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Orm has been uncharacteristically quiet since his dethroning.
It's been said that he hasn't spoken since The Failed War, or whatever name it is that the locals have given the events leading up to Orm’s concession of the Atlantean throne and subsequent imprisonment. His rage had dissipated at the sight of Atlanna and although Arthur has been adamant about imposing a mandatory period change of guards to prevent Orm from schmoozing his way out of solitary confinement, it seems as if the desire for conflict has bled from Orm’s body entirely. He now spends his days floating without complaint in his cell, or so the guards have told Arthur, though it’s not obvious whether he strains to catch the rare pieces of conversation that take place within earshot. Orm had been surrounded by people at nearly all hours of the day before his imprisonment. By all means, he should be indescribably lonely in that cell, a great leader brought low and separated from all that he holds dear.
But he has Arthur, and Arthur is not at all surprised by the silence.
From the moment they'd first crossed paths Orm has always projected a theatrical presence, a larger-than-life personality with the sort of voice that reverberates in the chest like the beat of a great drum. As a king, it’s always been his duty to make himself heard. As a prisoner, and as a man now discovering that the burning resentment he had held onto for so long is as meaningless as his claim to the throne, he has no obligation to orate crowds into a frenzy, or to compose speeches compelling enough to mobilize an entire army against a rival kingdom. He has no reason to speak up, a silver tongue stripped of its power.
And yet Arthur has found that Orm is better at communicating when he doesn’t speak.
“You’re still enjoying this, right?” Arthur asks, pressing his lips against the skin below Orm’s ear. It’s important that he know now because he has three fingers inside his brother, and if this isn’t in any way pleasurable, he’s going to have to find some way to step up his game.
Orm hums. His eyes are closed and his face is relaxed, projecting a serenity that betrays little of his feelings toward anything that Arthur has done in the past ten minutes. It must require near superhuman restraint to remain so outwardly calm, but Arthur has been learning to read Orm's body body; he understands the way Orm’s breath hitches again as he spreads his fingers and presses them as far in as his hand will allow, and understands that the muscle gripping Arthur’s fingers flutters because he likes this particular spot.
Arthur noses against the side of Orm’s cheek while his other hand scratches idly at Orm’s hairline, still unused to having nothing to do but wander. “Good,” he murmurs, then pushes his fingers through Orm’s hair. “Just let me know when you’re ready for more.”
Orm tips his head back and swallows. There’s a dusting of dark blond stubble over his jaw and throat, one of the only visible signs of his time spent in solitary confinement, and Arthur brushes the backs of his knuckles over it with a pleased hum. Orm is one of Atlantis’s most high-security prisoners—one of the most beloved of the high-borns, too—but Arthur had made sure to grant him access to most of the amenities required to maintain his personal hygiene, and until now he’s kept himself relatively clean-shaven and well-groomed, as though confident that an audience still awaits him somewhere. The stubble is new, which either means he’s fallen into a terrible depression in the few days that Arthur has been away dealing with issues on the surface, or that Arthur must be rubbing off on him at last.
Well, he’s certain that he’s rubbing something the right way. Orm doesn’t seem like a man of great patience, but he seems to have few complaints about the torturously slow pace at which Arthur has been fingering him for the past half hour. The first time, when they’d fumbled their way beyond a surprisingly emotional make-out session and Orm had allowed Arthur’s hand to slip between his legs, Orm had come twice in less than five minutes without so much as a whimper, stoic even in the throes of passion. That’s how he recalls it, anyway, but Arthur knows differently; after all, he'd licked all sound right out of Orm’s mouth, desperate for contact and eager to feel the tenor of his brother’s voice in the back of his throat. Arthur had inhaled a soft, shaky moan that vaguely carried the shape of his name, and it had been the best thing he’d ever heard.
It’s taken a few months of learning, but Arthur can take Orm apart from the inside out over the course of hours. Or rather, he would, but Orm has a way of finding his way onto Arthur’s cock and it is completely beyond Arthur’s ability to refuse.
In the present, Orm simply sighs and leans back, stretching out in the water with his thighs splayed on either side of Arthur’s wrist and his cock curving up toward his belly. Precome oozes into the water around them, lending a soft bioluminescent glow to Orm’s skin and the nearest wall, another obvious physical reminder of his brother’s full-blooded Atlantean heritage. The rest of Orm is as expected, though, and Arthur would gladly fuck him while he lounges like some hedonistic Greek king… but he’s been waiting to float an idea, and if having Orm wrapped around three fingers isn’t a good time to do so, he may never find a better moment to bring it up.
“I’ve been thinking,” Arthur says, keeping his tone conversational and light. He curls his fingers a final time and stills his hand, maintaining his pressure as a shiver works its way through Orm’s body. He takes a breath and gazes down, admiring the blissful expression on his brother's face, then wraps his free hand around Orm’s cock. “Mm, yeah, you’re right. Who wants to hear some silly idea anyway?”
Orm opens one eye.
“How silly can it be?”
Arthur rubs his thumb idly against the skin beneath the head of Orm’s cock, smearing precome until a thin strand of blue light drifts away and swirls in the water. It's beautiful, in a strange way. Nothing of Arthur's glows in the dark, but Orm hasn't complained much about it. “Well, it’s nothing, really,” he says, hoping to make it obvious that it’s not nothing. “I just sorta thought, you know, I’m always down here in the water with you. And the sex is great, don’t get me wrong. But I was thinking, maybe… if you’re interested… why don’t we clear some water out of the room and do this dry?”
A crease appears in Orm’s forehead, though Arthur isn’t certain whether it’s because of what he said or if it’s because Arthur’s now squeezing his cock from base to tip. The gentle clench around his fingers suggests it’s the latter, but Orm is still capable of surprising him.
“Does it make a difference?”
Arthur shrugs. The greatest difference, presence of water aside, would be gravity, but that’s never been an issue for Arthur. Fucking in water (and more specifically, fucking someone as adept at maneuvering through the water as himself) has been a thrilling new adventure in discovering which thrusting techniques will satisfy and which will simply propel him across the room, but he almost kind of misses the process of picking someone up and fucking them against a solid surface, or bearing the full weight of their body atop his own. He's certain that Orm has never had that experience, and it would be a nice way to introduce him to the concept of sex as Arthur knows it.
“Maybe. Won’t be any harder than this,” he says, rubbing his thumb gently over Orm's slit. Orm had been immensely smug the first time Arthur had accidentally rolled them upside-down during sex. Neither of them have forgotten it, to Arthur's dismay. “I can drain the room, if you wanna try it.”
“Fill the room,” Orm corrects. He doesn’t tend to let Arthur forget that water is the default down here.
“Fine, fill the room. I’ll put some air in here, and we can…”
Arthur glances around them, then down at the floor. The room they’re in is a cell quite similar to Orm’s, though the chance that anyone will wander across them is minimal; a bed made of a soft-looking membrane glows unobtrusively near a complex array of tubes that form a structure Arthur has been told is a filtration system akin to indoor plumbing. There’s little else in the room, but it’s suitable for a prisoner, according to the Atlantean wardens. Of course, they won't know that it's also suitable for fucking one's brother without interruption or surveillance.
Orm reaches down, grips Arthur by the wrist, and carefully eases Arthur’s fingers from himself. The residue of the jelly-like lubricant gives Arthur’s fingers a purplish hue, and like many things in Atlantis, emits a very faint bit of light in the dark of the room. It’s not the most inconspicuous lubricant Arthur has ever used, but it doesn’t seep into the water, and it had actually been Orm's suggestion. Next to the rich blue glow of his semen, it makes sex in the dark downright exciting.
“Fill the room.”
Without hesitation Arthur swims in the direction of the door, which unlocks and slides open as he raises his hand to it. The mechanism seems similar to that of a normal biometric scanner, though this particular room can only be accessed—and most importantly, viewed into—by himself. He’d had Vulko set it up when Orm had first been taken into custody under the pretense of setting up a room that could be used for interrogations. Luckily, the wardens had been on board with it, and it isn't difficult to clean up when they're finished.
On the outside of the cell is a shimmering projection of a control panel. Arthur operates it with a swipe of his finger, just barely familiar enough with the strange runes that make up the Atlantean alphabet to navigate his way to the cell’s atmospheric settings, and after jabbing at the projection for another moment he slips back into the cell and locks the door with another wave of his hand.
Then the room begins to drain. Fill. Whichever. Air bubbles out from all corners of the room, creating a rippling surface that almost seems to descend from the ceiling as the water is pumped out of the cell. Orm follows Arthur to the floor and, to Arthur’s amusement, squints faintly against the room's ambient lighting as the water sinks below eye level. There’s a brief moment where Arthur can see his pupils shrink, becoming two pinpricks of light as his eyes adjust to compensate for the difference in refraction, but Arthur barely has time to admire Orm’s eyes before Orm turns and begins to cough. There’s no polite way to expectorate an entire chest full of ocean water, so instead Arthur takes the opportunity to admire the faint purple stain between Orm’s thighs as he expels the water from his lungs.
“Maybe try doing it in the water next time,” Arthur suggests. “Before the air comes.”
Orm glances at him, mouth dripping with the frothy residue of air mixed with seawater, and narrows his eyes.
“Just saying.”
Arthur waits until Orm’s breathing is smooth again, then steps up to him. Even at his full height, Orm stands a few inches below Arthur, though the difference is hardly obvious when they’re tangled together in the water. With a reassuring smile, he lifts both hands and cradles Orm’s face in them, watching as water drips from his brow and the strands of hair falling over his forehead. He looks so handsome in this light. He looks handsome all the time, but Arthur is especially fond of seeing the droplets glistening on his skin. “Listen, if you don’t like it, we’ll drain the room and pretend this whole thing never happened. Don’t do this just because I want to.”
Orm slides both hands up Arthur’s chest and traces one of the black angular shapes inked beneath his pectoral, mouth curling up slightly at the thought. “You won’t coerce me, I assure you.”
“Hey, never say never,” Arthur says, then leans in and kisses his brother.
Orm sighs against his mouth and arches his body against the rest of him. His skin is pleasantly warm against Arthur’s despite the temperature of the water they’ve just emerged from, and he’s downright hot where his cock rubs against Arthur’s thigh and leaves a sticky line of blue smeared over his skin. It’s comforting to kiss him like this, out of the water and in breathable air. It’s good to feel the slickness of Orm’s tongue and the warmth of his breath against his lips. Arthur is used to the water, but this feels like coming home.
Without warning, Arthur leans down, slides his hands behind Orm’s ass, and lifts him up. Orm doesn’t seem especially startled as Arthur slams his back against the nearest wall, but when Arthur pins him in place with a thigh between his legs Orm sucks in a breath and grips at his shoulders..
“Now, you’re gonna put your legs around my waist,” Arthur breathes, “and I’m gonna show you how we do it on the surface.”
Orm obediently folds his legs around Arthur’s waist, and Arthur holds him easily against the wall with one hand and guides his cock against Orm’s hole with the other. The jelly and thirty minutes of prep time (if it can be called prep time and not simply mindless body worship) makes it a simple task to press inside, and he relishes the low groan that rumbles in Orm’s throat as he slowly buries his cock in him.
“Arthur,” Orm whispers, and to Arthur’s surprise he tips his head forward and kisses him slowly, deeply. It’s tender in the way their first kiss had been, and Orm is obviously savouring the moment. As far as romantic gestures go, a kiss out of water is not the craziest thing Arthur could have thought up, but the way Orm presses another soft kiss to his mouth after they part is as sweet as anything his brother has ever said to him. “I’ve missed the weight of you.”
An unexpected warmth flutters briefly in Arthur’s chest, and he doesn’t know what to do with such emotion while his cock is this hard, so he rocks his hips forward and mouths at Orm’s chin, pinning him to the wall with his body weight to get as much skin against him as possible. He’s already as deep inside Orm as he can possibly get and Orm is quite literally wrapped around him, but there are times when Arthur feels a desire to simply be closer. It must be an Atlantean thing. He’s never felt this with anyone else.
“You say that to everyone who fucks you like I do?”
Orm’s mouth curves into a smile against Arthur’s cheek. “If I could have any man, woman, or creature in this world… I would still fuck you. Only you.”
The warmth in Arthur’s chest splits, spreading through his body like a lightning bolt conducted by the column of his spine. He’s been electrocuted at Orm’s request before, but the timbre of his brother’s voice, soft though it is in the still air of the room, has never touched his cock quite like this.
“God, I love you,” Arthur groans.
Orm tightens his thighs around Arthur’s waist and answers with a sigh while Arthur, hands still slick with water and the jelly lubricant, digs his fingers into Orm’s skin and begins fucking him properly. This is Arthur’s element, and here in an air-occupied space he can really fuck him, hammering against him with thrusts that fill the room with the sound of Arthur’s thighs slapping against Orm’s.
Exertion is a foreign concept to Arthur, and he’s surprised by how quickly it takes for him to begin panting against Orm’s neck. It takes little effort to hold him in place, but Arthur keeps a bruising grip on his thighs and snaps his hips against Orm’s and watches, and sure enough, Orm is reacting positively too. His mouth falls open on a thrust and Arthur, grinning, aims for that spot again and again until the blunt edges of Orm’s nails dig into the muscle of his shoulder and each exhale comes with a subvocal whine.
And then Arthur strikes gold. Orm throws his head back with such force that it echoes off the walls and clenches desperately around Arthur’s cock, thighs straining with the effort of keeping them clamped around his waist, and for a moment Arthur thinks that Orm is actually going to come—
which he does, exhaling a low, shuddery breath and streaking his chest and abdomen with lines of soft blue light. Arthur continues to drive his hips forward without pause, encouraged by the spasm of Orm’s body and the sight of his brother mid-orgasm, long pale throat exposed and eyes fluttering shut in ecstasy.
“Fuck, that’s so hot,” Arthur hisses. He licks up the side of his throat until his tongue rasps over Orm’s stubble. He tastes like the chalky scent of a marine chert bed, the familiar mineral saline of the ocean floor. “Come for me again, I know you can, I got you…”
Orm shudders again, exhaling shakily as Arthur mouths against the side of his jaw. Arthur’s pretty sure it’s too soon for a second orgasm—Atlanteans are powerful in water and out, yet even a pure blood’s strength and stamina must yield to a brief refractory period—and he himself is starting to feel that familiar mounting pressure, so he does the only thing he can think to do.
He stops.
Or slows, to be more precise, digging his fingers into the twitching muscle of Orm’s hamstrings as he stops thrusting and begins to grind against Orm’s hips. It’s a nice change of pace and it allows him to more clearly focus on the breathy sounds Orm makes as Arthur rocks against him, a series of soft moans that Orm would have once tried to muffle in Arthur’s hair but now lets ring out clearly into the empty space of the room.
And the acoustics are great.
“Arthur,” he gasps as Arthur presses him into the wall again. A flush has risen into his cheeks, and his gaze is barely focused on Arthur’s face when his eyes flutter open. “please, I—”
A new shudder ripples through Orm as his second orgasm crests, and one hand tightens briefly on Arthur’s shoulder as his body’s grip does the same around Arthur’s cock. A soft keening noise catches in his throat and is cut short as Arthur kisses him, licking into his mouth like he might be able to taste the sound—or better, swallow it and carry it with him forever.
The space between them becomes noticeably more blue in Arthur’s peripheral vision. He grins against Orm’s mouth and shifts his weight so that Orm can feel the heaviness of his cock still buried inside him. It hasn’t even been long enough for their skin to dry, but it gives him some measure of pride to think that Orm’s skin is slick with sweat and not simply water.
“You wanna go back to wet now?”
Orm tips his head back with a weak groan. It’s hardly louder than a whisper, far from the rousing speeches that he’d heard Orm give before scores of Atlanteans. It’s a testament to Arthur’s sexual prowess, obviously, that someone so well-spoken should be reduced to… well, someone so post-coital, his tongue turned clumsy and brain filled with static, the occasional spasm still rippling through his body.
Arthur can relate to that much, at least; his cock still aches, his arousal roiling impatiently in his belly as he waits for Orm’s permission to continue. Maybe he could come from this, fucking his own brother slowly into a blissful, mindless incoherence in the comfort of an air pocket far below the surface. Just one more thing to add to his extensive list of ways he’d like to fuck Orm, or be fucked by Orm, or to simply just pass time with him. They’ve spent a lifetime apart, and surely now they’ve earned a lifetime together.
After a moment, Orm shakes his head and shifts his weight with deliberateness. Arthur wouldn’t have argued if he’d nodded, but of all the things Orm could have possibly said to him in this moment, Arthur prefers this silence the best.