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Thrawn had gotten them lost. Desperately and hopelessly lost.
Sent on a reconnaissance mission that no one could care less about, Thrawn must have known that they would be isolated from all help the moment they stepped onto the Lambda shuttle that brought them from the Blood Crow to the surface. The tropical planet’s thick vegetation and electromagnetic waves interfered with communication and navigation devices. On top of that, Captain Rossi’s inclination towards leaving them behind had yet to wane even after months of service. Yet, Thrawn had wilfully chosen to separate them from their one and only vehicle out of here.
Good job, Thrawn, Eli thought maliciously as he trudged through the swamp that Thrawn had led them into. He glared at the back of Thrawn’s head, cursing the fact that his shimmering blue-black hair was still sleeked back perfectly while Eli’s own head of curls had come undone despite his hair gel’s best efforts. In the suffocatingly humid climate, the loose tendrils stuck to the back of his neck. Eli briefly considered the benefits of going bald.
With a mighty heave, Eli freed his foot from the sucking slime, only for his next step to send it plunging back into the thick substance with a disgusting squelch. He grit his teeth through a full-body shudder.
Up ahead, Thrawn stopped in his tracks and craned his neck, studying the curved trees swaying around them. Eli followed his gaze but found nothing familiar about their surroundings. His Chiss eyes had better be seeing something Eli could not, because if Thrawn was about to take them on another side quest, Eli would demonstrate to him the exact amount of pressure required to suffocate someone with a pillow.
Eli struggled his way to Thrawn’s side. “I hope you’ve figured out a way to get us un-lost, Lieutenant. I’m starting to forget what it feels like to be dry.”
“I am working on it.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Eli swung his arm in wide arcs to swat away the flies buzzing about his face. Like everything on this planet, they were disgustingly humongous. Thank the stars for long sleeves, Eli thought as his arm collided with their soft, oversized bodies. He would hate to learn what the bugs felt like on bare skin.
“We should not be far now,” Thrawn announced, marching on. Busy fighting the local wildlife, Eli grunted in acknowledgement. He did not know how Thrawn knew where they were, seeing as nothing about their surroundings seemed identifiable in the least, but he trusted in his lieutenant’s abilities to get them out of the mess that he had gotten them into to begin with.
Thrawn turned, as if to confirm that Eli had not been kidnapped by the flies, then did a startled double take.
“What? What is it?” Eli asked, straightening. He reached for his blaster. If Thrawn was alert, Eli had to be twice as alert and ready to shoot a few faces. Was it the big cat that they had spotted earlier? Had it seen them too? Was it following them? Eli glanced towards the bank.
“Don’t move,” Thrawn said. The commanding tone of his voice kept Eli perfectly still on pain of death. He battled down the impulse to spin around to see what else could have caught Thrawn’s attention.
As Thrawn strode back towards Eli, the slime seemed to part for him. It wasn’t fair, how effortless he made it look.
Suddenly, Eli became aware of the minor wiggling on his neck, just above his collar. It was imperceptible before, but now that he was staying perfectly still… “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
“Don’t move,” Thrawn repeated in warning. He slid his pistol from his belt.
“Please tell me you’re not actually going to shoot this thing off me,” Eli said.
In the months that they had spent in each other’s constant company, Eli had become quite good at reading Thrawn’s expressions. Right now, the blank stare Thrawn was giving him communicated an oddly reassuring ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ sentiment.
“This might hurt,” Thrawn said in that soothing voice of his. It was not very soothing at the moment, but Eli would take this over Captain Rossi’s grating pompousness any day.
With a steady hand, Thrawn used the barrel of his blaster to pry the insect off Eli’s neck. There was a pinprick, but nothing like the skin-melting pain that he had braced himself for. The moment the weight disappeared, he stumbled backwards, exhaling in relief.
“What the hell was that?” he asked.
Thrawn held the insect up on his pistol. “It appears to be some kind of leech with wings.”
Eli blinked. “You’re telling me that thing can fly?”
“Not at the moment. It appears to be too engorged for its wings to carry its weight.”
A flick of Thrawn’s wrist sent the ghastly creature soaring into the underbrush on the bank. Eli breathed a little easier. That relief lasted barely a second before Thrawn’s attention returned to the spot on his neck. The concentrated glow of his red eyes and marginal scrunch of his eyebrows could perhaps be taken for concern.
“What now?” Eli asked.
“It has left a small wound. We must disinfect it.”
“Ideally, yeah, but guess what? Neither of us thought to bring a medpac for what was supposed to be a short excursion.”
Thrawn possessed the good grace to look abashed.
Eli sighed. “I’ll be fine. That thing isn’t toxic, right? I’ve been bitten by leeches before. No big deal. Let’s just get back as soon as we can.”
He made to wade around Thrawn. The blue hand on his arm stopped him.
“That would not be advisable. We may not have a medpac, but if I may offer a temporary alternative?” Thrawn said.
Held in place, Eli leaned back, his eyebrows crowding together with suspicious confusion. “Okay? Let’s hear it.”
“Chiss tongues have antiseptic properties. If you would permit me to–”
“No. Nuh-uh. I am sweating like a Twi’lek. That’s disgusting. I’m disgusting. You do not want to put your tongue on me right now.”
Stars, that sounded so wrong coming out of Eli’s mouth.
“I am not bothered by such trivial matters,” Thrawn said.
And that was an equally weird statement to hear coming out of Thrawn’s mouth.
Too stunned to come up with a better protest, a speechless Eli allowed himself to be tugged closer to Thrawn. Was this really happening? In the middle of a swamp?
“Okay, wait,” he finally found the ability to say as Thrawn leaned forward. The towering Chiss lurched to a halt, hovering over him. “You sure you’re one hundred percent fine with this?”
Thrawn considered. “Ninety-eight percent,” he said, his breath whispering over Eli’s skin.
“Where the hell did the other two percent go?” Eli demanded, feeling his heart rate spike. What did Thrawn mean, he wasn’t fully confident in this treatment method? He was the one that had suggested it, for goodness’ sake. He was going to give Eli an aneurysm.
“It will be one-hundred percent if you are are fine with this,” Thrawn said.
Eli wanted to strangle the man. He rolled his eyes instead. “I’ll be fine with it if you’re fine with it,” he grumbled.
Having had enough of the endless back and forth, Eli placed his hand on the nape of Thrawn’s neck and pulled him in. Get it over and done with, he meant to say, but the words never left his mouth as a warm, rough tongue dragged itself over the wound.
The contact stung at first. Eli hissed, flinching away, but Thrawn held him in place with gentle, firm hands. One arm snaked around his waist while the other reached up to support his neck. Squished against Thrawn, Eli buried his face in Thrawn’s uniform, finding solace in the scent of Chiss over the stench of swamp. He wondered about the cologne that was so powerful that it reigned supreme over sweat and tropical torture.
The second pass of Thrawn’s tongue over the bite mark brought relief. It was like having a numbing bacta patch slapped over an injury, except with less of the frost burn shock and administered with more care than the field medics bothered with. Eli sighed and sagged into Thrawn’s arms.
Thrawn took his time, his saliva gathering and spilling from the tip of his tongue. It slathered over Eli’s neck like a generous helping of a soothing gel. Surely, the mix of blood and sweat did horrors for his taste buds, but if he was put off by it, Eli could not tell from the way Thrawn revelled in tasting him with each careful stroke of his tongue.
The fascinating thing about humans such as Eli was that the neck was a highly sensitive part of the body. In many cases, a touch there triggered a violent reaction, causing a human to recoil from the signals fired off by startled nerves under the skin. In Eli’s case, and perhaps because Thrawn was involved, the sensory overload manifested in a different reaction.
Too lost in the sensation, Eli did not notice the moan that escaped him, but Thrawn heard it. He had never heard such a sound before, certainly not one so pleasing to the ear as this. Curious, he experimented with the pressure of his tongue on Eli’s skin.
This time, it drew a shudder from Eli. He leaned more heavily into Thrawn, his eyes fluttering shut as Thrawn’s scent flushed up his nose. A hot pressure built in his pants. It throbbed in time to the pace of Thrawn lapping at his neck.
Years of rigorous military training had turned Eli from a skinny Wild Space worm into a man of substance; by no means could he be considered easy to carry. Yet, Thrawn held him upright with no effort at all. That strength excited him. It left him wondering what else could be done to him.
A distant part of him acknowledged that this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Between the two of them, Eli had always been the more rational one, while Thrawn’s concept of realistic existed in a different universe entirely. That said, Eli always deferred to Thrawn’s judgement in the end. He supposed this would be no different than all those other times.
Thrawn had yet to say anything, so Eli allowed himself to silence the warning sirens wailing in the back of his mind.
Of their own accord, his hips drove themselves against Thrawn’s thigh. If anybody asked, he had been trying to reposition himself. It was a perfectly believable excuse. Only he would know that it was a lie.
The friction from that one movement lingered long after it had passed. Eli found himself caught in the uncomfortable state between arousal and an obtrusive hunger for more. It was an itch he desperately needed to scratch, but how could he seek that relief for himself without getting caught?
Thrawn jostled him, repositioning his neck to get a better reach. Eli whimpered as more of himself was exposed to Thrawn’s patient attention. Their new arrangement also shifted them imperceptibly closer together, such that Thrawn’s every microscopic movement incidentally rubbed against Eli in the most divine of ways. It was barely there, but it was enough, and Eli was content to lose himself in what little he was given.
“That should hold until we return to the ship,” Thrawn said, pulling away. With the sudden loss of his support, Eli swayed, his mind struggling to anchor itself back to his body. It took him a second to make sense of where he was and what the hell he was doing.
They were in the middle of a foul swamp and Eli had nearly lost himself to Thrawn’s manoeuvrings. He bit back a swear.
A glance upwards at Thrawn assured Eli that he was as oblivious as he was expected to be. With unbothered eyes, he surveyed their surroundings. His arms were still wrapped around Eli, holding him close.
“Come,” Thrawn said. He dropped his hand to Eli’s wrist. “We should make it back before the last light. I do not wish to know what becomes of this planet once the sun has set.”
Eli would have muttered something sarcastic about how he could not agree more were it not for the distracting curve of gentle fingers on his wrist.