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As the sun fades over the rebel base, Lieutenant Etian Asheda makes his way to one of the rebellion’s many interrogation rooms, his heart in his throat.
He doesn’t know what today’s exercise will be. He never knows beforehand; his orders only ever include a date and a time. Perhaps it would be worse if they did tell him what to expect; perhaps he’d only end up picturing in exquisite detail the type of pain awaiting him.
He stands at the closed door for a moment, clenching and unclenching his hands. He tries to bring to mind the forest lake his family had lived beside before the war. The way the surface had frozen in the winter so that the depths were untouched by the ravages of the cold or the howling of the wind. He holds the image in his mind, forces himself to focus on it.
It’s not much. It will have to be enough.
Swallowing, he takes the doorknob in hand and presses gently. The door opens soundlessly, and he steps over the threshold.
The room is unadorned; there’s little to distinguish it from any of the offices elsewhere on the base. Etian suspects it was in fact an office once upon a time, before the rebels took the town over. Unlike the Adversary, they hardly have the money for purpose-built state-of-the-art interrogation labs.
Only three concessions have been made to the room’s new purpose: the single window on the far wall has been bricked over; the back of the door has been fitted with soundproofing material, and the carpeting that once covered the floor has been torn out to reveal the grey concrete beneath. Intel is run by practical people: windows invite unfriendly eyes, screams bother neighbors, and bloodstains are hard to get out of carpet pile.
In the center of the room is a desk flanked by two chairs. One is empty, and in the other sits a tall man with eyes the color of dead fish scales. Nerian Trasca. Officially a lieutenant colonel, although it’s a tacit assumption that his real rank is much, much higher than that. Etian’s boss.
“Sir,” Etian says, bowing slightly. Trasca inclines his head in return.
Neither bothers with small talk: what would be the point? Outside this quiet little room a war is raging, and the rebellion needs weapons to fight it. That’s why Etian is here: to be molded into something he’s not.
He seats himself opposite Trasca and looks down. The desktop is bare save for a glass of water and two sealed envelopes, each made of the same grey paper.
“Open both,” Trasca says into the silence. “In any order you prefer.”
Etian hesitates: the two look no different from each other, save that the one on the right bulges slightly, as if it holds something small: a pearl or a bead, perhaps. After a moment’s indecision he reaches for the left one more at less at random, watching Trasca for any reaction as he lifts the envelope from the table and tears open the end of it.
There’s a card inside; he removes it and opens it, reading the scrawled note within silently to himself. It’s a single sentence, handwritten in pale green ink: “The nightingale cried five times.”
He looks for other messages: minute tears in the edges of the paper, changes in the texture or saturation of the ink, but there are none. Trasca is silent as he works, but he’s conscious of the other man’s eyes on him all the same. When he’s sure there’s nothing to find, he reaches for the second envelope and tears the edge open.
There’s no card inside, but… he turns the envelope sideways, and a small pill rolls out, settling in the center of his palm. It’s a chalky white color, innocuous in its blandness. He turns it over in his fingers but there’s no mark to indicate the drug or the dosage. But he can guess it’s nothing good.
Trasca leans forward and gently pushes the glass of water towards him. He doesn’t say anything, but his meaning is clear. This is how Trasca likes to give his orders: as silent suggestions, so that his operatives have to take the step off the ledge partly of their own volition. A charitable man might think it a kindness, a promise that the operative will always have a say in what happens to them.
Maybe it’s just that Etian has spent so much time lately peering into the darker parts of men’s souls, but he thinks of the orders as a part of the torture itself: by putting the burden on an operative to begin, they become complicit in whatever happens next. Case in point: when Trasca had first trained him to resist electrostim torture, he’d offered the machine’s plug to Etian and pointed to the wall.
Not for the first time Etian wonders what would happen if he refused just stood up and left. Nothing, most likely, save that he’d be out of a job. Save that he’d have let down the rebellion, his people, and all the other operatives that now lie in shallow graves after dying for the cause.
His musings have gone on too long; Trasca gently clears his throat. With a terse nod, Etian picks up the glass in one hand and the pill in the other. He raises the pill to his throat but palms it at the last second, taking a large gulp of water to mask the motion. The easiest way to disobey an order is to elide it, after all, and if Trasca wants to make him take poison by his own hand, he’s going to have to try harder than this.
He takes another sip of the water for good measure and sets the glass down on the table, ducking his hand under the table to pocket the pill as unobtrusively as he can manage.
“Very good,” Trasca murmurs. He sounds as robotic as he ever does, but there’s something odd hanging in the weight of his words. An expectancy.
Etian toys with the empty envelope, folding the ripped edges into smooth lines. “What was in the pill?” he asks after a moment, not really expecting an answer.
“Sugar.”
Etian jerks his head up to meet Trasca’s eyes. They’re dark; Trasca is staring at him with the unblinking intensity of a mountain snake. Etian opens his mouth to say something: ask another question, or make a joke maybe—but just then a wave of wrongness crashes through him, paired with a sharp dizziness, the sort that comes from standing too quickly. Every hair on his body stands up, and his skin tingles like he’s stood too long under the sun.
He tries to remember the cold lake, the ice, the snow, but it’s impossible: everything is heat; he’s undone with it. He’s on fire; he’s burning up. He needs water, he needs to drink, he needs—
His eyes fall to the half-empty glass of water on the table. Perfectly innocuous, save for the slightest trace of white resting at the bottom of the glass. “What was it?” he croaks.
Trasca’s chair screeches as he pushes it back and stands up. “Clothes off,” he says in the same light tone he always uses.
Etian reaches for his collar before the weight of the words hits him. Clothes—clothes—oh. He undoes the ties at his collar anyway, because he can’t think of what else to do, can’t think of any other way out of this.
He starts on the buttons next. His fingers are clumsy; it takes him two tries to grip the first button between his fingers, and two more to get it properly through the hole. As he fumbles with the next one he briefly considers just ripping the whole thing off: the heat in his skin has gotten worse and worse; the faintest brush of fabric over it feels like torture. Maybe that’s all this exercise will be. Maybe there’s no more to it. But as he gets to work on the third button, he knows it for a lie.
The shirt is finally off; he drops it from numb fingers to puddle on the floor. The cool air of the room feels delicious on his skin; every hair on his body is suddenly hypersensitive so that the faintest breeze from the ceiling fan feels like a caress. His lips part of their own volition, and the air feels just as good on the tip of his tongue. His nipples are hard.
“Focus, Asheda.”
Focus. Right. He’s under orders. He’s got a job to do. He stands on unsteady legs and kicks off his shoes, stumbling as he trips over the laces. It takes him a second to right himself, and then he’s reaching for the fastening of his pants. His breath is shaky as he unhooks the clasp.
He’s been naked before Trasca plenty of times: when Trasca taught him how to combat hypothermia, when he’d worked Etian over with knives and whips—but it never felt the way it does now. Like his skin is more than just bare skin, like his nudity is more than just an absence of clothes. There’s a potential to it now, something lying in wait. His heart hammers with it, and a heat builds in his stomach.
But in his haste to shove his pants down, he gets clumsy. The sugar pill slips from where he’d pocketed it and falls to the floor, rolling in a lazy circle before coming to rest by Trasca’s left foot. Etian stares at it, heart beating in his ears. With a rough swallow, he dares to look up at Trasca’s face. For some reason Trasca’s anger or worse, disappointment, feels like it would be the worst thing in the world right now.
But mercy of mercies, Trasca doesn’t look mad. He snorts. “Your sleight-of-hand was better this time, but your disposal left something to be desired. We’ll work on that later.”
Later. “After…?” he mumbles, because he can’t figure out how else to say it.
“Yes, Asheda. After,” Trasca says, and normally it would set off a whole host of warning bells in Etian’s head, the way that Trasca sounds almost gentle. “Now finish with your clothes.”
Clothes. Yes, Trasca had told him to take them off. He can do that. He wants to do it, he wants to be good for Trasca. He reaches down and unties the lacings of his underclothes, letting them fall to the ground beside the rest of his discarded clothing.
He’s fully naked now, and when he looks down, he realizes he’s half-hard as well. Some small part of him recognizes that this is off, that there is something very wrong about this, that he’s in the belly of the beast and there’s no way out. But that small part is quiet and seems very far away. The rest of him is warm, is trembling, and is filled with a need for something Etian can’t quite articulate. He wants—he wants—
“Very good, Asheda.” Trasca reaches out to rest a hand on his bare chest and oh, this is what Etian wants: Trasca touching him, praising him, using him.
“Kneel for me,” Trasca is saying, and Etian is dropping to the floor like he’s taken a knife to the gut, so fast he’s dizzy with it, so hard his knees ache as they slam into the floor. But the bite of pain does nothing to negate the swelling of his cock.
Trasca steps closer and rests a hand on his head, and Etian can’t help but lean into it, reveling in the weight of it, the delicate frissons of sensation as Trasca toys with his curls one by one. “You’re doing so well, Asheda,” Trasca murmurs, and Etian’s heart could burst with pride. “You’re going to be good for me, right?”
“Yessir,” he slurs, leaning in to nuzzle his cheek against Trasca’s thigh. The wool of his slacks is rough against Etian’s skin; the texture feels delicious. He can smell Trasca from here too: smoky tea and a hint of soap. What would his skin taste like? What would it feel like on Etian’s tongue? “Want to be good for you, sir.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Trasca says. “I need you to do something for me.”
Etian nods into Trasca’s knee. How wonderful, to be allowed to please Trasca. If he does what Trasca wants maybe Trasca will praise him, maybe Trasca will touch him. “Anything,” he whispers.
“Excellent,” Trasca breathes. “All I need is for you to tell me: how many times did the nightingale cry?”
The words may as well be in a foreign language at first, but Etian puzzles through. He mouths them over in his tongue, trying to taste out the meaning. How many times… did the nightingale cry? He screws up his forehead, trying to concentrate; but it’s hard to think with Trasca’s fingers carding through his hair. He has to answer this, he has to know it: for Trasca.
And there: yes! He remembers; it’s coming to him. “The nightingale, it cried,” he starts.
“Yes?” Trasca asks.
“It cried,” he tries again. He knows the answer. He knows it! But… “I’m not supposed to say,” he mumbles.
“Oh Asheda, you can tell me.” Trasca asks, letting his fingers trail down the back of Etian’s neck, running his thumb over the base of his spine. “You can trust me.”
He wants to tell Trasca. He wants it more than anything in the world. But… “I can’t.”
Trasca sighs, and the sound hurts him like a whip-bite. “That’s very disappointing, Asheda.”
Etian’s vision blurs, he realizes with a start that he’s tearing up. “’m sorry sir,” he blurts out. “But I can’t.”
A second sigh. Trasca removes his hands from Etian’s head, and Etian can’t help but keen at the sudden absence of touch. “Very well then. Touch yourself.”
He blinks. “Sir?”
Trasca waves a hand towards Etian’s groin, his half-hard cock. “Stimulate yourself with your hand.”
This is wrong, Trasca has never asked him to do anything like this before—but Trasca’s asking now. Hesitantly, Etian reaches down, takes himself in hand. Even though his grip is light, the first touch of his fingers sends shocks of pleasure through his cock. He gasps, reeling in place.
He slides his hand down and up, a moan tearing from deep in his chest. Oh, but it feels so good. His toes curl and his head falls forward as he strokes himself, faster and faster, harder and harder. Pre-come leaks from the head, dripping down to slick his fingers and drenching the air with the scent of sex.
Before long he’s fucking his hand, not caring about the filthy sounds falling from his lips. All that matters is the pleasure; he can feel the pressure building in him; he’s close, so close; he’s on the edge—
“Stop,” Trasca says.
Etian rips his hand away from his cock with an incoherent whine, the sudden absence of sensation sharp enough that it hits him like a physical blow. His cock is hard and aching against his belly, and more than anything he needs to touch it again.
“Please,” he pants, “I want—I need—"
“You can have it. All you need to do is tell me: how many times did the nightingale cry?”
Oh, but it would be so easy; oh, but he needs it so bad. “I can’t,” he sobs, rocking back and forth on his knees. “Please sir, I can’t, I can’t…”
“Very well. Then keep your hands at your sides.”
Etian slumps in defeat with a broken moan, his cock throbbing between his legs. Seconds drag by; the only sound is the blood rushing in his ears and his own harsh and ragged breathing. Everything in him is screaming to touch his cock. His hips jerk into the air despite himself, desperate for stimulation he can’t get. He digs his fingers into the flesh of his thighs so hard that the nails are a hairsbreadth from breaking the skin.
“Asheda,” Trasca says at last, and Etian almost cries with relief: it’s going to be over soon; it has to be over soon.
“Yessir?”
Trasca offers him a wintry smile. “Play with your nipples. Only your nipples.”
With a sob he brings his trembling fingers up to his chest. He closes his thumbs and forefingers over each nipple, pinching down slightly—and gasps as the sensation shoots straight to his cock. Gasping, he does it again and again: gyrating, shivering, and shaking as he tweaks at them, worries at them, rolls them into little nubs between his fingertips. His cock twitches and jumps against his stomach as he plays with himself, fat and leaking with neglect. Oh, but he wants to touch himself, he needs it, he needs it—
“Please!” he sobs, and oh, he hates this, he hates how easily he’s become this mewling, desperate creature he barely recognizes.
Trasca tilts his head as if considering, and no matter how much Etian hates himself in this moment, he hates Trasca more. “Very well,” Trasca says at last. “Stimulate yourself again.”
The first touch is so good he cries out. Every inch of his skin is hypersensitive; touching himself has never felt like this before. Everything feels heightened; even the weight of Trasca’s gaze on him gets him off. He has no patience for gentle touches anymore: he grips his cock hard and jerks his hips as he ruts into his palm. So good, so good—
“Stop,” says Trasca.
Etian cries as he yanks his hand away. Curse him, curse him, but Trasca is his commanding officer, and Etian is Trasca’s to do with as he wishes.
“The nightingale, Asheda.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he manages to gasp. His cock is aching where it lays against his stomach, and the rest of his body shivering with need.
A tsk. “Unwise, Asheda. Come here.”
Trembling, Etian manages to inch closer to Trasca’s feet, his knees aching where they rest on the hard floor. He has to look up to meet Trasca’s eyes. It feels utterly humiliating, and it makes his cock twitch against his stomach like nothing else.
Trasca stares down at him for a moment, unblinking. And then he moves his foot to press gently against the inside of Etian’s knee. “Rub yourself off against my boot.”
His cheeks burn even as his cock jumps at the thought. “Sir?” he asks through gritted teeth.
Another slow blink. “Did I stutter, Asheda?”
Etian is a gun in the hand of the rebellion and a gun has no say in how it’s used; a gun can’t hate its wielder. He hates Trasca right now regardless. But not enough to disobey.
He scoots closer, wrapping his shaking hands around Trasca’s leg to steady himself. He stumbles as he tries to position himself, cursing—and then his sac makes contact with the toe of Trasca’s boot, and his shaft with the ankle. It feels so good he can’t help moan again, fingers digging into Trasca’s pants.
“I said ‘rub’, Asheda, not sit there.”
“Yessir,” Etian mumbles, tears of humiliation stinging his eyes. He pushes himself forward, clumsy in his lust and shame—and gasps at the friction of his skin against the leather. It feels warm and supple against his skin, almost better than his hand, even.
He ruts desperately, rubbing his sac and cock shamelessly over the leather: back and forth, back and forth. The tears in his eyes spill over from the humiliation of it, the indignity. But he can’t stop; he chases the pleasure of it with a single minded intensity, and as the pressure in his balls builds he dares to hope that this time Trasca will take pity on him; this time will be the end of it. He’s desperate to come; he’s never wanted anything more in his entire life.
“Stop.”
Etian howls. He falls back from Trasca’s boot, body shaking, hands white knuckled at his sides. It’s too much, it’s not enough, it hurts it hurts it hurts—
“How many times did the nightingale cry?”
“I don’t know,” he shrieks, “I don’t fucking know, you fucking—
“Suck on your fingers.”
He doesn’t want to; he wants to use his mouth to scream and curse, he wants to use his fingers to touch himself, fuck himself.
But Trasca gave him an order and he has to do what Trasca says, he has to. He’s beyond questions of duty and loyalty now, but the weight of Trasca’s voice is the only thing anchoring him to reality, to his body.
Cock leaking, eyes blurring with tears, he shoves his first two fingers into his mouth down to the bottom knuckles and sucks. It feels good, he can almost imagine what the heat and the warmth and the wetness would feel like if it were encased around his cock. He moans around his fingers, fucking them back and forth out of his mouth.
He’s messy in his desperation; some faraway part of him knows that the sounds he makes as he suckles and laves are obscene. There’s spit leaking from his mouth, over his lips and down his chin, making even more of a mess. But he doesn’t care.
“Remove your fingers.” Is it just Etian’s imagination, or does Trasca sound a bit breathless?
Etian pulls his fingers out with a wet pop, whining quietly at their absence.
“Fuck yourself on them.”
Trasca doesn’t need to tell him twice. Cheeks burning with the shame of it, Etian widens his knees and then reaches behind himself with clumsy hands, plunging his fingers into himself as quickly as he can.
His hole clenches greedily around his fingers, the burn of the sudden intrusion drowned out by the pleasure of the breach. He draws his fingers back and then shoves them in again, and then he’s fucking himself properly, over and over and over.
His eyes flutter shut as he loses himself in the sensations: the slick slide of his fingers, the stretch and the burn. It’s not a hand on his cock, but it’s something, and he’s desperate enough to be grateful that Trasca has allowed him at least this, and hates himself for his gratefulness.
The angle is bad and his hand is beginning to ache, but then a chance stroke hits the spot and he cries out, hips jerking as he fucks the air, cock and balls throbbing.
Oh! He’s so close; the edge is just a step further, he can feel it, can almost taste it. He can’t help the moan that breaks his lips as he drives his hips forward, fucking himself on his fingers, three, two, one—
Faster than a snake bite, Trasca is leaning down and grabbing his cock at the base, punishingly hard.
Letting out a howl, Etian bucks his hips wildly, all to no avail. He needs it, oh but he needs it; if he doesn’t get it he thinks he’s going to die. He chokes on a hiccup, his face now a mess of snot and tears.
Trasca leans in and bites gently at the lobe of Etian’s ear, just hard enough to hurt. “The nightingale, Asheda. How many times did it cry? I won’t ask again.”
“I don’t know,” he screams.
Silence, and he sags in Trasca’s grip. He’s utterly bereft of hope and so, so hard. He feels like a rag doll to be played with and tossed away at Trasca’s leisure. There will be no relief: all he can do is kneel and bear it.
He stares up at Trasca with miserable eyes. Trasca meets his gaze for a breath. And then he looks away, loosens his hand from his balls, takes his shaft in hand, gives it three brisk strokes. “Come for me, Asheda.”
Asheda comes screaming. His orgasm is violent: it rips through him just over the edge of pain, painting thick ropes of come over his thighs and belly as his cock jerks and shudders. It’s too much; it’s too much, and as the aftershocks wrack his body he realizes he’s falling, and the ground is rushing up to meet him.
Silence. Deep, shaky breaths. And above him, a quiet sigh.
Etian lies on his side as he comes back to himself, shivering and trembling. Every inch in his body aches, but worst of all is his cock. He’s a mess of nerves and hurts, and he feels filthy—from tears and sweat and come, and other stains that run deeper still. When he can manage to raise his head without wanting to throw up, he opens his eyes. Trasca is staring impassively down at him.
“Strysium,” he says at last. “An aphrodisiac and a neurotoxin. Increases suggestiveness and pliancy in subjects.”
“Oh,” Etian says. All of the heat of the drug is gone; he feels numb now, cold.
“You did well,” Trasca says.
Etian gathers the tatters of his dignity around himself like a cloak. “You could have warned me, sir.
Trasca raises an eyebrow. “That would defeat the purpose of the exercise.”
And of course Trasca is right, but Etian can’t help the feelings of hurt and betrayal that burble up in him. And with them, shame. How dare he feel slighted by this? He is a knife in the hand of the rebellion. He gave his body and his mind over to Trasca to shape, and Trasca has shaped him with the single-minded intensity of a master forger at the smithy.
How can he object to this, when he agreed to serve the cause with his life? How is his anger anything less than an insult to all the other operatives that came and went before him? So he swallows his guilt and his shame and ducks his head. “Understood, sir.”
“Good,” Trasca says. “Same time tomorrow. We’ll practice your sleight of hand. Don’t be late.” And with a final nod, he walks out of the room, shutting the door behind him.