by SA Payne
Ichi was pressed to the sofa, pinned with Rye laying on top of him. The reserved man's shirt was
missing and in the back of Will's mind he noticed it had been tossed across the room. Ichi had
twisted so he was able to look up and backwards at the door and at seeing Will he'd blushed
almost the color of Rye's hair.
"It was unlocked because I logically assumed no one would be stupid enough to barge in!" He snapped caustically and struggled to free himself from the tangle of limbs.
For every move Ichi made, Rye countered in a subtle turns and twists, keeping Ichi pinned to the
sofa. Will just laughed. "Hey, man, sorry, just thought you'd want to know Harvick is docking."
"I'll be right there." Ichi almost managed to sit up.
Before Ichi could slid away, Rye simply got a grip on his waist and tugged him back down to lay
sprawled out and pissy below him again. "We'll be th..there shortly." Rye changed the answer.
"What?" Ichi almost choked but the look in the grey eyes was one he'd been learning well over the weeks.
"Take your time, want me to lock it on my way out?" He chucked a thumb toward the door.
"No." Ichi squirmed but found himself unable to get free of Rye's gentle grip.
"Please." Rye answered too.
Will nodded and with a laugh he locked the door on his way out.
"Rye, I have to go."
Seeming Ichi pull his mask of cool distance about his face again just made Rye feel wicked. One
of the best things he'd come across was pushing Ichi beyond his own controls, snapping him
loose to moan and gasp in shocking displays of emotion. Having him try to go back to his logical
day to day world after their small romp on the sofa was just a challenge to get him moaning
again.
"Har..Harvik can dock without you and the others can unload without you. You are bu..busy right now."
"Rye!" But protesting was pointless, Rye attacked his neck again and the fight melted from him.
"Oh, god."
And if Rye was disappointed that the night's play was cut short and what he'd thought might have
been the right time turned out not to be, it disappeared as Ichi clung to him and shivered at his
touch. Their fumbling on the sofa seemed safer than their explorations on the bed but both left
Rye feeling whole and content. The nagging worried fear had faded to a distant voice. He
grinned as clothing was returned to place, knowing that as soon as Ichi had fed his swarm and
returned home, the yet to their relationship would be merely a memory.
It made the walk to the docking hold seem both too long and too short. Rye caught Ichi's arm
before they made the last turn to reach the hallway to the hold. They hadn't told Harvick about
him, so around the ship's captain Rye had to remain silent and pet like. When Ichi turned to see why they'd stopped, Rye pushed him back against the hallway wall and stole a quick, but
passionate, kiss.
Rather than blush or be angry, Ichi just grinned a little and brushed hair back from Rye's face.
"Sooner I can feed the babies the sooner we can get home."
Nothing had actually been said between them but Ichi's understanding set Rye's heart to
fluttering. It meant that Ichi felt it too, they'd gone as far as they could without actually
consummating their relationship. Rye had even let Ichìreturn the favor' as he kept putting it and
found it to be a mind blowing, no puns intended, event.
The idea of finally moving further was a distracting one. In his mind he would play it out, knowing it would be a safe distraction with Harvick around and certain so long as he had his fantasies he
wouldn't miss the found freedom of speech. It made little difference to Rye who was top and who
was bottom. There was a distant sense that he'd, maybe, once preferred top and certainly
reducing Ichi to the point of begging was an indescribable delight. However, if there was one
thing his memories of his other owner had taught him, being taken, even in the course, rough
manner that had befallen him, was equally delicious. It was a trade off, pain was worse but so
was pleasure and Rye was finding many, many uses for that tradeoff.
The fantasy was distracting enough that he didn't notice the object of said fantasy had stopped
inside the cargo hold. Rye stumbled to a stop behind him, his head had been down in typical pet
fashion and he hadn't noticed Ichi had stopped.
"That's him, that's the one." Harvick's voice broke the suddenly unnatural silence.
Rye glanced up, the Avalon folks were never silent and on days when Harvick arrived they grew
even louder, more festive. What he saw set a spark of something off inside of his stomach. It
wasn't fear, or worry, but something closer to excitement. Harvick was down on his knees, his
face a mottled bunch of bruises, with a newly red gash over his forehead. His hands were bound
behind his back in locking cuffs and old blood had dried on his clothes.
Around him, the men of the station were kneeling as well. Bound in similar manner, some with
gashes or bruises. Henry lay unconscious and unmoving, bound as well and Mark was leaning
forward, his left lower arm bent at an obviously broken angle. They'd bound him also, cuffing his
good wrist to one of his ankles.
They weren't what set the spark of excitement into the pit of Rye's stomach, it was the others. A
handful of men, four in all, dressed in black and brown colors with splashes of red and wearing
the fashion and styles from a hundred different colonies. Only one held a serious weapon, the
small magnetic gun was old and held together with sealant tape and what looked like wire, the
rest held knives and clubs made of weighted pipes or lengths of metal.
Rye knew the gun, knew the risk it offered. A mag slug wasn't a pleasant injury. At a lower
setting it popped into flesh and cauterized the wound after it; higher settings could vaporize bone into small dust. From the repair work done on the gun, he could guess about a dozen things that
might not function anymore, from actually firing to being able to control the force level of the
slugs. From the look on the men's faces, it was only a matter of time until someone found out
just how well the gun worked.
"Pirates." Ichi whispered, almost in shock at the sight of the thugs, his eyes going wide as the mag gun nudged Harvick's head.
Things had felt frozen. Stuck in surprise and shock, time had stopped. Until a hand reached out
and gripped Rye's hair, pulling him in stumbling steps further into the cargo hold. He didn't offer resistance, something felt shut down or shut off. Much like his memories of those first days with
his owner or the hazy awareness of before, there was a sense of being out of control, like the
world was spinning around him.
Ichi, on the other hand, held no such disorientation. "Let him go!" He demanded and charged after where Rye was being dragged.
It was child's play for one of the men to kick the back of Ichi's knee and twist his arm behind him as he fell. The researcher went down with a cry that was more startled uncertainty than pain and
found his eyes locking on Will's. His friend's nose was bloodied but his eyes were sharp, he
shook his head in the smallest of shakes, silently begging Ichi to be silent.
The pirate dragging Rye across the hold held his grip firm in the red hair with one hand and just
as firmly around a homemade knife with the other. Rye was pulled closer to Harvick and jerked to a stop. The one with the gun in ill repair nudged the side of Harvick's head once more.
"Thi
s the pet?"
Harvick just nodded. For a second, his dark eyes met Rye's grey and they widened. He saw
something there, something alert, vital, dangerous, that shouldn't be in the eyes of a pet. He
frowned, surprised, and in the next heartbeat Harvick's head exploded. The whine of the mag
gun was sharp in protest at being used but it quickly recharged. Vapor from what had once been
Harvick's head floated in a red misting cloud across Rye and he felt it landing, hot and soft,
against his skin.
"Get them on, the other's will be done fetching the rest soon. Secure the men and make sure the watch is on the women. No damaging the goods before sale!" The one with the gun ordered.
"But the pet?" The one holding Rye whined as he jerked the red hair again.
"Sure the Captain won't reject some fun, just no touching the women. Avalon witch isn't worth as much of the fight's been beat out of her."
Laughs were exchanged all around and the grip on Ichi's arm eased. It was pretty clear the
pirates didn't deem him a threat and he couldn't rightly blame them. He'd never seen violence
before, never seen anyone killed and both sights had him cowed. Only the idea that these awful
men, that any man, would dare to touch Rye, shook him from his startled shock.
Ichi pulled hard on his arm and it slipped through his captors grip. "Leave him alone!" He heard himself shouting and found himself charging blindly toward the man holding Rye by the hair.
Which was stupid because he'd just seen what the mag gun was capable of and he had no
illusions about how tender his flesh was.
They didn't waste a slug on him. The man that had knocked him down before recovered from his
shock and swung his cudgel in a low arc. It caught the side of Ichi's head and dropped the
smaller man to the floor. A booted foot kicked out and rolled Ichi over where he lay, sputtering
for breath, stunned and unable to coordinate any movement.
"Kill him?" The man with the cudgel asked. "He ain't Avalon."
The one with the gun came over and ran quick eyes over Ichi before he shrugged. "Too pretty to kill, be a waste. Pet can't keep all of you lot occupied and away from the women. Bring him, a
mouth is a mouth, a hole is a hole." He grinned in a mocking way. "Someone will buy something so pretty even after you lot's finished with him."
The taste of blood was in Rye's mouth and it felt more familiar then nearly anything he'd crossed
with since arriving on the station. The smell of blood was sweet in the air. Only one thing
mattered, it wasn't what the pirates wanted on the station or what they planned to do with the
small research crew. Harvick's murder hadn't even surprised him and didn't offer fear or shock,
nor did the threats to his own person. He'd already learned what he'd been made into, he may
never have willing accepted a single member of the attackers as a lover but there was no love in
what they wanted. Rye knew he'd been remade for sex, they could and would use him and he'd
beg for more, it held no fear for him.
Until they'd hurt Ichi, that set off a cascade of fear and rage inside of him like nothing he'd felt.
Even the heights of ecstasy he'd found with Ichi paled compared to the horrible anger that
consumed him at seeing the gentle man harmed. When their words sunk in past the pounding,
boiling anger that made his head throb and he knew they planned to rape Ichi, his Ichi, the rage
froze. It became ice and the anger and fear froze and shattered and suddenly, without actual
thought or words, Rye knew what he'd originally been made for.
His elbow sung back, with no thought, no wasted time for concern, and with all his force it buried
into the neck of the man holding his hair. The man released his hold on Rye's hair and his own
blade, gurgling in surprised pain as his windpipe was crushed. Rye didn't think, he dropped and
rolled, snatching the blade from the air as it fell. He came up on his feet behind the startled
pirate just as the one with the mag gun swung toward him and fired randomly.
It was as if the entire moment had already been played out a thousand times inside of Rye's
head. He knew the speed of the slug, the angle it would be traveling in, knew the actions and
reactions of everyone around him before they even thought it. It was simple to kick out, knocking
the gasping pirate to the side to stumble. It put him directly into the path of the slug, the shot Rye hadn't even known had really been fired until the man beside him suddenly had a hole the size of
his fist appear in his chest.
The air floated with the dazzling mist of blood again and the mag gun slowly whined back to full charge. The blade was no longer in Rye's hand, he'd thrown it as he kicked the now dead pirate.
His mind had judged the balance of the surprisingly well made knife with the distance to the one
in charge with the gun. Without conscious thought he'd judged that a moment would appear and
he had to take it.
The blade appeared again, sticking from the chest of the attacker in charge. The hilt and a bit of
the blade sticking from flesh wobbled slightly. A look of shocked surprise crossed the man's face
as the mag gun dropped to the floor, breaking into parts as it hit. The pirate stumbled back, his
hands touching the spot where metal met flesh.
"Bloody hell." He gasped before tripping and landing as brokenly on the floor as the gun.
Rye slid to the side as a cudgel raced past him. The man was slow with it, bringing it in lazy arcs and counting on the weight of the club to do the work. It made it easy to learn his timing and Rye
slipped inside the arc of an attack. His hand flew up and the heel of his hand caught the stronger
man's nose, breaking it and spouting blood and curses into the hold.
Again, instinct said to move to the side and as he did a blade from the fourth attacker danced
dangerously close to both Rye and the man with the broken nose. Rye watched with detached
interest as his own hand punched out, landing on the knife attacker's wrist. He felt and heard the
bones snap under the force of the punch, the knife dropped from twitching fingers.
The blade didn't stay on the ground for long. Rye snatched it up and spun, knocking the cudgel
to the ground with a smooth kick. The knife, not as well made as the first but sharp, lashed out
and slit it's original owner's stomach open. Rye didn't wait to see if the blow was lethal, he turned the knife and dragged it up to the center of the man's ribs.
Which delayed him long enough that the man with the cudgel got in another swing. Rye ducked
and pulled the dying man with him. The cudgel landed on the trembling pirate, smashing
collarbone and knocking him back off the deeply buried blade. Rye kicked out from where he
was crouched and was pretty sure he'd broken or dislocated the cudgel swinger's knee. As the
man was following, Rye stood and the blade cut out again, slicing the man's throat open as the
tumbled to bleed to death on the cargo hold's floor.
Rye ducked again and froze, waiting for the next attacker and finding the hold empty of any. The
hilt was reversed in his grip, the blade running parallel to his forearm ready for defense of
offensive moves. Blood dripped on his hands and made the grip slick. He did a final check of the
four men, ignoring the moans of the ones still capable of sound and found them all fatally
wounded. The idea that he'd just coldly murdered four people didn't even show up as a blip on
his conscious. They'd tried to hurt Ichi.
Which reminded him of what
had set him off and he hurried to where Ichi was struggling to sit.
Blood rand down the side of his love's head, thick and it matted up the dark hair. Ichi's eyes were wide and frightened but Rye wasn't sure if it was in the situation at general or his actions.
He knelt down and ran his hands across Ichi's head. "Are you okay?" He asked with that odd voice of someone else again. The one that had vowed to die before allowing harm to touch Ichi.
Ichi nodded, unable to speak.
Rye was satisfied.
"Rye!" Will called out. "Get these cuffs off! They have the women on the ship! Hurry!" He hissed while pulling on his arms.
Rye glanced to the desperate men, men long used to waiting for the right time to act, before he
glanced off to the tube that connected the hold to Harvick's ship. He shook his head. "Ichi? Can you get them loose?"
"I think so." He whispered, shivering as Rye smeared blood across the sides of his face again.
"Good." Rye nodded and turned back to Will. "How many? Any more guns?"
"Don't be stupid, get us loose we'll do it together."
"How many?" Rye demanded.
There was something cold and frightening in the grey eyes, something that made Will do
something he'd never done before. He backed down. "Three more we saw on the ship, the
Captain has a better mag gun. Five others on the station, knives and clubs. They're looking for
some of our projects."
Rye nodded and left Ichi kneeling surrounded by a wreath of corpses. "Keep him safe." He
ordered, pointing a bloodied blade at Ichi before he bent and pulled the second knife from the
corpse. It would take too long to piece together the broken mag gun and frankly he wasn't sure why it hadn't simply exploded in it's user's hands before. "Ichi, move it, get them loose!" He ordered with a cold hard voice.
It was one that Ichi responded to. He nodded again and forced his dizzy head to move him
toward Will. "Rye?" He called out and the red head stopped on the way to the connecting tunnel but Ichi didn't know what to say. Don't die seemed silly, don't get hurt even more absurd.
Rye merely inclined his head in a small bow, accepting all that wasn't said, before he turned and
slipped down the connecting pathway.
