Chapter 7: T
The ache was a deep, satisfying bruise. It lived in the marrow of my hips, a hollowed-out tenderness that sang every time I shifted on the lumpy mattress. My room smelled of spent incense and me—musky, salted, a scent that had layers now. I traced a faint claw mark on my thigh, a souvenir from the charcoal brute whose knot had finally deflated after what felt like an hour. I’d lost count of how many had used me after that first wave. The memory was a blur of animal heat, snarled praise, and the relentless, wet percussion of flesh.
A crisp tap at the windowpane. I didn’t bother getting up. “It’s open.”
The casement swung inward on silent hinges, and Octavius flowed through, a silhouette of sleek feathers and tailored shadow against the sulfurous glow of the streetlights below. He perched on my rickety desk chair, arranging his wings with fastidious care, his huge amber eyes blinking slowly. He took in the scene: me, sprawled naked and gloriously wrecked on the rumpled fur blankets, the empty cans from last week, the equations on the wall that suddenly seemed like the scribbles of a child.
“You look,” he said, his voice a dry rustle of leaves, “like a banquet that’s been thoroughly attended.”
“I feel like one.” I grinned, wincing as I pushed myself up. I grabbed a discarded pair of sweatpants, pulling them on. The soft cloth was a strange comfort against oversensitized skin. “Beer?”
“If you’ve got something that doesn’t taste like fermented hellion piss.”
I shuffled to the small cooler by my bed, pulling out two sleek, black cans of Stygian Lite. “It’s exactly that, but cold.” I tossed him one. He caught it without looking, the talons on his thumb deftly popping the tab. I dropped back onto the bed, the springs complaining. The cool metal of the can hissed as I opened it, taking a long, bitter swallow.
Silence settled, comfortable and complete. Octavius was the only creature in any circle of Hell whose silence didn’t feel like judgment. It was just him. He sipped his beer, made a faint, disapproving click with his tongue, but took another sip.
“Beezle’s party?” he finally asked, his gaze drifting over the fresh bite mark on my shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“Productive?”
“You could say that.” I felt the grin spread across my face again, lazy and proud. “Met some new friends. The brindle one, Kai, he’s… intense. And this huge charcoal-furred fucker from the lower marketing pits.” I took another swig. “Took a double knot again. Actually, lost count after the fifth. Maybe sixth. There was a whole… queue.”
Octavius didn’t flinch. He never did. He observed me like I was a fascinating, mildly disturbing theorem. “A queue. How bureaucratically efficient of them. And you? How was it for you?”
That was the question no one else ever asked. They assumed. They saw the wreckage and thought they understood the storm. I stared at the ceiling, at a water stain that looked like a sprawling continent. “It was… power. But not like theirs. Mine.” The words came out slow, fueled by the beer and the unique safety of his presence. “At first, it was just happening to me. Then… I knelt down. I told them all to come here. And I took control. I had Beelzebub’s whole cock down my throat while I jerked off two others. I decided who came when. I orchestrated the whole fucking symphony.” My voice dropped, confessional. “I was the slut, but I was the conductor, Oct. It was mine.”
He was quiet for a long moment. I heard the soft swallow of beer. “The imagery is, as ever, graphically appalling. But the sentiment is… surprisingly healthy. For you.” He tilted his head. “So you enjoyed being the nexus of an organic orgy.”
“Fuck yeah, I did.” I laughed, the memory buzzing under my skin. “There’s this moment when you’ve got one cumming down your throat, another pumping his load into your ass, and you’re squeezing a third one off in your hand, and the sound… it’s just this wet, messy chorus, and you’re the only one who’s aware of all of it. You’re the center. They’re all just… instruments.”
I glanced over. He was staring into his can, his feathers slightly puffed. A strange tension radiated from him, different from his usual sardonic calm.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s just… a very specific aesthetic.”
I sat up. “Come on. Spill. You’re doing that thing where you think something witheringly sarcastic but decide to be polite.”
He let out a slow breath, a sound like bellows. “I’m not being polite. I’m being… uncharacteristically inarticulate.” He finally looked at me, his huge owl eyes unblinking. “Your adventures. The queues. The symphony. It’s foreign. It’s like you’re describing a particularly violent sport played with organs I prefer to ignore.”
I blinked. “You… ignore them?”
“Not ignore. Manage. Privately.” He took a deliberate sip. “Loon, I’ve never… ‘been’ with anyone. Not like that.”
The can in my hand felt suddenly very cold. I set it down on the floor with a soft clink. The static in the room seemed to swell, filling the space where my chatter had been. I’d known Octavius for years. Through my awkward shuffles into the corporate inferno, through his own razor-edged navigation of Goetia court politics. We’d talked about everything: ambition, fear, the crushing boredom of eternal bureaucracy, the best places to get spicy wings in the third ring.
Never this.
“Never?” The word came out softly.
“Never.” He said it firmly, no shame, just a stark fact. “The mechanics seem… unnecessarily complicated. The mess. The loss of control. The potential for melodrama.” He gestured with his can towards me. “You come home covered in the genetic material of half a marketing department looking like you won the grand championship. I have a cup of tea and a book. The outcome is functionally identical.”
A laugh bubbled out of me, surprised and loud. “Functionally identical? Oct, it’s not even the same galaxy.”
“Semantics.” He shrugged, a rustling of shoulder feathers. “The end result is a momentary chemical relief. Your method involves being used as a communal sponge. Mine involves my own hand and a locked door. I know which one I find more elegant.”
I just stared at him. Octavius. Prince of the Goetia. Sarcastic, brilliant, fiercely loyal Octavius. A virgin. The concept was so absurd it looped back around to making perfect sense. “So all this time… when I’ve been babbling about knots and deepthroating…”
“I have been, in the spirit of friendship, viewing it as anthropological research,” he finished dryly. “A study in the herd behavior of lesser demons. Fascinating in its own vulgar way.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. The soreness in my body was a pleasant, fading echo. This was new. This was intimate in a way that had nothing to do with physicality. “But… don’t you get curious? The… the connection of it? The heat of another person? The way you can just… lose yourself in it?”
He looked away, focusing on a complicated blood-ink equation on my wall about soul-transferance efficiencies. “Curiosity is a cognitive function. Lust is a chemical impulse. They can be divorced.” He was silent for a long beat. “The idea of being that… vulnerable. Of having someone’s wants, their frantic, messy needs, projected onto me, into me… It seems like a profound violation of the sanctity of self.”
His words hung in the incense-heavy air. I finally understood the tension in him. It wasn’t judgment of me. It was a deep, personal revulsion to the very thing I’d come to crave. For me, the violation was the point; it was a way to shatter my own awkward shell, to connect through a raw, wordless exchange of power and need. For him, his self, his brilliant, controlled mind, was a fortress. The idea of breaching it was a horror.
“It’s not always like that,” I said quietly. “It can be… just two people. Simple. Messy, yeah, but… warm.”
He scoffed, but it was weak. “Warmth is what blankets are for.”
We drank our beers. The silence stretched, but it had changed texture. It was charged now with this new, colossal understanding.
“So,” I said, breaking it gently. “You just… take care of it yourself.”
“Yes.” The answer was swift, defensive.
“What do you think about?”
“Loon.”
“I’m curious! Come on. I’ve told you about the time I got knotted by two hellhounds simultaneously while gargling Beezle’s load. You can tell me what gets the Prince of the Goetia off.”
He glared at me, but there was no real heat. It was the glare he gave me when I found a flaw in his logical proofs. “It’s… procedural. A maintenance of biological systems. Imagination is inefficient. I focus on the physical sensation. The precise friction. The escalation and resolution of tension.”
He sounded like he was describing a laboratory experiment. I couldn’t help it. I started laughing again, a real, belly-deep laugh that made my sore abs protest. “Oh, fuck, Oct. You’re a goddamn robot. ‘The escalation and resolution of tension’? I’m over here getting railed into a mattress thinking about the way a guy’s back muscles flex, and you’re basically running a diagnostic on your dick!”
A faint, dusky blush colored the feathers around his beak. “It’s effective. And it lacks… complications.”
“Sounds lonely,” I said, the laughter dying down.
“Sounds lonely,” I said, the laughter dying down.
The word landed in the quiet room with more weight than I’d intended. Octavius’s feathers lay flat again, his defensive puffiness gone, replaced by a still, almost statuesque composure. He studied his beer can as if the answer to an ancient riddle was hidden in the condensing beads of moisture.
“Lonely implies a desire for company in the activity,” he stated, his voice returning to its analytical cadence. “I have no such desire. The premise is flawed.”
But I could feel it now—the subtle, empathic hum I’d always been able to sense in others, that unique ability of mine tuning into his frequency. It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t simple curiosity. It was a profound, isolated ache, a fortress of self that wondered, in its deepest, most secret keep, what lay beyond its own walls. The fear was immense, a vast moat around that keep, but the wondering was there. I’d cracked it open by admitting my own power in the chaos. My honesty had begotten a sliver of his.
“Okay,” I said softly, conceding the point. “Not lonely. But… singular. Everything you do is so contained, Oct. Your mind, your space, your rituals.” I gestured around my chaotic den. “Look at this mess. I live in a whirlwind. You visit the whirlwind, but you never get blown around.”
“There is no strategic advantage to being blown around.”
“There’s no advantage to a lot of things that feel good,” I countered. I finished my beer, the can echoing hollowly. An idea was forming, reckless and tender. It felt like stepping onto thin ice over a lake of fire. “What if it wasn’t about advantage? What if it was just… an experiment? Between friends.”
His amber eyes swiveled to lock onto mine. “Define ‘experiment.’ Your definitions tend toward the operatically physical.”
I took a breath. My heart was beating a little faster, but not with the frantic heat of the orgy. This was a different pulse. “An intimate moment. Between friends. Where nobody gets knotted. Where nobody has to come unless they want to. Where it’s just… about the warmth. The contact. Seeing what it’s like to not be alone in your own skin for a few minutes.”
He was silent for so long I thought he’d simply refuse by saying nothing. The static between radio stations in the room seemed to amplify. I could smell my own scent on the sheets, the musk of my earlier conquests, and it felt suddenly crude, a relic from a different world.
“This is pity,” he said finally, the word sharp and brittle.
“No,” I fired back, instantly. “It’s the opposite of pity. It’s respect. You know my deepest, filthiest shit. You’ve never flinched. You just filed it under ‘anthropological research.’” I managed a lopsided smile. “I want to research you. Not your mind. The rest of you. The part that thinks sex is a ‘maintenance procedure.’”
Another long silence. He placed his empty can on the desk with meticulous precision. “I am not in the mood for sex.”
“That’s perfect,” I said, and I meant it. “If you were in the mood, it would be about the finish line. This isn’t. This is about… the field. Just walking across it together.”
“Your metaphors are consistently terrible.”
“But you’re still here.”
He was. He hadn’t flown out the window. He was observing me, weighing the variables. I saw the moment his intellectual curiosity overrode his deep-seated dread. It was a slight tilt of his head, a minute softening around his eyes. “No expectations,” he stated, terms of surrender.
“Zero.”
“No… orchestration.”
“You’re the conductor this time. I’m just the instrument. A single, simple one. A triangle, maybe.”
A faint, almost imperceptible huff of air—his version of a laugh. “Agreed.” He stood up from the chair, his movements suddenly stiff. “How does one begin this… fieldwork?”
“We could start by not being across the room from each other.” I patted the rumpled space on the bed beside me.
He approached like the mattress was potentially unstable ground. He perched on the very edge, his back rod-straight, his wings held tight to his body. The distance between us felt astronomical.
“And?” he prompted, a teacher waiting for the next step in a flawed demonstration.
“Relaxing might be a good step two.”
“I am relaxed.”
“You’re sitting like you’re awaiting a rectal exam.”
That got a genuine, sharp blink. He deliberately shifted, leaning back slightly on one hand. The pose was no more natural, but it was an effort. “Proceed.”
The formality was heartbreaking and hilarious. This was Octavius deconstructing intimacy into a series of steps. I moved slowly, giving him every chance to bolt. I shifted onto my knees to face him, the soft fur of the blankets under my shins. I reached out, my fingers hovering near the elegant closure of his tailored jerkin. “Can I?”
He gave a tight, single nod.
My fingers, usually so sure and greedy on a cock, felt clumsy on the intricate fastening. I undid the leather toggle, the material parting to reveal the soft, downy feathers of his chest, a palette of greys and browns so different from the sleek outer plumage. His breath hitched, just once. I pushed the jerkin off his shoulders, letting it fall behind him. His skin, where the feathers gave way, was smooth and surprisingly warm.
“Your turn,” I said, my voice low.
His talons were deft. He hooked his claws into the waistband of my sweatpants and tugged them down my hips in one efficient motion. The cool air kissed my exposed skin, the fading aches and marks from the party now fully visible to his analytical gaze. He didn’t comment. He simply removed his own lower garments with the same clinical efficiency, until we were both kneeling, facing each other in the dim light, naked.
The difference was startling. My body was a landscape of use: lean muscle, sharp angles, the vivid crimson and grey markings, the fresh evidence of passion. His was elegant, almost avian, covered in a layer of supremely soft down, slender but not frail, with the powerful legs of a predator and the strange, intriguing junction where anatomy took its own unique form. He was utterly still, watching me watch him.
“Now what?” he asked. The clinical tone was still there, but beneath it ran a current of something else—vulnerability, a slight tremble in the air around him.
“Now we get closer. And we just… hold on.”
I shuffled forward on my knees. He didn’t retreat. I moved into his space, the heat of his body a new kind of warmth against mine. I gently placed my hands on his sides, feeling the subtle shift of muscle and bone beneath the incredible softness of his down. I guided him, and he allowed it, until our bodies were aligned, chest to chest, my thighs outside his.
“Put your arms around me,” I whispered.
He did. His movements were stiff, uncertain. His long arms wrapped around my back, his clawed hands resting lightly between my shoulder blades. The touch was ghostly at first. Then, as I pressed closer, feeling the entire length of him against me, his embrace tightened incrementally. He let out a slow, shuddering breath against my neck, his beak brushing my skin.
We knelt there, holding each other. It wasn’t the frantic clutch of the orgy. It was a slow, steady sink into shared presence. I could feel his heart, a rapid, frantic flutter against my own steady, slowing beat. I could feel the tension in his back, the fortress walls still raised. I just held him, my hands stroking slowly up and down the delicate ridge of his spine, saying nothing.
Minutes passed. The only sounds were our breathing and the distant, eternal hum of the city beyond my window. His grip slowly became less of a conscious action and more of a natural state. His head bowed, his forehead coming to rest against my collarbone.
“This is… acceptable,” he murmured into my skin, the words muffled.
A smile touched my lips. High praise from the Prince. I turned my head just slightly, my nose brushing the sensitive place where the fine feathers of his neck met the smoother skin. I could smell him now, a clean, dry scent like old parchment, cedar, and a faint, ozonic hint of his inherent magic. It was nothing like the musky, sweat-and-come scent of the hellhounds. It was uniquely, definitively Octavius.
Feeling bold, I let my lips follow where my nose had been. I pressed a soft, closed-mouth kiss to the junction of his neck and shoulder.
He flinched. Not away, but a full-body shudder, as if I’d sent a jolt of lightning through him. His claws dug into my back for a second, not breaking skin but anchoring.
“Was that—”
“Do it again,” he interrupted, his voice strained.
So I did. I kissed the same spot, a little firmer, letting my lips part just slightly. I felt the tremble that ran through him, a seismic shift deep within his controlled core. I trailed my mouth upward, along the column of his neck, following the path of a prominent tendon. My kisses were soft, exploratory, a world away from the hungry, claiming bites of the party. This was mapping. This was learning a new, sacred geography.
His breathing changed, becoming deeper, less controlled. A low, involuntary sound escaped him—not a moan, but a deep, resonant coo, an avian sound of pure, startled pleasure. The sound went straight to my gut, hot and possessive in a way I hadn’t expected.
“Loon,” he breathed, my name a concession.
“I’m here,” I whispered against his skin before drawing the thin, delicate skin of his neck between my lips and suckling gently.
His hips jerked against mine, a sudden, uncoordinated thrust. The feel of him, hard and hot and so different, pressing against my stomach was a jolt of pure electricity. The clinical experiment was evaporating. Something raw and real was taking its place.
“Fuck,” he gasped, the obscenity sounding strangely elegant in his crisp accent. “You’re… you’re good at that.”
“I’ve had practice on less discerning necks,” I murmured, smiling as I continued my slow, devastating campaign along his throat. I used my tongue, lapping at the saltless skin, teasing the hollow behind his jaw. Every touch, every kiss, was a key turning in a lock that had never been tested.
“I can… ascertain why,” he managed, his words beginning to fracture. His hands were moving now, no longer resting stiffly on my back but clutching, exploring. One clawed hand slid down to the small of my back, pressing me tighter against him. The other came up to cradle the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my fur, not guiding, just holding on.
He was falling into it, the sensation overwhelming his analytical mind. I could feel it through my own empathy, the dizzying flood of input short-circuiting his practiced control. It was more intoxicating than any power I’d felt at Beezle’s. This was a demolition, and I was the careful, loving wrecking ball.
I shifted my focus, nuzzling into the softer down beneath his ear, breathing him in. My own cock, interested but not demanding, pressed against his thigh. This wasn’t about that. This was about the sharp, ragged breaths he was taking. This was about the way his entire body seemed to be learning a new language, one of ache and need and touch.
“Just feel it, Oct,” I whispered, my voice rough. “It’s just data. A new kind of data. Let it in.”
He made that cooing sound again, lower, more desperate. His hips found a rhythm, a slow, grinding roll against my stomach, seeking friction. It was awkward, unpracticed, and utterly honest. I met his movement, rocking with him, our kneeling embrace turning into something else, something tender and hungry all at once.
I moved my mouth back to his neck, sucking a darker mark into the pale skin, claiming him not as property, but as a friend who was crossing a frontier. He cried out, a sharp, beautiful sound, and his head fell back, offering more. I took it, kissing down the revealed stretch of his throat to the crest of his sternum, my hands sliding down to grip his narrow hips, helping him move against me.