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“The insolent whelp returns.” Hunhow’s voice swirled out of the subterranean mist, the massive Sentient-scaffolding of his body barely visible in the murk outside. Shadow let go of him and he slouched forward ungracefully, steadying himself on his hands and knees. He pushed up to his feet, swaying in place as the last of the disorientation ebbed away. “Why? Why have you shown your face in my sanctum again, Drifter?”
“I have news.”
Shadow paced around him slowly, hugging the edge of the platform; tracing a wide, languid circle. Drifter knew he was keeping a harsh, close eye. The back of his neck prickled from being scruffed like a disobedient kavat kit, and the front of his throat tingled with the phantom memory of the cruel gut-hook scythe pressing against his throat. He coughed, grateful to his hood for hiding new heat in his face.
“News. What news is so important that you must return to my prison?” The ancient Sentient’s voice was low, even and cool. He spoke in the sure, steady, almost hypnotic cadence of someone who knew they would be listened to. Drifter made a point of not kowtowing to any corrupt, despotic authority; had made his life’s work cracking veils and breaking shackles. Hunhow’s authority ran deeper than that.
“She is whole now. Natah… Lotus… Margulis. Whichever she has chosen. My…” he faltered. He wanted his words to make sense— to truly communicate what he meant by harboring and nurturing the waning Eidolon of Natah. “Duty to her is over. You…”
“So she is free,” Hunhow cut him off. Drifter stayed silent; when Hunhow said nothing else after a moment, he nodded.
“She’s free,” he echoed softly, and collected himself to say more loudly, “she’s free.”
“Then our business together is concluded,” Hunhow’s voice rang in the atrium. Drifter nodded, shrugged.
“And I’ve brought this back for you.”
He retrieved Nataruk from his side. He loved the bow, in all honesty; it was a far cry from the void-powered peashooters he was used to, and it felt good. It felt like something that was meant for his hands to hold. Still, it wasn’t his; it was a gift, given for a singular purpose. He kept his grip around the scaffolding loose, no matter how tightly he wanted to cling to the magnificent weapon. A fragment of Hunhow, he reminded himself, that should be returned to the massive Sentient. Keeping it would feel a bit like grave robbing.
“Nataruk. Borne of my bones. Crafted to kill,” Hunhow said plainly. “My Shadow will take it from you.”
Drifter held it out. Shadow approached; Drifter surrendered the bow, clinging to it only momentarily. His fingers curled to comb through the last orange lines of Sentient energy, and he shifted his gaze back to Hunhow.
“Are you going to let me leave peacefully?”
Hunhow’s Sentient-lights flared brighter for the slightest moment; Shadow’s did, too. They were coming to some unknown agreement. Drifter certainly hoped it was one about letting him leave in one piece.
“If that’s what you desire.”
“I’d desire it over getting ‘dispatched’ by Shadow over there, yeah.” He took a step back. The entry to the atrium was closed, locked, but he could probably… do something. He wasn’t sure what, but he could always do something. He didn’t survive so long by rolling over and showing his belly to everything that tried to kill him. Heavy silence reigned as he took a handful more tentative steps backwards, ready to throw down a smokescreen and bolt at the slightest twitch from Shadow.
“I do… owe you a reward, don’t I, Drifter?”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Drifter corrected wearily. Hunhow had been the one to help him first.
“For exceeding my expectations. For a job well done,” Hunhow continued. “For making me change my mind about you.”
“Am I still a vainglorious whelp?” Drifter sniped despite his full knowledge of how dangerous the situation could turn at any second. He couldn’t help it; it was such an obvious jab. He had to.
“Yes.” Hunhow’s voice dripped with condescension. “But not beyond… correction.”
“Correction?” Drifter didn’t bother to not sound offended. He’d done most of the legwork. Hunhow had given him a bow, and Shadow’s aid, and quite a lot of comments.
“Not beyond discipline,” Hunhow agreed.
“—are you coming onto me?” Sudden realization crashed into him. Hunhow laughed, finally, a low, rumbling sound that hit Drifter in the same places his most commanding tone did. Low places.
“How could I not? Bar my Shadow, none have touched me for eons. And I have touched none for eons, bar my Shadow… and you, Drifter.”
Drifter shut up— he would have stammered and said something stupid otherwise. He stared helplessly at Shadow, and then at Hunhow, then back again, and then back again. He swallowed. He looked at Nataruk, and then back at Hunhow. “And you… wanna touch me?”
“Inside and out. To feel the bruises left by the Archons. To trace the burns left by the false king’s wicked rod. To feel the Void inside of you, caged.”
“I don’t even know what it can do,” Drifter admitted. Hunhow sighed, a long, low gust.
“But you can feel it. What a prison your body is, Drifter. What a warden you are. I’d like to undo you; to see you trembling with pleasure like you’ve never felt before.”
If he was a warden, he was a poor, unwitting one. He did not give those thoughts voice, setting his hands on his hips and looking up at the Sentient. Drifter was curious despite himself as to how Hunhow was going to get him off. The Sentient had been motionless beyond the glass walls of the atrium for millenia, a witness to countless rises and falls. Somehow, jammed in there, Drifted doubted sex came into it. He had no clue how the alien machines even reproduced.
“…sure. As long as I have safe passage out.”
Hunhow rumbled in agreement. His body was still but for the flares of light; unreachable, trapped under the immense pressure of the deep. But there, and visible, and almost close enough to touch. Drifter could move and fight and was not limited to shadows or proxies. How must Hunhow feel? Still, he’d managed to talk Drifter into something even with all those limitations, so Drifter stopped himself from feeling too bad.
“Go on. Take Nataruk again.”
Shadow held it out. The bow vibrated with Sentient energy in his hands; Drifter knew he and Hunhow were attuned, in a way, and now suspected that they were attuned in a different way as well, but it made the heavy thrum of Nataruk in Drifter’s care seem like little more than a whisper. Drifter supposed he should be humbled. He reached out for the bow; the orange energy flared, the scaffolding almost appearing to ripple as his hands came closer. It came to him; was propelled by the energy wreathing it. Drifter expected it to rest in his hands, but instead the scaffolding caught his wrists. He testingly tugged; his wrists were caught by the curves at either end of the bow, nestled into Sentient-scaffolding and held there by energy threads.
“Hunhow—”
“Nervous, Drifter?”
“A little. What are you going to do to me?”
“Only what I said I would.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
Another curl of scaffolding curved around the back of his neck and dragged his hands up until they were bracketing the air by his head. Energy strengthened the disparate parts; Drifter tugged to no avail.
Shadow gripped him by the back of the neck and guided him down to his knees. Drifter understood, academically, that it was a more comfortable, more stable position than standing with the makeshift Sentient stocks taking his hands away; his face prickled with a surge of indignity and arousal and while he didn’t struggle, he hissed to make his displeasure clear. The Drifter did not kneel. As soon as he was down, the touch disappeared. Shadow retreated to circle the edge of the platform again, a silent sentry over Drifter. Shadow was tall, sturdy, warm with Void-given power; Drifter had nothing but the stolen memory of how warm some Warframes were. He’d expected lifeless metal. The one he’d taken command of was far from lifeless, if shackled to his mind. To Transference.
Shadow ran hot in the clammy oceanic hollow. The back of Drifter’s neck tingled with the new cold after being under his palm, even through fabric.
“I want to see you,” Hunhow decided. Shadow approached him again, from the side. Drifter was reminded of a vulture. What was he, then? Carrion? He couldn’t escape the mental image of himself as still-living, twitching prey, victim to the merciless whims of a hungry predator. A willing victim, but a victim nonetheless. Shadow set one hand under his chin and one on the top of his head, dislodging his hood and lifting it off. The air hit him, salt and brine, wet dirt and stone, the faint sweet stench of rotting flesh from the sealed-off corridors outside. Shadow held him by the throat as he swayed, less to help him keep his balance and more to impress upon him how serious his situation was.
He was wet. That was serious.
“Like what you see?” He hadn’t escaped Narmer’s horde unscathed, nor had he survived the rippling planes of Duviri unblemished. He was missing a little chunk out of his lip and his nose was crooked, and his eyes— they’d been seared with Void energy when he first transferred into a Warframe, from a mellow dark brown to icy, luminous, wisping blue. Dark purple bruises and palm-sized burns dotted his body from Amar’s relentless assault and Boreal’s horrid energy discharge.
“How vain you are.” Hunhow didn’t seem bothered by it. Nataruk pulsed, sudden heat, and tiny threads of Sentient energy cascaded down his body. They effortlessly hugged his skin under his battle gear. Drifter yelped, rearing back from the warm, tingling sensation to no avail; it was following him, oriented to his body instead of around it. The tingling petered out at his thighs, curving ever so slightly inward and teasing the softness of his inner thighs, but going no further.
“I— I think I deserve it,” Drifter defended. “I look pretty good for having stopped a madman from eating the sun.”
The bow pulsed again. A rippling tingle trailed down the very center of his body, between his chest and shoulder blades, and it didn’t appear to weaken as it traveled down— a high thrill seized him around the chest when they reached his bellybutton, and then his tailbone, and he muffled a squeal as the lick of energy carved a tingling line down his core. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever felt before, a touch that wasn’t. A sensation that was a creation of his mind so much as it was real, phantom touch turning to very real pleasure.
“Hunhow, what the fuck?”
He yanked his wrists in Nataruk’s hold again. It did nothing. Hunhow’s rumble filled the atrium and Shadow’s pacing took a different timbre.
“I did say… inside and out.”
The same sensation sparked to life on his skin. He thought he was ready. He steeled himself for the unique experience of Sentient energy-threads caressing his mound, splitting him and pooling as an insistent tingle between his legs, and managed to stay quiet until it happened. He groaned lowly, appreciative, at the delicate heat. Hunhow didn’t stop there. The two threads met at his hole; they trailed inside, the same slow, unhurried pace, and Drifter’s body jolted at the sudden heat warring with his. It felt almost like something was inside of him. He’d experimented with fingers and toys before— never actually with a person. Hunhow’s threads traced his walls, ghosting over nerve endings with tantalizing barely-there pressure. Places that had never been touched before, making Drifter cry out and jolt forward— and then cry out again as he lost his balance, setting himself on a collision force with the floor.
He never made it there; Shadow caught him by the shoulders and yanked him back to his knees. Drifter’s legs were parted now, as wide as he could get them, and he bucked his hips as Hunhow teased him. He knew he had to look stupid, wriggling there under the cruel restraints of his own bondage. If it wasn’t for that fucking bow, he’d be in heaven. That was the true danger of desire; it was strong, intoxicatingly so, when it could not be fully fulfilled.
It shouldn’t have made him as hot as it did. Shadow retreated once more, prowling around him. His powerful hands flexed; Drifter spared a look to his broad, muscular thighs and the heady, hazy glow of his energy, the smoke pouring off of him in thick gouts. He wanted him close, Drifter realized. He wanted the predator to strike.
Drifter whimpered pitifully, his own hands clenching into fists. Hunhow withdrew from his hole. His own wet messed the inside of his pants. The way he was angled, Hunhow could see every inch of him and could surely see Drifter’s expression of dumbfounded pleasure. Another cascade of energy flowed from the bow, down his body. Always downwards, building tension and anticipation that made Drifter feel almost sick on it. The flow was a slow, steady pace. Over his chest, down his ribs, cresting his hipbones and following the vee down to wash over his clit, forgoing the rest of his abominable wet to caress his inner thighs. He rose up into the sensation. Just like the last time, it won him nothing. He whined, throaty and strangled, and dropped back down, straining against Nataruk’s bonds.
“You may join in, Shadow,” Hunhow crooned. “But be gentle with him. He’s done well. This is a reward.”
Drifter gasped softly as Shadow closed the distance once more, swiftly, and approached him from behind, kneeling and seizing him by the back of the neck again. His hand circled around until he was holding Drifter by the throat. It wasn't tight enough to choke; it was, however, secure. He hauled Drifted back until his rear was perched on Shadow’s upper thighs, his spread legs bracketing Shadow’s. Bright orange Sentient energy traced his body again, skimming over his nipples and belly and meeting between his legs. The sensation was little more than the warm tingle Drifter was now infuriatingly accustomed to. Drifter twitched his hips and rocked back on Shadow’s thighs. Maybe, now that Shadow was a part of this as more than a patient voyeur, he would touch him past the commanding, clinical movements he’d done to take his hood off or to keep him from breaking his nose against the atrium dais.
“I never thanked you for helping me against Amar.” He’d never heard his voice so weak and breathy. Shadow squeezed his throat, a cursory movement, and his other hand slipped underneath Drifter’s armor to lay flat against his belly. His palm was brand-hot compared to the clammy air of the atrium. Shadow caressed the skin there, following old divots of scars, thumbing over his hipbone, doing nothing to help address Drifter’s real issue. Drifter curled his fingers. His nails dug into his palms. Shadow trailed up, opposite a new stream of Sentient energy. It traveled under the Warframe’s palm, compounding in heat and making Drifter attempt once again to squirm up and away. He drove himself up on Shadow’s thighs, into the Warframe’s sturdy chest, the back of his hand nudging against his shoulder. Shadow tilted his head back with his hand under his chin. Held him there, for a moment, until his thighs began to burn with the effort, and then let him lower back down. Hunhow’s energy stung his inner thighs and in response he pushed them wider.
Shadow’s fingers rolled over his nipple, nudging and pressing down on the sensitive bud. Drifter was able to squirm away from that; Shadow did not let him go far at all. Hunhow’s energy felt like the lightest brush and Shadow’s touch was hot. His hole was so wet he felt he would cry. Shadow repeated the motion, tweaking his other nipple, and Drifter— humiliatingly— mewled. His face burned and he was sure he was dripping even through his pants.
“More,” he finally broke. The constant trails of Sentient energy were good, but he wanted more. He needed Hunhow to enter him again, to invade the deepest reaches of his body and caress the sensitive nodes there until his being exploded with pleasure. Being penetrated by Sentient energy was like nothing Drifter had ever felt before, unparalleled in intensity and dominion. He needed Shadow to touch him more than lazy groping.
“Beg.“ Hunhow’s voice rose above Drifter’s needy whining and moaning. A hot flare of indignation burnt Drifter’s chest and face.
“No!” He hadn’t begged anyone before, he wasn’t about to start now. He wriggled madly on Shadow’s lap and was held firm by the hand around his throat, Shadow’s free hand falling to hold him by the hip. Drifter yanked his hands against Nataruk’s bindings; it did nothing.
“Do you want this to stop, Drifter?” Hunhow’s voice lilted, patient and steady. Drifter opened his mouth to pant and moan some more. If he could just get a little more— if he could touch himself— if he could just come!— his pride screamed for him to spit and fight. It was what he always did, ever since that night on the Zariman where he found out that fighting would define the rest of his life.
“Don’t stop!”
“Then beg.” Hunhow’s voice brooked no argument. Drifter thrashed anyway, petulant and defiant for defiance’s sake.
“No!”
Shadow’s hand around his throat tightened. He was still heeding Hunhow’s order; it hurt, might bruise, but the force was expertly meted out to only cut off Drifter’s bloodflow and quell his fight. He slumped in the hold when a rush of lightheadedness sent the room spinning. The choke relaxed back to the comparatively kinder force of Shadow’s palm cradling his throat. It was a sight better than the scythe, Drifter had to admit.
“You’ll beg,” Hunhow decided. Drifter snarled, lurched forward again, but settled near-immediately when Shadow squeezed his throat. The Warframe behind him shuddered. A laugh, Drifter realized. Shadow was laughing at him for being so easily taken in hand. Sentient energy-threads trailed down his body from Nataruk’s scaffolding again and his fight drained to nothing once more. It was warm, buzzing and alive against his skin. It traced his ribs; followed the hungry, lightly muscled divot of his belly and curled around his hipbones. It was impossible to ignore the feeling that Hunhow was making good on his urge to explore him, though at the expense of letting him come.
He could feel every individual thread of Sentient-energy caressing terribly sensitive parts of his anatomy. One traced his clit, traveling up the hood in a tiny, faint wave before lightly cresting the hyper-sensitive bud and humming faintly. It stayed there, implacable, no matter how desperately he jerked his hips. It was so delicate and precise as to be almost painful with its direct touch on his most sensitive part. Another circled his entrance, a singular line of fire playing at the incredible sense of tightness and readiness. It dipped in, ever so slightly, teasing him. He was smearing wet onto Shadow’s thighs. The Sentient-energy teasing his hole never went in enough to stroke truly sensitive nerve endings inside of him; Drifter wanted to scream. Yet another pair of Sentient energy-threads mapped his outer lips. It was nothing more than the lightest pressure and warmth, nothing compared to the heat his own body was enduring.
“Hunhow!” Drifter wailed. His legs trembled, and only Shadow’s intervention kept him from collapsing to the floor. The energy on his clit intensified until it was a hot buzzing pressure right at the very tip of it. The threads lacing the rim of his hole dipped the slightest bit inwards. “Hunhow, you bastard! Fuck you! Fuck you, give me more!”
Neither Hunhow nor Shadow responded. The sensation stayed there, almost enough but not quite, and no matter his twitching and thrashing was incapable of giving himself that extra bit.
He wasn’t fighting to win, though, not this fight. He threw his head back and screamed, secure in the knowledge that it would only be heard by Hunhow and Shadow, and slumped back in Shadow’s grip. “Please.”
Begging the Sentient felt like a betrayal in all the best ways. It was dirty, even, to prostrate himself so and plead for something as simple as touch; but he couldn’t touch himself, and he needed to come.
“Hunhow, please. Please!”
Shadow’s hand released his hip to rest on his inner thigh. Just a little more, Drifter mentally bargained. Just a little more and he’d never kick up a stink about anything ever again.
“Predictable, but not unwelcome.” At this stage of denial and desire Drifter heard Hunhow’s voice as an intoxicating rumble in his chest. “Very well, my Drifter. Have your reward.”
My Drifter struck him like lightning to the chest. He didn’t have much time at all to dwell on it; Nataruk pulsed, strongly this time, and a new wave of energy flooded his body. Faster, this time, plummeting like tiny searing comets to converge at his core. The threads caressed his walls and he screamed, thoughts whiting out as his brain struggled to comprehend sensations that weren’t quite real. There was something in his hole, heat and pressure and movement, and there was not. Hunhow’s Sentient-energy filled him up, pulsing heavily in sync with Drifter’s thunderous heartbeat. The thread on his clit enveloped it entirely. Shadow rubbed him over his clothes, two fingers pressing Drifter’s soaked pants into his clit.
Drifter screamed, again, fully taken under by the sensation of dark, sensuous, divine pleasure so ancient only an alien consciousness such as Hunhow could produce it, and his world went dark.
He didn’t know how much time had passed. Between his legs was still wet. He was laying down on his side, legs slightly bent, his head in Shadow’s lap as the Warframe combed fingers through his hair. It was almost like the hunter was petting him. It was slow, steady, and soothing. His entire body was sore, like he’d been shocked half to death and his muscles were paying for it, and figured that wasn’t incorrect as a descriptor. He mumbled in incoherent wakefulness rather than shifting his head from Shadow’s lap; then, tried again.
“Huh-Hunhow. Shadow.”
“Patience, Drifter. It was perhaps too much for you.”
“That was fuckin’ great,” Drifter contended, and had his next words interrupted by a yawn, “Dunno what you’re talking about.”
“Insolent,” Hunhow chided, entirely without heat. Nataruk was no longer holding him, Drifter realized. The bow was wrapped around his arm in pieces, still a cuff but now far more formidable and feeling like a part of him instead of restraints. Drifter glanced up at Shadow; the Warframe stroked his cheek, followed the line of his chin, and traced a heavy blue bruise on his throat.
“…does this mean I get to keep the bow?”
“Carry it with you. Use it to strike down our enemies. My Shadow will test you periodically to see if you are still worthy to bear it.”
Drifter hadn’t actually fought Shadow. Shadow had fought alongside him, had dealt the killing blow to Amar, had filled Drifter with inhuman vigor and lifted him to his feet when the Archons struck him down, and Drifter knew for certain that Shadow was a fearsome opponent. He honestly did not like his chances.
“…and if he decides I’m not?”
Shadow traced his jaw idly. The large Warframe was drawn, implacably, to his throat. Drifter could only hope his mercy would hold and he’d refrain from slitting it.
“Then you will be brought to me, where you will explain your mistake.”
“You’re giving me more homework? And tests?” Drifter didn’t even have it in himself to sound offended. Knowing that Shadow would be fighting to subdue, not to kill, was welcoming enough. He wouldn’t exactly be opposed to being subdued by the imposing Warframe— failing a test, though, he was far more wary of.
“Only because I have faith in you as a student, Drifter.”
Drifter nodded briefly, the movement hampered by Shadow’s legs and Shadow’s hand in his hair.
“And if I do a good job, am I gonna get another reward?”
Hunhow did not laugh, but voice was distinctly warm and amused when he responded next. “If you impress me. Rest, now. My Shadow will escort you to the surface once you’ve properly slept.”
The invitation was deceptively welcome. Shadow seemed content to pet his hair, and his body was comfortably warm even though the rest of the atrium was clammy. Drifter was still exhausted. He mumbled an affirmative, let his eyes shut, and fell asleep.