Archive of Our Own ^beta

“ I believe I am in love with you.”

Lupa startled, coughed, and dropped his data pad in his lap. He coughed and coughed and coughed , which prompted Gale--whose sudden appearance and declaration had caused Lupa’s distress--to make a beeline for the bathroom, returning a few seconds later with a glass of water.

“ Forgive me,” the Bishop murmured, his soft green eyes filled with worry as he passed Lupa the glass. “ I did not intend to cause you distress. I can...make my leave if you would--”

“ No!” The word was almost masked completely by his coughing, but the last thing in the world Lupa wanted Gale to do was leave, especially when he looked as raw as a fresh-cut wound. He swallowed down the glass of water in one go, coughed a few more times, and finally quieted.

“ Please, Gale, don’t leave.” Lupa couldn’t help but wince at the raspiness of his voice, and the ‘Leader of the Wolves’ in him hated that words sounded more like a plea than a request, but the way those seafoam eyes filled with hope was more than worth the bruised pride. “ I was just... startled. Of all of the things I was expecting to hear today, that was not one of them.”

Gale made a soft noise of anxiety but made no effort to leave. His hands trembled faintly at his sides, and Lupa mustered his daring and took them in his own, rubbing his thumbs over the Bishop’s flat knuckles and limber fingers. The quiver stilled, and Gale emitted a breathy sigh of relief, curling his fingers around Lupa’s own square-tipped and blunted digits. If Lupa had not seen Gale make clean, efficient, and--when need be-- brutal work of his enemies, it would have been impossible to believe that such soft hands were the hands of one who killed and devoured.

Hands unsuited for a battlefield, Lupa thought grimly, his mouth twisting into a firm line as a familiar anger boiled up from within. I chose to lead the Lokapala in my old life. Gale, like the others, had no such agency. He could not even control what they did to his body.

Lupa had thought many times of what he would do once he had found his way back to New Portland, but no matter what vision his new life entailed, he had been unable to see a future without Gale. What would Gale be, he had wondered many times, if he did not have to fight and devour to survive? Most of the time, he would picture (or, if the member of the Embryon was present, follow ) Gale’s tall, limber legs--legs strong enough to cleanly snap a man’s neck--and think dancer.

Yet there were so many other possibilities. He would study Gale’s painstakingly organized strategies and beautifully composed back-up plans and think scientist . He would listen for hours as Gale, in a rare maudlin mood, attempted to wrap his mind around the purpose of their existence and think philosopher . He would have passionate debates with Gale over the state of ‘Nirvana’--a state that only Gale and Lupa were privy to--and think intrepid journalist . 

Now, as he marveled at those strong, svelte hands, Lupa found himself adding pianist to the list of possibilities. Yet another beautiful possibility for such a beautiful soul.

“ Forgive me for being abrupt.” Gale murmured, eyes darting to the side, and was that a light flush on those elegant cheekbones? Honestly, if the Junkyard wasn’t going to kill him, Lupa was certain Gale would be his end. “ I have just...been reflecting on such matters recently, and I found myself unable to sleep. I just...I knew I had to see you...to tell you my thoughts. You understand me better than any other.”

Warmth blossomed in Lupa’s chest at those words. 

“ I see.” Lupa murmured. Boldness seized him, and he lifted one of Gale’s hands to his lips, kissing its back with reverence. Gale shuddered, his long lashes fluttering like butterfly wings, and God help him ; Lupa couldn’t take it anymore. “ Come here, Gale.”

When Gale had scaled the window into Lupa’s room in Svadhisthana--where the Wolves had set up a temporary base with the blessing of the Embryon after losing Vishuddha to the Brutes--Lupa had been sitting upright in bed, going through several missives pended to him by Serph for their upcoming assault on Anja. Gale’s presence--and his reasons for said presence--was a more than welcome distraction, and Lupa all but threw the datapad onto the bedside table before once more taking Gale’s hands in his own, gently tugging him forward as he himself shifted back to sit against the headboard. The Bishop was clearly uncertain, but he allowed Lupa to guide him onto the bed, biting his lower lip as Lupa gently arranged his thighs and knees so that he was all but sitting on Lupa’s lap.

“ I take it you feel the same way,” Gale breathed, eyes practically crackling in their intensity.

“ Perhaps.” Lupa teased, smiling wryly as he rested his hands on the gentle jut of Gale’s hipbones, feeling the softness of his skin and the tenseness of his muscles beneath the bulletproof polymer of his uniform. Gale exhaled--a small, tremulous punch of breath--and Lupa was struck that Gale was more than nervous--he was scared. He pressed his thumbs into the dips of his hips and rubbed soothing circles into their meat. “ When did you first realize that you love me?”

“ I…” Gale licked his lips and shook his head to gather his thoughts, tendrils of long green hair slapping against his cheeks at the action. Lupa was seized with the urge to remove the Bishop’s hood, but he could tell Gale was overwhelmed enough as it was; the last thing he wanted to do was push too far and send him into a bout of overstimulation. “ Just a few hours ago. I believe I have actually...loved you for some time, but it was not until today that I finally understood the cause of my...affliction.”

Lupa laughed in delighted surprise. “ Affliction?! Really, Gale…”

“ What else could I call what I feel for you?” Gale said almost miserably. “ How else could I describe how I feel when I am in your presence? When I am with you, I never wish to part, and the thought of you distracts me even when I should be focused on my duties. My stomach twists, my heart races, and as much as I wish to be close, I also have the inexplicable urge to run and never look back. For weeks, my stomach has been tying itself in knots, and I...it was unbearable, Lupa, how empty I felt without you there. Ever since you recovered enough to leave Muladhara and return to your men, I have...I thought it would grow easier with time, but it has just gotten worse .”

“ What has gotten worse, Gale?” Lupa whispered. He knew exactly what Gale was talking about--for he had spent the days and nights after meeting the remarkable Bishop feeling the exact same way--but he knew that Gale had to discover his truth by himself. If Lupa was to finally give into the desire to have and hold Gale for the rest of his life, then he had to be sure that Gale freely wanted the same, and he did not wish to risk influencing his decision. 

Lupa had a life before the Junkyard to teach him how to think and feel for himself; Gale had only a few scant months.

“ My…” Gale made a tiny noise of frustration and shook his head a few times, as if the words were at the bottom of a sauce bottle and he was trying to knock them free. “ I think about you, Lupa, whenever we are apart. I fall asleep, and for the first time I do not dream of the Church of Karma; I dream of you . I dream of you--touching me, holding me, loving me--and I wake up and realize that I am alone in my bed, and I...there was such a great emptiness in my heart whenever I woke to find you gone, that I would force myself to stay awake to avoid such dreams. It escalated to the point where Serph actually ordered me to bed after I had gone thirty-seven hours without rest.”

Lupa’s heart jumped out of his chest and lodged itself in his throat. “ Gale…”

The Bishop bit his lip and screwed his eyes shut, and Lupa was shocked to see wetness clinging to his long eyelashes. There were tear stains on his cheeks, the leader realized with a jolt of alarm--stains that had been too faint to see from a distance. There were many things, actually, that Lupa had not noticed until Gale was straddling his lap: the dark circles underneath his eyes, the sallow tint of his skin, the tear stains…

Has Gale, Lupa thought with a twisting of guilt, been crying for me?

“ So I slept, and I dreamed, and…” A whimper--god have mercy, an actual whimper --cut Gale’s statement clean in two. “ I dreamt of the Samsara Tunnels--when you had gone so mad with hunger that you no longer knew friend or foe, and we had been forced to stop you by any means necessary--and you were lying there again, blood streaming from your mouth and eyes unseeing. Yet this time, no matter how much blood Sera poured into your mouth, no matter how desperately she sang, you did not...you grew cold in my arms, Lupa, and I watched the rising of your chest slow until it...it stopped.”

Lupa did not remember his confrontation with the Embryon in the tunnels. He had underestimated just how much strain his continuous use of Cerberus would put on his body, and how fast and heady the effects of Varin’s hunger wave would overcome his own natural resistance to his newfound appetite. Yet he withstood the urge to devour, even when his enemies laid dead before him, because it had seemed like the honorable thing to do. Better to go mad than to sink to the Karma Society’s level of depravity.

Now, as tears began tracking once more down Gale’s cheeks, Lupa found himself wondering--unthinkably--if the honorable path had been worth the suffering of the one he loved most.

“ I woke up gasping for air,” Gale continued, “ and I could not stop crying , Lupa. I wept and I wept, and I had to muffle my sounds into my pillow, because Cielo is on watch tonight and I refused to let him see me in such a state.” His limber arms wrapped around Lupa’s back and squeezed desperately. “ I wept and I remembered...I remembered how desperately Serph had clung to Heat, the night Heat almost died. He was so distraught that he had actually started to transform into Varuna in his grief, and it was only Sera’s presence that kept him from going mad. I thought of how my eyes were gray before we went into the tunnels, but after we had stabilized you and taken you back to Muladhara, I looked in the mirror and saw that they were green . Then I remembered how Serph’s own eyes changed the moment he screamed.”

Lupa’s mouth went dry as the realization hit him like a truck.

“ Are you saying, Gale…” Lupa turned his head, coughed, and swallowed thickly before returning his gaze to Gale. “ That you... awakened for the same reason as Serph? But you--”

You had only known me for a week, Lupa wanted to say, but he couldn’t, because how hypocritical would it be to chastise Gale for falling just as steeply, madly, and deeply for Gale as Gale had for him? 

The first time Lupa saw Gale, standing stoic and stalwart with Heat in front of Serph, something had snapped and rocked within him--a tectonic shift despite standing on stable ground. Those eyes--gray, then, but no less intense or striking for their lack of luster--were as sharp as the knife concealed in his boot, and they pinned Lupa like one would a butterfly to a specimen board. He had been lost for Gale the moment he saw those eyes flicker with color, heard that cold yet passionate voice speak, and saw his long index finger trail over the edges of the holographic screen as they mapped out the tunnels together.

Lupa was old and wise enough to know that attraction did not equate to love; yet that practiced, constant manta faded when Lupa awoke from his near-death experience in the tunnels. He had been dizzy, weak, battered, aching, but alive ; and the first thing he had seen was not a member of his own tribe, but Gale, who was sleeping in a chair at his side. For the first time, Lupa saw Gale with his hood down, and he marveled at the flashes of metallic prosthetics glinting between folds of soft, shoulder-length hair. He saw how dark circles--the same kind of dark circles ringing Gale’s eyes in the present--were painted as thick and heavy as tribal markings on his pale skin. Then, Gale opened his eyes, and Lupa saw how those eyes--once gray; now a soft, seafoam green the same shade as his hair--widened with surprise, and then brightened with more light than Lupa had ever seen in the dark, depressing Junkyard.

He was beautiful --one of the most beautiful things Lupa had ever seen in his two lifetimes, second only to holding Fred when he was first born--and when Gale took Lupa’s hand in his own and smiled , Lupa knew he was a goner. He was completely lost--body, heart, and soul--for the last Bishop in the Junkyard; and while he had at first held no illusion that Gale could possibly feel the same, the soft looks, intimate discussions, and casual touches they had shared in the weeks that followed had given the Leader of the Wolves a faint spark of hope: the hope that, perhaps, there was some light and life to be found in the Junkyard after all.

“ I can’t explain it, Lupa.” Gale sounded so... amazed by that, as if he had witnessed the birth of a star instead of falling in love. “ It is so...irrational, and I do not comprehend this, Lupa. I do not comprehend this at all, but…” He took in a deep, shuddering breath and let it all pass in a rush through his nose. “ I have come to the conclusion that...some things need to be felt , not comprehended. You, Lupa, are one of those things.”

“ Gale…” Finally-- finally-- Lupa found the wherewithal to move, and his hands immediately shot to Gale’s cheeks, swiping his thumbs over the thick trails of dark underneath Gale’s eyes and smearing them with tears. “ You are spectacular , Gale. No one in Nirvana can compare to you.”

Gale’s answering smile was wet, wobbly, and so painfully hopeful. “ Does that mean...that my feelings are returned?”

“ I have loved you from the moment I awoke from my madness to find you at my side.” For all of the things Lupa wasn’t, he was at least as honest as he was honorable. “ I may have loved you even longer than that. Many things in the Junkyard do not make sense, but you, Gale, are the only one who makes me feel as if I understand.”

“ Lupa…” Gale whispered, chest heaving and shuddering from the enormity of everything, and his eyelashes fluttered as Lupa dropped his left hand and shifted his right to cup the side of the Bishop’s face. “ Oh Lupa, this feels…” He pressed his face into Lupa’s warm, sturdy palm and held desperately to the older man’s wrist, as if Lupa would even dream of pulling away from such a lovely touch. “ I am so happy , and it feels so sweet, yet it hurts . It twists and pulls and hurts , and I cannot...I cannot make the tears stop , Lupa. Why am I crying when I am so happy? Why does something so wonderful make me ache so deeply? I do not comprehend. I do not...”

Gale quivered like a taut crossbow string, and Lupa knew that he was beginning to feel overwhelmed by not just how he was feeling, but by existence as he experienced it in general. Bishops--as Serph had informed him, with a curt, no-nonsense tone of voice and stony, mercurial glare that aged him by at least twenty years--had been ‘calibrated’ by the Temple to ‘absorb’ as much data as possible, both from their personal uplinks to the church and from the environment itself. It was the reason that every Bishop in the Junkyard outside of Gale had gone insane from The Change, and why the Wolves’s own twin Bishops had bitten the jugulars out of twenty men before strangling themselves to death with their uplink cords. Love was one of the most confusing, potent, and volatile emotions known to man; add that to the inundation of background noise that Gale experienced every second he was conscious, and... and …

Gale’s eyes were flickering frantically behind his closed eyelids, and Lupa was struck first by the image of a water glass just a few drops away from overflowing; then of Gale hanging stiff and motionless in a tangle of his own wires, bands of mottled bruising winding around his broken neck like a venomous snake. A vice snapped tight around his throat.

No. Not Gale. I have already lost my sister and parents; please, cruel and callous star, do not take my love from me as well.

“ Gale…” Despite the alarm bells ringing in his ears, Lupa’s voice was as calm as it was gentle, and it was with steady hands that he took Gale’s shoulders and guided him down. “ Shhhhh...it’s alright. Come lie next to me, whirlwind; I wish to see you better.”

“ Whirlwind, ” Gale breathed, as pliant as bread dough in Lupa’s hands. “ A synonym of ‘gale’. Merely a different word with the same meaning, and yet...I like it. I like it very much.”

“ I also think of you as a tempest.” Lupa teased. He eased Gale onto his side on the bed and, after a second of hesitation, tucked his index fingers around the hem of Gale’s hood and pulled it down. The strategist’s hair spilled onto Lupa’s pillow, soft and glossy, and it took a considerable amount of self-control to keep from running his fingers through the strands. The implants studded throughout Gale’s scalp pulsed faintly neon green and aqua blue. Lupa wished he could rip them out with his bare hands. “ A tempest in a teapot, if I’m being specific--a controlled and calculated storm.”

“ Whirlwind, tempest…what is a ‘teapot’?” The moment his hood was removed, Gale wasted no time in making himself comfortable, drawing his knees towards his chest and curling his head and neck into the softness of Lupa’s pillow. “ Every name sounds wonderful when you say it, even if I do not comprehend the idiom...tell me, Lupa; what should I call you ?”

“ Whatever you want.” Once Lupa was sure that Gale had walked back from the edge, he slid down from the headboard and onto his back, turning onto his left side so that he and Gale were face-to-face. “ Anything you call me will be fitting. When we get to Nirvana, I will make you tea; though you strike me as more of a coffee person, I believe you’ll like tea all the same.”

Lupa touched Gale’s cheek--the most gentle of caresses--and the Bishop’s eyes snapped open as if he had been shot. They stared at each other for a long moment--brick red meeting seafoam green--and there was a slow, sickening moment where Lupa feared he had crossed some sort of unspoken line. Then Gale’s eyes grew soft and wet once more, and he reached up--trembling--to touch the hand on his face. The contact sent sparks shooting up Lupa’s arm.

“ Lupa, would you...could you…” Gale swallowed, sniffled, and blinked more tears from his eyes. “ I would...very much enjoy it if you held me.”

They were only words--soft, shy, and searching --yet Gale could not have hurt Lupa more if he had flicked open his boot knife and kicked it into his chest.

“ Nothing would please me more.” Lupa rasped, and fuck , oh fuck; he was so gone for this man. 

How many relationships had he attempted in the past? He had been nothing more than a social studies, chemistry, history, and gym teacher back then, constantly badgered by his happily single and pregnant sister under the light of the still-yellow sun to ‘settle down with somebody, Greg, for god’s sake! You’re not getting any younger, and I know how much you want a kid of your own!’ 

So he had tried numerous times--with men, women, and everything in between--and while he would occasionally find a partner to settle down with for several months, but the connection would inevitably wither under the drought of Lupa’s disinterest. They had been wonderful people, all of them--the sort of people with whom you’d want to be friends: funny, smart, creative, passionate, and--most importantly--honorable and kind. Yet none of them, no matter how appealing of a partner they seemed on paper, made Greg feel anything more than deep fondness.

‘ Perhaps there’s something wrong with me,’ he had joked, which never failed to make her frown in disapproval.

‘ Maybe you just need time!’ She would reply, pulling her cap down over her eyes, like she always did when she was determined. ‘ You could just be one of those folks that’s slow to boil, Greg!’

So he had given it time--six months, for one of his partners--yet the pot remained lukewarm, and they had left, and Lupa had come to peace with the idea of living and dying alone.

‘ Is there a person on Earth that can meet your standards?’ His sister had groused; and Lupa had simply laughed the remark off, as he did with all of her well-intentioned badgering. He would give his arms and legs to hear her nagging one last time.

Then, Greg had died, and he had been reborn as Lupa, and there should have been nothing for him in the Junkyard--nothing but death, grit, emptiness, and endless rain. Yet then there had been emotion, then hunger, then memory. Then he had snuck through the underground tunnels to meet with the Embryon, and there had been Gale --tall, limber, and graceful Gale, with eyes that cut into the meat of Lupa’s soul, hair the shade of polished green seaglass, and a latent yet powerful sense of honor to compliment his remarkable intelligence. His sister had been right; there hadn’t been anyone for Lupa on Earth, because the love of his life had been living in a place even more forsaken and hopeless than Old Portland.

Gale was here: in the Junkyard, in Svadhisthana, in Lupa’s room, in Lupa’s bed; and then, as Gale shifted himself forward and Lupa reached for him like one would a priceless and fragile artifact, he was finally in Lupa’s arms . It was firecrackers exploding and two halves snapping into a whole, and fuck , Lupa had dreamed about this. He had dreamed about having Gale in his arms for months --almost every night since they first met--but nothing his subconscious had divined could hold a candle to the reality of Gale himself. 

The younger man was all limbs --lanky arms wrapping around his chest and graceful legs tangling with his own. He could feel dense compact ropes of muscle cording underneath the soft skin of Gale’s back, and as Gale clung to Lupa with what could only be called desperation, the latter could not help but remember the time when the two of them encountered an infiltration unit from the Brutes while on patrol a week or so back. Lupa had prepared to transform into Cerberus, Atma mark flaring red and familiar growl rising up within, when Gale--despite being in human form and unarmed--launched himself from his hiding place and sprinted towards the three Brutes. 

Before Lupa could even blink, the strategist had activated the knife hidden in his boot and flipped himself onto the shoulders of the tallest Brute, swiping precisely at the neck of the soldier next to them as he went. The second went down, all but decapitated, and Gale had wasted no time in wedging the tallest Brute’s head between his knees and torquing it to the right. There was a snap that made Lupa wince, but he didn’t look away-- couldn’t look away as Gale swung his left foot up, propped it on the left shoulder of the now dead soldier, and lept . Before the tall Brute’s body could even hit the ground, Gale had wrapped his thighs around the shoulders of the third. Rather than breaking their neck, however, the Bishop instead performed a... movement with his legs that had the final Brute spinning to the ground and Gale himself landing nimbly on his feet. The enemy soldier landed back-first, and they didn’t even have the time to shout before Gale kicked under their chin, driving his knife through the soft and hard palates and into the base of their brain.

To Lupa--who only knew of the Bishops via the very sedentary and reticent one assigned to the Wolves--Gale’s spectacular act of calculated violence could not have come as more of a surprise. He had known Gale was apt on the battlefield, yes; but he would never have expected him to take out three armed enemy soldiers, single-handedly and in human form, in less than thirty seconds. 

In his old life, Greg had found it unnerving that so many humans found beauty in things like poisonous amphibians and tooth-licking carnivores; yet as Lupa watched Gale almost daintily wipe the blood off of his knife before sliding it back into his boot, he was struck by just how gorgeous Gale was at his most deadly. There had been a faint splatter of blood on the left corner of Gale’s mouth, and as the Bishop reached up a hand to wipe it off, Lupa had been seized by a wave of hunger so powerful he had to bite back a moan. It had taken every minute speck of control to not stride over to Gale and lick the blood off himself.

That had been the day Lupa had started thinking of Gale as his ‘whirlwind’.

(It had also been the day when he had made a beeline for the showers the second he stepped into Svadhisthana. It had taken him twenty minutes under an ice cold jet of water before his skin cooled and his stomach unclenched and he could face his men without wanting to die from embarrassment. Mercifully, no one asked why he had acted so erratically that afternoon, and Gale had either not noticed or failed to put the pieces together before he’d left for Muladhara. Thank God. )

Those very same legs that had so seamlessly and effortlessly killed three enemy soldiers were now intertwined with Lupa’s own, but rather than feel frightened (or even aroused), Lupa instead found himself in awe. Gale was clad in the ‘casual’ shoes he wore when he was confined to the Embryon base, but Lupa knew that even the footwear Gale wore at night had reinforced metal compartments instead of soles, inside of which were multiple knives that could be extended by pressing the concealed buttons at the heels. It would have been so easy for Gale to smack his heel into the metal frame of the bed and cut into Lupa’s leg; and since Gale was clever, he would make sure to sever the femoral or popliteal artery, all but ensuring Lupa would bleed out before he had the chance to call on Cerberus to staunch the flow. In their current situation, Gale had the tactical advantage, and Lupa could have been entirely at his mercy.

Yet Gale was so soft at his side. The moment Lupa put his arms around his back, the Bishop had practically melted into the touch, clinging to the older man as if he would leave if given more than a millimeter of slack. He clung and shivered and quietly wept; yet the line of his smile was giddy where it was pressed into the junction of Lupa’s neck, and the tears that dripped down the collar of Lupa’s vest were warm and sweet. Gale was wearing his shoes, but his legs rested heavy and limp atop Lupa’s own, and there was not an ounce of flight or fight to be found in the meat of those powerful calves. Lupa could try to kill him--wrap his hands around Gale’s neck and squeeze--and the Bishop would not have the chance to react.

‘ The effectiveness of a concealed weapon lies entirely in the willingness of its owner to use it.’ It had been an off-hand remark made by Jinana during one of their meetings with Serph, and while Lupa couldn’t remember the rest of the conversation for the life of him, that one simple comment rattled around his brain like dice in a cup. Gale was deadly, yes, but only when he chose to be; and he had willingly allowed himself to be defenseless the moment he had climbed through Lupa’s window.

Gale trusted Lupa. He laid soft and supple in Lupa’s arms because he believed himself to be safe with the leader of an enemy tribe. Gale felt safe around Lupa. Gale believed in Lupa; and the sheer amount of honor he felt at being rewarded such blind faith by such a beautiful man made tears well hot and stinging in Lupa’s eyes. 

Gale trusted him. Gale felt safe with him. Gale loved him. 

“ My Gale,” Lupa croaked, far too enamored and adoring of the man in his arms to care how his voice wavered. “ My nimble, cunning whirlwind. My tempest in a teapot.” Boldness took over, and he pressed his lips to the side of Gale’s head, a jolt of want shooting up his spine at the stifled hitch of breath the action produced. “ When we return to Nirvana, I will take you and Fred to a cafe, and you can try as many kinds of tea and coffee as you’d like.” He nosed Gale’s temple and the soft green hair on the side of his head, breathing in the smell of standard-issue soap and a crisp cleanness that fit Gale to a ‘t’. “ We will have to go to Karma City to have a proper cafe experience. The ‘chosen ones’ above ground still have access to things like milk, sugar, syrup, and fruit; and unless something has changed since my death, the only way to obtain such items in the underground city is to sell your kidney.”

“ Please don’t do such a grievous thing for my sake, Lupa.” Gale said with complete and utter seriousness. A genuine laugh spilled from Lupa’s lips this time, and he couldn’t stop from pressing more kisses to his beloved’s temple, relishing in the way the Bishop cooed and curled deeper into the Leader’s embrace.

“ I won’t, I won’t; I promise.” He would have to explain how it was a figure of speech later. “ But yes, while coffee and tea--being dried and non-perishable--are in no short supply in Samkhya, you would have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to the black market for them to smuggle the ingredients for fancier drinks out of the city...and then there was the chance they would keep your money and the goods for themselves.”

“ How dishonorable.” Gale muttered bitterly. Lupa nodded in agreement.

“ Very.” Lupa closed his eyes and sucked in a steadying breath. “ I had...promised to sneak Fred into Karma City for his tenth birthday. He so badly wanted a piece of chocolate cake and some ice cream, and a tenth birthday is... important .” He swallowed thickly and blinked away the tears that were suddenly pooling in the corners of his eyes. “ It was only a few weeks before his ninth birthday that I…I’m not even sure how much time has passed since then.”

Gale hummed in sympathy, and Lupa felt his left hand drift downwards from his back, taking hold of Lupa’s right hand and lacing their fingers together. Lupa sighed shakily and gave it a fond and thankful squeeze.

“ As soon as I get home,” Lupa vowed, “ I’m going to sneak you both to the surface and take you to a proper cafe. Fred can have as much cake and ice cream as he wants, and we’ll order you every tea and coffee item on the menu. Fred and I will just drink the ones you don’t like.”

Gale sighed wistfully and allowed his head to loll bonelessly on the soft space between Lupa’s shoulder and neck. Trusting .

“ Will it just be the three of us?” He queried. “ You, Fred, and I...it would be like a date, yes?”

Lupa’s face grew hot. Why did he feel like a teenager who had just asked his crush to prom? “ I mean, that was my intention, I suppose. Unless you don’t want to--”

Gale cut Lupa off with a firm shake of his head. “ I do not mind at all. I just hope that Fred will not mind. After all, it was a special outing intended for the two of you, and I am not even sure if Fred will like me.”

Lupa barked with disbelief, making Gale pull his head away just enough to look at Lupa’s face, green eyes startled and curious.

“ Gale, Gale ,” Lupa rumbled, unable to keep the mirth from his voice or the adoring smile from his lips. “ Do you know how long Fred had been badgering me to find a partner?” He reached out his hand and traced his fingers along the angular planes of the Bishop’s face. Gale’s eyelashes fluttered like butterfly wings, and oh God , Lupa was completely and utterly ruined . “ He didn’t care if it was a mom or another dad, but it had to be someone, and I quote: ‘smart, funny, nice, and as cool as you, Dad.’” He chuckled at the memory. “ Oh, and they ‘absolutely have to love music’; I almost forgot that part.”

Gale cocked his head to the side. “ But Lupa...I am not sure if I like music. The only music I have ever heard is Sera’s song. Will Fred be understanding of my limitations?”

God help him, Lupa didn’t mean to laugh so hard; it was just that the deathly serious look on Gale’s face was one of the most endearing things he had ever seen! Even the stoic Leader of the Wolves had his limits, and Gale had so far kicked down absolutely all of them, just by being his own enchanting self.

“ Don’t worry, Gale.” Lupa ran his thumb down the ridge of Gale’s nose and gave the tip a light boop, making the Bishop sneeze and scrunch up his nose. “ Fred will be more than willing to introduce you to the music of Nirvana. Just remember to wear your noise dampeners beforehand; when Fred plays his favorite songs, he tends to crank the volume to its maximum.”

It was clear from the look on Gale’s face that he didn’t understand half of what Lupa had said. Nonetheless, he seemed to be reassured by the older man’s assurances that his child would be willing to accept his paltry knowledge of music, and he let his eyes drift shut as Lupa slotted his thumb into the divot of his upper lip.

“ I am...pleased to hear that.” Gale’s breath hiccuped as Lupa’s thumb trailed downwards, tracing his thin lips with the reverence of a holy man praying at the altar of their divine. “ I want to meet Fred, and listen to his music, and drink coffee with you at a cafe...I want to stay with you, Lupa; no matter what happens in the future.”

“ I want that as well.” Lupa licked his suddenly dry lips and moved his hand to cup the side of Gale’s face. “ I want many things, but I have to know...Gale, at this moment, what do you want?”

Gale whimpered, sending a bolt of heat through Lupa’s belly, and slowly opened his eyes. They were darker now, but still so vividly green , and the wetness overlying them gave the irises an almost iridescent sheen.

“ I…” Gale swallowed, shook his head, and tried again. “ May I kiss you, Lupa?”

The bottom of Lupa’s stomach dropped out. “ Oh, Gale...nothing would make me happier.”

Those hands that could snap a man’s neck were framing Lupa’s face, and then Gale was surging forward, clumsily but eagerly pressing his thin lips against Lupa’s thicker ones. 

There was no skill, no technique, and a serious lack of all but the most basic understanding of how kissing worked behind the act. Yet it was perfect , it was so absolutely perfect , because those were Gale’s lips mashing with awkward determination against his own, and Gale’s arms around and his neck, and Gale’s warm, ragged breath puffing against his skin. It was the worst kiss Lupa had received since middle school, but none of that mattered in that incandescent moment, because it was the only kiss he’d ever had that truly mattered.

This is Gale’s first kiss, Lupa realized with a jolt, and I’m just lying here doing nothing.

Making up his mind, Lupa slid his hands up from Gale’s back and onto his cheeks, using the leverage to pull away from that absolutely breathtaking trainwreck of a kiss. Gale keened at the loss of contact, sending yet another delicious pulse of arousal surging up Lupa’s groin, and he actually attempted to chase the older man’s lips with his own as he pulled back. Lupa held his face steady, however, and used his thumbs to gently coax Gale’s eyes open.

“ Gale, Gale, shhhhhh…” Lupa kissed the dark circles beneath Gale’s eyes and smiled into the paper-thin skin. “ Please, whirlwind, wait just a second.”

“ I’m sorry,” Gale whispered, brow furrowed with embarrassment. “ I’m sorry, Lupa. I know that was not a satisfactory kiss in any sense of the word, but I just...I have never...this is my…I don’t know what I am...”

Lupa shushed him again, rubbing his thumbs soothingly over Gale’s cheekbones and the outlines of his orbital bones until all traces of unnecessary shame vanished from the younger man’s face, replaced with a blissful, shivering contentment. Good Lord, they had only embraced and shared a sloppy kiss, and Gale seemed as if he was close to reeling already. How would he respond if they actually--

No. No, no, no . Do not put the cart before the horse. That means you, too, Cerberus.

“ It’s alright, whirlwind.” Lupa murmured. “ I was enjoying myself, truly; for kissing you can’t be anything but enjoyable.” He couldn’t keep the smile off his face at how Gale’s cheeks reddened at the compliment. “ But I have done this sort of thing several times before...would you be willing to let me lead?”

Gale made a low, needy voice in the bottom of his throat. “ Yes, Lupa, please …”

That was all the permission Lupa needed. With utmost reverence, he cupped Gale’s face in his hands and brought their mouths together, determined to make Gale’s second kiss everything the first should have been.

Despite the failures that Lupa’s prior relationships had been, the one thing that his partners had agreed on was that he was acceptable on the bedroom front--or, as one of his longest relationships had put it, he was ‘a good lover and an even better kisser’. Lupa himself had never given any particular thought to technique or skill; he was simply the type to want to make his bed partners comfortable and happy, and he did his best to accommodate whatever reasonable needs and wants they had. However, when kissing Gale, Lupa found himself hoping that the latter compliment had been accurate. 

Lupa kissed Gale slowly and gently, with long, lingering pecks, wanting to enjoy the feeling and taste of Gale’s lips now that they weren’t violently mashing against his own. They were even lovelier than Lupa had imagined over weeks since meeting Gale: thin, cool, and firm, with a yielding softness that blossomed with every press of Lupa’s lips. 

It was addicting ; he could kiss Gale for the rest of his life and never grow tired of those lips, those breaths, those little moans and shifts. Even if he overdosed on Gale, Lupa was sure that he would remain unsatisfied, wanting more and more and more .

“ Lupa...oh...oh, Lupa, please ...Lupa… nngh ...”

Gale’s moans started out soft, but they ratcheted up in volume and frequency once Lupa’s kissing grew more passionate, his slow and gentle pecks deepening into a long and languid rhythm that had the younger man actually writhing in his arms. Without consciously realizing it, Lupa shifted his hands to better hold and position his lover, his left finding a home between Gale’s shoulder blades and his right nimbly dodging prosthetics to cup the back of Gale’s head.

On a whim, Lupa took Gale’s lower lip between his teeth and bit down playfully, making the Bishop shudder and actually groan into his mouth. Recklessness seized Lupa, and he quickly darted his tongue between Gale’s parted lips, groaning himself at how deliciously warm and wet it all was. The Bishop gasped, stiffened, and then keened. 

“ Lupa! ”

Jesus Christ. No one ever had called Lupa’s name like that before, and that guttural scream sent a wave of excitement crashing over the older man, sending him from pleasantly aroused to rock hard in a matter of seconds. Fuck, Gale was actually writhing in his arms, already so keyed up from simple kissing that it seemed he didn’t know what to do with it all. He eagerly plunged his tongue into Lupa’s own mouth with the determination that Lupa had come to expect from this cyclone of a being, and it was Lupa’s turn to moan into Gale’s mouth, the intensity of his arousal shooting along his spine and making his toes curl. His cock was painflly stiff, straning and throbbing against his pants, and fuck. 

The last time Lupa had been that hot and bothered was when he was a teenager in the backseat of his date’s car. They were kissing--just kissing --and he already felt a hair’s breadth away from losing it. Had it just been that long since he’d had sex; or was it just Gale’s body and lips and eyes and everything that made it so easy for Lupa to lose control?

There was a shift in position, and Lupa emerged from the fog in his brain just in time to feel Gale take his right thigh between his legs and pull it up and forward, grinding and grinding with enough force to make Lupa wonder if his leg would be bruised in the morning. Gale’s hands were scrabbling against his back, somehow unable to find purchase despite the loose vest Lupa wore in lieu of a proper shirt, and his moans and whimpers had only gotten louder and needier, almost sounding like--

--wait, was Gale sobbing?

“ Lupa…” Now that Lupa had broken free from the smothering blanket of arousal, he was now able to clearly hear Gale’s words, and he realized--with a jolt of alarm--that the Bishop almost sounded as if he was afraid . “ Lupa...I don’t know...I don’t know...I can’t think, I can’t think, it’s too...it’s so...I can’t… help ...”

The words were spoken in the pauses between their increasingly frenetic kissing, and Lupa wrenched his head backwards with enough force to kink his neck, his breath catching in his throat at the numbness he saw in those green eyes. Gale’s face was red, chest heaving, tears drenching the pillowcase beneath him, and Lupa immediately pulled his leg out from between Gale’s own, biting his lip as the younger man whimpered in confusion and attempted to pull it back.

“ Gale, Gale, shhhhh…” It was as if a bucket of ice water had been poured on Lupa’s body, drenching his arousal into a pile of damp, smouldering ash. His heart quieted and his mind cleared, allowing him to see just how utterly wrecked Gale looked: lips shivering, hair drenched with sweat, eyes foggy and flickering with disorientation in their sockets. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck ; he was such a fucking idiot. “ Oh, Gale…”

“ Help me, Lupa...” Gale sobbed, and the Leader of the Wolves wasted no time in gathering the Bishop of the Embryon into his arms, allowing the younger man to curl his body against him and bury his face in his neck. “ It’s so much, Lupa...I can’t think...I can’t think …!”

Lupa was convinced that carving out his heart with a spoon would have been far less agonizing than hearing Gale sound so helpless and lost. He pulled the limber man flush against his body and held him tight, pressing kiss after kiss to Gale’s face and exposed temple and stroking his hair as he wept, awkwardly rocking himself against Lupa’s chest despite his position on his side.

“ Shhhhhhhh…” Lupa cooed, nosing that sweat-damp hair and cursing himself for literally steamrolling into the exact scenario he had feared from the start. He had been aware--so goddamn acutely aware --that Bishops were prone to overstimulation, especially in response to large quantities of novel data and sensation; and yet he had been so focused on his own goddamn feelings that he’d practically shoved Gale off the cliff himself. Even Cerberus --as silent as they usually were--seemed displeased with him. “ It’s alright, my Gale; it’s alright. Take deep breaths...that’s right, just like that; in and out. You’re safe, Gale, and I’m not going anywhere. Shhhhh...come back to me, my whirlwind. Come back to me...”

It took a few minutes of rocking and hushing, but eventually Gale began to come down from his sensory high, his sobs softening and his shivering fading into the finest of tremors. A few more minutes had the Bishop resting easy in the Leader’s arms, still and quiet, and Lupa released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

“ Are you alright, Gale?” He whispered.

Gale nodded against his neck and pulled back to face Lupa once more. His eyes were sodden and bloodshot, but the redness had faded from his cheeks, and the sharp luster had returned to those clever eyes.

“ I’m sorry, Lupa.” Gale rasped. Lupa smiled sadly and shook his head, lifting his right hand to touch Gale’s left cheek.

“ You have nothing to apologize for, whirlwind.” He gave Gale a soft peck on the lips and was surprised when the younger man lunged after them upon their retreat. “ Gale, Gale, listen ; we don’t have to do this tonight.”

The Bishop’s brow creased with distress. 

“ What are you saying, Lupa?” He swallowed and averted his eyes to the right, staring at the pillowcase with a growing expression of shame. “ Are you...do you not want me anymore? Have I ruined things between us?”

Lupa’s heart broke for the third time that night.

“ No, no, Gale; that’s not it.” The older man took the younger’s chin in his hand and tilted it to the left, forcing the younger man to meet his gaze. “ Of course I want you, Gale; you have no idea how much I want you.” As if to emphasize the point, Lupa’s half-hard cock twitched in his pants, and he shook his head violently to focus. “ I have wanted you for weeks, Gale; but wanting is not the same as needing, and I am more than willing to wait for you to be ready to do this. Weeks, months, years; it doesn’t matter to me how long it may take or even if it never comes. The only thing that matters to me is you and your comfort. I don’t want you to push yourself.”

Lupa had hoped that his words would soothe Gale’s mind; yet the Bishop seemed to grow more upset as he spoke, and his eyes had glossed over with tears by the time Lupa finished.

“ I can handle it, Lupa; I can handle it tonight . I swear on my comrades.” There was a desperate lilt to Gale’s words that unsettled the normally stoic Leader of the Wolves. “ Please, Lupa, I just...I want you. I want you so much . Don’t you want me, too?”

Lupa’s cock gave another painful throb, and he grit his teeth and tried to force himself to calm the fuck down already . Cerberus, as usual, was of absolutely no help in that regard. “ I do, but I can just take a cold shower, Gale. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t get off tonight.”

“ I don’t want you to take a cold shower.” Gale’s hands moved from Lupa’s back to the front of his vest, gripping it with enough strength to stretch the dense fabric. “ I don’t want to wait. I can’t wait. I want this. I want you . I want...no, I need …!”

Gale swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut, turning his face halfway into the pillow and taking a deep, shuddering breath. Lupa was more than a little concerned, but he remained silent, stroking Gale’s hands and waiting for him to find his words.

“...don’t you understand, Lupa?” Gale finally managed. His eyes opened once more, and Lupa was thrown off by the sheer amount of anguish in those lovely green pools, making Gale look even rawer somehow. “ I may not have tomorrow. I may not even have tonight; I could only have a few minutes, or even seconds . You may have time, Lupa, but I’m not sure how much I have.”

Lupa’s mouth went dry. “ I don’t understand what you mean, Gale. Please, explain it to me.”

Gale made a small, low noise of distress, screwing his eyes shut once more in an attempt to both gather his thoughts and to keep the tears at bay.

“...the Church has been silent,” he finally whispered, keeping his eyes closed. “ They have been silent since calling the meeting with the Leaders. Yet as the Law continues to break down, and the tribes of the Junkyard unite, we come closer and closer to being able to storm their sanctum and overthrow them, and I am sure they have noticed by now. They have been silent, yes, but they may awaken at any time, and they...what do you think they’ll do, Lupa, when they realize that the last of their prized Bishops is rebelling?”

The meaning slammed into Lupa like a freight train. “ You mean…”

“ They could take control of me whenever they wanted, Lupa.” A few exhausted and miserable tears escaped Gale’s eyes at the resigned affirmation, and Lupa reached up a shaking index finger to brush them away, finding himself entranced by the way those long eyelashes fluttered at the touch. Gale was beautiful, so very beautiful , and Lupa wanted to scream. “ Ever since I embraced these new emotions and my new sense of self, I’ve been living in fear, Lupa. I’ve told no one else of this; I have not even confided in Serph, because all it will do is burden him with yet another obfuscating emotion. My comrades already have far too much to manage and agonize over as is, and there is nothing that they can do about the hold the Church has on my body and mind; there is not even anything I can do about it. Yet it is...it is a noose around my neck, Lupa; and I’m always waiting for the moment it will snap. Every time I have a headache...every time I have spots in my vision, feel faint, feel tingling in my arms and legs...it has gotten so bad that I...I am sometimes afraid to fall asleep, Lupa, because I fear will wake up and no longer be in control of my own faculties.”

Lupa hadn’t even realized he was crying until he felt wetness slipping down his cheeks. “ Oh, Gale…”

“ I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be Gale.” The Bishop’s voice trembled like a leaf in the wind, and when he finally opened his eyes, Lupa was struck dumb by how dark they had become; as if his sadness was staining the irises like India ink. “ If the Church takes control of my body, I’m not sure how long they’ll be able to maintain it, and I’m not sure what they’ll have me do while it lasts. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to survive their intrusion now that my individuality has solidified. The last time it happened, I was still…” Gale bit his lip and shrugged in frustration. “ Growing, I suppose.”

“ Before your change.” Lupa helpfully replied, trying to focus on Gale and not his overwhelming desire to rally the Wolves, lay siege to the Church of Karma, and burn that heinous abomination to the ground. It would be the first to go; and then, once they returned to ‘Nirvana’, the Karma Society itself--the true masterminds behind the Junkyard, the deaths of his men, and Gale’s torture and mind-rape --would be soon to follow. He would rally the Lokapala, band them together with his comrades and beloved, and they would make Cuvier and Angel pay, they would fucking pay--

“ Yes.” Gale nodded. “ Before I met you.” He released Lupa’s shirt and wrapped his hands around the older man’s fingers, holding them with a strength that belied their innocuous refinement. “ Do you see, Lupa? You could die in battle tomorrow, yes, or even from hunger; but there is still a chance you might survive. The moment we move on the Temple, I fear that…”

“ No, Gale,” Lupa cut him off with commanding bark, eyes blazing and Atma mark pulsing fresh blood-red. “ Absolutely not. The Church is no longer in control of our lives, and by all that is good and right in the world, I will not let them control your own as well.” He gave Gale’s hands an insistent shake for emphasis. “ We will go together to Serph and Jinana, you and I, and we will find a solution. And even if we cannot...” Lupa’s voice trembled from barely restrained emotion. “...then you should not be suffering alone, Gale. Let us help you carry your fear.”

Gale bit his lip and looked away.

“ Whirlwind, please.” Lupa pleaded. Gale’s eyelashes fluttered.

“ Serph has enough to worry about.” He whispered. Lupa released Gale’s hands and grabbed the other man’s face in his own, firmly yet gently forcing him to turn and look at him.

“ You are worth the worry, Gale.” Lupa insisted. Gale shook his head, again, but with a bit more desperation in the movement.

“ I am just a Bishop, Lupa. A strategist. Someone who stays in base to run simulations and sort through numbers. Serph does not even let me fight in the front line the majority of the time. All I am good for is--”

“ No! ”

Gale flinched and instinctively tried to draw away from Lupa’s vicious bark, but he was held in place by Lupa’s hands. Timidly, the strategist looked into Lupa’s face, relieved to find nothing but passion and nobility in his gaze.

“ Serph keeps you in the rear because he trusts you, Gale; don’t you realize that?” Lupa rubbed his thumbs over Gale’s cheekbones and latched onto the tentative hope sparking in his eyes. “ He trusts that, if he and the others were to fall in battle, the Embryon will survive. You were always more than his Bishop, Gale; and I know this from our private conversations. You are his comrade, Gale--his brother--and everyone in our three tribes sees your value as something far beyond that of a conduit to the Church. Even Jinana adores you.”

Gale blinked. “ She...she does?”

“ Yes, Gale,” Lupa sighed in fond exasperation. “ She and Argilla both see you as their younger brother. Argilla gets exasperated with you, yes; but that is what happens between most siblings. Despite Argilla’s rancor at your logical nature, she would easily and eagerly give up her life for you, just as you would do the same for her.” 

Lupa chuckled and shrugged. 

“ And Jinana herself?” He continued. “ She finds you ‘engaging and endearing’, in her exact words. She hopes that she will get a chance to know you better once we arrive in Nirvana. She wishes to take you to a bookstore.”

“ ‘Bookstore’?” Gale took in a shaky breath and let it flow heavily from his nose. “ I...I see…”

It was clear from the bewilderment on Gale’s face that he did not, but Lupa could see that the sparks of hope from earlier had flickered into a small flame, and he vowed to stoke those embers into a wildfire that would burn the world that manipulated and subjugated him to the ground.

“...will you come with me?” Gale finally answered, plantitively searching Lupa’s face for something only he could see. “ I will...I will speak with Serph and Jinana on the matter, but I would like...I would very much like you to be by my side.”

The relief Lupa felt at those words would have bowled him over had he been standing. As he was lying down, he settled for releasing Gale’s face and pulling him into his arms, a stupidly giddy smile on his plastered face. He could feel his Atma rumbling with pleasure in the background noise of his thoughts. “ I will be by your side always, if you would have me. I love you, Gale.”

“ Oh.” Gale looked momentarily disarmed by the words, but he swiftly recovered, smiling softly as he rested their foreheads together. “ I love you, too, Lupa. I love you so terribly…”

Unable and unwilling to resist any longer, Lupa closed the distance between their lips, and Gale responded as eagerly and beautifully as he had from the start. It felt as if Gale was blooming under Lupa’s lips and touch, and Lupa found himself swiftly growing hot and bothered once more, although he did his best to restrict himself to kissing and keep his hands confined to the middle of Gale’s back.

Yet despite the sheer amount of emotional and physical exhaustion the younger man was clearly feeling, Gale seemed undeterred from his initial intent, and Lupa groaned in equal parts exasperation and delight at the feel of Gale’s hardness pressing against his thigh.

“ Lupa, please,” Gale whispered as Lupa pulled away, cutting him off before he could even open his mouth to speak. “ Please, Lupa...if you still want me, then please ; let me have this.”

“ Gale--”

“ Right now I know who I am, and I know who I love, and I know who--and what --I want.” Gale reached his left hand up and combed it through Lupa’s dreadlocks as he continued. “ If the Church is able to once more assume control of my body and mind, and you and the others are not able to protect me or bring me back to myself...then I want this. I want to fade away knowing that I had something that was all my own: something good, something right, something the Church can’t take away from me. I want you , Lupa. I want to feel happy, complete, and...and one with you.”

Lupa groaned, his abdomen clenching with warmth and want . It was getting harder and harder to push back against the combined might of Gale’s logic and desire, especially considering that he himself wanted nothing more than to lay Gale on the mattress and make him his . 

The blood was swiftly rushing from his brain to far lower places, and his heart was swelling with love, and he wanted, he wanted, he wanted; but he had to be sure. Above all else, Lupa had to be sure, because he would never forgive himself if he achieved his own desires at the cost of wounding the love of his life.

“ Do you even know what you’re asking from me, Gale?” Lupa rasped, throwing up one last desperate yet valid defense against the overwhelming deluge of Gale’s will and want. “ You nearly spiraled out of control from kissing , Gale, and you and I both know that you know only the biology behind it all. You’re jumping into a situation and you don’t know where or how you’ll land.”

Gale frowned and chewed on his lower lip for a few seconds. Lupa waited, and dreaded, and hoped .

“...I want to have sexual intercourse with you.” The answer was slow coming, but it was said with as steady and sure of a voice Lupa had ever heard: the very same voice that Gale had used to announce that he would destroy the Church of Karma if it meant being able to take Lupa to Nirvana. “ Yet I don’t...I don’t know what to do outside of the most rudimentary basics; and what happened earlier was…”

The Bishop sighed.

“...It was a lot for me,” he reluctantly admitted, gazing pleadingly into Lupa’s eyes. “ You may...there may be times when you have to slow down, or even stop, just like you did before.” He licked his lips, eyelashes fluttering, and Lupa felt cracks starting to form in the last wall between himself and Gale. “ I trust you, Lupa; and I know you would never hurt me on purpose. I know you’ll take care of me.”

“ Fuck,” Lupa breathed, clenching his hands around fistfuls of Gale’s shirt. Rather than answering, the Leader closed his eyes and took a few steadying breaths in and out, weighing his options and beating back his desire with all of the rationality he could muster.

It was a terrible idea to the core. Gale was sleep-deprived, emotionally exhausted, and mentally fatigued. He was a living computer conduit hand-crafted to be oversensitive and had only just been pulled back from the edge of a sensory meltdown. Gale was smart, cunning, and clever; but while Lupa had a fair share of sexual experience from his past life, he knew as much as anyone in the Junkyard that even the barest notion of sex hadn’t crossed their minds until they gained their Atma. Gale knew what sex entailed, yes, but there was only so much a dry textbook or a blurb in the Church database could teach about the emotional and mental weight behind the biology. Lupa did not want to belittle Gale’s desires, and he did not deny that Gale very much wanted to sleep with him; but could one consent to such an act without being informed about all of the potential hills and valleys? 

There was a very real chance that if Lupa gave into Gale’s desires and made love to him, he could end up hurting the strategist far more gruesomely and deeply than any bullet or blade, and his old life had taught him that the effects of sex gone wrong could span the entirety of the person’s life. How could Lupa, in good conscience, risk doing that to the only person he had ever truly loved?

...on the other hand.

It was true that the idea of guiding Gale--sensitive, sheltered, trusting Gale--through his first time was more than a little nerve wracking to the older man. Yet despite having to swallow down the nervousness pooling at the base of his throat, the thought of being able to take care of Gale--to love him and lavish him with at least a fraction of the caring and tenderness he deserved--was more than a little appealing. In fact, if he were being honest with himself (which he tended to be), Lupa wanted nothing more than to show Gale the way forward: to dote on him and smother him with kisses and praise and touches that would make him laugh with delight and scream with pleasure. He wanted to make Gale feel good. He wanted to make Gale happy .

Besides, he realized as he opened his eyes and looked at Gale, who had a look on his face that said he was thinking of the most strategic way possible to flee the bed and fling himself back out of the bedroom window. As much as he hated to admit it, Gale was right (as he usually was), both about the Church of Karma and about his predicament. As much as he, Serph, and Jinana hoped that the radio silence from Sahasrara and the lack of Newborns meant that the same plague that had transformed their bodies had claimed the Church as well, it could also mean that they were sitting back and biding their time, waiting to see what the inhabitants of their militaristic ant farm made of their new situation before swooping in and resuming direct control. Gale was the last Bishop--hand-picked and altered to be the voice of the Church’s will--and if Lupa, Jinana, and Serph were wrong, then the first thing the Church would do to reassert their dominance is reclaim the being who they had conditioned to be their obedient little pawn.

The thought made Lupa sick. It made him want to tear out his braids and scream in despair. It made him want to transform into Cerberus, march into Sahasrara, and eat all of the vile bastards alive. It made him want to clap his hands over his ears and pretend he hadn’t heard a word Gale said. Yet he couldn’t, because Gale was right, and Lupa had to face the yawning, soul-crushing reality that he might not be able to save one of the people dearest to his heart. If Gale was ‘forcibly interrupted’ by the Church, and they couldn’t break their control over his mind and body, then the only option remaining would be…

No. No . Lupa couldn’t think about it. He couldn’t .

What he could think about, however, was how much he wanted Gale to seize all of the freedom and happiness he could. Gale was an adult--an autonomous, independent being--and Lupa knew that Gale was the type that never made a decision without exploring every possible outcome and balancing the pros and cons of every situation. Gale knew what he wanted ( to have sex with Lupa ), knew who he wanted ( Lupa ), and knew why he wanted ( because he loved Lupa. Because he wanted Lupa. Because his future was even more of an unnerving and maddening unknown than those of the rest of the Junkyard. Because if he was going to lose himself, then he was going to make sure he ‘died’ with as few regrets and unanswered questions as possible. Because he wanted to experience, just once, what it was like to love and feel loved). Lupa wanted the same things himself, and while it wasn’t an ideal situation for either of them, did anything in the Junkyard even come close to ideal? Why should he punish Gale for the failings of the society created by the Church? How could Lupa claim to know what was best for Gale better than Gale himself?

What would be worse: to have sex with Gale and risk hurting him; or to refuse him and deny the very autonomy he was trying to exert?

The answer was obvious, and after one last moment of hesitation, Lupa discarded what was left of his resistance and nodded--both to himself and to Gale.

“ I need you to promise me something, Gale.” Lupa said soberly. “ If we are to do this, then I need you to swear that you will let me know the moment you start to feel uncomfortable, and that you will not hesitate to say ‘no’ if things become too much.” He reached out and caressed Gale’s face. “ I will keep as much of an eye on you as you can. Even if you cannot find the words, if I sense that you are in distress, I will stop immediately. However, if I do not notice your distress, and you cannot stand it anymore, I want you to stop me--even if it takes force.”

Gale frowned. “ That will not be necessary, Lupa, for I know you will not harm me.”

“ Not intentionally, no.” Lupa corrected, brushing a strand of hair out of Gale’s eyes. “ However, as they often say in ‘Nirvana’, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Gale blinked slowly, cocking his head like a curious owl, and Lupa sighed.

“ What that means, my whirlwind, is that despite our best efforts to be good and do no harm, we often accidentally hurt others due to the very nature of being human…even those that we love. Ignorance, assumptions, neglect, a lack of accurate information, poor communication...but sometimes, things just...happen. Sometimes, no matter how much we try, we hurt each other.”

Lupa watched in fascination as Gale’s eyes briefly widened before narrowing into contemplative slits. Given the tightness of his lips and the furrow in his brow, it seemed as if the Lupa’s words had reminded him of something, and he was once again content to wait for the Bishop to put his thoughts in order. After all, this was not a situation to be taken lightly, and it was important for Gale to not feel rushed or pressured into making a decision. If they were going to have sex, then it was going to be at Gale’s pace, on Gale’s terms, and with Gale’s fully informed and uninfluenced consent. Nothing less would do.

“ I understand.” Gale finally spoke, saying it more to himself than to Lupa. He nodded--again to himself--before turning his full attention to the man lying at his side. “ Very well. I still believe that you will not bring me harm, but if I do start to feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed once more, I will let you know immediately. In the worst case scenario, I shall simply kick you off...although I will try to only utilize twenty-five percent of my usual force if immediate physical extrication is required.”

Lupa his face twisted painfully from the effort it took to hold in his laughter. “ Your consideration is appreciated; I would very much like to end this evening without a broken ribcage or spine.”

Gale frowned and wrinkled his nose in annoyance. It was an unfairly adorable pout that did nothing to cool the fire burning in Lupa’s chest. “ Please do not make fun of me, Lupa; I am serious.”

“ I am not making fun of you, Gale, I swear.” Lupa chuckled. He leaned forward, kissing Gale between his eyes, and his heart flipped in his chest at the way his long eyelashes fluttered in happiness. How could someone like Gale exist in a hellhole like the Junkyard? It just didn’t add up. “ I have seen just what those legs can do, and a touch of mercy is appreciated.”

Gale stared at Lupa for a long moment. Then he smiled--a soft, tentative little thing that made Lupa’s heart flip again-- and moved his hand from Lupa’s braids to the right side of his face.

“ You are on the very short list of persons I would go easy on--and a majority of those names are those of my comrades.” He used his thumb to rub the warpaint underneath Lupa’s right eye, smearing white, oily streaks all over his dark skin. 

Lupa had been intending to get ready for bed, but he had decided to answer a few communications before doing so; that, of course, ended with Vayu tapping on his window and floating inside once Lupa recovered from his surprise and flung it open, shaking the droplets of rain from its feathery cape before reverting back to its human host. He had taken off his boots earlier, thankfully, but his hair was still braided and his tribal markings were still plastered on his arms and face.

God, he was going to look like a hot mess once he was done, wasn’t he? Oh well. Even if he had cleaned up in time for Gale’s sudden appearance, he would still inevitably have to change his sheets in the morning; whether it be from paint, sweat, or... other things .

“ I do not believe such actions will be necessary, however.” Gale continued, breaking Lupa out of his (frankly stupid and pointless) train of thought. His thumb traveled downward, idly smearing white oil paint over Lupa’s lips, and the Leader of the Wolves had to take a moment to remember how to breathe. “ If I find that I cannot or am unsure if I can continue, I will let you know immediately; and if I lose my words...well…” He trailed off, smile widening, and reached his hand up to gather more paint from underneath Lupa’s eyes. “ I trust you, Lupa.”

“ I trust you too, Gale,” Lupa said, because it felt like something it had to be said, even though he was more than a little preoccupied by Gale’s strange actions. “ I trust you to know what you want and what you need. I don’t want you to think that my concern is borne out of a lack of trust; I just…”

It was Gale’s turn to shush, pressing his recoated thumb on Lupa’s lips until they closed and relaxed. “ I know, Lupa. Thank you. I have so much to thank you for, I do not even know where to begin…”

“ How about you start by telling me what you’re doing to my lips?” Lupa teased. Gale hummed pensively.

“ A whim that just seized me.” Without elaborating further, he circled his thumb once more around Lupa’s lips, coating them with another thin layer of white oil paint. “ Will you allow me to indulge?”

“ Of course.”

Gale’s smile turned soft. He leaned forward and gave Lupa a small peck on the nose before returning to his work. Lupa watched, bewildered but fascinated, as Gale worked with the concentration and laser focus of the artist he could have been had he been born in a better world. He made several trips up to Lupa’s eyes for more warpaint, moving over to his left eye once the right had been cleaned of still-wet pigment, and Lupa had a decidedly chalky and bitter taste on the tip of his tongue by the time Gale finally pulled away, studying his handiwork before nodding in satisfaction.

“ There.” With a mischievous smile that would have been more at home on Cielo, Gale wedged his right elbow onto the mattress and used the leverage to scoot his entire body forward, sighing in relief as what must have been a crook in his back eased with the repositioning. “ Now, Lupa, I have an experiment I would like to run.”

They were the clinical words that were once at home in the classroom where Lupa had taught chemistry to middle schoolers, yet the low and language tone the Bishop used made shivers dance up Lupa’s spine, and he once again found himself growing fully hard. “ And what would such an experiment entail?”

Gale wrapped his arms around Lupa’s neck and pressed their foreheads together.

“ The paint on your lips is still viscous,” Gale murmured, licking his lips in a way that had Lupa biting back a moan and clenching his abdominal muscles against the sudden flare of heat within. “ I was able to easily smear it on your face and transfer a fair amount of it to your lips. How easily, I wonder, would it transfer from your lips to my skin?”

The bottom dropped out of Lupa’s stomach.

“ Gale…” Lupa rasped, suddenly aware of how dry and gummy his mouth and throat had become, and how his tongue felt numb and thick as it tried to form words. A strange feeling of floating briefly overtook him, reminding him of how Vayu danced and fluttered on air currents of its own design, and it took crashing back to reality to realize that he had actually grown lightheaded from the sudden rush of blood leaving his brain.

Like a teenager? No, not even that; Lupa had never been as turned on as he was in that moment.

“ Well?” Gale looked way too satisfied with himself at Lupa’s dumbstruck expression. “ What’s your hypothesis, Lupa?”

The dam broke.

Gale understood, consented, and promised to stop if things became too disorienting or overwhelming; so there was absolutely nothing left to hold Lupa back from loving and cherishing the fuck out of this man. He closed the last centimeters of distance between them, kissing Gale as if the nectar of the gods was dripping from his lips, and he delved into his mouth with reckless abandon. Gale moaned, legs twitching and curling against Lupa’s own and hands fisting the back of Lupa’s vest, holding on for dear life.

Finally, Lupa pulled away, delighting at the flush on Gale’s cheeks and the muggy haze of pleasure clouding his eyes. His lips, Lupa was pleased to note, were already tinted white.

“ I’ve already left my first mark,” Lupa rumbled, grinning like the cat that ate the cream. Gale flushed, and Lupa couldn’t resist the urge to catch some of that white for his own, savoring the feel of Gale’s lips underneath his thumb as he smeared the transferred paint over the right corner of his mouth. The Bishop shivered beneath the pad, making Lupa and Cerberus thrum with excitement. “ I believe there’s enough paint for at least a few more places, however...although I would very much like to see if I could touch every bit of your body with white.”

Gale groaned and gripped the back of Lupa’s vest with enough strength to make the bulletproof fabric stretch and pull. “ It would...it would be my pleasure to help you explore the possibilities.” He gasped and whined, throwing his head back as Lupa began to attack his jawline, biting and licking and leaving a streak of white in his wake. “ Ngh...Lupa... please …”

“ I’ve got you, Gale; just like I promised.” The smooth fabric of Gale’s kevlar bodysuit was suddenly as irritating as wool underneath Lupa’s palms, and he and Cerberus decided--unanimously, for once--that they couldn’t stand being separated from Gale’s skin any longer. Oh, that long, elegant neck was such a distraction; but Lupa reminded himself that it would look even lovelier without the high collar cutting it in half. “ You’re so beautiful, Gale...I’m going to take such good care of you.”

“ You already are.” Gale was panting, arching desperately against the feel of Lupa’s hands running down his abdomen and his lips making intimate acquaintance with his right pulse point, and the little noises he made were the sweetest sounds Lupa had ever heard. “ It’s so much, but... aah ...please, don’t stop, Lupa…!”

“ I won’t. Not until you want me to.” Forcing himself away to pull away from Gale’s neck, Lupa detached himself from Gale’s death grip on his vest and sat up on the bed, eyes trailing hungrily over the white trails criss-crossing over the left side of the Bishop’s face. “ Come here, my whirlwind.”

Lupa was somewhat worried about the glazed over look in Gale’s eyes, but his grip was steady and firm as he took Lupa’s outstretched hand, and he easily shifted his torso and swung his legs over Lupa’s folded knees with one smooth motion, straddling Lupa’s waist with the prim grace that the older man could not help but adore. Even with dilated pupils, those green eyes bored into Lupa’s own with uncanny perception, almost as if he was making a study of Lupa’s very soul. To be flushed, sweaty, and smeared with oil paint, yet somehow able to retain nigh-unflappable composure; it was quintessential Gale.

“ You have done this before.” Gale stated. His voice was soft and non-judgmental, but the ambient light from the window was just bright enough to allow Lupa to see the corners of his mouth tip down slightly. Jealousy? No, something else…

“ I have.” Lupa confirmed, sliding his hands down the smooth curves of Gale’s hips before idling them just above the juts of his hip bones. Gale really did have a lovely shape: sleek and streamlined, with a deceptively thick layer of compressed muscle hidden beneath smooth, silky skin. He could feel the restrained power of Gale’s thighs from where they framed his pelvis and idly wondered if the Bishop was capable of breaking his hip if he squeezed too hard. The thought was more arousing than Lupa would care to admit. “ A fair amount of times, although I rarely actively sought it out, especially after my sister died and I found myself with custody of her newborn.” 

The shadow of past loss began to creep into Lupa’s mind, but he swiftly shook it away and refocused on the matter at hand, determined to embrace the present as much as possible.

“ I see.” Gale murmured, briefly touching the bridge of his nose with the index and middle fingers of his right hand. “ Then you know what you are doing. That is...quite reassuring, I will admit. However…”

“ Yes?” Lupa encouraged. Gale sucked in a deep breath and released it shakily from his mouth.

“ It is just…until this moment, I had never considered the idea that you would have someone... waiting for you in Nirvana. A severe oversight on my part.” Gale closed his eyes, licked his lips, and rattled out a shaky sigh before continuing. “ From what you and Sera have told me of Nirvana, humans tend to engage in monogamous relationships, and I would not wish to inspire... conflict between yourself and the partner you left behind. Given the circumstances, perhaps it would best to... postpone our liaison until you have had a chance to confer with them.”

It took a few seconds for Lupa to figure out just what Gale was saying, and when the pieces finally clicked together, he couldn’t help but throw his head back against the headboard and laugh . He laughed long and hard in a way he had not done since before his death--chest burning, belly aching, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes--and he laughed even harder once he noticed the utterly bewildered look on Gale’s face.

“ Now you are laughing at me.” Gale muttered. “ I do not comprehend what is so humorous about my concerns. Could you please enlighten me?”

“ Oh, Gale, no .” The genuine hurt in Gale’s eyes and voice snuffed out Lupa’s mirth like a blanket on a flame, and he reacted quickly to console his lover, grabbing his hands and stroking his thumbs over his knuckles with a guilty smile on his face. “ I am not laughing at you, Gale, nor am I laughing at your concerns. I swear upon my honor.”

“ Oh.” While Gale had appeared suspicious at first, the mention of Lupa’s honor seemed to put him at ease, for he of all people knew just how seriously the Leader of the Wolves took his moral code. “ I see; but if that is the case, what were you laughing at?”

“ The idea of someone waiting for me in Nirvana.” Lupa rumbled. He released Gale’s hands and moved his hands to rest once more on the curves of his hips, smiling adoringly at the even more bewildered expression on the younger man’s face. “ I apologize, Gale, for not having explained myself clearly. I have had a fair amount of relationships, yes, but all of them were in the past. Not the recent past, mind you; my last serious relationship was four years before I died.”

Gale’s eyes widened in realization. “ So there...there is no significant other waiting for you in Nirvana?” Lupa shook his head, and the Bishop visibly relaxed, although the perplexed frown remained on his face. “ But you mentioned that your son encouraged you to find a partner, yes?”

“ He did.” Lupa snorted. “ However, while I was willing to casually date before he was born, I lost all interest in such things after Fred was born. I was far too focused on raising Fred and learning how to be a single parent than finding a lover, and when Fred was old enough to start wheedling me about being a ‘shut in, lonely man’, I only did so out of a desire to please him. However, I had a rule that I followed to the letter during that time of my life: that I would only seriously consider a partner that I would want to meet my son. Not only did I want to risk bringing someone home that could be a danger to or a negative influence on Fred, but I did not want him to grow attached to a partner I was not serious about, only to have his heart break when they inevitably left our lives.”

Gale blinked and blinked. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Blinked again. 

Lupa smiled patiently and waited for the gears to finish turning in his brain, enjoying the feel of Gale’s beguilingly soft sides underneath his palms and the warmth and sturdy pressure of the thighs wrapped around his hips. Any second now…

“ But you…” When Gale finally found his voice, it was only a little more than a whisper, and the tentative hope in his voice was almost too much to take. “ You wish for me to meet Fred.”

“ Yes, Gale.”

“ And you wish to take us both to a cafe. Together.”

“ Yes, Gale.”

“ And you...you want this to happen, even though we are now…”

“ Lovers,” Lupa finished, his smile splitting into a grin that would make the Cheshire Cat proud. “ That is correct, Gale.”

Finally, it clicked, and Lupa watched in awe as Gale’s seemed to crack under an onslaught of emotion. His face tensed, relaxed, and tensed again; his jaw spasmed and went taught; his chest hitched and stuttered like an engine failing to start; and he couldn’t seem to decide whether he wanted to close his eyes or keep them open as more tears threatened to break through the dam.

“ You want me to meet your son.” Gale whimpered. 

“ I do.” Lupa nodded, smile so broad that it felt as if it would split his cheeks in two. He reached up to Gale’s face and very gently wiped the tears off of his cheeks, smearing the paint his lips had left behind. “ I want you to meet my son, Gale. I adore you, and as I mentioned earlier, I am positive Fred will adore you as well. I want you to be the first and last partner I will ever introduce to him.”

A sob broke its way through Gale’s pursed lips, and Lupa felt his own eyes burning as he took Gale’s hands in his own, clasping them like a solemn promise.

“ Would that be acceptable, Gale?”

Gale swallowed down whatever noise was threatening to force its way out of his throat and nodded. He opened his eyes to look at Gale, and the intensity in that green gaze took the older man’s breath away.

“ There is nothing I want more.” The younger man answered. “ It would be an honor to meet your son.”

Then Gale’s arms were around Lupa’s shoulders, and his lips were on Lupa’s own, and it seemed that Gale himself had been hesitating to cross a line of his own. Lupa’s words had seemingly punched through whatever flimsy, cellophane-thick wall had been stretched between them; and if the Bishop had felt eager and ready before, it now felt as if he was a bolt of lightning in the Leader’s arms: bright, blinding, and burning hot, without a hint of restraint or a care in the world. All of the suffering, the bloodshed, the hunger, and the loss faded away, and it was almost as if the Junkyard itself no longer existed, leaving just Gale and Lupa in a pocket of space built just for them. Reality had warped, thinning and focusing until all that remained were the Leader of the Wolves and the Bishop of the Embryon, tangled together on a military grade bed in a room lit only by the light pollution radiating through the window. 

The eternal rain pattered on the roof and windows, and the outside was naught but mud and industrial rubble, but all Lupa could see was green : green eyes, green hair, green feathers; the green of polished sea-glass and new forest leaves after a long spring rain. Gale was locked in the cage of Lupa’s arms, moaning and writhing like a man possessed as Lupa sucked down his neck and mouthed at his collarbones through his black bodysuit, leaving damp white stains in his wake.

“ Ngh! Ah! ” Gale slipped between coherent speech and intelligible noises as he endured the older man’s onslaught, bowing his body over Lupa and panting prettily into his red hair. “ Lupa...Lupa...Lupa... Lupa …!”

“ My Gale,” Lupa murmured, losing himself in a mantra of his own in between kisses, nips, and sucks strong enough to bruise. “ My Gale, my Gale, my Gale…”

Everything was fuzzy, floaty, and warm, and it was so easy for Lupa to get himself lost in the innumerable facets of Gale’s very existence: the crisp, clean smell of his hair; the supple give of his skin underneath his lips; the heat of his desperate breath against the shell of his ear; and the taste of salt and life on his tongue as he licked a stripe from collar to chin. Through the haze of arousal and warmth that submerged Lupa like a bath, the Leader found himself becoming more and more frustrated at how the Bishop’s bodysuit was cutting off access to the younger man’s neck, let alone the rest of that lithe and trembling form. An inaudible growl rose up from deep within Lupa, and he could feel the Atma mark burning a hole through his stomach, letting him know that Cerberus agreed.

“ My Gale.” Lupa pressed one last kiss to Gale’s left pulse point and sat back to face him, breath quickening and cock throbbing at the sight of the white pigment smeared over the entirety of Gale’s face and neck--proof that there was very little of Gale’s exposed skin that Lupa hadn’t touched. He would have to praise his lover for the excellent idea later. 

“ I want to see you--all of you.” He pressed a long, languid kiss against Gale’s trembling lips and pulled back, heart skipping a beat at the utterly flushed and besotted look on Gale’s face. “ May I…?”

Gale blinked the fog from his eyes and nodded. 

“ Yes,” he breathed, “yes, yes, yes .” His hands flew to the zipper on his back, but the precision with which he normally carried himself was nowhere to be found, and his shaky hands scrambled almost frantically to get a grip on the puller. Lupa grabbed them and gently tugged them back to the front.

“ I would like to do it myself,” he clarified, taking a moment to kiss faint white marks all over Gale’s knuckles before resting them in his lap. The younger man shivered and sucked in a breath.

“ Ah.” Gale’s eyelashes fluttered dazedly. “ Oh, yes . I believe...I believe that I would like that much better.”

Lupa kissed him--slow and sweet--and reached around Gale’s back with his right arm, grabbing the tab of the zipper and pulling it down with a single fluid motion. The bodysuit split in half, like a cocoon at the end of metamorphosis, and Gale shivered as the cool room air made contact with the sweat-soaked fabric of his undershirt. He gripped the back of Lupa’s vest, clinging to him like a koala, and Lupa was more than happy to take a moment to nuzzle against his beloved’s neck.

“ Lupa,” Gale breathed, as if it was the only word he knew. Lupa smiled against his skin.

“ Gale.” He kissed Gale’s left pulse point, grabbed the top of the bodysuit, and slid it down Gale’s shoulders. It was clear that Gale was reluctant to let go of Lupa, but he realized that it was the only way to get undressed, so he dropped his arms and allowed him to slip the top of the bodysuit down and over.

Undressing Gale was an act that felt sacred to Lupa--almost as if he was taking communion with the god before the sun. In all of the time the Leader of the Wolves had known the Bishop of the Embryon, he had never before seen Gale in anything other than his black bodysuit and outer gray armor, and he intended to take his time in exploring every inch of his beloved’s body. Gale’s shoulders were a delight--as graceful yet strong as the rest of him--and Lupa couldn’t resist the urge to kiss up and down those milk-white slopes, relishing in tiny shifts and whimpers of the man to whom they belonged. Once he had his fill, Lupa continued to peel the rest of the bodysuit off of Gale, stopping only when he reached Gale’s knees and realized that the younger man was still wearing his shoes. 

Ah. Hmm. What a cumbersome diversion.

As if sensing Lupa’s thoughts (which, given Vayu’s emphatic abilities, may have been the case), Gale hurriedly reached down and slipped his shoes off of his feet, tossing them to the side without a care for where they would land. One of the shoes ended up smacking against the wall with enough force to trigger one of its hidden switches, and the two men winced at the sound of a concealed knife snapping free from its compartment.

“ Sorry.” Gale whispered. Lupa chuckled fondly and stroked his sides.

“ We will just have to watch our step when we are done.”

Gale frowned and wrinkled his nose. “ You think you are clever.”

“ Extremely. Is it working?”

“ I have a feeling that Fred rolled his eyes at you quite a bit.”

“ What can I say? It was my solemn duty as a father to make my son groan and pretend he didn’t know me in public, and old habits die hard.” With a playful wink, Lupa grabbed the bodysuit and worked it the rest of the way over Gale’s legs, laughing at the impatient way the Bishop kicked it off his ankles and onto the floor. “ Eager, are we?”

“ Of course I am eager; I have dreamt of this for weeks.” Lupa had not expected such a frank and instantaneous reply, and it was his turn to be speechless as Gale--now clad only his black undershirt and shorts--returned to neatly straddling his waist. “ Also, I have noticed that for the first time, I am the one who is comparatively under-dressed. I feel as if this is something we should rectify.”

That’s right, Lupa thought dimly, as if he was realizing for the first that there was another component to the affair besides Gale. I am also a willing participant who should probably get undressed to move things along.

“ Then by all means,” Lupa murmured, giving Gale a nod of permission as he reached out to grab his vest. “ It’s funny; you almost sounded like Roland just then.”

Gale paused in pulling off Lupa’s vest and looked up in confusion. “ Your friend? How so?”

“  He would always pick at me about how I never wore a shirt on missions.” Lupa laughed breathily and shifted his arms through the holes in his vest, which Gale took and promptly threw aside. “ We were fighting so much in those days that I often had to change my clothing and shower before going home to Fred; after all, I did not want to see me covered in blood. Eventually, I stopped wearing a shirt altogether; a vest with pockets worked just as well, and it was one less article of clothing to change at the end of the day.”

Gale hummed in thought. “ Given that shirts offer next to no protection in combat, I can see the logic behind such a decision, especially with clothing and goods in short supply. Besides, I suspect that neither your men nor the Society cared whether or not you wore a shirt in battle.”

Lupa snorted. “ You would think, but Roland was always peculiar; he would say things like ‘perception matters’ all of the time, yet I could have given less of a damn about how the Society perceived me. Frankly, given how he had the tendency to suffer from secondhand embarrassment, I think he was the only one bothered by my lack of shirt.”

Gale smirked. “ Well, I must admit, I do not mind your lack of shirt in the slightest.”

“ Oh? Well I suppose I am glad for-- ah! ”

Without warning, Gale had licked a stripe up the Lava Flow on Lupa’s stomach, making the man shudder and the demon inside snarl from a completely different kind of hunger. The Atma mark flared red and hot beneath the Bishop’s tongue.

“ Gale!” Lupa hissed. The Bishop in question glanced up at him and smirked, sending a near painful jolt of pleasure through his cock.

“ Yes. I do not believe I mind at all.” 

After mouthing his way down the rock-hard plane of Lupa’s abdomen, Gale moved his right hand to Lupa’s crotch, hesitating just a moment before he pressed the heel of his palm against the bulge in his pants. Fireworks exploded in front of Lupa’s eyes, and the older man dimly heard himself snarl as he flung out his arms, fisting his bedsheets in a desperate attempt to keep himself from losing control.

“ Fuck, Gale! ” Lupa gasped, letting his head fall back against the wall with a soft ‘thunk’. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck; not like this . “ Gale, please, just... wait! Wait a moment!”

The Bishop immediately pulled his hand off of Lupa’s crotch and lurched upwards, eyes flaring with equal parts surprise and alarm. “ Lupa, what is it?! Did I hurt you?!”

“ No...no...Gale, don’t worry.” Lupa smiled weakly and lifted a hand to wipe the sweat off of his brow. His breathing gradually began to slow as the torrent of arousal ebbed to a potent yet tolerable burning in his blood and groin. “ You were not hurting me in the slightest. In fact, if you had kept it up, I’m not sure I would have been able to last.” 

Gale blinked. “ I...I see.” He cocked his head to the side. “ Is that not the intent behind this activity, however? Why would you wish to delay your release?”

It should have been illegal for a grown man to be that precious. “ Because if I orgasmed, I may not be able to do it again for hours, and there is something I wish to do with you first.”

God, he had been this close to coming in his pants like an overeager teenager, and who the hell knew what the refractory period would be for this new body of his? Lupa couldn’t take the risk of spending himself early and leaving Gale with only his hands or mouth to satisfy him. The night was long, and Gale was beautiful and miraculous; he deserved all of the warmth and touch Lupa could offer.

“ I...I see.” It was clear that Gale did not, but he slid himself back up Lupa’s waist anyway, straddling the older man’s pelvis with his powerful thighs. “ What exactly do you have in mind, then?”

“ I thought Bishops were supposed to be patient.” Lupa teased. He laughed gaily at the pout on the younger man’s face and reached forward to rest his hands on the small of his back. “ We’ll be there soon enough. First off, we should probably get you out of the rest of these clothes, yes?”

Gale’s cheeks flushed. “ Ah...yes...I forgot.”

Lupa chuckled and leaned forward, giving Gale a soft kiss on one of his cherry-red cheeks before grabbing the hem of his undershirt, waiting for Gale to lift his arms in the air before pulling it off in a single fluid motion.

“ You’re beautiful,” Lupa whispered, flinging the shirt somewhere before taking yet another moment to appreciate the view before him. He ran his hands over Gale’s chest, ribs, abdomen, stomach--everywhere he could touch, marveling at the toned chest and muscular arms that belied Gale’s primary role as a noncombatant. “ Just... beautiful . There is no one in Nirvana that can hold a candle to you, Gale.”

“ I fail to see what candles have to do with anything.” Regardless of his confusion, the smile on Gale’s face spread like a sunrise, and he arched eagerly into Lupa’s exploring caresses. “ Yet if you are saying that I... ah …” He shivered, eyes and face briefly blanking out as Lupa’s mouth replaced his hands, but he regained his train of thought a few seconds later. “ If you are saying...saying that I am better than any in Nirvana, then I appreciate the sentiment...even if...even if such a statement is an exaggeration of the grossest ord-- ngh! ”

Lupa looked up in appreciation as Gale closed his eyes, threw his head back, and moaned . Given that Gale had literally been born to think, he knew that getting him to completely turn his brain off was an impossible goal, but being able to give him pause was more than enough success.

“ I do not think it is an exaggeration, Gale--especially since I spent the entirety of my old life looking for someone like you.” He lapped his tongue soothingly over the area he had bitten before dragging his lips along Gale’s skin to his breastbone. “ I have never met anyone like you, Gale, and I will never meet anyone like you again.” Another kiss. Another lick. “ My whirlwind. My tempest in a teapot.” 

A kiss. A lick. A bite. A suck. A bite. A bite .

“ Lupa! ”

Gale whimpered, swinging his powerful legs up and around the small of Lupa’s back, and he squeezed and pulled them towards him in an attempt to bring Lupa even closer. The older man could feel how Gale’s calves strained and trembled against him, and the thought of how Gale--despite slipping further and further into the throes of pleasure--was desperately trying to control himself to keep from hurting Lupa was both heartwarming and arousing. God , if Lupa grew any harder, he might actually explode.

“ Gale,” Lupa whispered, pulling away from his body just enough to look up at him. The Bishop didn’t respond, eyes screwed shut and face sweaty and flushed, and the Leader frowned at how his body was shaking like a leaf in a storm. Something wasn’t right.

“ Gale,” he tried again, moving his hands down to Gale’s thighs. The younger man groaned in something other than pleasure and wilted forward, resting his forehead on Lupa’s own.

“ I...I need…” Gale’s eyes fluttered open, and he gazed plaintively down at Lupa, who smiled reassuringly up at him as he rubbed his legs. “ Just a moment...please…everything is starting to slip away from me, and I cannot...cannot keep a hold of…”

“ I understand.” Lupa massaged his hands up and down Gale’s thighs, rhythmically squeezing and kneading the flesh beneath his palms, and his heart fluttered at the soft little ‘coo’ of delight that escaped Gale’s lips. “ Take all of the time you need, Gale; the night is young, and I am not going anywhere.”

Perhaps a more callous and arrogant person would have laughed at Gale and said something along the lines of “what’s the point of having sex if you don’t lose control?!”. Maybe they would have given up at that point, pushed Gale off of them, and told him to stop wasting their time. Maybe they would have thrown his clothes at him and told him to get out while making infantilizing and petty jokes at his retreating back. Cruel and merciless sun forbid, perhaps some of them would not have even stopped to check…

As Lupa waited for his beloved to regain his bearings, he found his mind flashing back to college--specifically, to the parties and bars he, Roland, Adil, and (on occasion) Alys had frequented during bouts of weekend boredom. Yes, many of those arrogantly indifferent people floated in and out of their spheres of acquaintances and friends, and they had always expected Lupa--who was not shy about his pride in his looks and his willingness to explore his sexuality--to agree with their myopic views of women, men, and sex in general. 

What had become of Roland and Adil’s more worthless ‘friends’? It wouldn’t surprise Lupa if they were part of the group that had thrown the ‘undesirables’ of humanity to the proverbial wolves to save themselves. The pretty, posh, and elite, who cleaned up nicely and always knew just what to say and how to say it, despite dripping venom behind the backs of others. All those outside of their personal circles were either conquests, hindrances, or stepping stones to achieve their goals.

He thought of the worst of them: a worryingly young prodigy; smooth and polished, with black hair and gray-violet eyes that seemed eerily familiar to Lupa in a way he could not place. Roland had told him so many stories of that Sheffield: of how he never hesitated to throw the other members of the biochemical research department under the bus to cull favor with his professors; of how he was forever stirring the proverbial pot and stepping back to watch the ‘social experiment’ unfold before him; and of how he had entrapped his beleaguered boyfriend in a web of honeyed words and harsh fists. 

Lupa thought back on that man--that bewilderingly familiar man--and wondered what he and the other sociopaths in sheep’s clothing that were so prevalent among the upper crust of the University of Southern California would have done with someone as priceless and unique as Gale.

Lupa cut off that train of thought before it could begin. No, he refused to entertain such a horrible thing.

A poke to his nose by a slender finger brought Lupa out of his musings, and he blinked and focused his gaze once more on Gale, who was peering down at him curiously.

“ Are you alright, Lupa?” Gale asked, concern blatant on his face. Lupa chuckled and shook his head, smiling sheepishly.

“ Forgive me, whirlwind; my thoughts have a tendency to run amok.” Lupa apologized. His hands had stilled on Gale’s thighs during his musings, and he began to rub them once more: up and down, up and down, up and down. “ Are you ready to continue?”

Gale nodded. While still clearly flushed and aroused, he had lost that worrying tremulousness, and his legs were steady as he unwound them from around Lupa’s back. 

“ Thank you for your patience.” Gale whispered. Lupa’s mind briefly returned to the past--to close-cut hair, pressed blazers, and Sheffield--before he violently dragged it back and latched it to the present.

“ Do not thank me for basic human decency, Gale. If there is one thing you must remember from this point on--especially if we are to return to what you call ‘Nirvana’--it is that what you do with your body and mind is your right and your right alone, and those who do not respect that autonomy are the most dishonorable beings on Earth.” Lupa’s face and words were as solemn as the dead, and Gale--after a few seconds of contemplation--nodded with just as much gravity in return.

“ I understand.” He kissed Lupa--slow and sweet--before pulling back. “ What about you? Are you ready to continue, Lupa?”

Lupa grinned wolfishly. “ Without hesitation.”

They kissed, and kissed , and soon the mood of the room had escalated into a crackling heat that made Lupa feel as if electricity was dancing on his skin. Gale writhed and moaned under his hands and lips, and when Lupa thumbed the elastic of Gale’s undershorts as a silent question, his answer came in the form of a bruising kiss and a raspy ‘ yes ’ that set Lupa’s blood aflame. Unlike the bodysuit, the shorts were able to be removed with a single fluid movement, and then there was nothing but Gale before him, beautifully bare and completely unguarded for the first time in his life. 

God, God; Lupa’s heart felt like it was going to stop. Gale was so fucking perfect that it was literally going to kill him. What a hell of a way to go.

“ Lupa…” Gale gasped, shuddering as the cold, circulated air of the room touched his newly bared skin. He reached down and grabbed the waistbands of both Lupa’s leggings and outer body armor. “ Please...I want to see you as well…”

Oh. Yes. His own clothing. He kept forgetting about that.

Thanks to the Wolves’ tendency to eschew the common Junkyard dress code of ‘composing your uniform with all of the layers, buckles, snaps, and belts you can wear while still being able to move and fight’, Lupa was clad only in his low-riding black leggings and gray flex armor, and it was a simple matter of unzipping and shimmying out of both garments. Sighing in contentment at the relief of pressure, Lupa kicked them off of the bed and turned his attention back to Gale, feeling his cheeks heat up at the intensity of those clever green eyes as they raked over every inch of his bare body. Had any of his past lovers ever looked upon him so ardently? It was enough to make a man feel flattered!

“ Lupa…” Gale gasped, staring at Lupa as if he was something stunning and not just a naked man in good physical condition. “ Lupa...you are magnificent . You are more wonderful than all of the versions of you that were conjured in my dreams.”

Lupa’s cheeks grew even darker from embarrassment. “ Oh, hush. I am not.”

Gale’s eyebrows raised towards his hairline. “ Does this mean that only you are allowed to lavish praise? How very hypocritical of you. I should have just as much of a right to call you beautiful as you call me.”

“ No, no; it’s fine! I’m just... not used to it, is all.” Lupa admitted, laughing nervously and shifting his gaze to the right. Good Lord; he was a grown man who had been sexually active quite a few times in his past, yet Gale was making him feel like an anxious teenager staring his first time in the face all over again. Had it just been that long since he’d slept with anyone? “ Besides, I don’t think anyone has looked at me the way you have before. You know, like I am, well...” He trailed off and shrugged.

Like I am your everything.

Gale made a small noise of displeasure under his breath. “ That is...very unfortunate.”

“ I do not believe so.” Lupa replied honestly. He reached up and brushed a few wayward strands out of Gale’s face, tucking them behind his left ear as he spoke. “ I don’t think I would have liked it nearly as much if anyone else had looked at me like that. In fact, if one of my old lovers had confessed feelings similar to yours, I think I would have broken it off immediately.”

“ ‘Broken it off’...you mean, terminated your relationship?”

“ Yes.”

“ But...why?” Gale mused, gracing Lupa with yet another endearing owlish head tilt. “ Such a thing is...difficult to comprehend. I thought it was a good thing to feel loved.”

“ It is, but the reality is...far more complicated.” Lupa said, shrugging slightly. “ As I told you earlier, I have never felt love for anyone the way I love you; so if one of those partners that I did not love confessed such feelings to me, I would have been faced with the fact that I was unable to love them back. Such one-sided relationships are...very unfair to both parties, you see.”

Gale touched the index and middle fingers of his right hand to the bridge of his nose and nodded. What a curious trait. It almost reminded him of Roland.

“ I see.” He mused, dropping his hand back down to rest on Lupa’s bare left side. “ The one party who loved would feel underappreciated, and the one party that did not love would feel guilty about being unable to reciprocate the other’s feelings; I can indeed see why such a relationship would be destined for hardship and failure.

“ Exactly.” Lupa grinned up at Gale, who smiled bashfully in return. “ Which is why I think it is fortunate that the only one who has ever loved me in such a way is one that I love just as much in return. It means there is no bitterness of the past to tamp the sweetness of the present.” He smoothed his fingers over Gale’s hair, left temple, and left cheek, delighting in the way Gale pressed into his touch. “ My first and last love...you are mine, and I am yours.”

Gale sucked in a sharp breath.

“ You are mine...and I am yours.” He parroted, eyes blank and face flat as he mulled over the sentiment. 

The meaning behind the words seemed to click in his head after a few seconds, and the Bishop screwed his eyes shut and turned his face into Lupa’s palm, holding it in place with both of his hands. Yet more tears began to stream down his face, shimmering in the light pollution emanating from the window, and Lupa leaned forward to kiss the trails where they crossed his cheeks. They were salty--of course they were--yet he could taste the sweetness of Gale’s joy and hope all the same.

“ Shhhh...my Gale…” Lupa whispered, brushing their noses together. “ I’m sorry, Gale; was that too much?”

“ No...no...it was perfect.” Gale said, opening his eyes and releasing Lupa’s wrist in favor of wrapping his arms around the older man’s back. “ You are perfect.” He continued to cry, but the smile on his face was the definition of radiance, and he tipped his forehead forward to rest on Lupa’s own. “ You are mine, and I am yours. I like that. I like that very much.”

Lupa couldn’t keep the dopey grin off of his face. He couldn’t help himself at all when it came to how Gale made him feel. Whenever he was with Gale, he felt like Nirvana was within reach, even if his own version of paradise was far different from the one revered by the rest of the Junkyard. “ I like you very much. Come here, tempest; let me feel you.”

Gale’s body seemed to flow against him like the wind currents that Vayu plucked like violin strings. The skin that had been hidden beneath his clothing was as soft as silk and already damp with sweat, yet despite the flush that colored almost every inch of Gale’s pale body, his skin was cool where it made contact with Lupa’s Atma-heated own. The Leader of the Wolves gasped and shivered--feeling prickles of ice and sparks of static shooting through his limbs and into his core--and he just barely managed to swallow a moan at the feel of wetness beginning to drip down his cock. Oh fuck. Oh fuck .

Gale kissed him, long and slow, and Lupa took the interlude to gently coax them both downward until they were once more lying side by side, legs tangled and hands roaming everywhere as they kissed and touched and breathed each other in.

“ Gale,” Lupa breathed, taking advantage of a pause in their contact to regain his footing and lay out his plan. “ Gale, please…may I touch you?”

“ Touch me? But you have already been... oh .” Gale briefly seemed to forget how to breathe, and Lupa watched, entranced, as the Bishop’s pupils dilated in a blink. “ You mean...oh, yes , God, please Lupa.”

Gale didn’t have to ask twice. With equal parts gentleness and nervousness, Lupa reached between their bodies and took Gale’s cock in his right hand, his heart hammering at his ribs at the feel of the pulsing hardness against his palm. Gale moaned, eyes flying wide open with surprise before fluttering shut, and he bucked so violently against Lupa that he almost dropped him.

“ I’m sorry! Forgive me; I am…” Already struggling for coherency, Gale gripped Lupa’s shoulders and buried his face in the junction between his neck and shoulder, grunting and panting as Lupa began to slowly move his hand, up and down, up and down. “ I cannot...cannot stop myself...oh, Lupa, I’m trying…!” 

As if to emphasize his point, his legs spasmed on the bed, and he dug his fingernails into Lupa’s skin and tightened his body to what seemed to be a painful degree in an attempt to keep himself still. That just wouldn’t do.

“ It’s alright, Gale,” Lupa soothed, trying to focus on easing Gale’s tension rather than how indescribably hot it was that Gale was breaking apart from nothing more than a gentle hand on his cock. It was simultaneously one of the most arousing and touching things Lupa had ever witnessed. “ Just let your body move the way it wants. I’ve got you.”

“ But...but if I kick...I d-d-do not want to h-hurt you--!”

Lupa’s heart twisted into a knot. This unbelievably wonderful man.

“ You won’t hurt me. I promise.” As intoxicating as Gale’s responses were, Lupa stilled his hand to allow Gale an unhindered moment to think, although maintained a loose grip around his cock. “ I’ve got you, Gale, and I’m going to take care of you. I promise. It’s okay to let go…”

Gale whimpered and rubbed his face against Lupa’s shoulder. “ I don’t know how…I’ve never….I do not comprehend, Lupa...”

“ I know. I understand.” Lupa pressed a kiss against what he could reach on Gale’s head and began to lightly trail his fingers up and down his hardness. Gale moaned and jerked, his movements still uncomfortably stiff, and Lupa brought his left hand up to knead the back of Gale’s neck. “ Just start by relaxing and letting yourself move. Don’t worry about me, okay? Just allow yourself to feel. I’ll pull back myself if it becomes too much. Alright?”

Gale hesitated, then nodded against Lupa’s skin, and the older man could feel the younger man’s body finally give beneath his touch.

“...alright.” The Bishop finally whispered. “ I am ready now, Lupa.”

With another fond kiss against what was either Gale’s head or one of his prosthetic implants, Lupa tightened his grip around Gale’s cock and began to slowly pump his hand up and down, keeping his gaze trained on Gale’s legs to make sure he wasn’t tensing up again. Fortunately, Gale seemed to be taking his advice to heart, and Lupa felt a stupid amount of giddiness when he felt one of Gale’s feet kick painfully into his shins. He couldn’t help but hope that there would be a bruise in the morning.

“ What about you?” Gale somehow rasped between his pants and moans. Lupa chuckled fondly and nuzzled Gale’s damp hair, beginning to quicken his pace now that he was sure that Gale wouldn’t strain a muscle trying to keep himself still.

“ We will get to that.” Lupa said. “ Just let yourself feel this, Gale. That is what I want.” On a whim, he rubbed the pad of his thumb over the younger man’s already slick slit, and Gale cried out in abandon before painlessly digging his teeth into the meat of Lupa’s shoulder. Yes. Good.

Lupa had always been the type of sexual partner that was keenly aware of his partners’ wants, needs, and responses during sex. Sure, getting off was well and good--he wasn’t going to deny that--but he could always just use his own hand if he wanted to do nothing but orgasm. The real joy in sex, Lupa believed, was to make your partner as happy and satisfied as possible--which Alys once said made him a ‘service top’, but he never much cared for labels when it came to his sexuality. All he knew was that as horny as he was for Gale at that moment (and cruel and callous sun , just calling himself ‘horny’ felt like the understatement of the century), Gale’s own pleasure was far more important. If the Bishop’s worst fears did happen to come true (as much as Lupa didn’t even want to consider such a horrific notion), then not only would that night possibly be the only chance they would have to sleep together, but it might be Gale’s only chance, period. If this was going to be the Bishop’s one shot at sex, then by god, Lupa was going to do his damndest to make it memorable in all of the right ways. He would make Gale feel good, happy, loved, and safe if it was the last thing he did in his second life.

Besides, as relieving as getting off himself would be, Lupa found himself almost intoxicated by the way Gale was responding to his touch. Even after Lupa’s gentle admonishment to not tense up, it was obvious that the Bishop had first tried to restrain himself as much as possible: biting his lip, hiding his face, and tensing and flattening his hands against Lupa’s back to keep from digging his nails into his skin. It was a valiant attempt, but as the Bishop grew more comfortable with what he was feeling, the Leader grew both faster and bolder with his movements; and Lupa stroked, twisted, touched, and watched with fascination as Gale’s practiced composure crumbled like so much cigarette ash. His eyes squeezed shut, his body tensed, and his fingertips dug into the thick skin of Lupa’s back. One particularly inventive flourish later, and those fingers became claws, raking down the older man’s back in a frantic scramble for purchase. 

“ Lupa…” Gale groaned, finally conceding his battle to remain silent. A twist, a pull, and Gale actually yelled into Lupa’s neck as drips of sticky wetness began to slide down the back of Lupa’s hand. “ Oh, fuck! ”

That’s the first time I’ve ever heard Gale say that curse, Lupa realized, and goddamn ; that should not have been nearly as arousing as it was. His left hand clenched around his pillow as he resisted the urge to just reach down and jerk himself off, if only so he could relieve himself of the aching, burning, and pressure that made him feel like he was going to split open any second. It was too hot, too cold, too much, not enough , and Lupa worried irrationally that he was going to lose his mind before it was all over.

It would have been so easy, then, to get himself and Gale off in quick succession. Yet even at the most horny he had been in his life, Lupa was still not the biggest fan of instant gratification, and the thought of reducing Gale’s first time to nothing but a quick hand job did wonders to cool him off and calm him down enough to think. No, no ; Gale deserved more than the treatment one would get in a bathroom stall of a club or the backseat of a car. 

Lupa screwed his eyes shut, took a few deep breaths, and slowly forced himself back from the edge. It also helped that Gale chose that moment to kick his other shin with enough force to make him wince. How many times had he been kicked thus far? Lupa had lost count, really; and he resigned himself to the thought of waiting until morning to count the dusky violet bruises that were left behind.

...wait, no, that thought wasn’t helping. That thought was absolutely not helping. Jesus Chirst, pull yourself together, Lupa.

“ The cat never eats.”

The words were entirely unexpected for the situation they were in, and for a moment, Lupa wondered if he was somehow aroused to the point of hallucinating. When he pulled back to look at Gale, however, he found the younger man staring into nothing with those luminous green eyes of his. Lupa frowned and stopped his hand.

“ What was that, Gale?”

Gale blinked--as if emerging from a trance--and peered up at his lover. His green hair was plastered to his face, completely soaked with sweat, and his body and cheeks were as red as a compact full of blush. Yet despite his cock being rock hard, slick, and throbbing in Lupa’s palm, it was clear that Gale’s mind had wandered elsewhere.

“ We may be artificial intelligences--outside of you, of course--but we still require sustenance in the form of food and water, and we suffer the same consequences of hunger and dehydration as carbon-based lifeforms. Yet not once have I witnessed the cat eating or drinking.”

As confused as Lupa initially was, the odd statement was...intriguing, and the Leader of the Wolves found racking his brain for whatever memories he had of the cat. When Sera had first introduced him to the cat (which she had named ‘Mr. Mitten’ because of its one white paw), he had found it bewildering that a cat of all things was in the Junkyard, but he had simply chalked it up to some sort of glitch or ‘easter egg’ implanted in the simulation’s code. It acted like a cat, and he had seen it play, meow, purr, hiss, and scratch like a cat. It may have been a virtual cat, but it was a cat all the same, and Lupa took a great deal of joy in setting the cat on his lap and petting it whenever he found himself pining for ‘Nirvana’ in all of the ways that hurt.

Now that he thought about it, however...

“ You know, I haven’t either.” Lupa mused, his mouth twisting into a lopsided frown as he racked his brain and came up empty-handed. He let go of Gale’s cock, wiped his right hand thoroughly on the sheets, and used it to stroke Gale’s hair once he was sure it was clean. “ I never paid much mind to it, however, since I only ever visit Muladhara for short periods of time. But it never has eaten in front of me...you’re sure you’ve never seen it eat or drink yourself?”

Gale frowned and solemnly shook his head. “ Not once. Cielo and Sera always leave out a bowl of water and an open tin of rations for it, but I always end up having to throw the ration away once it begins to mold and rot. The level in the water bowl, too, never goes down; and I have never had to replace it with clean water...which makes no sense, given the cat would leave behind saliva and hair if it drank.”

Lupa blinked. “ You’re right. That is...very odd. It could be getting food and water elsewhere in the base, however. Perhaps it simply doesn’t like the types of rations Sera and Cielo set out for it. Cats--at least the ones in Nirvana--are notoriously picky creatures.”

“ True,” Gale hummed, laying his head on Lupa’s chest and closing his eyes in contentment as he was wrapped once more in the older man’s arms. “ Sera and Cielo had a similar thought process, however, and they have been setting out different varieties of ration with no success. I was thinking of suggesting that they lay out all of the varieties with the cat nearby and then hide somewhere and watch. Yet I wonder if those two even possess the required self-control required to wait out a cat.”

Lupa barked out a laugh. “ That is very true. Children--even older ones like Cielo--have very poor self-control until a certain age.” He kissed Gale’s sweaty hair, tucked his head underneath his chin, and mused on the matter for a few seconds. “ You and I could perform the experiment, if you want. In my exploration of the tunnels, I discovered a long-abandoned store room with rations from previous versions of the Junkyard; if the cat himself is from a past version, perhaps he prefers the food from that time as well.”

Gale pulled his head out from under Lupa’s chin to look up at him and touched his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “ That...is an excellent idea. Perhaps the cat is an artifact from a former…” He frowned, eyes briefly darkening with sorrow and confusion, and Lupa held him closer still.

There were times when Lupa second-guessed telling Gale of what he had learned of the Asura and Nirvana Projects during that final mission with Alys--moments when he wished he could go back in time to that day in the medical bay at Muladhara and tell himself to stop before he could speak. Gale was so very strong--physically and mentally--and after the initial time it took to process the probable nature of his existence (which had involved him vanishing from Muladhara for a few hours and returning without explanation to a frantic Serph and loudly annoyed but equally concerned Heat), he seemed to almost embrace his identity as a (supposed) artificial intelligence. Yet there were times when Gale’s gaze grew distant and shadowed, and it had become a common occurrence for Gale to call or visit Lupa for what was ostensibly idle chit-chat, but would swiftly escalate into the need for reassurance.

“ Do you believe I am real? ” Gale would often ask in a voice that was far too small for such a force of nature.

“ You are as real as all those in the Junkyard who are reincarnations.” Lupa would reply with every ounce of conviction and honesty in his body. “ You exist in the same world as the rest of us; if I am real, then you are as well.”

Gale would be soothed and steadied by Lupa’s words, and as the days turned into weeks, the raw wound carved by Lupa’s revelation had soon healed into a sturdy scar. Yet even old scars could burn and ache, and as Lupa waited for Gale to reel himself away from his phantom pain in the present, he could not help but wonder if he had made a mistake in being so frank and honest with the Bishop. The truth was such a heavy burden to bear, and since both he and Lupa felt it unwise to inform the others en masse of the truth behind the Junkyard, it was a burden that Gale had to bear alone.

No, not alone, Lupa reminded himself. I am alive, I am going to stay alive, and I am going to be with him.

“...from a past build of the Junkyard,” Gale finally finished, gazing up at Lupa with an expression that straddled neutral and plantitive. “ It could be that the cat is a manifestation of prototype code that was left in place after subsequent updates. Now I find myself curious, though, as to whether the cat is like the rest of us.”

“ You mean a sentient being and not a simple program.”

Gale nodded. Lupa hummed thoughtfully and gently ‘bonked’ his forehead against Gale’s.

“ Well, now you have me wondering as well.” Lupa concluded, laughing fondly at the intense expression on Gale’s face--and over a cat, no less! The older man was genuinely curious, however, so he did not have to plant false enthusiasm in his voice as he replied to the younger. “ Our first priority will be going to Serph and Jinana and discussing the Church. After that, I’ll go into the tunnels and retrieve the food, and we can arrange a night when I will be visiting Muladhara to put our plan into motion. Perhaps I will even have Helios fashion a net; catching cats is a notoriously difficult practice, but a close study of it may help determine if it is a simulation or a sentient being.”

Gale frowned. “ It will not require harming the creature, will it? It would break Sera’s heart if it were harmed, and even if it is naught but a shallow program, it still deserves to live a pain-free and pleasant existence. There is far too much suffering in the Junkyard as it is.”

God. God. Lupa was so fucking gone for this man, and he kept falling deeper and deeper into the pit of no return with each passing moment. How much more wonderful could Gale get? Was there even a limit ? Lupa was beginning to suspect there was not. What an absolute miracle he held in his arms.

“ I swear upon my honor that the cat will not be harmed.” Lupa stated solemnly. “ A simple physical exam should be non-traumatic, and we will release it back to Sera as soon as we have obtained what data we can. That is, if we can even catch it at all; the cats my sister fostered when we were growing up would slip through your hands like butter!”

The bit about ‘butter’ seemed to throw Gale off, but he nodded all the same, at least knowing of the substance enough to piece the meaning of the simile together. 

“ So, when will you go into the tunnels?”

There was something in Gale’s voice that had Lupa frowning. “ I can make the trip once I return to Svadhisthana. The storage area is very close to the branch that leads to Anahata; it should not take me more than a few hours.”

“ Will you go alone?”

Lupa blinked. “ Perhaps. It will be a short trip, and there’s no reason to bother anyone else with it, since the cash is close and within our territory.”

A heavy sadness settled in Gale’s eyes, and he shook his head back and forth on the pillow, strands of sweaty green hair hitting him in the cheeks with the motion. “ No. No you will not. I will accompany you.”

“ Gale, you really don’t have to--”

“ This is non-negotiable, Lupa. I will accompany you.”

A disbelieving laugh spilled from Lupa’s lips. What on earth had gotten into Gale? Why was he being so ridiculous all of the sudden? “ Gale, whirlwind, I appreciate the thought, but that really isn’t necessary. I am more than capable of taking care of my--”

The words suddenly died in Lupa’s mouth as his brain finally finished connecting the dots between the words, the context, and the miserably anxious look on his beloved’s face. Oh. Oh.

Oh.

“ I...I understand.” It took a few attempts, but Lupa finally managed to force words past the white hot knot that had tied itself at the base of his throat, even if his voice was nothing more than a feeble croak. “ Of course you can come with me, Gale; of course . We’ll wait until you’re next in Svadhisthana to retrieve the rations. There’s no rush.”

Gale’s body seemed to wilt with relief, but the expression of discontent remained on his face, and he cast his gaze downward in what appeared to be shame--which was bewildering to Lupa, because Gale had no reason to feel ashamed. Lupa was the one that…

That…

“ Thank you, Lupa.” Gale whispered, keeping his eyes downcast. “ Forgive me. I know I’m being irrational about this, but--”

“ There is nothing to forgive.” Lupa’s voice, while gentle, was firm and uncompromising. “ There is nothing irrational about worrying for me after what happened in the tunnels. For heaven’s sake, Gale, I…” He reached out and touched Gale’s cheek with tremulous fingertips. “ I hurt you , Gale. I hurt you and you don’t have to simply accept that and move on.”

I nearly forced you to kill me. Lupa had known that, of course, but the enormity of what had transpired was suddenly hitting him like a cinder block to the face. The events of that day were so terribly cloudy to Lupa, but now that he was lying face-to-face with the consequences, the blurry snapshots of memory he possessed were suddenly popping into vivid color. You loved me--even then you loved me--and I made you dig your blades into my flesh. I asked you to eat my body as I lay dying in your arms. The only one to blame for your fear is me. 

Gale nodded, closed his eyes, and sighed. When he opened them again, all traces of distress had vanished from his expression, and he laid his hand over the one that Lupa was resting on his cheek.

“ May we talk about this another time?” He asked. “ Not now, of course, but…”

“ Soon.” Lupa agreed, nodding and ignoring the yawning pit that had opened in his gut at those words. He did not want to talk about what happened in the tunnels. He absolutely did not want to talk about what happened in the tunnels. If it was for Gale, however, he would force out the bitter, biting words from a place he rarely shared. Best to do it in the morning--both to soothe Gale’s nerves and to simply get it over with . “ Tomorrow. I promise.”

“ Agreeable.” Gale smiled and canted his head forward, rubbing their noses together. “ Not tonight, however. Not tonight.”

There was something about Gale’s existence--especially when it was in close proximity to Lupa’s own--that made the world seem bigger and brighter. The shadow of Cerberus and the sensation of blood on his teeth faded into the background of Lupa’s thoughts, and all that remained was his tempest in a teapot: lively, lovely, and real . He couldn’t keep the grin from his lips, nor the rumbling laugh from his voice as he closed the scant distance between them, relishing in the way Gale’s toes curled against his shins as they kissed.

After the unexpected (and somewhat distressing) turn of their conversation, Lupa had almost all but forgotten why they were lying in bed in the first place, and he would have probably been happy to kiss Gale for the rest of the night. Then there were cool, long fingers tentatively wrapping around his cock, and the heave of his breath and the stars in his eyes reminded him that oh, oh . Lupa was still hard as rock, still horny to high heaven, and still drunk on Gale’s touch and voice and smell and oh, fuck , Gale.

“ Is this alright?” Gale whispered hoarsely. Lupa groaned and shook his head as he tried to remember what words were and how they worked.

“ It’s more than alright,” he finally managed, letting his forehead sink against Gale’s shoulder as he attempted to ground himself. Then the pad of Gale’s thumb brushed against his slit, and oh God , nope, he couldn’t let this continue--not if he was going to get anything else done that night. “ Nnngh, Gale, wait …”

The hand was off his hardness in an instant, and Lupa felt equal parts frustration and distress at its absence, so much so that it nearly made him cry. He took deep, steadying breaths instead, then pulled his head back to look at a now concerned Gale.

“ Did I hurt you?” Gale asked. Lupa shook his head and smiled reassuringly.

“ No, you didn’t.” He sighed and used his right hand to wipe the beads of sweat from his brow before continuing. “ It was just...like before. That’s all.”

Seafoam green eyes widened in realization. “ Oh. Yes. There is a sexual act that you wish to attempt before reaching climax.” Gale’s eyelids sank to half-mast as the flush crept back to his cheeks. “ I must admit...I am very interested as to what you have in mind, although I am not sure how apt I will be if it involves multiple steps. I am already quite... flustered , as you have seen, and I’m more prone to confusion when flustered.”

Multiple steps? Cruel and callous sun--just what did the Church of Kamra have in its database on the subject of human reproduction? The kama sutra?

“ No, no, whirlwind. No steps.” Lupa promised, tightening his abdominal muscles to a painful degree to keep his brewing laughter contained. “ It’s rather simple, really, one of the simplest positions there is--although I have a fondness for those simple positions. Too much complication takes away from the moment and the connection you have with the other.” He brushed a few sweaty strands of green hair from Gale’s face and tucked them behind the shell of his ear. “ I was thinking about having you ride me.”

Gale blinked several times. “ Riding?” He bit his lower lip and glanced away shyly. “ While I know the basic mechanics of sex between two beings with phallic genetalia, I am afraid I am not as familiar with the... logistics of the affair. Could you please clarify as to what you mean?”

“ Of course.” 

Deciding it would be a good idea to ‘show’ as well as ‘tell’, Lupa untangled himself from Gale and sat up, shifting backwards until his back was leaning on the headboard. He then coaxed a very perplexed Gale into a sitting position himself, and with gentle hands and guiding words, he helped maneuver the Bishop so that he was once more straddling his waist.

“ I would like to penetrate you.” It was frank--frank in a way that made Lupa’s soul scream with embarrassment--but now was not the time to be coy with his descriptions. If Gale didn’t know what he was getting into, then he wouldn’t be able to truly consent, and that was not an option. “ However, instead of you lying with your back on the bed and me over you, I want you to sit over me like this.” With a sly smile, he reached up and placed his hands on Gale’s powerful thighs, stroking them appreciatively. “ You would have to lift yourself up and down with your legs--which, given your lower body strength, shouldn’t be much of a problem. It would also allow you to control the pace; since if you feel overwhelmed or if things become painful, you can stop without having to worry about me.”

Plus, Lupa thought to himself; if you start to panic during sex, you won’t be pinned between my arms and underneath my body. You’ll be able to escape with ease.

“ I see.” Gale mused, and Lupa was relieved to see that the Bishop was clearly interested in the idea, despite the expected nervousness on his face. “ So that is ‘riding’.” He hummed under his breath for a few seconds, eyelashes fluttering, before nodding. “ Yes, I believe that will be...more than acceptable.” 

Gale’s breath caught at the last word, and Lupa smiled slyly, moving his hands up and inward so that he could stroke the creases of Gale’s thighs. The Bishop keened lowly and rocked into the touch.

“ Nng... Lupa …” Gale reached out with his hands and grabbed fistfulls of the bed sheets as he bowed forward. The faint sheen of sweat on his forehead and cheeks seemed to shine in the light pollution coming in through the window. “ Please . I need you. I need you so much .”

How could Lupa possibly say no to that ?

Of the scant amenities available to those who had the misfortune of calling the Junkyard their home, petroleum jelly was fortunately one of them, and Lupa always kept a jar at his bedside to work through his dreadlocks whenever he washed his hair. The Leader of the Wolves would most likely not get his shower that night, but there was more than one use for petroleum jelly, and it would be more than an acceptable substitute in lieu of proper lubricant. Lupa snatched it off the table, popped open the jar, and dipped the fingers of his right hand into the ointment.

Gale’s brow furrowed. “ That’s for...lubrication, yes?”

“ Exactly.” Once Lupa had coated his fingers with a very generous amount of petroleum jelly, he placed the jar back on his nightstand and turned his attention back to Gale, who now appeared decidedly nervous. He smiled reassuringly up at his lover and used his left hand to rub soothing circles into his right hip. “ Otherwise it would be too dry to be safe or comfortable, and I don’t want you to hurt, whirlwind.”

Gale nodded, biting his lower lip, and he studied Lupa’s jelly-covered fingers as if they were a complex mathematical equation he was attempting to solve. “ Will it…” He swallowed, licked his lips, and continued. “ Will it be pleasurable?”

“ Not at first,” Lupa replied honestly, reaching up with his left hand to cup Gale’s face. “ I’ll have to use my fingers to stretch and relax you, and it takes some time to loosen up, especially if this is your first time. There will at the very least be discomfort, but if I’m careful, whatever pain you feel will hopefully be no more than an ache that will fade as I work you open. The discomfort, too, should pass as you acclimate.” He brushed his thumb over Gale’s right cheekbone. “ However, if the pain becomes too much, or if you’re too uncomfortable to continue, you need to let me know right away so I can stop. This is an experiment, Gale; and if it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t work out, and we’ll try something else. Alright?”

Gale nodded, closing his eyes and leaning his face into Lupa’s hand. “ I understand. I trust you, Lupa.”

A tender sweetness filled Lupa’s chest. “ Your trust honors me, Gale. I will do my utmost to make sure it is not misplaced.”

The Bishop’s cheeks flushed even pinker than they were before. “ You are a flatterer.”

“ Not at all; I’m just honest.” Lupa’s left hand dropped down to knead his right hip as his right drifted back and down. “ I’m going to start inserting my fingers, alright? I need you to try to stay relaxed and keep from tensing up as I do this; otherwise, it’ll take longer and be more miserable for you.”

Gale nodded and released a shaky sigh through his nose. Lupa craned his head up and kissed him on the angle of his jaw.

“ I’ve got you.” He promised, whispering the words against Gale’s skin as he trailed his lips down to his pulse point. Gale shivered and pushed his head into the touch.

“ I know.” He whispered. “ I know. You have my permission to proceed.”

Permission to proceed? Good Lord. Good Christ . Lupa was beginning to wonder if Gale was actively trying to kill him. “ Okay. Remember, this is going to be uncomfortable, so tell me if you need a break.”

Another shaky (yet determined) nod.

As Lupa had expected, the moment he inserted his first finger, Gale hissed and clamped down around him. His thighs tightened around his pelvis, squeezing to the point of pain, but it only took him a second for him to realize what he was doing and pull them apart.

“ Sorry! I’m…” Gale released a shaky breath and let his head drop on Lupa’s shoulder. The Leader could feel how the Bishop’s body was all but vibrating as he tried to get himself to relax.

“ Take your time,” Lupa soothed, rubbing and kneading Gale’s lower back with his left hand. “ It’s going to be difficult the first time.” He began to carefully work his finger in and out and frowned as Gale’s shuddering worsened. “ Do you need me to stop?”

“ No, no, I’m...it’s just…” Gale took a few deep breaths in and out and tried again. “ It’s...strange...and somewhat uncomfortable. Not painful, however. You may continue.”

Lupa released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “ Okay.” He kissed Gale’s neck and made sure to keep his movements as gradual, gentle, and deliberate as possible. 

Slowly, very slowly, he felt Gale’s body relax over and around him, and the warm puffs of his breath grew calm and even on the skin of his shoulder. Even so, Lupa was in no rush, and he made sure Gale was as open and loose as he could make him with only one finger before pulling it out.

“ Are we done?” Gale asked, shifting slightly, and Lupa shook his head and tightened his grip on the younger man’s hip.

“ No, no; not yet. I’m going to use two fingers now, alright? The stretch will most likely burn, but if it doesn’t feel better within the next few minutes, you stop me. Okay?”

“ Understood.” Gale groaned. It was clear that the Bishop wasn’t having a fantastic time at that moment, and Lupa nudged Gale’s face out of his neck and gave him a peck on the lips, smiling sympathetically at his disgruntled expression as he pulled away.

“ We’re okay?” He queried. Gale frowned and exhaled thickly through his nose.

“ Was it...this strange for you?” He asked. “ During your first experience being penetrated.”

Lupa couldn’t help but wince at the memory.

“ Worse, actually,” he admitted, “ because we were both young and didn’t know what we were doing. That’s why I want to take my time with this. My first time taking--well, being the one penetrated--hurt a lot, but the later times didn’t, and they were, well…” Lupa swallowed and felt his cheeks redden from embarrassment. “ Much, much better; wonderful, even. If I didn’t think this would feel good for you, Gale, then I wouldn’t be suggesting it.”

“ I know that.” Gale insisted, shaking his head. “ I know that. I trust you . I just...it’s…”

“ New, strange, and something you wouldn’t have considered doing and didn’t even know existed just a few weeks ago.” Lupa finished. Gale nodded, and the older man craned his head forward, rubbing their noses together until a small smile returned to the younger’s face. “ It’s alright. Believe me, I understand; but it should get better. Bear with me for just a little longer?”

Gale nodded again, but there was far more confidence in the action, and Lupa could feel his thighs relaxing around his hips. With a sigh, Lupa re-coated the middle and index fingers of his right hand with petroleum jelly and reached forward once again, slipping them one after another into Gale’s entrance. 

“ Oh!”

It wasn’t an exclamation of joy; rather, Gale shouted as if he had been struck by a bolt lightning from a clear blue sky. It wasn’t exactly a painful cry, but the discomfort in the shout was all but tangible, and the clamp of Gale’s body around his fingers was tight enough to make them ache. His legs shook, his back arched, and his eyes were almost blank as they locked on the ceiling. The older man stilled his fingers in an instant.

“ Gale? Are you okay?” There was no reply--only silence--and Lupa had to almost physically fight the urge to yank his fingers back out. “ Gale, listen to me; do you need me to st--”

“ No!”

It was Lupa’s turn to jerk back, and he watched anxiously as Gale seemed to struggle with his own body, his logic and physical desire grappling with his innate, conditioned desire to fly or flee from the completely foreign intrusion.

“ Gale…” Without even fully registering it, Lupa moved his left free hand to grab Gale’s right, which he clung to like a vice. The Bishop’s left hand, meanwhile, had moved to snatch a fistful of bedsheets given the lack of any other handholds without pain receptors. The urge to pull his right hand out of Gale’s entrance and hold it was far from insignificant. “ I’m here, Gale. Tell me what you need.”

“ I…” The strategist’s eyes slipped shut, and Lupa’s stomach churned at the sight of the tears gathering on his lashlines, although he remained as still as a statue. “ It’s so much . Oh, Lupa; how did you stand this?”

It was as if Gale had ripped out Lupa’s heart, thrown it on the ground, and stomped it into paste with his steel-soled shoes. “ It was hard at first, and uncomfortable, but it gets much better once you adjust. However, this is not for everyone, Gale; and we can stop and try something else if you believe you truly cannot do this. I’m not dead set on this position. I promise.”

Gale shook his head, but the tears still gathered in the corners of his eyes, and his face was contorted into the definition of stress.

 “ I...I can…” The Bishop’s voice warbled, and he had to stop and swallow before continuing. “ I don’t know. I don’t...please, don’t move yet, Lupa. I am...struggling to relax myself, and if you try to move--”

“ I won’t.” Lupa vowed. “ I’m not going to move until you tell me it’s okay. I vow upon my honor.” He released Gale’s hand (who responded with a plaintive whimper) and reached his left arm up to curl around his shoulders, resting his hand just below the center of his shoulder blades. “ Would you like to rest your head on my shoulder while we wait? I think you can bend your torso forward without moving my fingers too much.”

“ Okay.” Gale whispered. “ I believe I would like that.”

It was difficult to keep his right hand steady as Gale bowed his body forward, and Lupa’s heart wrenched at the long, drawn-out whimper of pain that escaped from Gale’s lips at the most obtuse part of the curve. The moment the strategist laid his head on the leader’s shoulder, however, the muscles and shoulders of his back seemed to unspool like the string from a bobbin. He was still tense, and he was clearly still uncomfortable, but it was a far cry from the almost petrified rigidity of just a few seconds before. 

As promised, Lupa kept the fingers of his right hand completely still, despite the kink beginning to form in his wrist. He ran his left hand rhythmically up and down Gale’s spine and was relieved to feel him relax a little bit more every second. 

Gale really shouldn’t be doing this , he thought grimly, feeling how Gale’s arms shook from exhaustion where they wrapped around his back. No, not just ‘really’--he shouldn’t be doing this . Not tonight. He’s overwhelmed, overstimulated, and exhausted. One wrong move could send him crashing down. Why am I even agreeing to take such a risk?

Lupa knew exactly why, however; just as he he knew that if if was just about the sex or some sort of cliched ‘this could be our last night on Earth’ scenario, that not only would he have stopped after Gale’s first meltdown, but Gale himself would not have continued. This was not about sex; this was about so much more than sex , and it was for that reason alone that Lupa was willing to go along with Gale’s wishes.

That did not mean, however, that he would not treat their experience any differently than any other episode of intercourse.

“ We can stop whenever you want,” Lupa whispered, pressing his nose into Gale’s neck and breathing in the smell of his sweat. “ Remember that. Even if this does work out, and you’re able to ride me as planned, we’re done the moment you say we’re done.”

“ I’m not going to stop.” Despite the undercurrents of ache and anxiety in Gale’s voice, his words were as steadfast and resolute as those of a stone-hewn military general, and the squeeze he gave Lupa for emphasis was just as strong. “ I cannot stop , Lupa. No matter how many routes of escape you offer, no matter how many chances you give me to back out, I cannot take them . Please, please understand…”

“ I do,” Lupa said, and he meant it. “ I do understand, tempest; but that does not mean that I will not offer you the same consideration I have offered all of my past sexual partners. Just because you won’t stop doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be given every opportunity to stop if you so desire. I will do so tonight, and I will do so in the future if and when we decide to do this again, just as I know you will do for me. You may not need a safety net, Gale, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one open at all times.”

“ Lupa…” There were tears on his shoulder, and Gale’s breath was hitching in his ear, and oh no ; had Lupa said something wrong? Did Gale take the wrong idea from Lupa’s insistence? “ I’m so sorry, Lupa. I’m taking advantage of you…”

Wait, what?

“ Advantage?” Lupa barked incredulously. “ Gale, whirlwind, how could you possibly be taking advantage of me?”

“ Because you wish to stop,” Gale rasped, his shoulders quivering from the enormity of it all. “ You wish to stop but I am forcing you to continue. You are giving me every possible out but I have done nothing but push and hammer until I had my way. You are so kind and I am so selfish, and I--”

“ Gale. No. Stop. ”

Gale did; so rapidly, in fact, that it was as if he had been frozen solid by the mantra Serph had learned from that strange mechanical abomination at coordinate 136. Lupa moved his left hand to Gale’s right shoulder and forced him away just enough so that their gazes met, resolute brick-red locking with wrecked seafoam green.

“ If I was not willing to do this, Gale, then we would not be doing it.” Lupa stated in his best ‘Leader of the Lokapala and/or the Wolves’ voice. “ If I had not thought extensively about what we were going to do, why we were going to do it, and the pros and cons of both moving forward with the intended course or declining, then I would not currently be two fingers deep in you, Gale.”

The last bit was far cruder than Lupa would normally say, but he remembered how Alys had dispelled the tension and sadness of many a dour situation with off-color humor, and Lupa was not above leaning on what he knew and trusted in times of uncertainty. Fortunately for him, his subconscious gamble seemed to be fruitful, for an amused smile joined the red flush that spread across Gale’s pale face.

“ Interesting terminology.” Gale quipped. Lupa chuckled and gave his beloved’s forehead a playful ‘bonk’ with his own.

“ Blame Alys. You’ll see for yourself when we get to Nirvana, but she can make jokes raunchy enough to fluster Roland, and he’s fond of some atriocus types of ‘tasteful erotica’.” Lupa shuddered and shook his head. “ Regardless, my point stands; I’m not doing this because you’re forcing me. If I did not want to be here, I would not be here, and I, too, have the right to stop if I begin to feel uncomfortable.”

“ Of course.” Gale said immediately. Lupa’s smile widened.

“ I knew that, however, given how often you yourself have stopped and made sure I was comfortable during this process. You have not been selfish in the slightest.” 

“ Mmm.” Gale didn’t seem entirely convinced, but the twist to his mouth loosened, and Lupa couldn’t help but give one of the corners a kiss.

“ Also, to say that I’m not enjoying myself more than I have ever enjoyed myself in bed would be a bald-faced lie.” It was Lupa’s turn to flush dusky red from self-consciousness. “ I have never been as...well, aroused as I have been with you. I’m actually somewhat worried that I’m not going to last very long once I’m inside you.” He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “ The only time I’ve ever been this aroused before was when I was a teenager, and that was entirely because of the hormones. Not just that, but I’ve never...talked, laughed with, or enjoyed a partner as much as I do you. In fact, I think I can safely say that this is the only time I’ve ever truly enjoyed having sex.”

Lupa realized seconds too late just how bad his last statement came out, and given the way Gale’s eyes widened in alarm, it was clear that the Bishop had picked up on the unintended meaning. He opened his mouth, but Lupa immediately put a finger over his lips, smiling apologetically.

“ I’m sorry; that sounded awful, and it wasn’t what I meant at all.” He dropped his finger once Gale’s mouth was closed and rubbed his thumb along the dip of his chin. “ I’ve never been forced, I’ve always consented, and I’ve almost always enjoyed myself physically. This will be the first time, though, that I’ve ever enjoyed myself emotionally.”

“ I...I see.”

It was clear that Gale wasn’t completely swayed by Lupa’s explanation, and there was a flash of something in his eyes that Lupa wasn’t quite sure how to read, but at least he seemed satisfied that he wasn’t ‘taking advantage’ of the situation. His seafoam green eyes fluttered shut, and he laid his head once more on Lupa’s shoulder, sighing in contentment as the older man stroked his back with his free hand.

“ I am glad that I have made you happy.” Gale whispered. Lupa smiled and kissed what he could reach of his head.

“ You’ve made me very happy.” During the course of their conversation, Gale had relaxed a significant amount around his fingers, but Lupa wanted to ask for permission before he pushed further. “ Is it alright if I begin to move my fingers?”

Gale nodded after only a second of thought. “ I believe it will be alright. However…”

“ I’ll be gentle.” Lupa assured him. “ I promise. And if you need to stop, all you have to do is let me know, okay?”

“...understood.”

 It was clear that the Bishop was still unsure, but Lupa felt relatively confident that he could start to safely stretch him out, although he kept a laser focus on the Bishop’s sounds and body language for any sign of distress. While Gale did tense up the moment Lupa began to move, it was a far less violent reaction compared to when Lupa first inserted the second finger, and a few minutes of gentle scissoring had him practically melting against Lupa’s body. A bit more time had him squirming in Lupa’s loose hold, making soft whines of pleasure that shot straight through the older man’s cock.

“ Feel better?” Lupa asked, smiling knowingly. Gale groaned and pushed his nose into the soft space between Lupa’s neck and shoulder.

“ I am...beginning to understand the appeal.” The Bishop gasped out, his neatly trimmed fingernails scratching gently against the skin of Lupa’s back as he struggled to keep his thoughts on task. “ I have never felt anything like this before, but…” He trailed off, groaning into Lupa’s neck, and it took a few seconds for him to regain his speech. “ I like it--I like it --but it’s not enough, and I don’t...I don’t know what to do.”

“ That’s okay,” Lupa said reassuringly, moving his free hand to rest on the spine just below Gale’s shoulder blades. “ You’re feeling exactly what you’re supposed to be feeling if I’m doing this right and you’re enjoying yourself. You’re doing just fine; just let yourself feel this, Gale.” Satisfied that he’d done enough work with two fingers, Lupa placed his ring finger at the younger man’s entrance, holding it there. “ I’m going to add a third finger now, okay? Once we’re done with this, you should be ready.”

Gale whimpered. “ Yes...please…”

Compared to the first two fingers, the third finger slid in almost easily, and Gale only tensed up for a moment before relaxing around the intrusion with a shuddering sigh. He rubbed his face on the soft spot between Lupa’ neck and shoulder, shivering from delight, and he made a soft hiccup of breath as Lupa began to spread and scissor his fingers. Within a minute he was panting, toes curling and fingernails digging into Lupa’s back, and another minute had him writhing and pushing against Lupa’s fingers, chasing whatever sensation he could find.

“ Lupa...Lupa... Lupa…! ”

Perhaps some partners would have drawn out the desperation of their bed partner, testing just how incoherent and desperate they could make them before granting them the stimulation they required. Lupa was not one of those people, having always found the practice (unless preferred by the receiving partner) borderline sadistic, and Gale was extremely keyed-up and strung-out as it was. So the moment Gale’s gasps began to shift into sobs, Lupa slowly withdrew the fingers of his right hand from his entrance, holding his hip with his left hand to keep him still. 

“ Ngh… Lupa? ” Gale almost sounded confused by the sudden lack of fingers, and Lupa thoroughly wiped off his hand on the sheets before grabbing his shoulders, pulling him away just enough to see his damp face and glazed eyes. “ Oh...are you finished?”

“ With the preparation, yes,” Lupa replied. “ You did very well, Gale. Much better than I did the first time around.” Which, given how Lupa’s first time bottoming had gone, was a very good sign--both of his preparation work and Gale’s general comfort. “ How are you holding up?”

It took Gale a moment to find his words, which meant that it was probably a good time to take a breather; so Lupa shifted Gale’s legs so that he was sitting in a neutral position on his lap and stroked his hands up and down his back. Gale shivered and let his eyes drift shut.

“...it is a lot,” the Bishop finally managed, “but I now have a more than adequate understanding of why this activity appeals to people. I am very much looking forward to what is to come; yet even though the activity produces very pleasurable sensations, I am certain that the only reason I am enjoying it as much as I am is because I am engaging in this sexual act with you. I am very glad to be here, Lupa.”

Many people might have found someone speaking so clinically about sex off-putting (and even laughable), but to Lupa, the sentiment was one of the most sweet and heartfelt things he had ever heard, and the tenderness he felt in response made him feel like his heart was twisting into a pretzel.

“ Gale…” Lupa breathed, leaning his head forward to kiss the right corner of Gale’s mouth. “ I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone else. I never want to do this with anyone else ever again. If this is the last time I ever have sex, I will be content, because I’m making love to you .”

“ Making...love?” Gale asked, cocking his head to the side. “ Is that another name for sexual intercourse?”

“ Yes--but with a different connotation.” Lupa’s fingers traced idle patterns on Gale’s flanks. “ You can have sex with whoever you want for physical pleasure, and even to deepen certain types of friendships; however, you only ‘make love’ to people who are sweet and dear to you--people that you care for romantically.” He took one of Gale’s hands, kissed it, and folded it in his own. “ I’ve had sex before; however, I can’t honestly said I’ve ever liked any of my partners enough to call it ‘making love’. You’re my first.”   

“ Oh…” Gale blinked a few times before visibly softening. “ I feel as if I should be sorry for that, but I’m not.”

“ Good, because I’m not, either.” Lupa said, smiling. “ Good things come to those who wait...and I’ve waited a very long time for you, Gale.”

 “ Oh. ” Gale sniffed and blinked away the film of wetness from his eyes, and Lupa couldn’t help but feel mesmerized by the fluttering of those long, lovely lashes. “ I wish I could say the same, but I never knew someone like you existed until we met in Svadhisthana, and I never knew I could feel anything like this until that horrible day in the tunnels.” 

Gale sounded genuinely mournful about this, and Lupa opened his mouth to reassure him, only to be cut off before he could make a sound. 

“ I know I am being illogical and foolish--that it was impossible for me to miss what I did not know--but I just...I want you to know that my feelings are as deep as yours. Even though I have only had my own for weeks, it is because of you that I can feel at all, and...oh, Lupa, I don’t want anyone else to make me feel this way. I don’t think anyone else can make me feel this way. You gave me my heart. You gave me the world . I love you, I love you, I love you --” 

Lupa kissed him then, because he didn’t think he’d be able to live if he didn’t kiss Gale at that exact moment--that if he didn’t, his heart would punch through his ribcage, and he’d die on the spot. He kissed Gale until he was lax and shivering under his lips, and then moved his lips down to the Bishop’s neck and collarbones, licking the bruises he had left behind and leaving new ones behind in the unblemished spaces between. The white paint he’d transferred earlier smeared over the red and blue, and fuck , Lupa wanted to devour him. He wanted to devour him just as much as he wanted to hold him close and never let him go. Not in the cannibalistic ways of the Junkyard, but in a hot, deep, and melting way that Lupa had never before experienced in his life. He wanted everything Gale wanted to give--wanted it in ways he had never thought he would want: from head to toe; from heart to soul; and all of the unseen places and spaces in between. His eyes and lips and hands and thighs...God, God, Gale, Gale, Gale!

Gale was bowing over him, digging his nails into Lupa’s back, and Lupa could feel his cock dripping from where it was pressed against his own stomach. The sensation of wetness on his hot skin made his mind briefly blank out.

“ Lupa, please,” Gale whimpered. “ Please, I can’t take this...”

There was wetness on Lupa’s shoulder and hot breaths puffing rapidly on his even hotter skin, and Gale’s face was dripping with sweat and streaked with tears when Lupa gently nudged him up and back. Those seafoam green eyes almost seemed to be shining in the dark from their intensity, and Lupa found himself reaching up with his right hand and trailing his thumb underneath Gale’s left eye, entranced.

“ I love you, too,” Lupa whispered, overcome in every possible way. “ I love you so much. I want you so much.”

“ I want you, too,” Gale whispered, shifting his hips and whimpering as his cock brushed up against Lupa’s abdomen. “ Please, Lupa, don’t make me wait any longer. I don’t know what it is I want, I don’t know, I don’t know ; but I want it so badly, I feel like I’m going mad ...”

Lupa sat up straight and held out his arms, and Gale wasted no time in leaning into them, pillowing his head on Lupa’s shoulder and pressing his face against his neck as he took deep, stuttering breaths.

“ Help me, Lupa…” Gale moaned. “ Please, I need you so much, I can’t take it --”

“ Okay, whirlwind.” Lupa soothed, holding Gale to him with his left arm and reaching out to the nightstand with his right, grabbing the container of petroleum jelly. “ I’ve got you. I promise. Take a moment and let me know when you’re ready to continue.”

“ Sorry,” Gale whispered. Lupa shook his head and planted a kiss to Gale’s hair.

“ You have nothing to apologize for. I need what you need.”

A few seconds passed without words, and then Gale slipped out of Lupa’s arms and shifted himself backwards, locking eyes with his beloved and giving him a determined nod. Lupa grinned and nodded in return.

“ Alright, then. All I have to do is lube myself up first.” He popped open the container of petroleum jelly, scooped up a decent portion with his fingers, and reached down to his own cock. “ It will hurt you less if I do and go easier for the both of us.”

The first touch of his slicked-up fingers on his painfully-hard cock made lights pop like flashbulbs in Lupa’s eyes, and he hissed and threw his head back, smacking it lightly against the wall. God. God . Thank heavens that it was his own hand, because if Gale had been the one to touch him, he was pretty damn convinced he would have come right there and then. As he screwed his eyes shut and took deep pulls of breath, he wrapped his hand around the base and squeezed , relieved when his arousal began to cool soon after. 

All the same, Lupa waited a few more seconds before moving his hand up and down his cock, gritting his teeth and clenching his abdomen against the sensations the action produced. Fuck , he had never felt so good before--so good that it actually ached and burned. Gale wasn’t the only one that felt like he was going mad.

“ I have barely even touched you.” Gale breathed, and Lupa opened his eyes to see the Bishop gazing down at him, eyes wide and thin lips parted into a small ‘o’ of awe. Lupa felt self-conscious all of the sudden, and as irrational as it was, he briefly wondered if Gale was seeing someone that wasn’t...well, him . “ You have been working on me throughout this whole affair, but you’re already...do I really affect you in such a way?”

Lupa knew that Gale’s observation wasn’t meant to be an insult, but it would have been hard for it to be anything but in Nirvana, and he found himself bashfully diverting his gaze. At least his embarrassment helped to cool his excitement to manageable levels.

“ Why would you not affect me?” It took Lupa a second to find his words, and when he did, he winced at how strained they sounded. “ It’s been at least a decade since I’ve last done this, and you’re...you’re everything I’ve ever wanted. I think there would be something wrong with me if I was reacting any differently.”

“ Oh. ” Gale whispered, breath catching in his throat, and his pupils dilated even wider. “ I never thought...to think that I can affect you so, even with my gross inexperience...you’re so beautiful, Lupa, and I’m so honored to be able to make you feel so wonderful.”

Lupa’s cheeks felt hot enough to fry eggs. “ I’m not going to last if you keep talking like that.”

“ Oh,” Gale flinched and drew back slightly. “ Forgive me, I--”

“ A joke, whirlwind. I’m sorry for not making it clearer.” Lupa’s voice was gently teasing, and once he was sure he was lubed to his satisfaction, he wiped his hand off on the bedsheets and reached out to Gale. “ Well, only a bit of a joke, if I’m being honest. I want to be able to bring you to completion without using my hands, so we should try to finish relatively soon.” His hands gripped the juts of Gale’s hips and drew him forward. “ That is, if you’re ready.”

“ I am,” Gale stated firmly, eyes firm and thin lips pressed into a no-nonsense line. “ I’m going to need you to tell me what to do, but…” He closed his eyes and nodded before opening them back up. “ Yes. I’m ready.”

Lupa’s mouth dried out. “ Okay. Okay .” He took a deep breath and made a few quick calculations in his mind. “ I could lay flat on the bed, but I think I’ll be more useful if I’m sitting up slightly, if you don’t mind.”

“ Not at all.” Gale lifted himself up on his thighs and allowed Lupa to shift back against the headboard, watching intently as he propped his two pillows against the headboard and leaned back until he was sitting at a comfortable angle. “ Now what? I think I am getting the idea, but…”

“ You would be right, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking.” Excitement thrummed like vibrating guitar strings in Lupa’s veins, and he placed his hands once more on Gale’s thighs, drawing him forward and bending his own legs until his knees were just barely pressed against Gale’s lower back. “ Keep yourself lifted up and come forward...yes, just like that.”

Once Gale was in position, Lupa took his cock in his hand and positioned the head just below Gale’s entrance, his heart feeling like it was going to grind to a halt at any moment. His red eyes looked up and locked with Gale’s excited but clearly nervous green.

“ Now that you’ve been prepared,” Lupa began, voice low and steady, “you can lower yourself down on me. Take as much time as you need and try not to take me all at once. The slower you go, the easier it will be for you to adjust, and the less likely you’ll injure yourself.” And me .

Gale gulped and nodded. “ Are you ready?”

“ I am. Are you? ”

“ As I’ll ever be.” Gale’s eyes fluttered closed as Lupa stroked his side with his free hand. “ I am...frightened, but I know I will be alright, because I am with you and you will take care of me.”

Lupa sucked in a breath and blinked away tears. “ Always. No matter what.”

Gale opened his eyes and nodded, and with a shy smile curling the corners of his lips, he slowly began to lower himself down. Lupa gasped and flung his head back.

“ Oh, God, Gale …”

It was so good . It was so fucking good--all tight, slick, and heat--and Lupa almost felt the way he did when Varin hit him with his hunger wave during the flight from Vishuddha. There may have been no physical blow, but his breath was knocked out of him all the same, and his sudden lightheadedness was accompanied by stars flickering and popping in front of his eyes. His body shook, his heart jumped into the base of his throat, and his body had gone from relatively dry to coated with sweat in an instant. Yet instead of unwanted physical hunger driving his endorphin rush, it was the feel of Gale surrounding him, and oh, cruel and callous star, it was so much.

“ Fuck .”

 The uncharacteristic curse broke through the thick fog of pleasure covering Lupa’s mind, and his attention immediately snapped to Gale, who was slowly but surely inching his way down Lupa’s cock. The entirety of his pale body was flushed, his eyes were screwed shut, and his mouth hung open as he gasped and panted for breath. His long, seafoam green hair was drenched with sweat, dangling around his face and plastering itself to his cheeks, and Lupa could see his neural implants pulsing an even brighter blue and green than usual.

Beautiful , Lupa thought, completely and utterly gobsmacked at the vision before him. He’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. The wind given form and shape. How did someone like Gale come to love someone like me?

“ Whirlwind,” Lupa rasped, moving his hands so that they were resting just below Gale’s ribcage. “ How are you doing?”

Gale groaned and shook his head vehemently, several strands of sweat-soaked hair slapping against his cheeks with the motion. At first, Lupa was afraid that the headshake meant that Gale was in pain, but the Bishop didn’t flinch, pause, or pull back. He simply kept taking Lupa’s cock, bit by bit, until he was finally sheathed to the hilt. Once the proverbial band-aid had been stripped off, Gale wasted no time in folding his torso forward and resting his forehead on Lupa’s shoulder, twining his arms around his lover’s neck as he shook and whined.

It took Lupa a few seconds to even remember how to think , let alone translate his thoughts into words. Gale was so warm, and tight, and good, and oh God , it was Gale . All of the times he’d spent with the Bishop before that night; all of the dreams that had him gasping awake, damp and hard, in the middle of the night; all of the times he had secretly watched Gale and longed for the first time in his life; it had all come down to that one shining, perfect moment, and Lupa was pretty sure he would have come right there and then if he had been younger and less collected.

Lupa wasn’t either of those things, however; he was a man who had been two years shy of forty before his death, and all that had known him in the past and present had frequently marveled at his nigh unwavering self-control. Besides, he was still so worried about Gale, and that worry cracked him out of his euphoria like a whip. He wrapped his arms around Gale’s back and stroked his spine and sides, pressing kiss after gentle kiss to that elegant neck.

“ Are you okay?” Lupa whispered. Gale whined and clung even tighter.

“ It’s so much, ” Gale mewled, his body spasming against Lupa’s as he was pummeled by the conflicting urges to relax, tense up, move, stay still . “ It’s so much, Lupa...I feel…”

“ Are you in pain? Do you want me to pull out?”

Gale made a small, discontented noise, shaking his head violently in denial. Lupa frowned and lifted his right hand to cup Gale’s left cheek, using his thumb to wipe away the tears gathering at his lower lashline.

“ Talk to me, Gale,” Lupa softly insisted. “ I need to know if you’re okay.”

Another moment of silence; then--

” I am alright,” The Bishop finally gasped, prying his brilliant eyes open to look down at the love of his life. “ I’m feeling so much, but I...I believe they are positive feelings. Yes. Yes, I can see how they could become negative, but right now...they are good. They are nothing but good.”

Lupa’s shoulders sagged with relief. “ Good. That...that’s good.” A few strands of Gale’s hair were plastered to his head, and Lupa very gently brushed them out of his face, smiling nervously all the while. “ Are you overwhelmed?”

“ A little, but I am alright.” Gale paused, took a few deep breaths, and gathered himself before speaking again. “ Is it...supposed to be? Overwhelming, I mean.”

“ Yes. Sex going to be a bit overwhelming no matter what you do, no matter how many times you had it.” Lupa moved his hands down to Gale’s waist as he spoke. “ Sex is one of those eternally overwhelming things. What’s important is that it’s the type of overwhelming that makes you excited instead of afraid, and that you wish to chase the sensation rather than draw away. Is that how you feel?”

Gale pursed his lips and furrowed his brow in thought.

“...yes.” It was an uncertain reply, but then the Bishop nodded to himself, and the following words were far steadier. “ Yes, that is how I’m feeling. I want to continue. I want to find completion with you.”

Lupa’s nervous smile became a grin. “ That’s all I needed to know. Do you think you’re ready to move?”

Another nod. “ Yes. Are you ready, Lupa?”

How sweet. “ I have never been more ready for anything in my life, Gale.”

The younger man flushed an even deeper red. “ Ah, yes. Okay.” He coughed, swallowed, and licked his lips. “ So I just…”

“ Push yourself up and down with your legs,” Lupa confirmed, gently but firmly grabbing the juts of Gale’s hips. “ I’ll help keep you steady. All you have to worry about is not slamming down too hard and not letting me slip out. It’ll feel awkward at first, but you should find a good rhythm soon enough. And again, if things start feeling overwhelming in a bad way--”

“ Then I just say stop, and you’ll stop.” Gale finished. He didn’t seem annoyed by the reminder; rather, the smile he gave to Lupa was grateful. “ I’ll remember that, and if I find myself unable to say so, I know you will see it and stop of your own volition. Thank you, my love.”

The words sent more shivers down Lupa’s spine than the warm tightness around his cock. My love . How long had he dreamed of someone calling him that? How long had he dreamed of being someone’s ‘love’?

His whole life. Lupa had waited for this moment his whole life .

“ It is the least I can do.” All Lupa could manage was a whisper, overcome by Gale’s everything, and the fact that the two of them, despite all the odds, were together. How could his death have led to such a rebirth? How could he have found love in a literal war games simulation? Lupa didn’t know, and in that moment, he didn’t care. All that mattered was the warm, breathing, green-eyed man straddling his waist. “ It is the least anyone can do in this situation. Move when you’re ready, Gale; I’ll follow your lead.”

Gale closed his eyes, exhaled deeply, and nodded. With far more trepidation than necessary, he raised himself up a few inches on his powerful thighs and half-dropped, half-lowered himself back down. Both Lupa and Gale gasped in unison.

“ Oh ,” Gale whispered, eyes wide and mouth opened into a small ‘o’ of surprise. “ Oh, I see...see the appeal of this act now.” He raised himself up--a little higher this time--and came down with slightly more force. A long, throaty groan left his lips. “ Oh, yes, Lupa! ”

Gale’s naive, unrestrained pleasure seemed to resonate with Lupa’s own, amplifying his sporadic and jarring movements into what was already turning out to be the best sex Lupa had ever had. He was clenching his abdomen to the point of pain out of fear of coming far too early. It also said a great deal about Lupa’s comfort level with Gale that he didn’t even care to be embarrassed by that fact.

“ That’s it, Gale.” Lupa encouraged. “ Just like that. Just keep moving at your own pace, and I’ll be... happy. ” The last word emerged with a groan as Gale did just that. His movements were still somewhat jagged, but the Bishop was swiftly finding his rhythm, and every single movement sent sparks shooting up Lupa’s spine. “ God, yes, you’re doing beautifully .”

“ Am I?” Gale asked. His pupils were blown, and his body was shaking as if he’d fall apart any second, yet his voice was thick with uncertainty. “ You are not just saying that to make me feel better, or--” 

At that moment, Gale brought himself back down with more force than before, and whatever he was going to say next was stillborn on his tongue. His toes curled, his limbs jerked, and Lupa watched--utterly fascinated--as his lover threw his head back with a strangled sound that couldn’t decide if it was a moan or a scream. Lupa could have sworn that Gale’s eyes had actually rolled back into his skull just before they closed.

Holy shit. That may have been the single most arousing thing Lupa had ever seen in his two lives.

“...what was that?” It took a few seconds for Gale to come back to himself, and when he did, Lupa was surprised to hear a tremble in his voice. “ Lupa, what was that? I don’t...” 

As quick on the uptake as Lupa usually was, he found himself briefly stymied by Gale’s words, and it took him a few seconds of thought to realize just what the Bishop was talking about. His eyes widened in surprise.

“ Oh! That!” As Gale’s head dipped forward, Lupa released his hips and reached up to meet it, tenderly cupping the younger man’s face in his hands. “ I’m sorry, I hadn’t even thought about...you’re referring to what you just felt there, yes? A sort of... intense spike of pleasure?”

Gale nodded shakily.

“ That’s supposed to happen,” Lupa said, smiling at Gale as he visibly relaxed. “ If you angle things just right, you basically hit something that’s...akin to a bundle of nerves. It’s one of the most enjoyable aspects of penetrative sex.”

“ So it is...normal.”

Lupa nodded. Gale sighed and shook his head.

“ Forgive me,” he murmured, blushing from embarrassment. “ I cannot seem to stop interrupting our intercourse over silly, meaningless thoughts and equally silly and meaningless fears.”

Lupa shook his head. “ They aren’t silly or meaningless. All you knew before coming here was the basics of sex and the fact that you wanted to have it with me, so it was inevitable that there would be things you weren’t going to get from the start. That’s okay, Gale. No big deal.”

As emphasis, Lupa gave Gale a few playful pats on his cheeks, laughing as the younger man smiled shyly and ducked his head. His cheeks flushed even pinker than before.

“ Still,” Gale said, turning his head to kiss Lupa’s palm. “ My inexperience must be awkward at least and frustrating at most to you. After all, you have so much experience, and I am…” He trailed off and blinked. “ I am talking far too much, aren’t I?”

“ You’re talking just enough.” Lupa said, his smile softening. “ And you’re taking as much time as you need. I’m along for the ride, maybe, but make no mistake--it’s been one of the most enjoyable of my life.”

Gale’s smile widened. “ Ah.”

Lupa stroked his thumbs over his cheekbones and eyebrows and traced the lines of his thin mouth before letting his hands fall back to the Bishop’s hips.

“ When you’re ready.” Lupa said.

Gale nodded, took a deep breath, and began to move once more.

Once Gale got his bearings again, things fell into a far steadier rhythm, with Gale rocking himself up and down on his thighs and Lupa whispering words of encouragement between his own gasps and occasional upward thrusts. The world around them seemed to slow to a standstill before falling away entirely, leaving Lupa and Gale to swim in a sea of warm, syrupy pleasure that grew hotter by the second. 

All that Lupa could hear was the rushing of blood in his ears and the little whimpers of pleasure of the man above him, and all he could see and feel was Gale: the warmth of his skin; the smell of his sweat, the tightness around his cock; and those beautiful, haunting, intelligent eyes. Even thick and muggy with pleasure, Gale’s seafoam green eyes were locked with Lupa’s own, almost as if he was afraid that the man he was riding would disappear if he looked away for just a moment. 

Given all that had happened between them--and how close they had come to losing each other--maybe he was.

“ I’m right here,” Lupa heard himself saying, just barely able to make out his words through the rushing of the blood in his ears. “ I’m right here, my darling; and I’m not going to go away. I’m not.”

Gale whined, closed his eyes, and shook his head back and forth like a sopping wet dog. While it was clear that the Bishop was trying his utmost to restrain himself, it was clear that his release was chasing him on his heels. His fingernails raked burning lines down Lupa’s hips as he shook, and shook, and shook , sounding as if the wind was being knocked out of him with each rise and fall of his hips.

“ Don’t leave me, Lupa,” Gale pleaded. His voice sounded almost delirious from pleasure, and his eyes were glazed over when he opened them again. Lupa found himself wrapping his arms loosely around Gale’s lower back for fear that he was beginning to get dizzy as he neared completion. “ I can’t go back...I can’t go back to the way things were before I met you.”

“ Gale--”

“ You saw me, Lupa.” Gale’s words were punctuated by a particularly hard downward motion that had Lupa choking on stars. “ Everyone looked through me before you came. I was nothing but a tool, a computer, a robot --but you…” He rose and fell, rose and fell, hitting that spot over and over that made him lose all coherency; and his statement hung heavy in the air until he gathered his wits. “ You always saw me, didn’t you? I need you, Lupa; I need you to look at me.”

Gale was crying again--emotion, pleasure, and exhaustion blending into a pressure that had no other way of being relieved--and his tears fell like rain on Lupa’s stomach and chest. Even as drunk on pleasure as he was, Lupa’s world still centered around his tempest in a teapot, and he refused to leave such bittersweet sentiments echoing in the darkness of the room.

That was what they had been doing all along, wasn’t it? Crying out in the dark, waiting for someone to hear them and answer--and now they were here, together, and it still felt like a dream.

“ I’m not going anywhere.” Lupa was panting now--his chest heaving for air--and he rose to meet Gale’s thrusts with just as much frenetic, frantic desperation as his lover. Everything was so blindingly, brilliantly close; and he found himself helpless to do anything but follow Gale into the unknown. “ And I’ll never look at anyone else. I’ll never look away from you. I’ll always see you; I’ll always hear you; I’ll always... Gale--! ”

The warm syrup had boiled into scalding water, crashing over Lupa in wave after wave until he was sure he was going to lose his mind. The easy rhythm Gale had set up early on had completely fallen apart, and the Bishop was crying out with every thrust, slamming down on Lupa’s pelvis with enough force to cause it pain. Lupa was too far gone to care, however, the pain being nothing more than an insignificant hum of background noise in the cacophony of his and Gale’s lovemaking. All he could do was hang onto Gale’s hips and meet his riding with equal vigor, leaving them desperately scrambling for the same peak. Lupa wanted to reach the top. He wanted to stay in this moment forever. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted --

“ Please, Lupa!” Gale was practically sobbing, choking on his own breath, and Lupa felt his movements become shallow and frantic. It seemed as if the sleepless weeks of emotional turmoil were finally catching up to Gale, and Lupa reached up to grab Gale’s shoulders as he bowed forward, losing the strength to keep himself upright. “ Please, Lupa, please...I need...I...I…!”

“ I know, whirlwind. I’ve got you...I’ve got you …”

As Lupa supported Gale’s upper body with his left hand, he reached out and took Gale’s cock in his right, stroking it in time with his own upward thrusts. Gale’s hardness was warm and slick against his palm, pulsing in time with the Bishop’s heartbeat, and it took only a few pumps before--

“ Lupa! ”

Gale howled --a raw, primal sound that nearly shook the bones out of Lupa’s skin--and slammed himself down on Lupa’s pelvis one last time. It was enough, and Lupa only had a brief moment to thank his lucky stars for a soundproof quarters before Gale was coming all over his hand, shivering as his hot skin was painted with even hotter ropes of sticky white. Gale keened and shook, spasming like a man possessed, and oh cruel and callous sun, he was clenching so tightly around Lupa’s cock--

“ Oh, God, Gale! ”

Desperately, Lupa thrust his hips up one last time, and his head slammed backwards into his pillow as his climax struck with the sudden violence of a gunshot. He melted, he froze, he was full of light despite the dark creeping in the edges of his vision, and he came inside Gale with a force that sent him reeling. Firecrackers popped and crackled in his brain. Stars boiled, cooled, and collapsed in on themselves beneath his eyelids. His body couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be hypersensitive or numb. The universe expanded into infinity, lingers, and then snapped back in on itself like a rubber band. Lupa was dizzy, so dizzy, and he had just enough wherewithal to catch Gale’s falling torso before that dizziness sent him spinning into a shallow oblivion.

Lupa wasn’t sure how long he’d blacked out, but when he came to, he found himself staring up into Gale’s frightened eyes. The younger man's face crumbled, and Lupa wrapped his lead-heavy limbs around him and pulled him close, tucking Gale’s head underneath his chin as the Bishop quivered in relief.

“ Shhhhh…” Lupa soothed, his voice hoarse and soft. “ I’m alright, Gale. I just lost consciousness for a moment. It’s something that can happen when you climax intensely.”

“ Oh.” Gale sniffed and picked his head up off of Lupa’s chest, staring at his lover with bloodshot eyes. “ I’m sorry, forgive me, I just...you were so still . I was afraid that I had hurt you, or--”

Lupa cut him off with a finger to his lips. “ I understand, but I’m alright.” He reached up and brushed Gale’s hair out of his face. “ What about you? How do you feel?”

Gale smiled tiredly and moved to lie next to Lupa, resting his head next to Lupa’s as his eyes fluttered shut. It seemed that the strategist’s last reserves of energy had finally petered out, leaving him soft, weary, and boneless next to Lupa’s warm, sturdy form. He frowned and fidgeted his legs underneath the covers.

“ Sticky…” Gale groused. Lupa chuckled and shook his head in bemusement.

“ Lucky for you, that’s an easy enough fix.”

With a soft smile, Lupa grabbed the corner of his bed’s undersheet, using it to very carefully wipe the worst of the cooling, tacky come off of Gale’s abdomen and genitals. Gale whined, not enjoying the feel of scratchy sheets on his too sensitive skin, but he nonetheless did his best to keep still while Lupa cleaned him up. 

Finally, Gale was clean enough to be comfortable, and he sighed happily as he pillowed his head on Lupa’s left shoulder. Lupa chuckled tiredly and curled his arm around Gale’s chest, pulling him snug to his side and peppering his face with dozens of lazy kisses.

“ You alright?” Lupa queried quietly. Gale nodded and gave him a slow kiss of his own.

“ I am...tired,” he said, “and still overwhelmed; but I feel...well all the same.” He paused, licked his lips, and gathered his thoughts. Lupa was content to wait patiently until he spoke again. “ It was not exactly what I had expected, yet it was better than I had expected, and it was all because of you.”

“ Was it?”

Gale nodded.

“ I believe that having sexual intercourse with anyone else would have been overwhelming in a negative way, but what I did with you--making love, you called it--was... delightful . I find myself not wanting to have sex again for some time, yet I also hope that we will do it again many more times...if that makes sense.”

Lupa couldn’t help but giggle like a madman. Delightful . Gale thought he was delightful . Damn, this afterglow was certainly a potent one if it had Lupa losing it over word choice.

“ I agree,” Lupa managed, resting his lips on Gale’s forehead. “ As I said earlier, I don’t want to have sex with anyone else; you’re it for me, Gale. You’re my one and only.”

Gale cooed happily and let his eyes drift shut. “ My Lupa…”

The Bishop fell silent after that, and Lupa could feel and hear his breathing evening out as he finally lost the battle with wakefulness. The leader himself was sticky with come and greasy with oil paint, yet he was more than content to lie there with Gale snuggled at his side, tracing lines on the Bishop’s bare shoulder and counting each of his slow, even breaths like one would count sheep. He’d never felt so comfortable in the beds of his past partners: when in high school and college, he hadn’t been sure if he’d be allowed to stay; and in his later years pockmarked with Cassandra’s endless line of suitors, he had just laid there with an empty feeling in his stomach as the contentment he sought never came. 

Yet now--in a damp, gray world far away from his child and dearest friends; where he was forced to consume a child’s blood or his enemy’s flesh to survive, and would lose himself to decaying, tar-tinted madness if he refused--Lupa finally felt content. He felt comfortable. Happy. Safe. Loved .

It made him want to cry from happiness, but he refused to let the tears fall, nuzzling into Gale’s hair until the ache faded. The last thing his sleep-deprived lover needed was to be woken up by Lupa being a ‘sissy’, as Cassandra often called him when they were kids.

The minutes whiled away like hours, and Lupa had almost managed to doze off when he realized that there was something important he had yet to do. With a soft groan, the Leader of the Wolves reluctantly extracted his left arm from underneath Gale’s head and reached out with his right, grabbing the personal datapad he had set aside earlier in the day. Gale shifted and lifted his head a few centimeters off of Lupa’s shoulder, blinking blearily up at him, and Lupa gave him a reassuring smile in return.

“ I just have to finish something up.” He flicked on the datapad and began to scroll through his list of contacts, searching for Serph’s personal electronic address. “ It won’t take more than a few minutes.”

Gale hummed and let his head smack down on the pillow. His eyes closed and his breathing evened, and Lupa assumed he had simply fallen asleep, the exhaustion of the past few days and their recent activities finally catching up to him. The older man gave the younger man’s hair one last fond, smooth stroke before returning his attention to the datapad, opening a new message form and--after a moment of thought--making both Serph and Heat its recipients. That way, if one of them missed the message, the other would be able to bring them up to speed. 

It was a simple, sparse, and to-the-point email: that Gale had come over to discuss an important matter with Lupa and had fallen asleep; that Lupa believed it would be in Gale’s best interest to get an uninterrupted night of rest after personally witnessing his level of exhaustion; and that Gale would return to Muladhara in the early--no--mid--no, delete that-- late morning or early afternoon. The Leader of the Wolves purposefully did not mention what he and Gale had ‘discussed’ that night, nor did he indicate any change in the personal or professional relationship between them. After all, Serph was Gale’s leader and comrade, not his, and he trusted Gale to inform him of his romance if and when the time was right.

Just as Lupa had finished up the letter, Gale sighed and braced his hands on the bed, pushing himself into a sitting position with a nigh tangible air of exhaustion. For a moment he simply sat there, shoulders slumped and head dipped so that his chin was touching his chest, before sliding himself to the edge of the bed and placing his feet on the floor.

“ Gale?” Lupa queried. He quickly sent the email and set the datapad back on the side table before turning his full attention to his lover. “ Is something the matter?”

The Bishop sighed miserably and rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes.

“ I should be getting back to Muladhara.” Gale finally said. His speech, though intelligent as always, was slow and thick with fatigue. Lupa frowned and quirked his head to the side.

“ Muladhara?” He repeated, as if he hadn’t heard the other man clearly. Gale nodded. “ Must you go so soon, whirlwind? I would very much enjoy it if you stayed the night.”

Besides , Lupa mused, you look fit to fall over with the slightest breeze.

“ I would very much enjoy it as well,” Gale said mournfully, “ but the note I left on my bed was sparse with detail, and I fear that Serph will go concerned if I am gone overlong. Perhaps, if I am expedient, I can return before anyone notices I am missing.”

A red eyebrow quirked up towards an equally red hairline. “ ‘Expedient’? Gale, you’re just sitting up and you already look ready to fall over.”

Gale sighed, shoulders slumping, before reaching over the side of the bed to pick up his clothes. “ I will be fine as soon as I get moving. Besides, I wish to spare you the inconvenience of my continued presence.”

“ ‘Inconvenience?’” Lupa pushed himself off of the wall into a full sitting position and idly watched Gale as he picked up his undershirt and shorts with the difficulty and slowness of one wading through molasses. “ Gale, you are not an inconvenience to me.”

“ I do not mean with you, Lupa,” Gale murmured, already sounding as if he was close to falling asleep. “ I mean with the rest of your men.”

Lupa’s eyes widened in realization, and he suddenly found himself relieved that Gale’s back was to him, if only so he couldn’t see the grin forming on his face.

“ Are you worried that my men will spread rumors about your presence?” Lupa teased, shifting himself so that his right leg was off of the bed and his left was folded up at the side. Gale nodded wearily.

“ Precisely.” With undershirt and shorts in hand, Gale very slowly stood from the edge of the bed, only to nearly fall over when he finally stood straight. He used his free hand to catch himself on the bed and simply stood there for a moment, legs wobbling like gelatin, as he attempted to regain his bearings. Despite the fatigue teeming in his voice, however, Gale’s speech was as eloquent and formal as always.  “ If someone were to catch me leaving your room in the morning--especially with the state of my clothing--then word will certainly spread that you are fraternizing with one of the upper echelon of the Embryon.”

“ Is that so?” Lupa rumbled, shaking his head in wonder behind Gale’s back as he moved to stand himself.

“ Of course it is so.” Gale scoffed. Even when he wasn’t tired, the Bishop had a hard time understanding sarcasm, and it seemed his ability to take things literally increased exponentially when practically drunk on exhaustion. “ Your Wolves are greater in number than we in the Embryon, and if they happen to have the same propensity for idle gossip as my tribe, then you will never hear the end of it if they suspect we are together.”

Lupa’s shoulders were tense to the point of pain as he struggled not to laugh. “ Hmm. I see. That is bothersome; but would such gossip bother you?”

“ I am not worried about myself, Lupa.” Gale stood up straight, took a few steps forward, and had to frantically reach out and grab the edge of Lupa’s desk to avoid falling over.

“ Gale…” Lupa warned. 

“ I am fine,” Gale reassured, even as he leaned almost the entirety of his weight on the side of the desk. “ I am simply... fatigued at the moment.” His head briefly lolled forward before immediately snapping back up. “ I just need a moment to regain the feeling in my legs. That is all.” He turned his head to glare at Lupa...well, attempted to glare; it looked more like a weak, morose glower than anything truly annoyed or angry. Lupa smiled back sheepishly and shrugged.

“ If you are not worried about yourself,” Lupa murmured, waiting until Gale had turned his gaze away before quietly getting to his feet, “ then what are you worried about?”

“ Do you truly think that sleeping with someone who was once your enemy will sit well with your tribe?” Gale countered. While he may not have had the strength to keep his head from weaving like Vayu when dazed, he at least had the energy to verbally snipe. “ You forget that we were locked in combat less than three months past. How would your men feel if they knew you were romantically involved with one of the command personnel of the Embryon? Do you want a legion of Bats regarding you as weak for fraternizing with the enemy? Do you want to risk what happened to Jinana happening to you?”

Oh. So that was what Gale feared.

“ Do you believe my men would go so far as to sell me out to Varin Omega?” Lupa queried, walking around the foot of the bed and approaching Gale, who--worryingly--seemed too dazed to sense his increasing proximity. “ I do not intend to sound vain, Gale, but the Wolves are extraordinarily loyal to me; and they were also incredibly individualistic even before the change. I doubt they would mind me sharing my bed with you.”

“ The Maribel were also very individualistic,” Gale whispered, voice cracking in a way that pulled at Lupa’s heartstrings. “ And Bat, too, was once unfailingly loyal to his Leader. That did not stop the destruction of half of the tribe and Jinana being overcome by hunger. If I had arrived with Sera only a few minutes later, then…”

Gale took another step forward, swayed, and began to fall forward. Lupa was there, however, and he caught the Bishop in his arms before he could tumble to the ground. Gale startled, stiffening like a board, before straightening his neck and looking at Lupa’s face.

“ Hello.” Lupa whispered, smiling fondly. Gale blinked in surprise before relaxing and resting his head on Lupa’s shoulder.

“ I do not want you to die, Lupa,” Gale whispered. Lupa’s heart lurched painfully in his chest.

“ I am not going to die,” Lupa’s vow was so full of conviction that Gale turned his head to look at his face. “ Not because of this...and not because of you.”

Gale sniffed and buried his face in the junction of Lupa’s neck.

“ How can you be so sure?” There was something so raw and fragile in Gale’s voice and on his face--as if he was hoping against hope while bracing himself for impact. “ Tomorrow, the next day, the day after--none of us can know for sure if we’ll survive the night, let alone reach Nirvana. You cannot promise that you will not die.”

“ No, I can’t,” Lupa agreed. “ What I can promise you, however, is that no matter how our story ends, I want to face the end with you by my side. Even if your worst fears come to pass, I would rather have a short, happy time with you than two more years of emptiness and isolation. Don’t you agree?”

Gale grew as still as the dead.

“...I don’t want to have to choose.” He eventually said. “ I want a long life in Nirvana with you and all of the things you adore. I want to meet your son, see a tree, and visit a coffee shop. But if...but if we must meet our end in the Junkyard, then...as long as I am with you, I will die happy. Having you is...more than I could have asked more. More than I could have hoped.”

Lupa kissed Gale’s hair, temple, ear, and cheek, his arms curling around Gale in a gesture that was meant to both protect and support. Gale was clearly a hair’s breadth from falling down, but he clung back to Lupa with what strength remained in his body, and it didn’t seem like he would let go any time soon.

“ Just please...be careful, Lupa.” Gale whispered fiercely. “ Take more care of yourself than you did before. Nothing...nothing like the tunnels again. Can you promise me that if nothing else? Please?”

“ Of course, my tempest. Of course .” There wasn’t a hint of hesitation in Lupa’s voice. “ I vow upon my honor that nothing like the tunnels will ever happen again. I have...so much to live for, and a future to chase; and I refuse to cause you any further heartache if I can help it. If death comes for me, it will have to rip me from your arms before I go.”

Gale shuddered. “ What a lovely thought...thank you, Lupa.”

Lupa snorted and shook his head, but otherwise said nothing, the retort of how Gale was the one he should be thanking dying on his tongue. He had a feeling that if he said what was on his mind, Gale would use up his energy protesting, and the Bishop could barely stand as it was. Besides, everything was so soft and matte in the afterglow that Lupa didn’t want to risk breaking the spell.

“ Come to bed with me, Gale,” Lupa whispered, “ and when we leave we can start again in a world that will kill us if we give it the chance.”

Gale shuddered in his arms. “ Okay.” He allowed himself to sink bonelessly on Lupa’s chest, and the older man wasted no time in gathering his lover into his arms, lifting up the Bishop with an ease that would make even Heat envious. “ But, Leader will surely realize I’m gone in the morning--”

“ I sent a message to Serph and Heat while you were trying to leave,” Lupa interjected, carrying Gale to the bathroom and over the threshold as if he were a bride. “ Don’t worry, I was discreet about it; all I said was that you came over to discuss strategy and fell asleep on me, and that you would return to Muladhara once you had a good night’s sleep.”

Gale sighed in relief and wrapped his arms around Lupa’s neck, nuzzling adoringly into the dip of the older man’s throat. 

“ I am not sure if they will accept your story upon my return.” He mused, allowing Lupa to sit him on the bathroom counter. The Bishop was so tired--exhaustion seeping into the very marrow of his digital bones--and it was a struggle to keep his eyes open as he watched Lupa busy about. “ Serph and Heat have been intimate quite a few times since the resolution of their feelings, and I fear that no matter how well I clean myself up tomorrow, Leader will notice something different about me.”

Lupa hummed thoughtfully as he ran a washcloth under lukewarm water, running it over his lower abdomen and pelvis until they were clean. The sweat and oil paint would have to wait until tomorrow.

“ Not only that,” Gale continued sleepily, “but I am sure Argilla will suspect, since she has been teasing me about you for weeks, and she has been sexually active with Jinana; although I am certain the mechanics are different. Also, given the note I left on my bed, I can say with almost one-hundred percent certainty that Cielo will ask question after question until I crack and tell him the truth out of pure frustration. Yet despite all of this…”

“ Yes?”

“...I don’t want to tell them yet.” Gale confessed, sinking his head on Lupa’s shoulder and allowing the older man to clean the last of the come off his own body. “ You are the only thing I have ever had in my life that has been my own and nothing but my own. I know it is a lot to ask, and I do not expect us to remain a secret forever, but…”

“ You want to enjoy us,” Lupa finished, tossing the soiled washcloth into his hamper of dirty clothes before moving to wash his hands. “ I understand, Gale. I am more than welcome to accompany you to Muladhara if you want, but I will also keep our relationship quiet for as long as it is tenable. Whatever you want to do.”

Gale let his eyelids fall to half mast and leaned his head on the bathroom wall. If Lupa were a crude man, he would have called Gale’s appearance ‘fucked out’: messy damp hair; white oil paint smeared all over his skin; still-flushed cheeks; and glazed, unfocused eyes. Lupa was a decent human being, however, and all he could think of was how relaxed and unguarded Gale looked in that moment. 

In fact, Lupa realized with a start, this was the first time he had ever seen Gale completely and utterly disarmed. He was vulnerable--naked, without a weapon, mentally fatigued, and too tired to summon Vayu--and he was vulnerable just for him.

I love him, Lupa though, his stomach somehow feeling like it was sinking and soaring at the same time. I do not even have the vocabulary to describe how much I love him. I have no choice but to spend the rest of my life showing him what I cannot say, and it will be a life well spent.

After drying his hands on his towel in silence, Lupa picked Gale up in his arms and carried him back to the bed, tucking him in with the care and steadiness of a practiced father. Once Gale was covered and comfortable, he lifted his corner of the sheets and slid in beside him, deciding he would take the proverbial bullet and sleep on the wet spot of the mattress.

Not that it mattered, really, since Gale wasted no time in snuggling up to Lupa’s side and resting his head on his chest. Oh well; it was still the polite thing to do.

“ I do not have to decide tonight,” Gale whispered, his voice softening and slurring at the edges as fatigue folded him in its hands. “ And there are so many things I do not know. My lack of knowledge used to scare me, but...I know that as long as I am with you, I will be able to one day comprehend the incomprehensible. Good night, Lupa. I love you.”

Lupa’s words caught on the knot in his throat, and Gale had fallen asleep by the time he managed to force them out, but he said them anyway. “ Good night, Gale. I love you with everything I am.”

Ever since Lupa had woken up in the Junkyard, he had found easy sleep next to impossible to obtain, and he found himself working with less than three hours of rest more often than not. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t tired, but even in the days before his memories returned, he found himself plagued by visions of the past whenever he closed his eyes. A child with blue eyes and an olive leaf tucked in a Greek Orthodox bible, asking his father to return safely from his mission; a woman with fluffy dreadlocks and steady hands, playing video games with Lupa’s head resting on her shoulder and holding him tightly as his world fell apart; a boy with soft gray eyes and an even softer smile, tracing fairy rings in the midnight stars and flipping from a beam as if he was attempting to take flight; and a boy with pale hair, even paler skin, and blue eyes, with alcohol on his breath and a Mona Lisa smile on his lips as wove his words into poetry.

(If he was being completely honest with himself, Lupa found him avoiding sleep not just to keep those ‘dreams’ at bay, but to keep his professed attendants from worrying when he arrived at his morning briefing with blotchy red eyes.)

By the time Lupa fully remembered Gregorios Lykaia, he was in the middle of losing Vishuddha to Varin, and the memories of the people he loved had turned into cruel jokes when mixed with the uncontrollable hunger in his belly. The tunnels had echoed with Fred’s voice, his tortured reflection on the water stared back with Alys’s eyes, and Roland’s misanthropic, sardonic thoughts had blended with Adil’s airy yet morbid insights until his thoughts were nothing but a hollow, incomprehensible roar. To die knowing he would never see his little family ever again--

It had been that--more than the effects of Varin’s Hunger Wave itself--that had driven Lupa over the cliff and plunging into hopeless despair.

Yet he had woken up after all--escaping a second death at the hands of the Karma Society’s machinations--and hope incarnate was currently dozing in his arms. Now as Lupa closed his eyes, he found himself longing for those reminders of what was waiting for him in Nirvana, and he sank into the waters of recollection with a smile on his face.

One day he would bring Gale to the surface, to Samkhya, and Lupa would introduce his new lover to his old family. Fred would show him his books on astronomy and teach him how to play marbles with the other children. Alys would run test after test and ask question after question with plying Gale with a near endless amount of green tea. Adil would teach Gale about the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and human girls who waited for fairy princes to offer them food and escape. Roland wouldn’t hesitate to shove his favorite books into Gale’s hands and sit him down in front of his favorite movies, his acerbic but affectionate commentary flowing like water all the while. They would defeat the Society, save the people of the Underground, restore the sun, and…

Lupa and Gale slept, twined in each other's arms, and the eternal rain lightened into a fine drizzle. The world would have to wait until tomorrow.