aldnoah || inaho/slaine, "escape velocity"

He tells his sister that he’s done for the day, and Yuki sighs and smiles before punching his terminal out of the network. He walks out of the administrative wing, past Deucalion’s dock, returning salutes from soldiers and nods from civilian scientists. Tanegashima is still a precious secret, isolated and secure, and everyone on the small staff recognizes him. He’s been here since the facility was re-established, after all, and he’ll be based here so long as the Deucalion is in service. Perhaps longer, as long as his heart his beating in time with the Deucalion’s drive. He shrugs off his uniform coat and slides into a jeep and is off-post a few minutes later. In his rearview mirror, he can see the gate guard tapping something into a computer, almost certainly logging his departure. That’s fine. The UEF has to tolerate what he’s doing if it wants to keep the Deucalion in the sky. He turns the jeep off the main road and onto an unpaved access path. Here, away from the coast, the island is a study in recovery. Vines tumble down impact craters; young trees reach up from burn scars. All of Tanegashima is thriving – except…

He turns off the engine in front of a small, stucco-walled complex nestled among fast-growing bamboo. A guard salutes – not too crisply anymore; not after seeing him almost every day for two years – as he keys through the only entrance. The courtyard inside is cool and quiet, shaded by the high walls and a few of Tanegashima’s hearty trees. It’s deceptively lovely. The stucco hides reinforced concrete, the walls are too high to climb, and the entire complex is designed to keep its only permanent occupant hidden and healthy. Save him from the chains of misery.

All of Tanegashima is thriving – except for Slaine Troyard.

He crosses the yard and taps his keycard again to enter the small residential block of the secret prison. “I’m home,” Inaho calls, sinking into the comfort of routine.

“You’re early,” murmurs Slaine languidly, listlessly. It’s not polite, but Slaine is rarely polite with Inaho. Rarely sincerely polite, anyway. He sets his book face down on his chest, but doesn’t make any move to stir himself from the sofa, watching Inaho with half-focused pale eyes.

Ah. It’s one of the lazy days.

Inaho had seen a lion once, in elementary school. His impression, he’d told Yuki that evening, was that the lion was bored. Yuki had given him a lecture, to the best of her recollection, about how lions usually ran around chasing other animals, and if this one hadn’t actually been born in captivity, it might prefer flexing its claws and chancing it in Africa to this worry-free life in Japan. Like us and the orphanage, he’d offered, and her frown had flickered, just for a moment.

“The Deucalion is almost finished with its inspection,” he offers, which isn’t a lie but isn’t an explanation. Slaine is too disinterested to care either way, his blue-green eyes unfocused somewhere on the ceiling. Inaho strips off his coat, his shoes, and settles on the arm of the sofa beside Slaine. Slaine has had this one for days now; he must have finished and started rereading. “More books, tomorrow?” Bribery is a cheap and easy way to coax Slaine out of his most apathetic moments. Predators in the zoo had tires and balls; Slaine Troyard has books.

“Or the day after that.” He lifts the book, flips back a few pages, and startles Inaho by reciting. “‘How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.’” The hairs on Inaho’s neck stand up, despite Tanegashima’s golden afternoon heat. Slaine’s tone is soft and even, but there’s a firmness to it, a note of challenge, that’s completely at odds with his position, still sprawled soft and vulnerable. Slaine’s pale eyes flick sideways and the corners of his lips turn up, just a little bit, just enough to make it clear that Slaine noticed Inaho’s shoulders tense. Slaine’s smile curves into a benign mask, and Inaho’s heart rises, just a little. This is one of his favorite facets – better to have Slaine still-feral and teasing and feeling something, even if that something is fierce and vicious and directed spitefully at him… “Relax,” he says with clearly feigned lightness, the sort of voice Inaho can imagine him using with prickly counts. “It’s something my father would have liked; that’s all.”

“I didn’t know Doctor Troyard enjoyed…” Inaho spares a glance for the book’s spine. “Revenge dramas?”

“Dad?” Slaine’s brows knit fractionally, and then he’s back in the only game left to him. “He didn’t. But my adoptive father enjoyed them too much for his own good.”

The late Count Saazbaum is a conversational dead end. Inaho has spent two years dancing around this topic, to avoid disrupting Slaine’s recovery by bringing up his late father, when Inaho took out the man’s barrier… but there’s no sign that Slaine is upset, or that Slaine wants to avoid the subject. No visible sign, at least. He seems mostly focused on Inaho, the mask-smile still in place and his bright eyes fixed on Inaho’s.

“Feeling sorry?” Slaine asks. He lifts a hand, cupping Inaho’s cheek, and Inaho bites his tongue. Sometimes the safest strategy, when Slaine goes on the offensive, is to give him as little to work with as possible. But Slaine presses the attack, setting his book aside and pressing his lips to Inaho’s ear. “Don’t be.”

And then, soft enough that even the cameras in the suite won’t be able to hear –

“You didn’t kill him.”

Inaho jerks back before his stolid constitution can kick in, and stares at Slaine. Part of it is the clear implication that Slaine Troyard murdered his adoptive father – but most of it is the bizarre juxtaposition of emotions in Slaine’s voice and face. The aristocratic smile is still there, but that’s an obvious lie, easily discarded. But the rest – there’s a warmth to Slaine’s tone and a softness to his eyes that Inaho usually sees when Slaine mentions Princess Asseylum , but an edge to Slaine’s voice and a firm set to his jaw that Inaho usually only hears when Slaine is about to start shouting – It’s all gone a heartbeat later, when Slaine registers the confusion on Inaho’s face and sinks back into the cushions, self-satisfied at having flustered his only remaining opponent.

“That’s good to know,” Inaho says levelly, because he has enough competitive spark left in him to not like leaving Slaine the last word, but also because it’s true –

Slaine smiles his obfuscating courtier’s smile and picks up his book, and Inaho forces himself back onto his feet, back into his usual evening routine. The rest of the uniform off, into the shower… but when he closes his eyes, all he can see is Slaine’s vicious, tender face.

He had thought he had learned all of Slaine’s facets by now.  The fierce man who rose to any challenge; the voracious student; the furious, bitter soldier; the listless pet; the quiet boy nurturing a fragile, cherished hope; the self-loathing patient with nothing ahead of him but quiet despair. He’s never thought of Slaine Troyard as a simple person, but now there’s an extra problem.

You loved him, almost as much as you love her. You hated him, at least as much as you hate me.

You hated him, perhaps as much as you hate yourself.

All of these things exist at once, not as different facets of a whole, but churned up uneasily together, capable of showing all at once on a single pale, tired face.

He’s spent three years trying to whittle away at Slaine’s self-hatred. But it’s a stubborn thing, and deep-rooted, and Inaho could whittle away at it all day every day until the end of time without making more than a dent.

Save him from the chains of misery.

If chipping away at Slaine’s hate won’t work…

If hate and love twine together that closely in Slaine’s heart…

If Inaho can’t make the self-loathing disappear, perhaps he can coax something else to grow alongside it, to balance it, to maybe even surpass it. All of Tanegashima is thriving, all the world is thriving – except Slaine Troyard, because of Slaine Troyard. If Inaho could make him see, then perhaps –

It isn’t possible to make him see, not while Slaine is a prisoner and not while Inaho is stationed indefinitely on Tanegashima.

Save him from the chains of misery.

He rinses off, towels off, and decides, just like that.

He doesn’t bother dressing, just grabs a tube from the medicine cabinet and pads barefoot down the hall and into the sitting room. With cameras everywhere, nudity is the best way to camouflage his intentions. He slips over the arm of the couch and straddles Slaine in one familiar movement, and waits.

He has to wait, because Slaine is still playing at indifference. He stays lying on his back and flips a page of his book languidly, without even looking up at Inaho. On any other day, Inaho would tolerate this. Testing and studying and pushing and prodding and antagonizing Inaho is one of the few interesting games left to Slaine, and so Inaho indulges it, even relishes it, in all its forms. Sex is chess by other means and a more satisfying conclusion. But Inaho has a new game in mind, a better game in mind, if he can just get Slaine to play along.

He reaches his hand under the waistband of Slaine’s light pants without ceremony, keeping his eyes on Slaine’s face and feeling around by muscle memory until his thumb is under the head of Slaine’s cock, where Slaine hates to be touched not because it’s unpleasant, but because it drives him crazy so quickly that, by unspoken mutual agreement, they deemed an early attack on this weak spot off-limits. It’s almost cheating, at least in the game they’re used to.

Slaine gets perhaps another two lines in his book before his lips thin and he, apparently, decides that feigning indifference is out of the question. He puts the book down, spine splayed, on his chest, definitively between them. “I’m sorry,” he says, with his insincere, courtier’s smile, “I was otherwise occupied.”

“You already know how it ends,” Inaho says, levelly. “Fuck me.”

Inaho is typically direct, but all of this is very artless, even for him, and Slaine notices it. His eyes narrow. There’s a chance that he’ll say no simply to be cruel and contrary, to flex the tiny shred of power he has left, and Inaho will be stuck going quietly mad with unspoken words for another day or two. But Slaine’s curiosity is one of his better features, and his cock is already stiffening between Inaho’s fingers, so Inaho isn’t terribly surprised when Slaine gives a small frown of irritation but puts the book on the floor. He does it slowly, deliberately, making it clear that he isn’t doing this just because he was asked. “If you’re that desperate.” His voice is polite, as though he’s agreeing to do Inaho a small favor, but it’s satisfyingly breathy on the last word.

Not in the way Slaine means, he isn’t.  “I’ve been thinking about you.” Again, it isn’t a lie but isn’t much of an explanation. He distracts from it by pulling Slaine’s pants down past his knees and grabbing the nondescript tube, slathering his fingers. Slaine’s indifference – mostly feigned, occasionally real – have made him familiar with this part. He reaches around his own waist, slips a finger down the crack of his own ass and in. The upside to his familiarity is that he’s learned to embellish. He lowers his hips and sticks out his ass so that his hardening cock brushes against Slaine’s every time Inaho rocks onto his own hand. It’s a little difficult on his thighs, but Slaine gives a sigh that’s probably supposed to be annoyed but comes out with a lovely humming edge, and just like that, the strain is worth it. Inaho ruts a little harder against him. Slaine keeps his eyes fixed on Inaho, not with the sort of softness or proprietariness lovers are supposed to have, but with calculating scrutiny. That’s fine. Inaho will give away the game soon enough.

Slaine is hard enough to ride at more or less the same time Inaho is ready to ride him, which is to say, relatively quickly. They may be veterans, but they’re also just out of their teens, and besides, Inaho has had plenty of practice. He rests one hand on Slaine’s abdomen, lightly, for balance, and takes Slaine’s cock in the other, guiding it into his ass before sinking down slowly, slowly, until Slaine has to bite his lip and look away.

He should be more focused on his goal, but it’s still nice to score a few points as the game draws to an end.

He moves slowly for the first few strokes, loosening himself up and coaxing Slaine’s breath into deep pants. He moves his hands up, balling his fist in the worn fabric of Slaine’s shirt, and pulls Slaine into a sitting position, into a kiss. Slaine nips at his lip to be contrary, or maybe he’s genuinely annoyed. Inaho bites back, just a little, and lowers his head to Slaine’s collarbone. He keeps one hand fisted in Slaine’s shirt, keeping him close, and the other moves back to his own ass, and then brushing lightly over Slaine’s balls. Inaho’s mouth moves up to Slaine’s neck, to his ear. He worries at the lobe with his teeth for a moment, to be convincing, then presses his lips to Slaine’s ear and whispers.

“When you came here the first time, did you really steal a Sky Carrier?”

Slaine gasps, though to anyone watching – most of the guards don’t bother monitoring once they start fucking, but Inaho suspects that one or two perverts have slipped into Slaine’s detail, and he doesn’t want this going off the rails because of a single voyeur – the gasp would appear to be a response to Inaho squeezing Slaine’s balls. Not delicately, either; precision is impossible in this position. If Inaho’s only goal was to get them off, he wouldn’t have bothered with the inevitable awkwardness of it.

But he wants to stop Slaine from answering right away, to give him time to consider the question before vocalizing anything else – and to give him time to realize that Inaho has deliberately maneuvered them into position to have a more-or-less private conversation.

Inaho is considerate, when things are important.

Inaho tugs Slaine’s shirt over his head while Slaine is too temporarily distracted to protest the manhandling. Inaho runs a thumb over one of Slaine’s stiff nipples, contemplates, then pinches lightly.

“Like that,” moans Slaine. Nipple play is not a particular favorite of Slaine’s, so Inaho is quite sure that Slaine is answering the question, not encouraging him. He does it again anyway, to the other one, for the inevitable voyeur.

He sifts through follow-up questions, discarding ones with obvious answers. Was it dangerous? Yes. Was it for her? Yes. No need for those. But there are a few Sky Carriers on Tanegashima at the moment as part of the Earth Forces’ experiments with Aldnoah technology. They’re the fastest long-range vehicles available, and Inaho doesn’t have the first idea how to fly one. But he has a capable pilot right beneath him, if Slaine remembers, if Slaine is willing – “Again?” he asks, circling the small, pink areola. It’s higher pitched and more strangled than he’d like. Keeping their heads clear but their bodies agitated is difficult.

Slaine freezes for a heartbeat. Inaho doesn’t think anyone else would notice it, but the two of them have been pressed together so close for so long that they pick up on tiny things…

“Yes,” he whines, his voice very plausibly debauched. His blue-green eyes are wide, but that can all be explained away as arousal, not necessarily surprise, not necessarily a conversation.

Inaho smiles, genuinely, for the first time that day. A few more pinches, a few more kisses, and Slaine is nearly there. He settles his hands on Inaho’s slim hips and takes control of their rhythm, slamming Inaho down in time with his own thrusts. His fingers grip too hard into Inaho’s skin when he comes, but Inaho rides him comfortably through it anyway, too pleased to care that he’ll have some light bruising there tomorrow. And when Slaine is finished, Inaho pulls off nonchalantly and leans back contentedly against Slaine’s knees, still rock-hard but distracted by plans for how to get the two of them to the main base, and how to prevent immediate pursuit, and –

And that distraction is why he’s taken off guard when Slaine shifts, pushing Inaho back onto the cushions, pinning his hands above his head.

“My turn,” Slaine says. His lips are tight enough that Inaho takes the underlying meaning, the one that isn’t about getting Inaho off. He arches his hips anyway, to keep the surface meaning plausible. He wraps his fingers around Inaho’s cock, and Inaho ruts into it with a contented sigh. Slaine kisses the flat of his stomach, and up his chest – and, Inaho knows where he’s going, and wonders if he’s taking his time to make it look unhurried for any observers, or if he’s being a deliberate tease. When Slaine’s head finally makes it level with Inaho’s the shaggy fall of his long, unbound hair falls in a curtain around their  faces. It’s private and it’s intimate and Inaho is slightly irritated with himself for not thinking of it before.

Why, Slaine mouths.

Inaho tugs his hands free of Slaine’s grip and reaches up, cupping Slaine’s pale, flushed face for a moment as he chooses the words. “There’s so much I want to show you,” he murmurs. He throws a leg around Slaine’s waist as he says it, lets it sound like a promise of prolonged debauchery to anyone less perfectly observant and in-tune with their idiosyncrasies. But Slaine will understand.

And, he hopes, Slaine will accept the offer.

Slaine’s hand is steady on Inaho’s cock for a few more strokes, and then he tucks his hair behind one ear and slides back down to Inaho’s cock. He doesn’t tease, doesn’t antagonize, just licks Inaho once and then swallows him whole. Inaho props up on his elbows curiously at that. Slaine sucks cock spectacularly – taking Inaho all the way down, cupping Inaho’s balls between his hands with a good deal more finesse than Inaho managed earlier – but he barely ever gets right down to it. These down-to-the-base, enthusiastic blowjobs are usually Slaine’s trump card, his checkmating queen, and he usually at least makes Inaho beg for it. Inaho’s fingers fist in the cushions, and it occurs to him that this unprompted pleasure may be a form of thanks.

He smiles again as he comes. He will have an opportunity to ask, soon.

*

They sink the Sky Carrier, deliberately, within walking distance of a bus line that runs to a train line that will take them all the way across the continent. The main goal is to put as much distance between them and Tanegashima as possible before they disappear into some area cosmopolitan enough that neither of them will stand out, but the travel has a very important benefit. The steppes give way to fields and the fields to farms and the farms to mountains and woods, and the people who travel alongside them are so happy. It isn’t like the tense years after Heaven’s Fall, when everyone expected another war. These people believe that the peace will hold. All the world is thriving – because of Slaine Troyard. Or, rather, because of the crescendo of Slaine’s plans and the spectacular nature of his alleged demise. Inaho gives Slaine credit in either case.

Inaho watches Slaine as they travel. Civilians and most of the Earth Forces aren’t looking for him – he is, after all, supposed to be dead – but the Tanegashima force will be looking for them, so they bundled him up at the first opportunity anyway, a hat obscuring his shockingly fair hair and an oversized scarf obscuring half his face. But just watching his eyes is enough. They start wary and hard, but they thaw somewhere along the way, until Inaho sees them actually crinkling up at the corners when they stop in Berlin and see children pointing up at the night sky with wonder instead of hostility.

Inaho takes his hand.

“There’s more,” he says, “to show you.”

It won’t be easy. The unit at Tanegashima is small, but it will never stop hunting them.  In honoring Asseylum’s request, they’ve severed any support network Inaho might have had in the Earth Forces, traded a private game for a worldwide and very dangerous game.

But it will be nice to play alongside each other for once, even if it’s against the world. And worth it, because –

Slaine squeezes his hand, almost shyly. His eyes are glassy but at least that upturned crinkle is still there.

– the entire world is thriving.