Chapter Text
“Aloy, you need to stop,” Fashav says, his voice calm, but firm.
“What I need ,” Aloy snaps back, “is to get back out there!”
Fashav blocks her exit, arms crossed over his chest, regarding her with an unreadable expression. Her ankle screams as she fruitlessly tries to shoulder past him.
"Get out of my way," Aloy says, each word cold and clear, though her voice is hitching with pain.
Fashav lets out a slow breath, his hand coming to grip her shoulder, his palm and fingers hot against her bare arm. "I have a proposition, Aloy," he says, still infuriatingly blocking the door.
"I don't have time for this!"
"You'll make time," Fashav tells her, and his tone brooks no argument. "I’m suggesting single combat, no weapons, just hand to hand. If you can best me, I'll let you walk out of here without another word of protest."
"Easy," Aloy snarls, though she's not sure it will be.
Hand to hand, Fashav has the advantage of both height and weight. Though his old injury from the Embassy still bothers him from time to time, he's not currently suffering from an ankle so swollen and twisted every step is agony. But what choice does she have?
"And if I win," he continues, "you agree to stay here and let us take care of you to our satisfaction." Fashav gestures at Kotallo, who has been watching this all unfold with an expression Aloy would have once found unreadable.
Now that she knows better, she can see the little furrow in his brow as his eyes flick between them. He's worried. Worse, Aloy can tell he agrees with Fashav.
"Fine," she agrees, and she can hear Fashav's relieved exhale.
"Let's go to the training room then," he says.
He strides past her, and Aloy glances towards the exit. She could make a run for it. But Kotallo is still there, watching her like he knows what she's thinking.
With a sigh, Aloy follows Fashav, trying not to wince every time she puts weight on her damaged ankle.
In the training room, Fashav has stripped off his armor and is just in Carja style linen trousers, running through a few stretches. Aloy can see the still livid scar on his abdomen.
She shrugs out of her gear, stripping down to just her shorts and undershirt, mindful of her own injury.
"Rules?" Aloy asks, eager to get this over with and get back out into the wilds.
"First to land three hits?" Fashav suggests, his eyes lingering over her in a way that makes her face heat. "Or pin the other."
She'll have to watch out for that. At her best she's pretty confident she could get three hits on him before he could land them on her. But even if she wasn't injured, he's big , and has the advantage when it comes to getting her in a pin. She'll just have to be faster, and keep out of his reach.
"Fine," she agrees.
They circle each other on the woven mats covering the floor of the training room, their texture familiar to Aloy's bare feet. Fashav makes a quick lunge towards her, striking out with a fist, but Aloy is faster, the blow glancing off her raised arm. She blocks the next one as well, but he uses the momentum to get an arm around her and pull her close.
Panicking, Aloy instinctively brings her knee up into his side. She doesn't hit his old wound but it's a near thing and he releases her with a pained grunt. Aloy takes this moment to put distance between them, heart pounding in her chest.
"That's a point for Aloy," Kotallo says.
"Fighting dirty, I see," Fashav says, hand splayed over his stomach as he watches her with a hawk's gaze.
"Sorry," she says, because she is.
Fashav shakes his head. "I see you mean to win. But so do I."
He approaches again, a little more cautiously this time, and she can see his eyes assessing her. When he swings at her, she ducks and rolls past him, spinning and landing a hit on his ribs with a triumphant cry. That's two hits, and she just needs one more.
She stumbles getting up, her injured ankle protesting at its treatment. It's just long enough for him to sweep her legs out from under her.
She hits the mat on her front, the wind knocked out of her, and Fashav is on her before she can even get her hands underneath her.
He grabs one wrist, pinning it to the small of her back, the other held tight in his grip to the mat as he holds her down with his weight.
She shouts as soon as she can draw the breath to do so, trying to gain some kind of leverage to buck him off, strike backwards at him with an elbow, anything . Worse still, she can see Kotallo’s greaves between strands of her own hair in her face, as he witnesses her humiliation at Fashav’s hands.
“Be still,” Fashav says.
Not that she has much of a choice, Fashav’s weight pinning her down. She wants to scream until her voice gives out, she wants to– she wants to cry . She hates crying.
“You’re hurt,” he says, as her breathing starts to calm and her struggles slow. “Tell me, what good are you to the world if you die?”
She knows he’s right, that’s the worst part, but she can’t possibly sit still.
“Everything depends on me,” she reminds him, hating how she sounds like a petulant child.
“I know ,” he agrees with her. “That is why it is so vital that you take the time you need to rest .”
She slumps fully then. She’s been running herself ragged and she’s so tired . Still, something wild in her paces, like a caged Ravager.
She can feel hot tears sting at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over. Her throat is tight.
Fashav lets his grip on her wrists slacken slowly, as if waiting for any sign of renewed resistance. Aloy is too tired to fight any longer though. She lets Fashav help her up.
He kisses the top of her head and she slumps into his embrace, body deciding that it's just not going to hold itself up anymore. His arms wrap around her and she sighs, hiding her face in his chest.
"Oh, sunshine," he says as a few tears finally fall, landing on his skin.
He picks her up as easy as anything, her legs wrapped tight around his waist and her arms around his neck, carrying her out of the training room. She's grateful that it's just the three of them in the base this week; she can cling all she likes without prying eyes.
He sits on her bed so she’s cuddled close in his lap and Aloy can hear Kotallo follow them in and the sounds of him putting away their armor.
“Can I take another look at your ankle?” Fashav prompts.
“I just wrapped it this morning,” Aloy grumbles, voice muffled against his throat, but her heart isn’t really in it.
“And I would like to rewrap it.”
Aloy flops back onto her bed, leaving her legs in Fashav’s lap, wincing a little when he removes the cloth around her ankle before winding it around a little tighter and fastening it in place.
He presses a gentle kiss to the wrap once he's finished, his hot hand gripping her heel. He doesn't stop there, lips trailing up her leg, lingering on the tender inside of her knee as he glances up at her with a mischievous expression.
"What?" Aloy asks, pulse quickening.
If there's one thing she hates, it's losing, but she suspects Fashav has some kind of consolation prize in mind.
Kotallo sits next to her, the bed dipping slightly with his weight.
"Nothing," Fashav says, worrying a pink mark into her thigh and making her gasp. "Just thinking of how to keep you entertained while you convalesce."
Not to be outdone, Kotallo cups her cheek in his big hand and leans in to kiss her.
"I have a few ideas, as well," he breathes into her mouth.
"I bet you do," she says, nipping his lower lip and making him smile.
As nice as a few days in bed being tended to by two incredibly handsome men sounds appealing, Aloy still chafes at the idea of having to recover. She sighs dejectedly and Kotallo pulls back, frowning.
"Sorry," she says. "I just know I'm going to go crazy the next few days. I feel– fucking useless ."
"Aloy," Fashav says, a hint of anger in his usually gentle voice, like a steel dagger hiding under silk. He squeezes her knee, his thumb digging into the mark he'd left there with his teeth, making her stomach clench pleasantly. "You are not useless."
Aloy makes a frustrated sound. She wants to pace. She wants to run , to feel the wind on her skin and feel grass beneath her feet and between her fingers, and her stupid fucking twisted ankle has her cooped up in the base instead. "I can't be still ."
Fashav lets out a long, slow breath. "I have an idea," he says, "but only if you're up for it."
He looks… nervous, almost, but that can't be right, Aloy thinks.
"Alright, let's hear it," Aloy says, curious.
Fashav looks at her, his eyes sliding over her supine form like a caress, but there’s something calculating in his gaze.
"Let me tie you up," he says finally, watching her face closely for her reaction.
Aloy blinks at him, not sure if she heard him right. “You want… to tie me up?” she asks.
Fashav’s mouth twitches into a smile. “Yes, sunshine.”
“Why?”
Fashav rubs circles on the inside of her knee with his thumb. “I have my own selfish reasons, of course,” he says with a smile. “Seeing you wrapped up in my ropes, helpless but to let me dole out pleasure,” he presses his thumb into that mark again, and Aloy wonders if she’ll have a bruise there later, “or pain.”
Aloy swallows. She’s known for a while now that Fashav likes control, that he likes… inflicting pain. She’s seen the marks on Kotallo’s skin, narrow red lines in a ladder across his ass and thighs and though she’s never been privy to those sessions between them, she’s also seen how much more… relaxed Kotallo seems afterwards.
Fashav has even slapped her ass a few times while his cock has been buried deep inside of her, more playful than anything, the slight sting of it just enhancing her pleasure.
“Those are your selfish reasons,” Aloy says. “But what am I supposed to get out of it?”
Fashav laughs softly. “It’s a good exercise in being still, in giving up control.” He kisses her knee. “Just think about it, being at our mercy while we make you come as much as we want.”
Aloy squeezes her thighs together. That sounds dangerous ; each of them is obsessed with wringing as much pleasure from her body as possible and not being able to stop them after they’ve turned her into a shuddering, oversensitive mess–
“Have you done this before?”
“It’s something of a speciality of mine,” he admits. “Kotallo seems to think I do a good enough job.”
"Oh–" Aloy says, eyes darting between them. She knows they have a whole history together, one she’s barely scraped the surface of in her short time with them, but some of it still shocks her. “And… you like it?” she asks Kotallo.
He nods. "I find it– meditative."
"Meditative," Aloy repeats slowly, almost incredulously. How could anyone find being tied up to be meditative ? “What if I hate it?”
"Then all you need to do is say so and we'll cut you out of the ropes and never speak of this again,” Fashav says. He pulls something up on his focus and swipes it her way.
Aloy opens the data and immediately shuts it again, her face burning.
"What is that ?" she demands.
"It's art ," Fashav says, trying and failing to bite back a smile, the corners of his mouth twitching up.
Aloy drags a hand down her face, opens it back up. It’s an image of a Carja scroll, depicting a woman with her silks half off, her breasts exposed between diamonds of rope wrapped around her torso and her arms bound tight behind her. There is a look of ecstasy on her face as a man kneels between her spread legs, his face buried between her thighs. An absolutely lurid poem is written on the scroll in looping Carja cursive. Aloy closes the image.
“I have some more examples, if you’re interested?” Fashav teases. “Some of my own work, drawn from my memories of my youth in Meridian.”
“I’m good,” Aloy says faintly. “So this is a… Carja thing?” The Carja are weird . “I never saw anything like that when I was in Meridian.”
Fashav laughs. "Yes, this style of bondage was invented by the Carja, though I’d be surprised if you had gone to the parts of the city where it's… popular."
"And you want to do that," Aloy says. "To me."
"That's the idea," Fashav says, his expression entirely too innocuous for a man who's just admitted to wanting to tie her up.
"And you think I’ll like it," Aloy continues, turning the idea over in her mind. She's not sure she sees the appeal or not.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Fashav says, kissing her knee again.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “I’ll try it.”
Fashav smiles warmly at her, his eyes crinkling, obviously pleased. He kisses her, then Kotallo.
“I want you to get her ready for me,” he says into Kotallo’s mouth, making Aloy squirm. “Just get her worked up, don’t let her come.”
Kotallo nods, his gaze falling to Aloy as Fashav leaves the room. He captures her mouth in his, his hand cupping her breast, pinching her nipple between thumb and forefinger and making her squirm.
He’s just got her shirt off when Fashav returns with several hanks of rope and some tools.
“Why do you have a hammer?” Aloy asks, pushing herself up onto one elbow. Kotallo’s mouth is at her breast now, and she tries not to be distracted by his teeth on her nipple.
Fashav holds up a hook like some of the ones Zo has set into the ceiling to hold planters, though this one looks to be a little more heavy duty. “For added stability,” he says, but that just asks more questions. “Don’t you mind me, just let Kotallo make you feel good.”
He’s obviously not going to clarify any further, so Aloy lets herself fall back, sighing as Kotallo starts kissing his way down her belly, his hand already questing between her thighs. Aloy is distantly aware of Fashav still working, but it’s so easy to let Kotallo distract her, dragging her shorts down and off her legs, careful of her ankle.
She sighs at the first touch of his mouth, rolling her hips up to meet him as he lavishes her with slow, languid licks. He’s not trying to get her off, just as Fashav had requested, his exploration of her meandering, mostly avoiding her clit. Aloy whines, tugs his hair, trying to drag his mouth where she wants it.
“Greedy,” Kotallo teases, easing two fingers inside of her.
“We’ve obviously spoiled her too much,” Fashav agrees, joining them. “Ready, sunshine?”
Aloy nods, but can’t help her moan when Kotallo pulls away from her cunt, licking his fingers clean. He helps her up, letting her lean on him to keep weight off her ankle.
Aloy watches as Fashav approaches the desk where he’s left the rope, surveying the coiled lengths with obvious excitement.
"You really like this," Aloy says slowly.
Fashav casts a little smile back at her, setting a pair of scissors down as well. To cut her out of the ropes, if she really hates it.
"I do," he admits, double checking his supplies before turning to her and taking her mouth in a kiss.
"What do you like about it so much?" she asks, sighing into his mouth.
Fashav hmms, biting softly at her bottom lip. "The trust it takes," he says slowly, pulling away and looking at her with dark eyes. "Your partner is… putting everything in your hands. To be able to take that, and guide them through the experience is… heady."
Aloy doesn't think she really understands. But she does trust Fashav.
“I trust you,” Aloy says out loud, because she wants Fashav to hear it.
The smile he gives her makes her stomach flip, warm and dangerous all at once. “That means a lot to me, sunshine,” he says. “Thank you. Ready?”
Aloy nods and Fashav grabs a length of rope, starting to uncoil it. Kotallo takes a seat on the bed again, giving Fashav room to work.
"I'm going to put you in a chest harness first, and rig it to the ceiling to hold your weight," Fashav explains, starting to wrap her torso in ropes.
"Hold my weight?" Aloy questions, watching his deft fingers tie the ropes in a diamond pattern over her chest.
"I want to tie off your injured leg," he says, dropping a kiss to her shoulder. "You'll have one foot on the ground for stability, but the ropes will be holding you up. Arms behind your back."
Aloy does as he asks, folding her arms behind her and letting Fashav bind them. She's acutely aware of how the position pushes her breasts out, already accentuated by the ropes around them.
She can see Kotallo out of the corner of her eye, his hand rubbing slowly between his own thighs as he watches Fashav immobilize her and she's hit with the sudden urge to cover herself, but of course she can't.
Fashav hooks a length of rope over the support hook he's drilled into the ceiling, tying it to the ropes around her chest and stepping back to survey the whole thing with his focus for a moment.
"Lean forward," he says, hands by her waist to support her in case the hook fails.
Aloy tips forward carefully, the ropes shifting around her slightly, but they hold. Fashav nods, pleased with whatever he sees on his focus.
"Good," he says. He runs a finger between the rope and her skin to test how tight it is. "How do the ropes feel?"
"Fine," Aloy says, noting how she can feel them shift and creak slightly with every little breath.
"You tell me if that changes. As soon as that changes," Fashav says seriously, and Aloy nods.
He handles her ankle carefully as he helps her fold her leg, securing her calf to her thigh with another length of rope. Gently he pushes her leg up, testing how far she can stretch.
"Is this alright, can you hold it for a while?" he asks when her thigh is nearly parallel to her torso.
Aloy nods and he ties her leg there. Her other foot is still flat on the floor, but she's grateful for the chest harness helping her keep her balance as she sways a little.
Fashav kneels in front of her and Aloy is achingly aware of his proximity to her exposed cunt, though he ignores it entirely in favor of wrapping her other leg and securing it to a hook set into the floor so she can't lift it.
He presses a kiss low on her belly and stands to capture her mouth as she whines at him.
"Patience," he chides, smiling against her mouth.
He draws her wild hair into a low ponytail, wrapping another rope around it and securing it the the coils keeping her arms tied, drawing her head back, so she's looking helplessly up at the ceiling.
He stands behind her, close enough for her to feel the heat radiating from him. She shifts restlessly in her bonds, testing their hold on her.
“You can fight my ropes all you like, Aloy,” Fashav murmurs into her ear. “But you’re not getting out of them.”
Aloy is beginning to realize the truth of this, flexing her arms and legs against his vicious ties. The most she can do is wiggle her fingertips, just barely able to reach Fashav behind her, and a shaky whine leaves her mouth.
“Touch me–” she begs, feeling suddenly unmoored, “Fashav–”
“I have you,” he says quickly, his hands hot and firm on her skin, holding her close as she shakes. Her fingers flutter uselessly against his skin.
She is completely and utterly at his mercy. Her breath hiccups out of her.
"Do you need me to cut you out, Aloy?" Fashav asks, voice worried.
She tries to shake her head but she's bound so fast she can't. "No," she says instead, her voice strange in her own ears.
“Alright,” he says. “Just breathe with me, love. The ropes have you. I have you.”
Aloy lets out a shaky exhale, trying to sync her breathing with Fashav’s. It helps, the tremor in her limbs subsiding as she starts to drift, caught up in Fashav's ropes, his hands, his voice. Even the scent of him feels so immediate, hot Carja spices and earthy Tenakth paint.
"There we go," Fashav murmurs, kissing her ear.
She turns her head as much as she can, brushes her nose across his cheek. She can feel him smile.
She's completely lax in the ropes now, breath hitching just occasionally. The ropes will hold her, she thinks, an extension of Fashav himself. She's floating .
“I’ve never seen her like this,” Kotallo’s voice drifts to her distantly, the words unimportant.
“My ropes have had you like this plenty of times,” Fashav counters, a smile in his voice.
“Hmm,” Kotallo says. “I doubt I look as lovely.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Fashav says fondly. “I find you both equally exquisite, drunk on my ropes and at my mercy.”
Hands rove over her body, idly petting over her arms, her belly, cupping her breasts, each sensation bleeding into the next until she feels as if there must be a dozen hands on her. Just more pieces in the gestalt of sensation surrounding her.
There's a new touch to her thigh that makes Aloy's eyes flutter open, gazing at the gray ceiling. Even if she hadn’t been tied fast, she’s boneless enough she couldn’t lift her head up from where it lolls against Fashav’s shoulder.
“It’s just Kotallo, love,” Fashav murmurs into her ear.
She feels fingers settle over her mound, a thumb skating over her clit and she sighs.
“Good girl,” Fashav continues, voice so, so soft. “You let Kotallo make you feel good now.”
Like Aloy could do anything else.
Kotallo's fingers spread her cunt open and she gasps at the first touch of his tongue. She’s so sensitive, her whole body feeling like it’s going to shake apart, only held together by Fashav’s ropes, his arms.
"A little slower, Kotallo, ease her into it," Fashav says and Aloy whines as Kotallo's tongue on her slows to a crawl.
She has no leverage, unable to rock her hips against his face, and she can’t even scrape the words together to beg him properly. Every touch of his tongue to her clit has her whole body jerking uncontrollably like she's been caught by a shock trap, but Fashav holds her fast.
Aloy comes with a cry, completely helpless to push Kotallo away as her sensitivity peaks, the pleasure turning too sharp as he keeps working at her. She shudders like a machine fighting an override, no where for her to go, no way for her to fight the tide of sensation. She can only drown in it.
Kotallo is merciless . Aloy loses track of how many times he makes her come, each orgasm fading into the next so Aloy isn't sure if the pleasure ever stops at all.
The whole time Fashav is whispering litanies of praise into her ear, telling her how beautiful she looks, how good she is for them, how wonderful she sounds, how they’re going to keep her forever.
Finally she simply can't come anymore, hanging insensate from the ropes. She is distantly aware of Kotallo’s mouth on her, but the tension is no longer drawing tighter. Still, she whines when he pulls away, just missing the warmth of him.
“I think we’ve worn her out,” she hears Kotallo say, but the words don’t really register, like they’re about someone else.
“I think you’re right,” Fashav agrees. “Let’s get these ropes off you, sunshine.”
Aloy makes a questioning noise. Sunshine is Fashav’s name for her, so he must be talking to her, but she doesn’t understand the words. It's only when she feels the grip of the rope around her injured leg loosening that she can parse their meaning.
“No," she whines, her voice hoarse, nearly gone. The ropes are the only things holding her together. "I need to keep them."
“You can keep them, sunshine,” Fashav assures her. “Let me just loosen them a little.”
Aloy whines again but she's so worn out she can't even tense her muscles, her breath shuddering in and out of her as Fashav releases her from her binds.
Fashav won't let her fall apart, she reminds herself.
"Kotallo's here too?" she asks, suddenly worried he's gone.
"I'm here," Kotallo says quickly, cupping Aloy's cheek in his hand. "I'm here."
Between the two of them they get her into her bed, clutching at the loosened ropes as they curl around her. Aloy watches as hands pet over her skin, tracing the faint indentations left by the ropes.
“Beautiful,” Fashav murmurs, and they really are.