lightyears from civilisation. You can’t be going crazy–crazier–from the quiet in your head this soon.’

Sevatar snorted, already more of a snore.

*

Thiel couldn’t help but laugh breathlessly as he and Sevatar raced along the beach at a dead sprint. Even without their armour, they were too heavy for the shifting of loose sand to put them off balance. No, it was the pit-traps and the landmines they had avoid while luring each other into. Sometimes they set them off just for the concussive waves of explosion to toss the other to the side, heedless of real danger in their game.

Sevatar laughed to, approvingly, as if to say Look at how adorably sneaky and devious my Ultramarine is. Thiel glowed with it, and ran faster, determined to win.

*

‘Got everything?’

‘Am I keeping the sunglasses? Of course I am. But I should be the one asking you that.’ Sevatar leaned against the Land Speeder and showed every sign of planning to put his bat winged skull helmet on without taking them off.

Thiel rolled his eyes. Yes, he had been the one to call the Legion serfs who would show up soon to clean up after them from how thoroughly they’d trashed the place.

He took a last look at the sun setting over the sea, and threw an arm over Sevatar’s shoulder. Kissing him on the cheek, he asked, ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’

Sevatar was frozen against him. Thiel could almost hear the cogs turning in his head, as he tried to figure out what this gesture meant and how he was expected to respond to it. Finally he drawled, ‘I suppose you don’t bore me, so that was the best I could hope for between wars.’

‘Love you too,’ he said, the words coming easier each time he said them. Then he pulled his helmet on and locked it in place. ‘Let’s go home.’

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: 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: 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.

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.

No Nails AU: More Sevatar/Thiel characterization/relationship meta that I had lying around, since interest was expressed.

Thiel’s not a guy normally associated with “having issues”, probably because they’re so low-key and he’s so functional compared to so many other people around him, but yeah, like most people he’s got his own things going on.

Thiel’s spent his entire life being told that he’s wrong and there’s something wrong with him. He’s not purposefully trying to be rebellious most of the time, he just does things that seem natural and obvious to him. Afterwards people yell at him and he’s totally baffled about how anyone could have found that objectionable, and it worked didn’t it and clearly doing otherwise would have lead to more losses.

As time goes on and Thiel’s record gets more and more marked up in red, like his helmet, he both gives up and digs his heels in on some level. He doesn’t care about getting in trouble. That just happens, he couldn’t avoid it successfully if he tried. He’s going to keep doing what he thinks is right, no matter how often he gets told he’s wrong. In contrast to, say, TCF!Sigismund, no one has ever been able to make Thiel feel guilty, ashamed, contrite, or whatever over the fact he acts like he knows better than his superior officers or established protocols. He feels, vaguely, like he should be and something’s wrong with him because he doesn’t, but that’s not the same. It doesn’t help that he is an efficient fighter and commander, so he has ammunition for his belief that doing things by the book on principle or following an order he knows won’t work from the ground isn’t worth people’s lives. He’s not suggesting total anarchy, just… flexibility to cope with an inherently chaotic world.

Then he meets Sevatar. Sure he knows other Legions do things differently, but most Astartes gossip is about how other people do things wrong, their specialty isn’t as good as our specialty, they’re tactically unsound or moral degenerates, it’s not our way, and certainly the Ultramarines are no exception. He’s been on joint campaigns but he’s a young and low-ranking battle brother among people who’d rather keep to their own. He would never have thought to hold himself to anyone else’s standards, then he ends up in a situation where he spends a lot of time trying to see from a totally different world view and perspective.

Sevatar thinks he’s not just interesting, but intelligent and a sound tactician. He’s mocked by Night Lords for being too orthodox, too moral when for years he’s heard that he’s somehow ethically lacking for even imagining the things that always get him in trouble. He’s tried not to internalise it, but it was always there, an ache at the back of his mind. He wanted to be a good person. He wanted to be right.

He’s initially uncomfortable with the idea he’s in love with Sevatar for a lot of reasons. One of them is he worries he’s making too many excuses for him, letting himself get acclimated to the Night Lords being bad people and doing terrible things, often casually and as a matter of course. Another is that he worries his love is selfish. He loves Sevatar for loving him. He loves Sevatar for wanting him, trusting him, believing in him, needing him. Even in the early days of their relationship, Sevatar wasn’t affectionate or good with people, but everything he did told Thiel that he was worthwhile, that he had worth and was worthy. He thinks love should be selfless but he’s only in it for the validation he gets, and he doesn’t want to be a person like that.

You shouldn’t be in a relationship with someone because you want to change them, but he worries sometimes he is. He worries that while he’s changing Sevatar a little, Sevatar’s changing him even more (and these are Night Lords here, how could it be for the better?). Then he worries more that he isn’t, and that he loves Sevatar more than he cares that he’s horrible. What would be enough to make him fall out of love, to draw a sword on Sevatar and say oh hell no? But he’s selfish, because Sevatar is good to him, in their own way, however he is to anyone else.

Thiel doesn’t know if he should be in love, if it’s right or wrong, but even without those answers he eventually has to admit he is.

*

Sevatar, on the other hand, had totally different issues leading him to take a really long time to admit he was in love even after it became true and then became obvious. He’s just really stupid, with emotions.

At various points over the years, people have told him various things about how horrible he is and how he’ll never experience love, or *sigh* you just don’t get it, Sev, depending on whether they’re his various detractors or Atramentar. He believed them. It seemed only reasonable to do so, since he really didn’t get it. He clearly has strong feelings for Curze and his Atramentar brothers and a handful of other people, but he wasn’t really sure what that was, and was pretty confident it didn’t fit the criteria he’d heard for romantic love.

So he spent awhile after he and Thiel started living together wondering ‘Is this love?’ out of sheer uncertainty. He thought, by definition of who he was, it couldn’t be. But Thiel was clearly in love with him, right? Or he was misinterpreting this somehow? He wasn’t going to ask anyone in his Legion, as has been said: no one wants a Night Lord’s romantic advice, and the only other people he might have asked are Thiel himself and Ahriman, who’s too busy.

So when this is finally clarified for him, he’s very ‘Oh, okay’ about it. He didn’t think he was capable of falling in love, but he had no particular investment in that belief. He doesn’t have ‘I am a monster, I cannot possible love!’ issues. It’s just correcting a factual error.

Because he could do something extreme in defiance of the idea, hurt Thiel physically or emotionally very badly, but why? He has nothing to prove to anyone, including himself, especially since everyone else already knew and has been mocking him for it for months. Why would he care about rejecting a label? It is just a description of his feelings, which undeniably exist. He might be a son of the sunless world when it comes to lying, but what’s true is true. If the word for it is love, then he loves Thiel. Nothing changes.