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“Are you sure this won’t be an issue?”
“You have asked this four times, Father Nightroad.” Tres does not restate his answer: it will not be an issue. Abel does not need to worry. And yet, he does. He always does, wringing his hands as he follows the ends of the other man’s coat, because the idea of doing something like this and here makes him feel like he’s in free-fall and not precisely in the best of all possible ways.
Tres does not pause, and not for the first time, Abel wonders if what keeps him going, what lets him not constantly second-guess himself is the surety of his programming or simply just who he is. Either way, it both relieves and frightens him in equal measure: it draws him in. Tres could convince Abel to go just about anywhere if he simply took the first step.
But this is...well, it’s not necessarily something they shouldn’t do, but it’s not precisely within the remit of their permissions, either. Still, Tres is right: sparring in one of the training rooms shan’t be an issue. That is, in fact, what the rooms are there for. They’re specially designed to allow AX agents (who can, in all fairness, trash...just about anything) a chance to hone their skills. You never know, after all, when some awful thing will call them back to the field.
Neither Abel nor Tres need to hone their skills. Tres is not permanently capable of losing his skills. They are a part and parcel of his programming. Abel…. Abel tries not to think about his skills any more than he has to. Put simply, then, they do not need to practice. They are not actually coming here to spar.
Or, well. They are. Sort of.
“Abel,” Tres says, as they reach the door. Turns to look back at him. “It is fine.”
Abel lets out a long breath and finally nods. Yes. It is fine.
They step inside and Tres locks the door, and then Abel double-checks the door is locked because he knows what his luck is like, and then they go to the benches and disrobe an appropriate amount, enough that they won’t have to deal with replacement cassocks or any of the endless griping (or, for that matter, bills Abel can’t afford) when something happens to their clothes. It’s quiet, that awkward breathless moment before the storm, and Abel takes his shirt off, immediately shudders in the cool air of the room, double-checks that his hair is tied back, before he unlaces his boots and turns around.
Tres is already waiting: stripped down just as Abel is, his face impassive, gaze steady, arms folded behind him. Waiting.
“No powers,” they set the rules before they ever even got here, but Abel still restates them for his own sanity if nothing else. “No weapons. No unsportsmanlike behavior.” Tres’ expression does not change, but he tilts his head just slightly, as if asking a question, so Abel clarifies, “Don’t try to poke me in the eyes or kick me in the balls.” Tres nods, shifts his stance as if to say ready.
Abel hesitates and then, as they say, puts up his dukes.
If he were anyone else, Tres’ first hit would have sent him flying, and the second would have snapped half the bones in his body. Instead, the first hit strikes his ribs hard enough he’s rendered breathless, and the second one makes him stumble.
For a moment, Abel is almost certain this is a terrible idea. He hates fighting at the best of times, and it’s hardly likely to be a relief to him to hit Tres back, but then Tres pulls his hand back to go in for a third strike and Abel reflexively catches the strike. Takes a deep breath.
“Stop,” Tres tells him, pressing his hand back toward his chest, flexing the impressive force of his mechanical joints and muscles. “Hesitating.” Abel debates opening his mouth to say something, to deny, perhaps, or to admit that he doesn’t want to not hesitate, but Tres looks at him, and he gives up the ghost.
He stops hesitating.
Ten breathless minutes later, Tres’ knee shoved into Abel’s back, one of his arms bent up behind him, he is forced to concede that in pure physical strength alone, Tres is his match. And perhaps he has been hesitating, but he doesn’t want to go too hard.
And maybe he sort of wanted to lose.
Settled down against him, breathing ragged into his ear, Abel can hear the slightest hint of a smile in Tres’ voice as he asks, “Do you concede?”
“No,” Abel replies, and then gasps, thunking his head down into the floor as Tres shifts above him, letting more of his not-inconsiderable weight settle down onto Abel’s hips. Rather than twist his arm further, though, Tres rolls forward, grinding into the crack of Abel’s ass, and—
This is what they had planned all along, sparring to get their blood up, more for the thrill of it than anything, knowing that by the end even if it was short and hardly a fight at all they’d be all over each other, not the battle. This was what Abel had been worried about: if someone opened the door, came in on them now, caught them like this, Tres holding Abel down and grinding again and again into the crack of his ass, smelling like sweat and barely decent and so obvious in what they’re doing. He keeps looking toward the door, glancing there every other breath, until Tres digs the fingers of his free hand into Abel’s side, presses down hard against the muscles over his hip and pulls as if to drag him off of the floor, to show him what Tres really wants.
He stops looking.
“Do you concede?” Tres repeats, his voice hard but not as hard as his dick, digging into Abel’s ass. He debates fighting it, debates trying to roll over and twist Tres off, reverse their positions.
He doesn’t really want to.
“Yes,” he breathes at last, voice shaking and then sighing in pleasure as Tres finally lets go of his arm, rolls him over, and pins his hips to the ground. Tres looks beautiful: sweat slicking his skin, plastering his short hair across his face, highlighting the flush on his cheeks. His pants have begun to slide down his hips, stretching across his thighs, framing the hard tent of his cock up against the seam. He doesn’t pull it out, but he does lean forward and grind against Abel’s own answering hardness, and as much as he desperately wants to shut his eyes—
Abel wants to watch more.
He holds onto Tres’ hipbones, trying to pull him closer, only for the other man to lean forward, push the palm of his hand into Abel’s sternum and thump him back to the floor, his breath wheezing out of his lungs in a sudden oof . “You conceded,” Tres reminds him, not unkindly, putting his weight into it until Abel is twisting, shifting helplessly under him, yawning pleasure from the feeling of being so well trapped starting to burn at the edges of his flesh, the constant grinding of their cocks against one another through the cotton of their flies, all the things he could have if he would just let go.
“I did,” Abel agrees, when he can get the air in his lungs to speak. So, he does what he said he would do: he concedes.
It is a very good concession.
Tres' hands, one on his chest that migrates upward occasionally to weigh heavy against the bast of his throat, ratcheting his heartbeat up ever higher—one on his hip, keeping him pinned, at the Gunslinger's mercy. Their cocks, the heat between them, the crashing waves of friction that are almost-too-much in the cloth of his pants, leaving Abel pressing one hand over his mouth and biting down to try and muffle the sounds he so desperately wants to make as he claws at the floor, at his own chest, at the base of his stomach as close as he can get to putting his hand on his length and squeezing. It gets hard, Tres rocking him down into the floor until his hipbones are aching with newfound bruises, until Abel is begging him, pleading, his knees hitched up as he presses back and against and down into that friction, that desperate heat, and—
"Please," Abel begs, his voice breaking. "Please, Tres, I can't—"
Tres leans down, ever-more-weight onto Abel's neck, and kisses him on the mouth, Abel's hand between their lips. It does not matter that their lips don't meet; the simulacra is enough, and Abel shudders as he comes, finally closing his eyes and wheezing as he meets that endless edge of infinity, feeling Tres hitch down and stop stock-still against him, jerking sharply thrice.
It is quiet, then, neither of them moving, and any passersby could assume the room was empty, weeks unused as AX agents come and go. Quiet, but for the fruits of their exertions, and the resulting ease, the settling, the quiet laughter and relaxation of completion. A wondrous concession indeed.