Might as well be consorting with a virgin, for all the good six years of going desert dry've done Keeler: face flush, eyes burning, and mind enslaved by inhibitions and utterly unconvinced. A better man would stop now, take the Sleipnir's lead navi through a recital of half-baked reassurances, or a twelve year-old's tutorial of what goes where before everyone starts to notice babies don't come out.

But Encke wants Keeler more than that better man - more than any man can, and the time for sympathetic stalling sprawls like a sun-warmed cat behind them.

The white wrist's bird bones and the light twist Encke doesn't give, a warm substitute for air in the fighter's tight grip, when he takes Keeler's hand captive and presses it down over his dressed-up length. He's hot for it, underneath the lieutenant stripes, hot for a fuck and hotter for a fight, and Keeler's made a tradition of stirring him to both. Playing him on.

"I'd do a lot to you," he says, darkly earnest to a degree of antisocial sobriety. "About as much as you let me get away with."

And he would, dog on the bone, hunt declared before eyes slit and burning. There's a danger here, in a balance precariously achieved by placating, rather than annulling violent, contrary forces: one day, he'll eat up Keeler whole. Devour him, skin and marrow, cock and heart. There're ways to break a man, and fighters know them.

He doesn't look Keeler in the eye when he nudges his legs apart, takes himself in hand and finally - God damned finally - starts to ease himself in. There's no need for it. It'll be hurt and anger and bravado, and Keeler'll fray his lower lip between his teeth, before yielding a little groan and reasoning himself into the strategy of whiling this one out. Encke knows. He's spent days learning just what his navi's made of.

"...just don't leave," he says stupidly, as if it's a bargain. As if he can make up for it - for everything. Anything.