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It’s hot as hell down here, but the dwarves are onto something: these sulfuric springs are great for aching muscles. Law’s surprised more of the party aren’t taking advantage of them, but he isn’t going to complain… even if he’d love to see what Rinwell – uh, Rydia? – would wear for something like this. After so much time sharing everything with the other guards in Cysloden, it’s nice to have things to himself, and– well, there’s no shortage of ways to take advantage of the time.
(That pinched look melting off Rinwell’s face as the disguise she’d kept all throughout her time in Law’s world fell away; her delighted laugh as she leapt over the smoke-scuffed cratered floor to land and be spun in the pretty white-haired knight’s arms… It’s so clear how much of her Cyslodian persona was the tension of being found out now that they’ve returned to where she came from – all that snappish repression turned to open-armed love for this place, even her fury underpinned with glee. She’d love the hot spring just as much, Law bets, groaning into his hand as he pictures her head falling back, those green waves she’d hidden under short brown rippling across milky-bare shoulders as she sank into the water’s warm embrace and sighed in pleasure…)
"If you know what’s good for you, you won’t finish," a dark voice warns from too close.
Law yelps, tumbling off the rock wall shelf with a flailing splash as his hands leap clear. It’s just one of the party, not Lord Ganabelt come to arrest him for obscenity, but old fears die hard; he’s scrambling upright as soon as he remembers he can stand in the shallow pool instead of choking in it. "I wasn’t doing anything!" he denies, tying off a dwarven towel with his heart pounding.
"Then you won’t mind if I interrupt."
It’s the tall guy with the dragon helmet – Kain, Law remembers, edgy and off-putting in his spiky purple-blue armor. Given that the guy is cold enough to ignore the weighted glances every other member of the party keeps shooting him, preferring to linger off to the side when the rest celebrate a hard-won fight, Law thinks he can be forgiven for not getting what the other man is doing here. "Come to enjoy the springs?" he ventures.
"If that’s what you call it." Oh. "I was hoping to spend some time alone, but, since you’re here… I think I’d rather 'enjoy' you."
Oh. Law blinks, thrown. "Uh – I’m? flattered??" he tries. It’s at least kind of true; ignoring the dark cloud that seems to loom over Kain, what he can see of the man is fairly appealing. He sneaks a glance down the other man’s legs, taking in the dense curves of muscle at his calves and thighs, and… yeah, okay, all that jumping around he does is clearly doing great things for his figure, but– "Prooobably gonna decline, though," he says, edging backwards out of the spring.
"I wasn’t really asking," Kain evenly replies. (What?) "I came here to release some tensions, not to embroil myself in more." His head tips, raptorial. "You were thinking of the girl, weren’t you," the dragoon asks-but-not-really. "The one Cecil took in."
Law flushes angrily, his chin tilting up in challenge. (First rule: never confirm anything.) "How do you know?" he retorts. "Maybe I was thinking of the blonde one."
"Rosa," the other corrects, voice rolling like a warning rumble of thunder in the distance. "She'd certainly be worthy of your… admirations. If she were less blatantly spoken for." A sneer: "If you've somehow managed to miss how Cecil hangs off of her, I'd be very impressed."
Okay, so maybe it’s hard to miss how all over each other she and the silver-haired fairy-tale knight are: practically climbing into each other’s laps to check for injuries, always finding excuses to brush the other's hair out of their eyes or land the barest blushing touch on a wrist... knight diving to block lady from even the slightest attack, lady sending arrows with extreme prejudice through anything which dares hurt her beloved... Law used to try to sneak glances at them when they’d get out of the latest fight – it’d take a hefty bribe for a jury to convict him for that; they’re both so fucking pretty – but, uh… Cecil didn't really take it well, when Law called Rosa over to nurse him with tender care. Since then he’s made a point of moving in to treat Law first, before any excuse can be made about needing healing.
(The paladin’s magic pricks like frostbite as each cast – Cura, Cura, Cura – crackle-whistles through Law’s wounds, freshly raw skin aching with dust-dry, powdery cold. It’s the sort of pain it’s easy to get lost in: an empty chill so frigid, it almost starts feeling warm.
Law passed his mandatory survival training. He knows paradoxical undressing is a sign of hypothermia, that it’s just a step away from toes and fingers falling off, but he can't convince himself the man’s not fucking hot. It's all he can do not to look Cecil in the eye – and to not look at Rosa anywhere else.)
"If you do anything to threaten his happiness with her," Kain informs him amidst these thoughts, "I will not hesitate to wrench you limb from limb."
"Got it," Law wheezes, pinned under the killing intent radiating from the helmet’s gem-set eyes.
The pressure lightens. "But you weren’t thinking of Cecil’s dear fiancée," Kain tells him, no question mark in sight. "You were thinking of the girl he’d call daughter."
Huh? …Oh, right, yeah, Rydia. Swoon… Everyone in this party’s gorgeous, Law swears. Rydia’s more of a spitfire than Rosa, but it’s beautiful on her. Something about that tender feistiness – she’s innocent, a girlishness Law wants to bask in and protect, but not so sheltered as to make him feel too damaged. Her beauty is literally otherworldly, and he thought that before she turned out to be some kind of fairy princess another other world adopted; she summons frost-draped snow spirits and naked guys with six-pack abs with equal ease, and Law would really like to know what it takes to be a summon, cause he’d go naked too if it meant she’d summon him to–
"If he had any indication you were making her uncomfortable," the dragoon says pleasantly, "only his regretfully admirable conscience would see you kicked out of this 'party,' instead of boiling alive as your grave slowly filled with magma." His helmet tips. "Shall I tell her what you were doing just now?"
Law’s stomach swoops, and he stills, hovering on the edge of the hot spring chamber. "Nnnnnnno," he says, voice pitched high even to his own ears. "No, that’s okay."
(Damn it, damn it – he’s survived in Cysloden; how is he just discovering that being blackmailed into sex is hot now?!)
Kain smirks and pats his thigh, an armored seat just bordering the patch of bare skin where he's removed his dragon-head codpiece and slipped his tights down. When Law drifts closer, hesitating, he spreads thin fingers over the younger's thigh and drags him down to the stone edge of the spring, tossing a long, well-formed leg over him to settle in his lap and work the towel free.
“Have you ever done this before?” the dragoon asks, paying only thin attention to Law’s answer.
To be fair, Law’s attention isn't on answering either. Astral Sovereign, he’s already hard and Kain is right on top of his dick. "Sometimes, uh– with the Snake Eyes… There wasn’t a lot of privacy, see, so we’d kinda…" He makes a jerk-off motion, sheepish – he wasn't a frequent participant, had too much to lose to risk going dick to dick with a guy who might toss Law to the search committees as easy as slip him something from the latest arrest, but it paid to know how things in the Bureau of Federal Observation worked.1 "I’ve never, uh… fucked anyone, though."
(Spirits, please don't let him get offended cause he thinks Law wants to top –)
“Stay in the water, then. It'll reduce the ache,” Kain says, brusque, and then his thighs are around Law’s neck and Law is crashing to the water and Kain is slipping off the bench without a splash to prowl slowly towards him, a possessive armored hand yanking him closer by the ass even as the other roughly runs down over ribs, waist, hip. “That top you wear is indecent,” he remarks, seemingly out of the blue.
The high cut of the skirt part, the cold triangle where loincloth and tail meet high above the waistline of his pants– Law flushes to realize Kain’s hand is squeezing, kneading, what, dressed, would have remained exposed. “It's not that bad,” he says regardless.
“It's obscene,” Kain disagrees, all long, strong legs against, along him. He's still in his armor: the steel is hard where it presses into the flesh of Law’s calves and thighs. “I'm surprised no one else has thought to take advantage.”
“Haven't been wearing it that long, honestly.” Law laughs, choppy and already short of breath. “Used to be this… really ugly uniform. Hated how it looked on me, so… kinda just grabbed the first thing that was nothing like it. And didn't look too bad with my hair.”
“Then stuck a wolf head on it?” Kain asks dryly.
“I don't wanna hear that from you, Mr. My Head is a Dragon!” It's pretty awesome, actually, but like hell is Law admitting that now.
“The dragoon armor,” Kain growls, dragon head low and breathing just behind Law’s ear, “is a highly valued mark of skill for a Baronian soldier, and deserves your respect.” His clawed gauntlets dig sharp into Law’s sides.
“Yeah, well, my pauldron is important too!” He bought it off a street vendor for just ten gald!
Kain’s feet force their way between Law’s own, spreading them far enough to break his stance – shit, he should've totally gone for a leg swipe there – and walk him back over the bench, forcing him down on it as a clank underscores Kain’s gauntlets being tossed over the side. “Insufferable,” Kain hisses as his finger probes the pucker of Law’s hole.
Which – Law squirms, out of anticipation as anything else, but– are things really meant to –
An opening. Kain’s finger finally worms inside, working a surprised groan from Law’s throat. “Relax,” the dragoon commands, all serpentine promise-threat.
Fuck. Law shudders, body complying out of sheer reflex – command feels so natural on Kain, a man who’s never known oppression or lifelong fear. Never doubted that an order spoken would be heard. If this were Dahna, Kain wouldn't just be Renan… that authority, wielded by a man used to unquestioning obedience, marks him as the kind of leader who could well have been a Lord.
“You're quiet, suddenly,” the other man observes on a pleased growl, thin fingers and strong forearm petting along Law’s side. “Good. I like you better with your mouth shut.”
And just like that, the finger is drawn out – replaced, too soon-not soon enough, with the thicker length of Kain’s cock.
If taking the time to open Law up was a kindness, it's the only one Kain gives him. His thrusts are ruthless, tight-controlled power piercing deep with all the viciousness of his spear to drill Law’s weak point with unrelenting accuracy. Once Law gives in and lets his groans and gasps open into moans, grunts, keening, it's like Kain’s made it a mission to wring as much from him as possible.
Which – they aren't that far from the camp. Law should have been ready to be interrupted, should've had an excuse ready, but he let himself get into it. Trapped between Kain and the wall like this, it's obvious what they’re doing… and he can't even stumble free, try to play it off as an awkward accident of positioning. (Two brooos, chilling in a hot tub, his brain helpfully tosses up.2) All he can do is go limp, as low and close to the bench as possible, and hope the water hides him enough that Kain won't have to explain too much to their little party’s leader.
“...Kain,” Cecil says, awkward. Like the dragoon, he wears his armor in his off hours, but the liquid silks and luster-marbled plating of his costume look more natural this way than Kain – that white hair, delicate over elfin face, makes him seem past earthly trifles like heat or discomfort. If Kain would be a Renan lord, imperious and self-assured, Cecil is the sort of model who would grace Cyslodia’s adverts and entertainment screens: a Renan beauty, icon both admirable and untouchable.
“Cecil,” Kain returns. His voice is deliberately even, with a tense undercurrent that wasn't there before.
“I see you’re… enjoying the hot spring.”
“Yes.” His cock slips out of Law’s hole, leaving Law to muffle ragged gasp as Kain steps away. “Did you… need something? Or did you just want to interrupt my relaxation?”
Cecil’s hands flex. Law can't help wondering what the clench does to the muscles under the striped metal on his forearms. “Is… that what you were doing?”
“What’s it to you?” Kain retorts, a mite sharp.
“No, it’s…” Cecil swallows, eyes darting down to Law – fuck, he's definitely been spotted – and back away. “I’m glad you're, um. …Relaxing.”
Well, there's no point hiding if he's already been seen. Law pulls himself back upright – only for Kain to set a hand over his shoulder. “It’s nice to have an outlet for all of this stress,” the dragoon says, thumbs digging slow, deep sweeps into the muscle of Law’s bicep. Making noise is the last thing Law should be doing right now, but – fuck, Kain’s somehow found where Law's sore from his last workout… and the perfect pressure to rub into that spot, too. Law can't resist the flutter of his eyelids, or the appreciative groan he lets out in response.
Another one of those darting looks: in, away. Cecil can't seem to decide whether he wants to stare at Kain, or never look him in the eye again. “I didn't realize you and Law were so… close,” he says, and, hang on, what's with that tone exactly?
“We’re not,” Kain flatly denies. (Ouch.) “But he was convenient for my needs.”
The words hang there a moment. Law watches Cecil swallow back the question they invite, and wishes this all weren't so damn hot.
“It helps that he's so… tractable,” Kain continues. (Wait, what does that even mean?) “I enjoy watching his muscles flex under my touch.” A beat, before: “And, of course, he takes my cock like a dream.”
Cecil’s eyes find Law again, almost as helplessly as Law himself feels. The violet there is dark and thin-rimmed in the steamroom heat. “I'm glad he’s been so good for you.”
“I'm sure he'd be good for you too, you know.”
Their leader reels like he's been shot. “I couldn’t,” he protests, strangled and a little betrayed. “Rosa –”
“Have you ever known that girl to care more for propriety than your well-being?” Kain snaps, his grip abruptly too tight on Law’s shoulder. When it relaxes, it's deliberate, each finger loosening after the next until the whole hand falls away. “Tell her I made you do it, if you need an excuse,” he says, just a half-step shy of flippant. “I've already been the kidnapper, the betrayer. I don't mind carrying the blame for this, too.”
It must be unconscious, how Cecil sways a step in closer to them. As unconscious as the way Law’s tongue darts out to wet his lip when he meets Cecil’s eyes again. …As unconscious as the ragged groan the paladin lets out, his lashes fluttering.
“Come on, Cecil.” All darkness, all heaviness fallen away, Kain cajoles him like a boy convincing his best friend to go swimming. “The water feels great. Don't you want to come and soak your feet?”
“I…” Cecil’s hand covers his face, one violet eye still shyly peeking through his fingers. “Can I really…”
“Come and soak,” Kain says again. “Let me make you feel good.”
“Kain…”
It's the dragoon’s name Cecil breathes out, but his gaze falls back to Law, something troubled in its depths.
Law wets his lip again. He isn't quite sure where he fits in this, the tangled web lying heavy between the Baronians, but he knows what he wants. “Please?” he asks – a little shy when the pink-dyed lock he'd kept rebelliously long though his military cuts tips into his face, and there's something that makes him feel almost childish about how he brushes it aside. “Come relax, Cecil. I– …I wanna feel you.”
Cecil wavers, head tipping back on a tortured groan.
“You can do it, Cecil.” That authority creeps back into Kain’s tone again, absolving all sin. “It's alright. It won't hurt anything, if you feel good.”
“It won't…” Pale hand creeps down, gingerly fiddles with the latch to a hip guard.
“That’s it.” Warm like liquor, like the warm drinks which steal tongues and make the poor souls in Cyslodia lean closer. “Don't keep us waiting, now,” Kain commands, attention locked unwavering on that plate as it comes loose. “Law’s been waiting to put his mouth on that prick of yours and make you feel so much better.”
“I –” Cecil’s hand trembles. “Law?”
“Yeah,” Law breathes, already salivating. “Fuck – come on, Cecil. It's not really sex if you just use my mouth.”
The paladin swears, a bitten-off oath, and removes each piece of armor from feet to hips with deliberate, if fumbling, intent. The strip is all mechanical precision, no artistry to it as hip plates and sabotons litter the line from cavern door to spring – still, it bares strong muscles in disparate counterpoint to that delicate face, the v-lines where each bundle sinks into the next stark and begging to be tongued. It's gorgeous enough sculpture that Law feels dirty for being this affected just from calves and thighs, but then Cecil settles onto the rim of the pool beside them, and – holy shit that cock is going in his mouth.
Even with his feet in the water, the man hesitates. Kain scoffs, tone darkening. “Still playing shy? I suppose I’ll have to go first… as usual.”
Cecil swallows, but doesn't argue this. “You're still wearing your armor,” he says instead.
“So are you.”
Cecil… pouts – just a flicker, there and gone. “Not as much as you are.”
Kain barks a laugh, pushing Law to his knees again. “Come and take it off me.”
Predictably, Cecil doesn't, only watching greedily as Kain’s prick plunges deep into Law’s winking hole.
He hasn't been empty for long, but it's enough that taking something there feels like being invaded all over again. Law gasps and pants and swears through the push, tears springing at the corners of his eyes, and tries not to feel too much like a zeugle pinned and squirming, some wild monster killer captured, made tamed pet under lordly gazes.
The slide opens up. Kain’s cock drags hard and heated against Law’s walls, way only so eased by the water, but fucking ever deeper into him while he shudders and grips the bench and takes it. A low grunt overhead marks Cecil’s hand cupping himself, beginning to jerk off his own cock.
“You may have traded Baron’s armor for the flounces you now wear, but I never took you for a coward.” Kain’s words drop like rocks into the water. “You're keeping the cockslut waiting. Come, Cecil. Show me why you were made a dark knight.”
Law groans and lets his mouth dangle open limply, ready to be taken and used – and Cecil snarls and shoves his cock entirely inside in brutal, vicious push.
“Kain,” he gasps, growls, threatens. Law’s eyes are clenched shut on overstuffed tears, he can't see where Cecil’s looking, but he knows by how broad hands grip hair over his ears that he is being made a demonstration piece, just stress relief to bully by two ends who refuse meeting without something in between. “You're always like this. Why must you taunt me?!”
“If I said it was so I could watch you make that face, would that earn me any sympathy?” If Cecil has grown darker, blunter, Kain is softened counterpoint – some longing note haunts the smooth, even strokes rolling hips into Law’s ass, a faint awareness which melts like snow under the brutality with which Cecil exerts his frustrations. “You're indecisive, Cecil. Caught between two choices – ngh. Your morals –” The breath on Law’s shoulder vanishes as Kain throws his head back – a heavy splousch, like a stone dropping into the spring, and Cecil gasps like he's taken a blow. (Law will think of this, every time he hears that sound on the other end of an attack again.) “Forgive me,” Kain says, insouciance and desperate honesty intertwined; long fingers grip Law’s ribs like a spear shaft and wrench his body back on that invading prick with increasingly frayed patience. “For wanting to be the one to make you choose yourself.”
“Kain…” A heart-wrenched keen.
“Fuck,” Kain swears, redoubling his efforts. His voice is clearer, brighter, more like a man’s and not some nightmare visitation without the muffled metal echoing his gasp of “Cecil –”
Law swallows, hard, around the uncut cock in his mouth. Works it deep as he can get, rucking back the foreskin with his mouth and lips and throat, and drags his tongue on every part he's learned is sensitive – Kain knows what he wants, will take it when he's ready, but if the dragoon’s signature attack is splitting off to drive into a point he saw alone, Cecil’s is leaping to shield the rest of them. Cecil wouldn't choose himself. Would walk away and leave Law having never seen fine mist drops like melting snowflakes, gathered like birds in pale lashes. And Law is ravenous to learn, fixed on finding out what Cecil smells, feels, sounds like when he comes.
Which is why it’s a complete surprise when Kain hisses a muffled curse and yanks free, rush blocking out all maybe-sound of Cecil’s reply as cool stripes drift and settle over Law, under the springwater. A few jets spring like dolphins past the surface to land atop his shoulder blades, but Law is busy gasping at the sudden emptiness, how his ass keeps clenching around nothing in futile attempt to find what had sieged his walls so well just before. Fuck, it's almost like he's coming, but– with nothing to fill him, no grip or warmth or slide around his cock, all he can feel is how his balls draw up in what must be a dry orgasm, brain scrambled as sensation and physical counterpoint cruelly diverge.
With his eyes rolled up like this, Law’s own lashes stripe his vision of Cecil – lips parted on a curse, muscles all pulled back like bowstring, veins in the cock Law’s let slip standing stark amidst the steam. The man’s a painting, Law thinks muzzily, mind spitting out an art exhibit the Bureau’d shut down – un-Cyslodian, seditious, degenerate work, just colors and shapes by some jumped-up Dahnan who’d thought the abstract should have place in galleries amidst proper Renan portraiture. Confiscated and burned, of course, the artist one more prisoner for Riville’s tower… but Law had seen the paintings, before the smoke. The dark lines, maybe prison bars, maybe trees, maybe interrupted signals, streaking across white so pure it almost glowed, even through flames.
And through it all, the real. The taste of Cecil in his mouth: bitter brothiness, thick-salted and almost earthy – like the ramen Law remembers from that stand, when it was running, steam and laughter and warm orange under pennants draped from tarp. Long hair across his shoulders, a brush, a pennant, and words are exchanged over his head in conversation he knows shapes of, but can't follow.
Some aching memory hisses at the dust of snowflakes, like banked coals in a ruined cairn. …It was a hearth, once – these half-heard words… They were Calaglian, back then, Law’s gut whispers, and for once he allows the thought to sit and hiss, unburied under snow.
They can't follow him, here. He’s somewhere further than Dahna, than even Rena. And however much the red rock and lava flows outside make his gut churn, he is so far beyond any failure of the Crimson Crows.
He’d joined this party for convenience’s sake. Because Rinwell, Rydia, had been pretty: a point of familiarity, however slight, in this uncertain world. Because he had fists, and was used to being told how to use them, and punching weird alien zeugles was a better prospect than being completely, utterly directionless and alone.
But… this world… this cause…
It’s worth fighting for, isn’t it?
I see you, Dad, Law thinks, flexing two hands, bare, without a core. The flavor cupped salt-bitter on his tongue tastes a lot like unshed tears.