Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dante Vale’s team never made things easy.

Some would think a man like Grier would like a challenge, but he was a man who simply wanted to do his job and do it well. This was why it was a pain when Dante Vale grabbed the target on their latest encounter, the Amulet containing the Titan Ambrosia, and took off through the labyrinthine ruins it had been hidden in. DeFoe would have ordered every man after him if they weren’t all occupied with getting their butts kicked by the rest of Vale’s team. So, instead, it was Grier’s job to chase him down.

The main problem was that Dante was very good at what he did. Losing a henchman down there would have been easy enough. Luckily, Grier wasn’t just any henchman. He got turned around a few times but kept on the trail. The corridors were too tight for Titans, and there were too many corners and narrow halls for Hyperstride or Nimblefire. Options were limited, and if things got physical, which there was almost no doubt it would, it would come down to traditional hand-to-hand combat. Any offensive powers or Titans could bring the already frail ruins down on top of them.

Grier paused in his search. It was neither that he’d lost track of where he was nor that it was getting increasingly dark that made him stop. He’d heard something. It was faint, but…

A fist connected with his jaw as soon as he’d pulled the rotting door next to him open. As he staggered, there was a flash of goldenrod fabric as Dante dashed by him. The punch hadn’t been powerful enough to slow him, so Grier shot his hand out and managed to grab the other Seeker’s arm. As he pulled, though, he came away with only a jacket and made a frustrated sound as Dante disappeared again. He discarded the coat to the side and again took off after his quarry.

At first, he thought he’d lost Dante. At least until he turned the next corner. He must have been right on the redhead’s heels since the other Seeker had been stopped by a collapsed corridor in a dead-end and hadn’t recovered enough to correct himself yet.

“Finally,” Grier announced, standing arrow straight as Dante turned to face him. Grier wasn’t an unreasonable man. He was willing to negotiate. “Hand over the Amulet, and we can both walk away from this unharmed.”

“Not true,” Dante huffed. “My pride would be irreversibly crushed.”

“That won’t be the only thing broken if you don’t give up.”

Dante snorted, moving into a fighting stance. “You and I both know that’s not happening. So why don’t we stop with the witty banter and get to the ass-kicking part?”

“Agreed.”

The Foundation Seeker was the first to spring into motion. The fight was difficult, with little visibility and limited space, but not impossible for the two experienced combatants. They traded blows, dodging, weaving, and matching each other in skill. Dante kept trying to get the upper hand and escape, while Grier blocked his route every time. This song and dance continued until Dante made the most minuscule of mistakes. It only took a half-second of timing being off for Grier to get a good grip and slam him into a wall, pinning him. Dante grit his teeth to keep from falling unconscious as his head impacted with solid stone.

“Where is it?” Grier demanded, tightening his grip.

Through his grinding teeth, the redhead still managed a defiant smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Grier snarled at him but didn’t receive a reaction. Their faces were so close that their exhausted breathing intermingled. Dante’s breath smelled vaguely of mouthwash and curry.

The blond soldier didn’t have time for this. He knew it was rude, but at this point, manners were meaningless. So, he held his captive still with a forearm across the chest and stuck his free hand in Dante’s right pocket.

Dante made a startled sound, but didn’t stop him, even as the hand pulled out his Amulets. Grier scrutinized them. Solwing, Caliban, Metagolem… All the usual suspects, but no Ambrosia. He tossed them to the side and searched the left pocket. Wallet, passport, rental keys, but no Amulet. He discarded those to the side as well.

“Planning on strip-searching me while you’re at it?” Dante teased, smirking.

“I wouldn’t have to if you’d just give it up,” Grier growled, turning him roughly and pushing the redhead against the wall front-first. “Hands where I can see them.”

“Yes, officer.” Dante spread his legs slightly to accommodate the position, hands pressed against the cold stone. “Keep this up, and I might give it to you yet. But I don’t mean the Amulet.”

Grier stopped what he was doing. He would have asked Dante what he meant if not for the aroused growl in his voice as the soldier searched his back pocket. At first, he thought the Seeker was teasing him again. But one look at his face told Grier that Dante was getting seriously turned on. The slightly parted, panting lips. The red-tinted cheeks. Not to mention, he just noticed that the redhead’s backside was pushing against his hand. Every cell in his brain screamed at him to stop and back away. Forget the fact that this was another man. This was his enemy. Dante Vale represented everything he was fighting. He was the chaos to Grier’s order.

So why wasn’t the rest of him listening to his brain? Instead of pulling out, his hand remained in Dante’s back pocket, and he took an experimental squeeze of the soft flesh through denim and underwear fabric. The redhead’s amber eyes fluttered closed, and he nudged his hips back encouragingly.

The blond’s other hand left its post, holding him against the wall as his brain lost the rest of its control over his actions from the pleasurable groan escaping Dante’s lips as the hand in his pocket pushed forward and downward. The waistband of Dante’s khakis was the only thing still holding them up, and even that gave way a bit to slide down his hips. The other hand sank into Dante’s front pocket again as he reached around from behind. He discovered that only a couple of inches away, Dante was definitely aroused. If he pushed his hand far enough, he could brush his fingers against the hard-on there, eliciting a gasp. Dear Lord, why was he still doing this?  What had come over him?

It was turning him on to feel the heat radiating from his captive’s body. As his fingers brushed against Dante’s erection, the hand in his back pocket left its position and wrapped around to the front of the redhead’s shirt, pushing under it. This allowed him to push himself full-body against the other man’s back, his own hardness pressing against his rear.

Dante breathed out quickly and gasped, fingers scraping against the wall. “Good to know I’m not the only one enjoy- AH!” his sentence was cut short as he was pushed against the wall forcefully by the frustrated grinding of his enemy. The hand under his sweater massaged his abs, and he bit his bottom lip.

“You are an impossible man, Dante Vale,” Grier finally spoke, the hand in Dante’s front pocket ceasing its teasing of his dick and leaving its temporary surroundings. He expertly undid the front of the redhead’s jeans, reaching in and grasping the throbbing appendage tightly. The subdued man let out a cry, hips grinding back against his erection. “You’re over-confident, unpredictable, and overbearingly chaotic in your methods.”

The redhead let out a laugh, though it sounded breathless and hot. “You’ve yet to tell me what… ah… my bad qualities are…” he panted as the hand on his dick stroked it roughly. The other one moved down and bypassed his genitalia while pushing his jeans and briefs down further. Finally, Grier grasped at the inside of his upper thigh. His entire body shuddered in pleasure.

Grier forced Dante’s legs as far apart as the jeans around his thighs would allow. He then pulled back, biting the middle finger of the glove he wore on his left hand and pulling it off roughly. This was insane. Why was he still doing this? Any of this? Something about the thoroughly aroused state his captive was in compelled him to keep going. So, he reached up with his now bare hand and covered Dante’s mouth with it, muffling the moaning sounds he was making. The feel of his lips and goatee upon his palm and fingers only encouraged him further. So, he bent his middle and ring finger, forcing them past the other Seeker’s lips and teeth, where they were enthusiastically sucked and licked. His own dick throbbed at the feeling, jerking off his quarry harder. The rougher he handled Dante’s cock, the harder he sucked on the two fingers invading his mouth. He didn’t know how much more either would be able to take.

So, he withdrew his fingers from the hot, wet confines of his mouth and leaned back just enough to slip the hand between them. The blonde’s fingers teased Dante’s back entrance, ignoring how increasingly wrong this was. The sounds that came out of his mouth were intoxicating. The cries of pleasure, the moans, the desperate, breathless panting. He forced his middle finger inside the redhead’s asshole, eliciting a strangled cry. His captive’s legs buckled, and the hand wrapped around Dante’s dick let go to catch him from either injuring himself or impaling himself entirely upon the finger deep in his twitching muscles.

Dante used the leverage to reach back, wrapping an arm around the man behind him’s neck and pulling him forward into a kiss. Their tongues wrestled as the finger worked its way in and out of the tight confines of his asshole repeatedly. When Grier decided he was too comfortable, he also added the ring finger. Dante cried out again, head falling back against the blonde’s shoulder. He held tight to the arm around his chest, panting heavily as he was violently fucked by the two fingers.

“Oh… oh, god… oh, god, Grier!” Dante cried out, trying to push himself back against the fingers even harder than they were already being shoved inside of him. “P-please, stop teasing… m… me!” The last word came out a loud moan, punctuated with his legs shaking and threatening to give once more.

“Do you like that?” Grier growled into his ear. It was a rather ridiculous question, as he already knew the answer, but he found that he could use this to his advantage.

“God, yes!” came the enthusiastic response.

“You want to feel something even better in your hole?” He almost couldn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth. Not that he should have been particularly surprised by what had happened so far.

“Yes! Ah, please… AH! Fuck me, please!”

Hearing those words screamed from Dante Vale’s mouth made his own dick jump to any full attention it might have been slacking off on. He tried not to concentrate on how hot and tight his hole was and the implications forming from the fact that he was enthusiastic, completely ready, and willing to be fucked, and how easily his fingers could slide into those deep crevices. “If you want it, then tell me where you hid the Amulet.”

Dante hesitated for the first time that night, seeming to debate in his head whether or not he should tell him. To encourage him, Grier’s fingers dug all the way into his hole, moving around and scissoring as deep as they would go. This was rewarded with another strangled cry of pleasure, followed by, “The rubble!  It’s under a stone there in the rubble!”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Keeping his promise, as he always did, the blond pulled his fingers out of the other man’s hole, eliciting a groan from him. He undid the front of his uniform pants and pulled out his own rock-hard cock, stroking it to make sure it was fully ready. He didn’t wait for further encouragement or preparation. His dick slid suspiciously easily into Dante’s asshole, fitting almost completely deep without trouble. The last inch and a half were a tighter fit than the rest, giving him the impression that while the redhead was obviously well-versed in such acts, he’d never taken someone as large as his rival and enemy. No matter, Grier gripped the other man’s hips and began pumping his dick in and out of the hot corridors of his fuck-hole.

“Uhn, yeah, fuck! Harder, please, god, harder!”

“You don’t have to ask God,” Grier said, pushing himself in and grinding his hips. “Ask me properly.”

“G-Grier! Please fuck me harder, Grier!”

“That’s better.”

The blond accommodated the request with enthusiasm, adjusting his grip to slam his dick harder into the hot entrance. He was rewarded with screams of pleasure and encouragement. It didn’t take long before the redhead’s body quaked, and he came hard, coating the ancient wall of the tomb with his semen. He was probably glad Grier had such a tight hold on him as he finished, figuring he wouldn’t have been able to hold himself up.

It took a few more moments of violent thrusting before Grier followed suit, filling Dante’s asshole with his own seed. It felt both horribly wrong and fantastically right at the same time to cum inside of the redhead. As soon as he was done, he finally simply let go, letting the other man collapse to the floor heavily without any support holding him up anymore. The larger man stumbled backward a bit himself, turning to lean on the opposite wall and breathing heavily for a few moments. Part of it was to recover. The other was trying to sort through his head what he had just done.

One look behind him answered that question quickly. Dante lay on the floor, his pants around his thighs, a trail of white running out of his asshole. He was facing away from the blond. It was hard to tell whether he was avoiding his gaze out of humiliation or was simply too exhausted to bother turning.

Jesus Christ… what could have possibly caused him to lose so much control? He had never had such thoughts about a man, let alone Dante Vale, before. He didn’t even know how he knew what to do.

Grier shook his head. There wasn’t time to think about this. He quickly zipped himself back up, straightening out his uniform once again. He snatched the glove he discarded onto the ground and pulled it on, deciding to worry about sanitizing himself later. He then stalked over to the pile of rubble where Dante had said he had stashed the Amulet of Ambrosia. After a minute’s worth of sifting, in which he began to think he had lied, he finally found it. The blond sighed in relief that this was finally over and turned to leave. Of course, he couldn’t go without passing the man on the ground, now sitting with his back to the wall.

The militaristic man almost passed right by him and nearly managed to not even look at Dante. But all he had to hear was one shuddering exhale of breath to realize that he wasn’t the only one having an adverse reaction to what had just happened. And he couldn’t just leave him here, alone and defenseless, where his team may never even find him. Even Dante Vale wasn’t good enough to find his way out of a labyrinthine ruin in the dark after what had just happened to him.

So, against his better judgment, Grier knelt beside the redhead, whose eyes were hidden behind rust-colored bangs. “Waiting for round two?” Dante sneered. It didn't have nearly the bite it should've, though.

“It would be disrespectful of me to leave you vulnerable. Especially after… that.” Even to his own ears, it sounded ridiculous. Still, Grier needed to justify this. Hell, he needed to find a way to explain everything.

Dante realized immediately how stupid it was, letting out a short laugh. Even that sounded exhausted. “After all of that, you expect me to believe you still respect me?”

Grier frowned at the words. Well, more than usual. “Why wouldn't I?” he asked in genuine confusion.

There was a moment of silence before Dante's head tilted, one amber eye showing itself through the curtain of his bangs. “You're serious?” he finally asked. It was hard to determine what emotion was behind it. Confusion. Disbelief. Maybe a little amusement. “I literally begged you to fuck me like a cheap hooker trying to earn an extra twenty. I  don't even respect myself that much right now.”

Grier felt a spark of indignation on the Seeker's behalf. “Don't be stupid. We both lost control of ourselves. I… don't even know why that happened,” the blond admitted against his better judgment. There was just something about this moment, and it was so intimate that it made him want to defend what they did. No matter how wrong it felt. “I've never felt such things for anyone.”

Dante blinked at him in surprise. “No one? Wait… that wasn't your first time, was it?” He didn't sound like he was mocking Grier. Rather curious instead.

“Having sex, no,” Grier corrected him sternly. He didn't want Dante to misconstrue things. “It was the first time I have been with a man. And most certainly the first time with a rival.”

“Not just your first gay fuck, but your first hate fuck?” Dante put a hand to his chest. Now he was mocking Grier. “I'm flattered! Truth be told, though, I don't know why I did either. I'm not going to pretend after that that I don't like taking some dick when I can get away from babysitting duties. But I've never had the urge in the middle of a Seeker mission. Let alone while fighting someone.”

“The fact that it was me is likely just as shocking,” Grier joked dryly.

“No, that part I'm definitely not sorry about.” Grier looked at him in shock at the words but couldn't find the same teasing as before. “What? I've thought about it. Never while on the job, of course, but… I probably shouldn't tell you this, but you're exactly my type.”

Grier stared at him until Dante started laughing. The blond felt his face flush, but even he couldn't tell if it was anger or embarrassment. At any rate, “At least you sound better. I feel less guilty about leaving you to find your way out,” he huffed, standing back up. It was true, though. Dante sounded more like himself, and given just a minute more, he'd be recovered enough to leave. He paused as he started to, looking at the redhead, who was pulling his pants up. “It shouldn't have to be said that neither of us should speak of this to our teams.”

“Oh, yeah, that's something I'd love explaining to the others,” Dante snorted as he buckled his belt. “Sorry I lost the Titan, Grier fucked it out of me.”

At that, Grier actually almost laughed before he caught himself. “Yes, well. If they ask, you gave it up in exchange for me allowing you to leave without handing you to DeFoe.”

“I'll try not to die of humiliation,” Dante sighed. He stood up with some effort but then stepped forward. “Wait. One more thing.”

Grier put his guard up, making sure to hang onto Ambrosia. He wasn't stupid. Dante was slippery on his worst days. Still, he turned to face the shorter man. A second later, his eyes widened, his breath catching as Dante took Grier's face into his hands and kissed him.

It wasn't sexually charged like before. It was slow, searching, and full of emotions that Grier wasn't even prepared to begin sorting. Its much less frantic nature allowed Grier to focus on things he didn't before. Like how soft Dante's lips were and the perfect angle they met to make it as deep as possible. It felt like it lasted for hours. Until Dante stopped. Then it felt like it had only been seconds. Maybe it had.

Dante licked his lips and smirked. “Just making sure. Get out of here, I need to gather up the shit you threw everywhere. And hopefully clean myself up enough that I won't leak when I get out of here.”

Grier cringed, still not ready to confront how crassly honest Dante was about his sexuality. Instead, he decided to cut his losses and go. He looked at his hand as he did, Ambrosia still tightly clung to it.

Whatever this Titan did, it better be worth the trouble it took to get it.