[ An impressive showing it is, in Set's eyes. Wherever Hugo lacks, it's not in determination; someone possessed of passion and conviction could never truly lack, not in the god's eyes, for all else would follow to the extent of his ability with training, focus and attention paid to him. Others might have grown frustrated, presented not only with a god's divine power — his fluid, malleable sands and extensive tactical experience — but also, his capacity for sheer ruthlessness in never giving an inch that Hugo didn't take.
To be caught the one time sends a thrill through him, a brilliant ache that lightens his spirit and makes him laugh when he feels Hugo's hand upon him. A brief span of time, where he becomes the prey and the other man a predator ( don't unpack it, the imbalance between enjoying being caught, and never wanting a hand laid upon him again — ). Of course he changes gears there, no longer the darting arrow or wind-swept ribbon of scarlet, but the hawk flashing talon and beak that took Hugo mid-jump and rolled with him: thighs strong around his hips, hands grappling the front of his coat as he'd laughed and laughed and tumbled them across a rooftop. Bounced him off in the end and kept running in another direction.
They're done in an hour, Hugo winded and Set buoyant with the experience. The darkness around them tempers his own energy levels, unable to pull in the light of the sun to offset the cost of using his divinity, of running and darting and playing. He breathes a little restlessly, deep and dragging breaths as he paces to cool himself down — the heat in his legs, the ache in his hands. The lingering tension in his belly, that he thinks he can do nothing about until Hugo captures a breath and expends it in question.
Set stills. His fingers half-flexed to work out the soreness from hauling himself up onto sills, digging his claws into walls to take a corner fast enough to tease Hugo with the trailing ends of hair or branch. His claws slip out from the root of the nail, reflexive as he processes. Concludes. Crosses the meager space between them and dips his head below Hugo's gaze, his spine following the upward arc a heron's lithe neck might make as it dips and rises with prey captured in its beak, as he curves into the Spectral's space and captures his mouth in answer.
[ Asking at all is something impulsive. He knows that, and he’d accept a “no” or even balking at the question in the first place easily. For most, it would be a strange thing to ask now, but there’s a type of person that gets it. The thrill of a chase is intoxicating whether you’re the one doing the chasing or being pursued. He’d felt it most in that moment where Set had caught and pinned him so quickly. If not for the terms of their game, he probably would have asked it then. He’s glad he didn’t, because he’s sure it would have been breathless and inelegant. ]
If not, then…
[ He starts to respond smoothly as Set takes his moment to consider it, since it’s just enough that he worries about being rude. The statement trails off with a slight smile as Set approaches, though. He hadn’t been wrong about that spark after all.
It’s no surprise that Set is the one to take that first move, considering the trial that he’d set out, and Hugo’s response to the challenge is no less enthusiastic. As soon as their lips meet, Hugo leans into the kiss greedily. Where he’s possessed of an unnatural chill, Set feels warm in a way that he feels like he longs for now. Maybe that’s just as much where the impulse came from, he realizes.
Faintly, and much to his annoyance, he thinks Takasugi was right. The imprint does enhance things like this. It feels invigorating, and that’s enough for him to reach up and thread his gloved hand into Set’s delicate, leafy hair. He’s still careful, ever a gentleman in how he styles himself, but it’s still a hungry, bold gesture as he pulls Set closer like one of them might devour the other. ]
[ There is, perhaps, a natural affinity that Set has for Spectral-types. A rare and precious vision of their existence, inspired within him due to his own deep, natural association with death; the god of war's blade that carves through the lives of the opposition is, at its heart, a tool of death. And are Spectral not, in their way, avatars of death and vengeance and stewards of their fellow Augmented? The most naturally resistant to Katalyth. The most innately useless for Karterian ambition; for in the way that animal-type Augmented would make pets and tools, and Terra and Golem generate natural resources, what do Spectral offer?
He finds them fascinating. His favorites are all Spectral, after all: Silco, Brickston, Liem and now Hugo. Undead little beasts, spiteful and vengeful and maddened. The natural balance and consequence of unchecked greed. ( He covets them, in his own way. Wishes he had been of them, rather than what he is; but, he is pleased and proud of his own Natural Soul. While it is at odds with his divinity, he is powerful and eternal and himself all the same. ) That quality of rapturous delight bleeds through into his kiss, little hesitance to be found in the way he parts his full mouth against Hugo's and puts teeth to his bottom lip to drag it into his mouth. A soft threat, that he could bite through it and instead chooses to suckle and tongue his way into the other man's mouth.
His hands find Hugo's trim waist, dragging him in without mercy; hauling him close, trying to bend him backwards — a clawing gesture, hungry and exacerbated by the chase. Like he's a predator that's captured his prey, and seeks to devour it whole. Vines and tendrils and branches strain towards Hugo, perhaps chasing the bright gleam of his golden hair as if it were the sun. They twine around his fingers where they've slipped into Set's red hair, while he breaks only to whisper through bared teeth: ] I feel you within. That connection they speak of, I wonder if it will save us all — or become a shackle that drags us all down with one another.
[ Whatever end the Augmented reach, it will not be for lack of fighting back. Or finding what they need in one another.
Without urgency, though his hands are strong and unquestioning, he reaches for the buttons of Hugo's shirt — pausing, only to lean his spine backwards far enough to peer down at them. The crease between his strong brow and claws brought to bear against one delicate button an obvious statement: if he cannot figure out how to get those buttons undone now, he's just going to rip them apart and be damned with the whole thing. ]
[ That bite on his lip only draws out a telling smile, because he enjoys that little spark of pain (and doesn’t see it as a threat, besides, because Set’s actual thought is too insane for him to even consider). He pursues the deeper kiss that follows without any hesitation. It feels like the natural expression of a well-fought chase, and he’s hungry for it.
So is Set, clearly, because Hugo gasps as he’s pulled in. His spine curves back as it feels like Set is truly bearing down on him. The twist of plants towards him may be new, but this feeling isn’t. It’s the intensity of instinct that Hugo had always enjoyed with Thiren. It’s possessive and predatory, and of course that’s addictive for someone as starved for affection as Hugo. Even that dark thought that Set murmurs just makes him hum out a laugh, a breathy little— ]
Both?
[ …It’s not actually something he wants to think about. These Imprints bother him more than they probably should. At least there’s immediately something else to focus on. ]
Ha— There’s no need to tear it off me, you brute.
[ He laughs it out against Set’s lips, and even “brute” sounds more like a term of endearment than a criticism. Honestly, if he weren’t trying to save money for his gallery, he’d just let Set rip it apart. He’s always been into that kind of rough play, but. Shirts aren’t exactly cheap here, especially not at the quality he prefers.
He reaches up one-handed to the top button of his shirt, though as his fingers settle there, he pauses briefly. It’s a moment’s hesitation, because there’s a reason that Hugo has dressed in a conservative, Karterian style besides it matching his own personal taste. The most anyone has seen of him has been a forearm, because the stronger markers of his corruption can all be hidden away underneath his clothes. He feels as self-conscious about this now as he had as a young man fooling around.
But it’s only a moment. He deftly starts to unbutton his shirt, but he dives back into the kiss with vigor as he does it. It’s a distraction for him more than it is for Set, even if he feels his face burn with a flush that doesn’t even make sense. His hand in Set’s hair tightens to pull him closer. Maybe he doesn’t want him to look. Maybe he just wants to savor this because he couldn’t blame anyone if they recoiled away.
As he takes off his shirt, it shows more and more of his incorporeal skin and the uncanny bone underneath, but it’s far more than that. Threads of black entwine around his bones not unlike the vines that Set is wrapping him in, all radiating from a central point. There are no organs left inside him, but a lightly pulsating crystal grows inside his ribcage roughly where his heart would have sat. ]
[ The movement of Hugo's hands between them draws his attention, while those beautiful, tapered fingers begin to work on the buttons of the shirt Set wishes to have off of him now — in contrast, Set's attire varies between the traditional fashion of his homeland ( which titillates and shocks the stuffy Karterians ), and whatever he mimics with his sands, forming pieces he spots on the bodies of other or in storefronts. The money he earns goes into the militia, devoted as he is to their growth as he is to earning their loyalty, on behalf of all Augmented.
Hugo's mouth on his pulls his gaze away from the expanse of skin — un-skin, not-skin, Spectral skin — steadily exposed to the air atop their distant rooftop. The act seems to irritate him, as he digs his tongue into Hugo's own, coiled and warm and wet and almost angry as his hands dip between them and push at Hugo's hips. At his belly, to put a measure of distance between them. The motion culminates in a sharp, quick bite to the the man's lower lip before pushing him back: not to reject him, but to rake his eyes over his exposed torso in long, purposeful patterns. Shoulder to shoulder, collarbone to rib, rib to rib, rib to heart: the throbbing, colorful crystal exposed like candy, like something vulnerable and easy to target.
Impulsive, he pushes his fingertips over the space where the crystal sits. Translucent skin stops him, blocks him from taking hold of the pretty thing inside of Hugo, and that seems to irritate the god as well. He looks up from underneath full, red lashes and hair and vines that scatter around his face like a curtain, wild and perfectly eager when he states: ] — do not keep from me that which I wish to have. You are lovely.
[ Of course, he can say it. If there would be anyone who could find the state of Hugo's body ( of all Augmented bodies ) intoxicating and glorious, could it not be the embodiment of the infinite, red desert? With a body that changes as his does? That can be identified simultaneously as man and beast and natural phenomena without differentiating between one or the other?
One hand slips into the back of Hugo's hair, palm cradling his skull as he sinks his fingers ( nails scratching, errant and sharp ) into blonde locks and tugs him softly back. Mouth lowering to find his bare throat, the line of his collarbone and the space where his strange, crystalline heart radiates soft light that plays off the angles of Set's own face as he puts his mouth over him and kisses him there, open mouthed and hungry. The other hand cups his Spectral companion through the front of his pants, faltering not even a little. ]
[ At first, Hugo thinks that aggressive response is just Set responding in kind. As he hungrily seeks Set’s tongue like he might draw all of the warmth out of him for himself, he smiles. Even something angry is fine with him, because to be fair, it’s not like he has to worry about the mess of blood anymore. It’s only when Set pushes away that he realizes that isn’t it. Their lips part messily with the bite, and Hugo gasps out a confused little sound of pain. ]
Ah… If it’s—
[ Hugo starts to speak too, because he misinterprets why Set looks over his torso. His tone is delicate and acquiescing, because he has his own cynical, self-loathing assumption. The Augmented may all be “monsters” of a sort, but all the rest, they were at least alive, weren’t they? His new body was some kind of cruel memento mori, so he could hardly blame anyone if they balked at fooling around with what he personally saw as a corpse.
So, Set’s words are more startling and striking than the bite. He’d already been thinking of a way to elegantly disengage and preserve his dignity, and yet. He probably loses it after all, because his wide-eyed stare and brief stammer is as touched and hopeful as when he was a younger man. That impossible flush on his face intensifies, and it’s brightest at the very tips of his long ears. ]
[ That enchanted look doesn’t last, because he’s not a younger man anymore. Even if those words strike right into his sensitive yearning, he still laughs as Set embraces him again. It’s more relaxed, though, enough so that he’s less shy as he tilts his head up to bare his neck to Set and rest some of the weight of his head into his hand. ]
And here I was, joking about that love at first sight comment, you know.
[ He’s still a mouthy brat, of course. He especially can’t help it when he feels like he’s been (delightfully!) outmaneuvered in two ways now. He still half-expects there might be something that’s a bridge too far, and Set might withdraw, but it’s at least easier to push down that thought as an eager kiss settles over his crystalline heart.
…The hand palming his mostly hard dick helps too, admittedly. A chase really does get him going. He gasps out a little sound of pleasure at the contact, lowering his head just a little without impeding Set’s kisses. ]
Just be careful. It’s sensitive.
[ Does he mean…? No, actually. He doesn’t. Maybe it’s foolish to trust Set with this when he’d forcibly bitten into Hugo’s bones before, but he still does. The barrier of his ethereal skin softens, and though it’s still very much visible, Set will be able to sink through it now to touch the bone and crystal underneath. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
To be caught the one time sends a thrill through him, a brilliant ache that lightens his spirit and makes him laugh when he feels Hugo's hand upon him. A brief span of time, where he becomes the prey and the other man a predator ( don't unpack it, the imbalance between enjoying being caught, and never wanting a hand laid upon him again — ). Of course he changes gears there, no longer the darting arrow or wind-swept ribbon of scarlet, but the hawk flashing talon and beak that took Hugo mid-jump and rolled with him: thighs strong around his hips, hands grappling the front of his coat as he'd laughed and laughed and tumbled them across a rooftop. Bounced him off in the end and kept running in another direction.
They're done in an hour, Hugo winded and Set buoyant with the experience. The darkness around them tempers his own energy levels, unable to pull in the light of the sun to offset the cost of using his divinity, of running and darting and playing. He breathes a little restlessly, deep and dragging breaths as he paces to cool himself down — the heat in his legs, the ache in his hands. The lingering tension in his belly, that he thinks he can do nothing about until Hugo captures a breath and expends it in question.
Set stills. His fingers half-flexed to work out the soreness from hauling himself up onto sills, digging his claws into walls to take a corner fast enough to tease Hugo with the trailing ends of hair or branch. His claws slip out from the root of the nail, reflexive as he processes. Concludes. Crosses the meager space between them and dips his head below Hugo's gaze, his spine following the upward arc a heron's lithe neck might make as it dips and rises with prey captured in its beak, as he curves into the Spectral's space and captures his mouth in answer.
( Tag. ) ]
no subject
If not, then…
[ He starts to respond smoothly as Set takes his moment to consider it, since it’s just enough that he worries about being rude. The statement trails off with a slight smile as Set approaches, though. He hadn’t been wrong about that spark after all.
It’s no surprise that Set is the one to take that first move, considering the trial that he’d set out, and Hugo’s response to the challenge is no less enthusiastic. As soon as their lips meet, Hugo leans into the kiss greedily. Where he’s possessed of an unnatural chill, Set feels warm in a way that he feels like he longs for now. Maybe that’s just as much where the impulse came from, he realizes.
Faintly, and much to his annoyance, he thinks Takasugi was right. The imprint does enhance things like this. It feels invigorating, and that’s enough for him to reach up and thread his gloved hand into Set’s delicate, leafy hair. He’s still careful, ever a gentleman in how he styles himself, but it’s still a hungry, bold gesture as he pulls Set closer like one of them might devour the other. ]
no subject
He finds them fascinating. His favorites are all Spectral, after all: Silco, Brickston, Liem and now Hugo. Undead little beasts, spiteful and vengeful and maddened. The natural balance and consequence of unchecked greed. ( He covets them, in his own way. Wishes he had been of them, rather than what he is; but, he is pleased and proud of his own Natural Soul. While it is at odds with his divinity, he is powerful and eternal and himself all the same. ) That quality of rapturous delight bleeds through into his kiss, little hesitance to be found in the way he parts his full mouth against Hugo's and puts teeth to his bottom lip to drag it into his mouth. A soft threat, that he could bite through it and instead chooses to suckle and tongue his way into the other man's mouth.
His hands find Hugo's trim waist, dragging him in without mercy; hauling him close, trying to bend him backwards — a clawing gesture, hungry and exacerbated by the chase. Like he's a predator that's captured his prey, and seeks to devour it whole. Vines and tendrils and branches strain towards Hugo, perhaps chasing the bright gleam of his golden hair as if it were the sun. They twine around his fingers where they've slipped into Set's red hair, while he breaks only to whisper through bared teeth: ] I feel you within. That connection they speak of, I wonder if it will save us all — or become a shackle that drags us all down with one another.
[ Whatever end the Augmented reach, it will not be for lack of fighting back. Or finding what they need in one another.
Without urgency, though his hands are strong and unquestioning, he reaches for the buttons of Hugo's shirt — pausing, only to lean his spine backwards far enough to peer down at them. The crease between his strong brow and claws brought to bear against one delicate button an obvious statement: if he cannot figure out how to get those buttons undone now, he's just going to rip them apart and be damned with the whole thing. ]
no subject
So is Set, clearly, because Hugo gasps as he’s pulled in. His spine curves back as it feels like Set is truly bearing down on him. The twist of plants towards him may be new, but this feeling isn’t. It’s the intensity of instinct that Hugo had always enjoyed with Thiren. It’s possessive and predatory, and of course that’s addictive for someone as starved for affection as Hugo. Even that dark thought that Set murmurs just makes him hum out a laugh, a breathy little— ]
Both?
[ …It’s not actually something he wants to think about. These Imprints bother him more than they probably should. At least there’s immediately something else to focus on. ]
Ha— There’s no need to tear it off me, you brute.
[ He laughs it out against Set’s lips, and even “brute” sounds more like a term of endearment than a criticism. Honestly, if he weren’t trying to save money for his gallery, he’d just let Set rip it apart. He’s always been into that kind of rough play, but. Shirts aren’t exactly cheap here, especially not at the quality he prefers.
He reaches up one-handed to the top button of his shirt, though as his fingers settle there, he pauses briefly. It’s a moment’s hesitation, because there’s a reason that Hugo has dressed in a conservative, Karterian style besides it matching his own personal taste. The most anyone has seen of him has been a forearm, because the stronger markers of his corruption can all be hidden away underneath his clothes. He feels as self-conscious about this now as he had as a young man fooling around.
But it’s only a moment. He deftly starts to unbutton his shirt, but he dives back into the kiss with vigor as he does it. It’s a distraction for him more than it is for Set, even if he feels his face burn with a flush that doesn’t even make sense. His hand in Set’s hair tightens to pull him closer. Maybe he doesn’t want him to look. Maybe he just wants to savor this because he couldn’t blame anyone if they recoiled away.
As he takes off his shirt, it shows more and more of his incorporeal skin and the uncanny bone underneath, but it’s far more than that. Threads of black entwine around his bones not unlike the vines that Set is wrapping him in, all radiating from a central point. There are no organs left inside him, but a lightly pulsating crystal grows inside his ribcage roughly where his heart would have sat. ]
no subject
Hugo's mouth on his pulls his gaze away from the expanse of skin — un-skin, not-skin, Spectral skin — steadily exposed to the air atop their distant rooftop. The act seems to irritate him, as he digs his tongue into Hugo's own, coiled and warm and wet and almost angry as his hands dip between them and push at Hugo's hips. At his belly, to put a measure of distance between them. The motion culminates in a sharp, quick bite to the the man's lower lip before pushing him back: not to reject him, but to rake his eyes over his exposed torso in long, purposeful patterns. Shoulder to shoulder, collarbone to rib, rib to rib, rib to heart: the throbbing, colorful crystal exposed like candy, like something vulnerable and easy to target.
Impulsive, he pushes his fingertips over the space where the crystal sits. Translucent skin stops him, blocks him from taking hold of the pretty thing inside of Hugo, and that seems to irritate the god as well. He looks up from underneath full, red lashes and hair and vines that scatter around his face like a curtain, wild and perfectly eager when he states: ] — do not keep from me that which I wish to have. You are lovely.
[ Of course, he can say it. If there would be anyone who could find the state of Hugo's body ( of all Augmented bodies ) intoxicating and glorious, could it not be the embodiment of the infinite, red desert? With a body that changes as his does? That can be identified simultaneously as man and beast and natural phenomena without differentiating between one or the other?
One hand slips into the back of Hugo's hair, palm cradling his skull as he sinks his fingers ( nails scratching, errant and sharp ) into blonde locks and tugs him softly back. Mouth lowering to find his bare throat, the line of his collarbone and the space where his strange, crystalline heart radiates soft light that plays off the angles of Set's own face as he puts his mouth over him and kisses him there, open mouthed and hungry. The other hand cups his Spectral companion through the front of his pants, faltering not even a little. ]
i had to upload another icon for this one (1/2)
Ah… If it’s—
[ Hugo starts to speak too, because he misinterprets why Set looks over his torso. His tone is delicate and acquiescing, because he has his own cynical, self-loathing assumption. The Augmented may all be “monsters” of a sort, but all the rest, they were at least alive, weren’t they? His new body was some kind of cruel memento mori, so he could hardly blame anyone if they balked at fooling around with what he personally saw as a corpse.
So, Set’s words are more startling and striking than the bite. He’d already been thinking of a way to elegantly disengage and preserve his dignity, and yet. He probably loses it after all, because his wide-eyed stare and brief stammer is as touched and hopeful as when he was a younger man. That impossible flush on his face intensifies, and it’s brightest at the very tips of his long ears. ]
no subject
[ That enchanted look doesn’t last, because he’s not a younger man anymore. Even if those words strike right into his sensitive yearning, he still laughs as Set embraces him again. It’s more relaxed, though, enough so that he’s less shy as he tilts his head up to bare his neck to Set and rest some of the weight of his head into his hand. ]
And here I was, joking about that love at first sight comment, you know.
[ He’s still a mouthy brat, of course. He especially can’t help it when he feels like he’s been (delightfully!) outmaneuvered in two ways now. He still half-expects there might be something that’s a bridge too far, and Set might withdraw, but it’s at least easier to push down that thought as an eager kiss settles over his crystalline heart.
…The hand palming his mostly hard dick helps too, admittedly. A chase really does get him going. He gasps out a little sound of pleasure at the contact, lowering his head just a little without impeding Set’s kisses. ]
Just be careful. It’s sensitive.
[ Does he mean…? No, actually. He doesn’t. Maybe it’s foolish to trust Set with this when he’d forcibly bitten into Hugo’s bones before, but he still does. The barrier of his ethereal skin softens, and though it’s still very much visible, Set will be able to sink through it now to touch the bone and crystal underneath. ]