Neither had made it deeper within the Interrogator's chambers than the open room, bent over a central desk under scrutinising lumen light. Marazhai's claws, wet and hooked, tear open the flesh at Heinrix's hips while his own lip bled from the impatient bite of a blunted fang just before.

There were times Heinrix would indulge Marazhai's games, chased into dark corners and bloodied into meat for the drukhari's pleasure. Other times where Marazhai would indulge him in his delight of the mundane. In his own tolerance of a hunter's likewise demands.

Marazhai's hips roll against van Calox's own, the bared flesh white-hot in trust. In abuse, trained to accommodate thorns within as Marazhai's pierced cock spreads him. His scarlet uniform was a terrible mockery of mon-keigh blood. Of scars tearing far deeper just beneath the linen.

He had had him against the desk in hurried frustration such that Heinrix's hands splayed over paper and slate in some mess. And then against the wall when Marazhai had turned him roughly, against the wall behind them instead.

Marazhai tests his companion's stretch with a guttural growl, hips rolling impatiently to soak them both and to simply fuck Heinrix deeper.

Heinrix would find him rough. Unforgiving of the barbs across his length now and insatiably clawing his skin to bring them both to pleasure. His own coattails were brushed aside neatly to bare a pale flank torn apart since their knowing one another.

"Ohh... What an eager whore you are, van Calox." He purrs, restraining himself, talons curling into a fresh wound and raking closer towards raw muscle.

Heinrix allowed Marazhai to shadow his steps to his chambers, now adjoined to his new office-a gift from von Aurastor-just before finding himself held down over the desk. And it was a fine desk, he would admit, having seen it more closely than he would have before Marazhai had lunged for his back. His talons, as always, quickly found their way to his skin and he-never content to disappoint-indulged the sport with fervour a little more bold than weeks before this.

He bit him. He bruised him under a grip aflame but ultimately relented with his own fingers dragged in desperate hurry over work left for later. Not content with this debasement, Marazhai had torn them both from it and set him against the wall where he caught himself from a broken nose. His flesh cried out in every place Marazhai marked him. Pierced cock making a panicked pleasure of his submission as he complained with a broken groan from behind clenched teeth.

Nothing new, nothing new. His flank, bared, was crossed in pale marks only the pair of them had seen. Marazhai was not like to be merciful with his… affections. Heinrix, increasingly, invited his cruelty with a welcoming curl of his lip.

"What an eager whore-"

That, even still, had never ceased to draw the fire of humiliation to his skin. Heinrix, arching his back as Marazhai dragged his vile claws through a bleeding, fresh wound, cried out- a hand flying up to grip the Drukhari’s slender wrist. He didn’t stop him. Heinrix, instead, panted.

“You exhaust your finite reserves of luck,” he breathed, “making comments like that.” He curls over the pain, forehead to the cold steel. After moments, he winces, wet eyelashes parting to watch a drop of blood break between his boots.

A harsh crackle of static ripped through the chamber's charged atmosphere, followed by the sharp, tripartite chime of a high-priority vox hail from a wall-mounted unit inches from his hand. The sound was an obscenity in the quiet room, a sudden intrusion of cold, hard duty. Heinrix froze, every muscle in his body going rigid.

"Interrogator van Calox, priority hail. Apologies for the intrusion, but we have a discrepancy in the cargo manifests from the Xylos transfer that requires your immediate authorization cipher. The Lord Captain is... occupied. Please advise."

Von Aurastor had faced the both of them with some modicum of decadence now far beyond the reach of Valancius' broken dynasty.

The desk, a stage to play. Inconsequential after moments in excitement pulled them both around to the wall at the behest of Marazhai's talons brought within Heinrix in possession. Better against steel and wire than obnoxious, moving papers dipped in stray blood. The way they hissed under van Calox's hands as he was overwhelmed to Marazhai's liking.

The way van Calox hissed at him between skin and lip and teeth. Pretty beast. Contained beneath claws in admiration as he fucks him now, hips rolled against his own. His cries begging amidst mechanical silence.

"You exhaust your finite reserves of luck--"

Marazhai's lip curls and he shows a fang behind his head, throat rumbling as he rolls his hips deeper to press him punishingly against the wall. A breath of mundane delight was Marazhai's contentment.

"Within your finity is a boundless reserve, my pet," he sighs, hips pinning them both together. "Or, it is that you're encouraging me to devastate you a little more quickly." Said as claws dip deeper into parted flesh and Marazhai yanks him closer with a shuddering sigh. The ice, nonetheless, never far from his hand as he felt it in hoarfrost over his own mind. When they played. When they simply stood near to one another.

Long limbs cord up at static around them. One of several vox units contained within van Calox's chamber alone, mounted on wall and desk. In his hand at other times. Terrible, tedious scrutiny always presiding to make itself known. Tremendous noise that brings a smirk to Marazhai's anticipating, thin lips. Far from the sound of blood and oil as he simply fucks him deeper in inconvenience, brows pressed together as Marazhai's piercings catch against both their flesh.

"Interrogator van Calox, priority hail.--"

Marazhai fucks him through the hail with a grin edging itself wider.

"Priority..." Sensation lost in the banality of a short fuck suddenly creeps into his mind in whorls of idea. As he continues. The pace roughening unevenly as Marazhai's claws find their way beneath Heinrix's frock and to his belly beneath, tearing.

"Nnnh-- another task beneath you. Demanding your attention with slaves' tithes. Disrupting our play." Marazhai growls, as he fucks him pointedly for moments and glances down as he watches himself thrust out-- piercings plucking the sore muscle of van Calox between his flanks.

The sound of the hail rings at the front of his mind.

Marazhai watches his cock disappear again within Heinrix, hilting as he presses the scarlet body to the wall, bruising against the bulkhead with a presiding grin. An elegant arch of the spine assisted a pace far rougher now as one bloody claw leaves his companion's flesh to hover near the unit instead. Deeper, angle assisted by the scrutiny of their heights. He would see to Heinrix's answer himself if the Interrogator did not.

"Immediate... and are you going to oblige?" Marazhai titters, claws fastening deeper as he quickens within with a hiss.

"Within your finity is-"

He couldn’t argue. For all his complaints, Heinrix could do little beyond prove the Drukhari’s goading. He was a whore. The freedom to bleed, to kill, to enjoy doing so… It was transcendent at the best of times.

This was… What was this? A sensible climax to buried things let from the leash. Still to his shame but even still more… He could not deny his body its release. Marazhai, of course, would lace the ordeal with his own poison. Heinrix would allow it. Increasingly moreso every time they met.

He tensed beneath him against the steel, rolling his forehead to the side as he glowers at the grille of the vox unit, releasing a captive breath as all manner of terrible thoughts crossed his mind. Heinrix squeezed his eyes shut, his mind racing to build the walls of his Inquisitorial persona back up, even as Marazhai’s voice grated against his ear with all the edge of a rusty razor.

Of course, to Marazhai, this was mere inconvenience. He and von Aurastor had some understanding, it seemed. Marazhai was never… disrupted unless the nature of the assigned task aligned with his desires. That was fair, Heinrix decided. But for now, he grimaced. He needed to answer. He needed his voice to be level, authoritative, unshaken. A weary hand, not quite trembling but not quite steady, comes to press over the switch of the receiver.

"This is..." Heinrix began, his voice coming out as a strained, rough gasp. He cleared his throat, the sound raw. Marazhai, naturally, chose this exact moment to hilt in him, flattening him against the bulkhead and he quickly releases the switch as he moans against the plasteel wall, legs rigid as he raised to his toes.

"Immediate…"

Marazhai teased.

"and are you going to oblige?"

Heinrix panted, the lighter of his mismatched eyes fixed on Marazhai as he failed to stop a frown, a pleasured whimper staked in discomfort. He then arches with a silent, teeth-clenched wince. He tried again, focusing on the cold, hard authority he was supposed to embody. "This is Interrogator van Calox. Stand by, Hexen. I am... concluding a sensitive matter."

The vox crackled again, Hexen’s voice cutting through the static, tinny and utterly oblivious to the drama unfolding in the chamber. "Understood, Interrogator. But the matter is urgent. The cargo manifests from the Xylos transfer require your authorization cipher to be sealed. Without it, the records remain open, and Lord Aurastor was... explicit... about discretion."

Heinrix squeezed his eyes shut. Of course. A cipher. Something that required memory, precision. Marazhai seemed to sense the shift, the new layer of pressure, as he shifted his weight, a subtle, deliberate movement that made Heinrix’s legs tremble.

Some heretical, defiant, buried part of him wished to declare that he was… servicing a superiour asset.

"The cipher..." Heinrix gasped out-fingers on the panel-trying to focus, to pull the string of characters from his memory. He could feel Marazhai’s claw tracing the line of his spine, slow and deliberate. "...stand by."

"Did you say you are transmitting, Lordship?" Hexen's voice was laced with strain. "Vox is unstable on this channel. There is... interference."

"No," Heinrix gritted out, his forehead pressed hard against the cold plasteel. The 'interference' was the sound of his own ragged breathing, the low growl of pleasure from the Drukhari behind him. He needed to end this.

When he speaks, Marazhai's grin widens to feral ice and his eyes are upon him dilated to a satisfied hunter's titillations over another.

"This is...-"

He does hilt him, claws pawing around a muscled hipbone with a groan of his own- a chord more performative, shearing at the flesh of Heinrix's breath to claim it in the teeth of his own noise.

His eyes, of course, glittering tourmaline and landing on the hand fumbling with the unit's switch. Simple mon-keigh mechanics that could simply be flicked on and off on demand. If you could hold onto it for long enough to speak.

Marazhai rolls his hips pointedly when they meet eyes sidelong, a brow arching with the grin that follows. Well, van Calox? He asks deep within the mire of sensation as he fucks him over his writhing form that reached again for the switch. He felt those legs part beneath himself as he filled him relentlessly.

A way with words as his. Teasing. Perhaps inviting. Would all at the end of the receiver's rattle like to hear his matters? Mon-keigh and their obfuscations of domination.

It was more likewise that his pet had not been broken from the Imperium's chain just yet. It makes Marazhai laugh over him when he speaks. A harsh cackle and harsher claws petting over his hip, around his spine.

As he arches his own to fuck him deeper. A need for urgent pleasure in banal, indulgent sex was ensnared in patience forced upon it by the binds of torment now.

"Urgent... Nnh! We had better finish satisfying ourselves, then, my pet." Marazhai talks over the unit. His lips peel back to snarl at the thing. Sardonic in rivulets down the throat- as his pace simply does not change. He tears the skin and the fabric of memory to groan over Heinrix's shuddering form.

It was entirely his intention to fuck him deeper each time he heard that switch flicker on; every time he heard Heinrix's voice rumble from the throat to answer.

"Are you struggling to find your words within that throat of yours, Interrogator?" Marazhai rumbles, as he secures his talon around Heinrix's waist and makes performance of pounding their hips to one another. Mundane enough to last him-- the primal pleasure of friction just hardly enough to please for the moments he immersed his flesh entirely.

"-There is... interference."

The hand by the unit crawls across the bulkhead and he curls a thumb over it, static's vibrations unsettling from fingertip to wrist. He cackles. He was familiar with this interference. Glittering night-eyes land on the panting beast beneath his grip as the hand around his spine pets upwards, upwards. Past belly and uniform.

"No."

He grips a handful of the Interrogator's hair and brings them closer, other thumb spidering over the vox's switch. It makes its way over Heinrix's own hand and pulls it away before he steals the spot over the unit, fingers clasping possessively over the little chassis.

"You may tell them that you are indisposed... I will be waiting." Marazhai groans, lip curling as he inhales the scent of his creature both and another laugh. One curtailed by the panting of the man beneath himself hitching his breath prematurely to gorge on it. It was the closest to truest pleasure he would find when at rest like this. Panting and breaths feral-- the drukhari's mind flickering to imagery of blood. Of the panting and breaths over a feast or the most sublime torture.

Dread as the switch flickers on, the transmission whirring to life beneath Marazhai's fingers. A head lilting in affection towards his pet and grinning in the silence screaming at them from within the vox's mechanical utterance.

He wrenches Heinrix's head level to the unit, fucking him into the bulkhead with a pointed, strangled panting as the other hand challenges him omnipresent.

Heinrix bares his teeth and winces upward as Marazhai takes up a grip of his hair. It was enough to brand him in a hot flash as he squirmed between the Drukhari’s hips and the mercifully cold bulkhead. He purses his lips in the moments he was able to overcome the pain, the pleasure, to give him a hard look for the demand.

He’s not sure he could see himself displeasing von Aurastor’s expectations yet. Even if Marazhai’s chuckle still managed to crawl up his spine every time he heard it. And felt his stomach lurge when the vox crackles on. Heinrix swallows. Through sheer, blistering force of will, he dredged the code from his mind, his voice a raw, strained monotone.

"Cipher is... Kilo-Thane... Niner-Seven..." He choked back a gasp as Marazhai wrenches his head by his hair, leveling him with the vox unit and he gives it a focused, pained look as Marazhai moved within him. He could not bite back the strained, quiet, but undeniably audible moan he breathed against the steel.

"...Rho," he finished, the word almost a sob. "Acknowledge, Hexen. Now." Heinrix bit, face flushed, teeth bared in feral disgust.

There was a pause on the other end, then Hexen's voice returned, laced with relief. "Acknowledged, Kilo-Thane-Niner-Seven-Rho. Cipher accepted. Thank you, Interrogator. Hexen out."

The vox clicked into silence. The chamber was suddenly quiet again, save for Heinrix's ragged panting.

“Bastard…” He finally gasps, curling his fingers against the wall. One hand, searchingly, hovers behind him to hook against Marazhai’s waist.

Marazhai's hands curl around brown locks and he awards him with a tug. Another as the claw reassures him with its readiness to tear his scalp if it must- the other hand held over the vox to keep it on, kept from Heinrix.

The monotone of pleasured distraction tries in earnest and he hilts him for it, removing himself and fucking himself back within as harshly to draw the breaths shorter. In fantasy of his claim over van Calox over all that he spoke with.

The moan, heard, threatens to bristle the hair down Marazhai's nape and he rolls his eyes. Hesitation insatiable. Each sob and reluctance to speak a moment that Marazhai would fuck him again in reminder. The vox is waiting to hear your voice.

"Go on, pet..." Marazhai growls, teeth baring behind as he pins him against the plasteel.

Marazhai could not discredit the effort. How he tried. How he wavered and groaned for their audience when Marazhai fills him- when he teases him with any removal of his length and piercings. He felt the beast's muscles trembling under himself for long moments and brought himself closer in shadow when he snarled.

The recollection of the cipher draws a grin from Marazhai in patience- and an obnoxious, drawn sigh of pleasure against Heinrix's hair and ear.

"Bastard..."

He hears. He feels the strain suddenly relent under his duress and Marazhai's eyes drift downwards to catch him in sight.

The hand finds him and he obliges with a purr, eyes drifting between Heinrix's tensed jowl and his eye. The vox. His little finger lifts and taps a terrible claw against the unit with a purse of horrendous lips. Duty foremost a truly thrilling thing when he saw how it folded under his ministrations. The way his pet tensed for him when he was fucked hard and writhed for him likewise. Cute.

Claws in Heinrix's hair scrape over his scalp appraisingly and to his nape where they pet, claw, clasp. The unit silent. But not so. Marazhai's thumb shifts over the button.

"Now that we are without distraction, van Calox, I wonder who else would deign to hear us..." He pants, cackling. "It seems I've forgotten to lift my thumb."

Marazhai's lip curls and he wraps his hand around Heinrix's jaw to pull him near as he gasps over him, teeth messily finding his ear and biting as he fucks him into the bulkhead heedless of the sound- nearing his finish assisted by the Interrogator's stammered performance.

Heinrix rolls his neck under the terrible claws, breathing unevenly. A small noise dying in his throat as his eyes flicker over his shoulder. And to the vox unit. His face, of course, red.

It seems I’ve forgotten to lift my thumb.

“Ngh-…” Heinrix curls his fingers tight against the steel and leans against the talons caging his jaw for the teeth to find his ear. He straightens his back with a grimace and flattens in defeat against the bulkhead while fighting Marazhai’s grip. At the very least some semblance of his shattered composure restored? For a moment, Heinrix’s mind was pure static, a white-hot scream of humiliation and rage. The thought of Hexen, of von Aurastor, of any soul in the void hearing this... it was a violation beyond the physical. He felt a sob building in his chest, the final, pathetic crack in his Inquisitorial armor.

And then, something else took its place. A cold, terrible clarity. The survival instinct of a man who had endured the Black Ships and the pyres of a hundred heretic worlds. He stopped fighting the pain, stopped fighting the humiliation, and instead, leaned into it.

His panting, which had been ragged with suffering, evened out. His body, still pinned, went unnervingly still beneath Marazhai’s assault. He turned his head just enough, his mismatched eyes, now dark with something other than pain, finding Marazhai’s in the gloom.

When he spoke, his voice was not a plea. It was a low, resonant whisper, a chilling invitation.

"They may come to know the nature of the power you wield over me," he rasped, his voice dropping to a near-inaudible, conspiratorial murmur. He arched his back then, not in a wince of pain, but a deliberate, challenging motion, his eyes never leaving the Drukhari's.

"Perhaps also they will hear not just my weakness... but your need?"

Marazhai, to credit so subsumed in shared banality, sensed the building ice within. A torrent, plucking at the edges of his soul in something terrifying. Something ecstatic.

Ecstasy at the precipice of humiliation and crumbling gold begged that Marazhai continue. He does, pacing Heinrix against the bulkhead flush when the Interrogator curls so generously against it.

He, in indulgence, lets a dragging breath claw its way out of his throat. A mirror of that desperate shuddering of his pet's own locked.

Calculated-- Marazhai's breath pauses in attention, senses bristling from nape to spine. The claws holding jaw and vox unit tighten to anticipation that drained the blood from his talons. He feels it beneath himself and his lip thins in a snarl, fangs poised at a flushed ear.

His eyes meet those looking at him as he was denied the possession of breath against skin, made to face him in the icy dark. Oh, danger. None would hear this, Marazhai surmises as his hips still. Stillness already felt to be dead without struggle, he thinks now, was simply presiding in wait.

They may come to know--

Not a flicker of dissonance would reach the vox's speaker and Marazhai felt it inside his own mind: the inattention of static ever present and ever distant. Clarity in predation hissing at him. Be wary, that the lord Interrogator had blades yet to reveal. Be wary, fallen one, of the teeth of vessel's teeth poised to swallow him whole.

Marazhai stares at him in fury. In anticipating thrill- disbelief- at the words.

Perhaps also they will hear not just my weakness...--

The teal gaze contracts furiously, claws turned inwards in purgation of the power wielded. Shown to him and stolen away in vicious, frozen remembrance.

--but your need?

"Nnnnhhg...--" This is no Archon's throne. The Novacula. The lower decks given to him where he would be sent away in rending desperation as a starved beast might be. On the officer's deck, amongst those who would see his soul torn asunder for his survival. All games, all whims and primordial flailing. Sai'lanthresh laughed at him.

Something more speckles over his vision as he finds himself levelled in fear. Thrill. All was a game that both played, in weakness entangled together to some abyss where both would be stripped bare. He sees the seal in the dark without need of averting his gaze.

The drukhari laughs. A closed-mouth rumble behind his teeth chokes on its own strain.

All dissonance. Marazhai's claws pinch the flesh he held and his breath suspends, imperceptible. The fangs give away consideration. The claws at Heinrix's jaw- at his throat- give away him.

His thumb slips from the switch. Vestiges of dominion linger only at the corner of receiver as Marazhai moves within him, hand brought against the unit to hold them both with the tension of an unyielding cord. One that might hold up its weight in complaint beneath a footbridge.

He bristles, the look suspended in strange silence as he lingers uneasily on that storm-flecked gaze and he assists them both eagerly to their finality.