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Locus isn’t exactly best pleased when they return to the office the Feds have so generously given them and finds Felix there waiting for them. It’s not exactly an office, per se – a shitty mattress covered blankets in one corner, and a desk and chair in the other, which is where Felix is sat. He’s sprawled on the chair like he owns the place, boots kicked up onto the table, armour scattered in grey and orange pieces across the floor.
(They’ve never understood how Felix can do that, casually strip out of the armour, make himself vulnerable and human.)
“Get out,” they say, bluntly, and Felix tosses a knife at their head. It misses, of course, wasn’t really aimed at them, and lands with the tip jammed into the wood of the door frame. Felix grins.
“Hello to you too, babydoll,” he says, lazy as always, hands behind his head. The bands of orange tattooed around his wrists match the orange streak dyed into his half-shaved hair, and silver flashes on his tongue when he talks. He’s had two more piercings in the cartilage of his ear since Locus saw him out of his armour last, tiny gold hoops that swing with every head movement.
Felix calls them crazy for taking the name of their armour (as if their name means shit, as if losing the one they were given at birth is some kind of sacrifice), for refusing to take it off. Locus thinks the man that had the markings on his armour permanently inked into his skin in thick, black lines has little room to talk about crazy.
“Get out,” repeats Locus, though they know they may as well be talking to thin air for all the good it will do. Felix is bad at following orders unless there’s money involved; it’s one of the reasons he’s an excellent mercenary, and also why Locus hasn’t got bored enough of him to kill him yet.
Felix grins, swings his legs off the desk with a casual, fluid motion, stands up and paces over to where the other mercenary stands in the doorway. He presses lips in a small pout against the shine of Locus’ visor, leaves a lip-gloss print there that makes Locus’ jaw tighten unnoticably with frustration.
“Cheer up,” he says, hands settling on the other mercenary’s hips, the metal of the armour cold and sharp against his palms – Locus takes good care of their armour, but even their meticulous cleaning can’t prevent dents, scratches, wear and tear.
He traces a new groove dug through the grey by a bullet, nicks his finger on the ragged edge of it, and smirks. “Bad day at the office?”
Locus punches him.
They put hardly any power behind the blow, aware that reinforced gloves and the motors tripling the strength provided by their muscles are more than enough to break bone, but Felix’s head snaps back all the same. He staggers, lets go of Locus to touch a hand to his mouth, feels the split of the skin there and spits blood onto the floor.
Then, little shit that he is, he steps forward and licks a long smear of crimson across the shiny shoulder plate of Locus’ armour, barbell glinting metal-red at the tip of his tongue. The alloy of the armour tastes like dust and oil and metal beneath his tongue, acrid and unpleasant, but it’s worth it for the way Locus shudders just the slightest bit.
“You scratch that, I’ll break your spine,” says Locus, quietly, and Felix laughs, as he always does whenever someone threatens him. Not for the last time, Locus wonders quite how the New Republic have yet to notice that their hired merc is stone-cold insane.
“Mmh, talk dirty to me,” purrs Felix, grinning wide, and drags his tongue along the one-way glass of Locus’ visor, slow and wicked.
Locus pushes him away with one hand, impatiently wipes the blood and lip-gloss from their helmet as best they can, sets their gun down on the table – a gesture they know Felix will read as trust, as if still being in their power armour doesn’t leave them with the strength to break him easily in two.
Then again, maybe Felix likes that. They gave up trying to work out what Felix likes years ago.
Felix is back the second they stop pushing him, edging into their personal space, plastering himself up against their armour. “C’mon,” he whines, nuzzling against the Kevlar neck plating around Locus’ throat, dragging his teeth over the ridges of it. “C’mon, Locus, baby, lighten up a little.”
He says lighten up, and Locus hears hit me again. They oblige.
They hit harder, this time, and Felix stumbles, a bruise rising over the sharp edge of one cheekbone. Blood drips from his nose, and when the dazed expression leaves his face he grins, licks at the trickle of it hungrily. “That all you got?”
Locus hits him again. And again. And again. Eventually there’s a crunch from something, possibly Felix’s nose – broken, by this point, too many times to count – or maybe a rib. Locus has been dropping their blows lower, lower as Felix’s face becomes a more colourful patchwork.
They want to break Felix, but they can’t do it permanently. Not yet.
Reluctantly, they stop, watch as Felix slides down the wall he’s been pressed up against by the steadily-advancing bulk that is Locus, mouth open wide and breath coming in wet gasps through the bloody mess of his nose and lips. He’s still grinning, though, smiling through crimson teeth as he drops to his knees and presses his forehead to Locus’s thigh, struggling to inhale against the pain in his chest.
Locus curls a hand in his hair, tight enough that they’ll be picking strands of black and orange hair from the finger joints of their gloves for the rest of the evening, and Felix lets out a long, low noise that might be a whine. He catches his bloodied lip between his teeth, worries at it, heedless of the way his lip splits again beneath the abuse when he’s so single-mindedly focused on Locus above him. His eyes are downcast, though, and that at least mollifies Locus somewhat.
There are very few things Locus would say they enjoy, per se, but Felix – bloodied, inked up, cocky, lip between his teeth and eyes on the floor – is definitely on the list.
(More likely, they enjoy the power of it, the superiority. Humans brought low by their own humanity and base desires. It’s the power that sings to them, not the image. Even so, it wouldn’t be as satisfying by half if it were anyone but Felix on their knees before them.)
“I could snap your neck,” they say, a little bored and a little tempted.
Felix responds by wrapping his hands around Locus’s calves, nails finding purchase on the contours of the armour. He leans forward, mouth open and bloodied, to press his lips against Locus’ codpiece.
Locus’ assessment of the amount of sanity their partner has left drops by several notches, and they shudder sharply, the hands in Felix’s hair tugging until it feels like it will come out by the handful. No matter that they can’t feel it, that there’s several layers of fabric and kevlar and reinforced plastic and metal between them, it’s like a shock up their spine.
“You could,” Felix agrees, pulling away, licking his lips and exhaling slowly. Locus knows he gets off on this too, can see it in the way he rolls his hips slowly against thin air. The way his pupils are blown wide enough that his iris is a barely-visible strip of colour around them. “But you won’t. Because you like this just as much as I do.”
As much as they hate to admit it, Felix is right.
Locus’ angry silence is admission enough, and Felix leans forward again with a wide smile to lick a bloodied stripe at the juncture between Locus’ thigh and groin, sliding slowly sideways until he’s mouthing over Locus’ crotch with slow, lazy movement. They tolerate it for a while, the steady smearing of blood over their usually pristine armour – and then they don’t.
After all, it’s them that are going to have to clean it up afterwards.
Felix tolerates being dragged to his feet by his hair with a hiss that escapes from behind bared, crimson teeth. Locus isn’t exactly sure whether it’s pleasure or pain; doesn’t exactly care. “You could have just asked,” he says, wrapping arms around Locus’ neck and pressing a brief kiss to the solid plate of his shoulder. It hurts the split in his lip, makes it sting where it catches on a ragged edge of metal, but he doesn’t care.
The lip-print he leaves is half lip-gloss, half blood.
His fingers slip under the latches holding Locus’ helmet to their chest piece, and he slips fingernails under them, pops them open one by one. The seal on it hisses, magnetic lock beeping a warning before switching off, and Felix carefully pries the chunk of metal and plastic and wiring off his partner’s head.
At a look from Locus, he places the helmet carefully down on desk and out of harm’s way. After what happened last time he damaged any piece of Locus’ armour, he’s not taking chances.
“There,” he says, quiet and slyly delighted, reaching a hand up to trace the X-shaped scar that mars the sharp angles of the other mercenary’s face. It’s a livid red-purple against the dark brown of Locus’ skin, and it’s only long familiarity with Felix’s insistence on touching it that stops them from flinching away from the touch.
Anyone else would have had their fingers broken long before now – but then, Felix has always been special.
“There,” says Felix again, hand sliding to cup one of Locus’ cheeks and the other coming up to join it on the opposite side of their face, until Felix is cradling their jaw in his hands. “Isn’t that better?” He smiles, wide and radiant and bloody, and Locus thinks briefly that they’ve never seen someone as disgustingly beautiful as Felix. The bruises rising on his face, purple-black and livid, do nothing to mar it.
Locus sighs, scowls and says nothing in return – but when Felix tilts their head down, and goes up on tip-toes to make up the rest of the height difference needed to bring their lips together, they let him.
They don’t kiss, never have. This is how it’s always been; Felix kisses him, and Locus bites down, draws blood so they can both taste it in their mouths and Felix smiles with red lips because, despite his protestations otherwise, they both know who the madman is here.
(It’s not the one who named themself after their armour.)