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As he raised a glass of brivari to his lips and nodded once more to Lady Aurella's interminable, rambling anecdote, Londo wondered whether life at court had changed during his past few years on Babylon 5, or whether he had. The dull vapidity of conversation around the room had begun to tire him even more than usual. He knocked back a too-large swallow in the hope it would numb his ears as well as his tongue. This was poor brivari, overly chilled and with a slightly cloying aftertaste.
G'Kar was a few paces away from him as usual, chatting lightly with a couple of court ladies whose names Londo didn't know, but still so attuned that he glanced over his shoulder when Londo nearly choked on brivari. Londo waved a hand at him, and saw a glimmer of amusement in the mismatched eyes before G'Kar turned away again. Londo wondered how much more of this he needed to put up with for appearance's sake before he could make his excuses and escape.
The two of them had been taking most of their meals in Londo's quarters. Less risk of poison that way, but also, it was quiet and peaceful and, though he wasn't about to admit it out loud, the conversation was a good deal more engaging than the tedious drivel that went along with dining in the company of the ministers or the court hangers-on.
The simple, slightly shameful fact was that he had grown used to quiet evenings. For years and years, meals had been like all other things in life: applied with purpose and an eye towards social advancement. There was no "off duty" for a scion of Centauri nobility. But on Babylon 5, he had begun to settle into the rhythm of eating in with Vir, or seeking out various acquaintances in the Zocalo restaurants. People who could not do anything for him. People he ate with, or shared a drink with, because he liked their company.
Now, in this overheated room full of people he didn't particularly like, he felt bored and restless. And, increasingly, unwell. Sweat prickled up the back of his neck. Too much brivari on an empty stomach, perhaps, but it didn't usually bother him like this.
He made an acknowledging "hmm?" to Lady Aurella's droning and took another drink from the half-empty cup to soothe his throat. Something was bothering him about the aftertaste. It was familiar, somehow, and unsettling. It couldn't be poison? His latest swallow of brivari tried to climb back up his throat. But he'd been careful; two of his rings scanned for most of the common types of poison used at court, and anyway, poison was not currently in vogue for political assassinations. It was too obvious. Deniability was the current fashion, like the attempt on his life with the knife that had very clearly been meant to be pinned on G'Kar.
"Prime Minister?" Lady Aurella asked, interrupting herself in the middle of whatever she had been nattering about. "Is something wrong?"
"No," Londo said by habit, aware that G'Kar was looking at him again, frowning.
He felt very strange. Not quite drunk. There was a humming in his ears, and the lights seemed too bright. Damn it, there had been something in that drink. What was that aftertaste? Coppery, but floral, like some kind of exotic flower wet with blood. He'd tasted it before, somewhere, and perhaps that was why it hadn't caused him too much alarm until now. One didn't normally suffer poisoning twice, not from a competent poisoner, at least ...
He happened to look past Lady Aurella just then, and met the eyes of a fellow behind her who had turned to look at Londo over his own drink. Minister Orlan, about Londo's age, now gone paunchy and gray, although Londo remembered that he'd cut a dashing figure in the Couro Prido once upon a time --
The Couro Prido.
And suddenly he knew exactly what that taste was, and why he felt so hot and strange, and he knew that he had to get out of this room immediately.
He took a swift step back, and glimpsed Orlan's lips curl up at the edges, just a little, before turning quickly away. That bastard, Londo thought. Lady Aurella looked alarmed. He didn't even remember what he said to her, but he nearly backed into G'Kar, and was acutely aware of G'Kar touching his elbow briefly to steady him.
The rest of the contents of the blasted cup he dumped into a potted plant, and dropped the cup on top of it. Only after it left his fingers, he thought perhaps he should have kept it for -- what reason? Evidence? This was not Babylon 5, where guilt would be determined in front of an ombudsman. He knew Orlan had done it, he needed no evidence for that, and he had no authority other than his own to appeal to.
"Mollari?" G'Kar murmured, sounding alarmed.
He was touching Londo's elbow again. Londo jerked his arm away and tried not to stumble as he left the room. The cooler air of the blessedly empty hallway made him gasp in relief.
"I'm fine," he told G'Kar, who was nearly bumping into him.
"You ingested something, didn't you?" G'Kar said shortly. "It was in that cup. Do I need to take you to a doctor?"
"No -- Great Maker, no. I need to go to my quarters."
Fortunately it was not all that far. Unfortunately, G'Kar wouldn't leave him alone.
"You can go back," Londo said between his teeth.
"A very poor bodyguard I would be then. What was in the drink?"
"It's a drug," Londo said, his breath hitching a little, trying to focus. He felt as if everything was swimming around him. Sweat slicked him under his clothes, and he was especially aware of it along his ribs.
"I figured that much out." G'Kar touched his arm, steered him matter-of-factly down the corridor, and Londo realized he'd stopped moving in his disorientation and distraction. "I know that you are neither stupid nor self-sacrificing enough to go expire quietly in your quarters, so I will have to assume it's not lethal." He was speaking with a particular intensity that penetrated the swimming feeling and made Londo look at him in surprise, only to realize that G'Kar was very angry, and not at him.
"No, it's -- it's not dangerous -- not that dangerous," he corrected himself.
"Really? Because you look awful, Mollari."
"I do?"
"Trust me, you do." They had reached the door of Londo's suite, and G'Kar reached across him to take the pin off his collar and trip the electronic lock. "What does the drug do? However nonlethal it may be, I don't suppose it's indicated for a recovering heart attack patient."
"That was months ago. And you should leave," he said as G'Kar urged him inside with another of those light little touches. Did G'Kar do that to him.... all the time? He had apparently ceased to notice it under normal circumstances, those casual little redirects or a touch on the arm to get his attention. Now he felt as if G'Kar's hands left a hot imprint behind.
G'Kar kept them going all the way across the room until Londo's back hit the wall and suddenly G'Kar was in his space. That ... did not help. He could feel squirming along his sides, sparking shudders of pleasure -- so intense it was nearly pain -- as the engorged tips rubbed against his undershirt.
"What's it do, Mollari?"
Londo was panting now, desperate for privacy and relief. "It's -- it's a -- a recreational drug. Called adourik. It's banned. We experimented with it in the Couro Prido --"
"The what?"
Londo shook his head impatiently. "Doesn't matter. Long ago. Orlan was there too. Not there there, but in a different -- it doesn't matter. That's how I knew." He was aware that he was probably not making a lot of sense. G'Kar looked baffled as well as angry. Londo's own frustrated inability to pull his thoughts together made his next words come out more pleading than he intended. "I know you don't exactly trust me, but can you just trust me on this, and leave?"
"I do trust you," G'Kar said, almost offhandedly. While Londo's drug-slowed brain was still processing this, G'Kar took him by the arm with more pressure than usual, not merely redirecting him with a light tap, but almost pushing him into the bedroom. "And you need to lie down before --"
He stopped speaking abruptly, and Londo was aware that G'Kar now had an arm across his back, supporting him, and that all six of his members had escaped the usual confines of his daytime underwear and there was no way G'Kar could fail to notice them writhing under his clothes. However, G'Kar only paused for a moment. "Ah. A recreational drug. Obviously. How very Centauri."
And then he kept going, directing Londo to the bed. Londo tried to put up some resistance on general principles, but having G'Kar manhandling him around was causing his knees to go alarmingly limp.
"Yes, 'ah, obviously'," Londo mimicked him, as well as he could. He was gasping for air, his entire body drenched in sweat. He craved touch. He ached for it. He couldn't have it. Not now, not like this. "Now -- now you know, now you -- understand why you must leave."
Instead of leaving, G'Kar, curse him, went down to one knee in front of Londo, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. This was absolutely not a position in which Londo wanted him right now, and only the fact that he was still wearing his waistcoat kept his members even somewhat restrained and not snaking around G'Kar immediately.
"I have heard a little about drugs like this one," G'Kar said. "Will you recover on your own?"
No. Yes. No. He was too addled to come up with a response. The one time that he, Urza, and some of their friends and girlfriends had sampled adourik, they had ended up in an all-night orgy that he remembered with more discomfort and shame than enjoyment. The Centauri had a number of different drugs for heightening pleasure that were safe and more or less effective -- the one made from G'Quan Eth was one of them -- but this and others like it had been developed with more malign intent. There were reasons it was considered too dangerous to be used, recreationally or otherwise.
"All right," G'Kar said, as if Londo had actually answered him, and his voice was strangely gentle. Londo's brain seemed to be lagging, because now G'Kar was undoing his coat buttons.
"Do you not understand what I'm telling you?" Londo demanded, trying in an uncoordinated way to swat him away. "You need to go."
"I understand perfectly well," G'Kar said calmly, as he went on undoing Londo's buttons. "Your enemies wanted to hurt and humiliate you. But it's just the two of us here. Trust me," he added, meeting Londo's eyes abruptly with his mismatched ones. "I have seen you under far more embarrassing circumstances than this."
"I ... I suppose that's true," Londo managed, trying not to whine as his coat came free and everything underneath it squirmed against the fabric of his undershirt. "But -- I -- I don't want to -- hurt you."
It came out perilously close to a sob; he wanted this and he didn't want it, he certainly didn't want it like this, and all his emotions were even more ragged-edged than if he'd had an entire bottle of brivari. And still he heard how foolish it was as he said it.
"Mollari," G'Kar said. He laid him back on the bed and climbed on top of him, and this time Londo did let out a needy whine; he was unable to suppress it. At least one of his members had already climaxed for the first of what was likely to be many times; he could feel the warm stickiness against his side. "Do you really think you could make me do anything I don't want to do?"
***
Under other circumstances, G'Kar would have enjoyed having Mollari spread out in front of him like this, red-faced and pliant and needy.
But these were not usual circumstances.
He didn't even really have a chance to examine Mollari's unusual anatomy before it was all over him. He had thought about this before, more than he would like to admit. Sometimes in the context of quick and dirty sex in an alcove or on a couch behind a curtain, as he'd heard other Centauri couples having furtive semi-public sex now and then around the palace; but more often, he had thought about exploring Mollari's body more slowly, with a gentleness that surprised him even in his fantasies.
There was nothing especially gentle about this, and certainly nothing slow. As soon as he got the top parts of Mollari's needlessly layered outfit unbuttoned and open, he was grabbed by several frantic, writhing members, all of them hot to the touch and dripping. One of them immediately spurted down the back of his neck, which was startling and unpleasant. G'Kar couldn't help wondering how difficult it was going to be to get the smell out of his armor.
"S-sorry," Mollari gasped. He had bitten his lip at some point, and there was blood on his chin. Those little fangs were sharp.
G'Kar wasn't sure if it was the blood, the apology, or Mollari's abject helplessness that upset him; perhaps all three. He took two tentacles in one hand, like a fistful of writhing flowers, and Mollari's eyes rolled back in his head.
G'Kar began to find the rhythm to it. He was imprisoned in a cage of wanton, squirming need, but a cage from which he could have easily escaped -- but only at the risk of hurting the most delicate parts of Mollari's body. He did manage to strip off most of his armor and associated clothing, one piece at a time, throwing them over the edge of the bed: mostly to get them out of the way, where they couldn't gouge anything sensitive or create a situation he did not want to explain at the palace laundry.
He was not sure if any part of what he was feeling was arousal. Or ... it was, but in the same way he'd always been half-aroused as well as angry when he and Mollari used to argue in the council chambers. There were times when he could have easily imagined taking Mollari against the wall, but there would have been little pleasure in it beyond the satisfaction of shutting him up -- which was certainly not negligible, to be fair.
And now, when he would very much have liked to give him pleasure, there was not a lot of pleasure in the way it had happened. But there seemed to be relief. Mollari clung to him like a drowning man, gasping in a stuttering cadence, his hot face pressed against G'Kar's neck and his engorged members squirming all over both of them, digging into anything they could find that was something like a body cavity. When G'Kar took one into his mouth, Mollari made a faint whimpering sound and several different ones came at once, only to be just as tense and wet an instant later.
G'Kar found that if he just let himself relax into it -- accept that they were doing this, that he wanted to be here, that he wanted to help and he did seem to be helping -- he found that there was more enjoyment in it than he'd expected. It was better than a forced march across the Ko'Hadran Desert, and he'd done that without complaining. And there was no sand in the bed. It was also better than enduring another evening of listening to those people out there dribble platitudes and veiled insults over their cups of brivari, and thinking about that made G'Kar huff a soft laugh into Mollari's hair and then kiss his sweaty forehead, though he wasn't sure how much of it Mollari was aware of, at this point.
I'd rather be here, doing this with you, than out there with them. The company is certainly better.
At least the poisoner's intent had been to humiliate him, rather than kill him. G'Kar was still very angry about it, in a rather distant way, and angry at himself as well, for failing to recognize the danger even after the earlier attempt. He would have to watch more closely. Mollari had babbled a name. Ordan? Ordran? G'Kar would have to ask some questions later.
In the meantime, he felt Mollari's desperate writhing begin to calm somewhat. As the frantic motion began to settle into something a little closer to normal sex, G'Kar found that he was, after all, responding to it, that perhaps he'd been responding all along, but had been too worried about accidentally hurting him to really relax into the feeling. He would have enjoyed penetration, but didn't want to try; however, it was Mollari who raised his hips and wrapped his legs around G'Kar's thighs and indicated with upthrust hips and soft groans what he wanted. There was certainly no shortage of fluids to slick the way.
Even as his own pleasure finally took over, G'Kar tried not to pound him hard. Mollari was already close to limp in his arms, clearly exhausted. But somehow it was that, or some part of it ... G'Kar holding him close against his chest with one arm, while his other hand propped him up; Mollari gasping softly against him, the two of them plastered together with a shared mess of slippery fluids .... there was something akin to the shared camaraderie of bleeding together in battle about it, and something that was almost like the way he'd felt when Mollari had met his eyes across the medbay (dying one moment, halfway to consciousness the next). The rush of tenderness that washed through him startled him, and he came to climax in the next moment.
After having experienced a probably unhealthy number of orgasms of his own, Mollari somehow seemed to be relaxed or calmed by G'Kar's. Maybe the drug needed a partner for completion, maybe it was running its course, but he sank slowly into a sort of near unconsciousness. His tentacles, not so much sated as simply worn out, flopped to the bed around him, not retracting as G'Kar understood they were supposed to do when finished.
"Mollari?" G'Kar laid him down, hastily checked his breathing. His double pulse was fast, but probably not unhealthily so. He'd gone from being overheated to slightly chilly to the touch. His skin was tacky. The room reeked like a brothel, and the state of the sheets was unspeakable.
G'Kar carefully unwound himself from Mollari. He went into the bathroom, washed his hands, filled a glass and wet a cloth, and brought both back. He cupped a hand under Mollari's head, raised it, and got him to drink. Then he cleaned him up a little, while Mollari let him, pliant and floppy, but breathing steadily enough that G'Kar decided not to be too worried about him.
Mollari drained two glasses before he seemed to come around a little, but he was still too tired and, from the look of him, too sore to move, and he seemed half asleep. He watched through half-lidded eyes as G'Kar moved around the room. G'Kar had noticed which closet the maids went to for clean sheets, and he retrieved a few items. He didn't plan to bother making the bed properly, but he also didn't want to sleep in a clammy mess.
Mollari made the first proper noise he'd made in a while, a faint protesting sound, as G'Kar rolled him to the side, got the sheet out from under him, and threw another down for them to sleep on. He wasn't going to take the floor tonight. If Mollari stopped breathing in the night, he wanted to know about it.
"I, uh." Mollari's voice was hoarse, but he sounded back to something approaching coherence, although his words slurred into each other with weariness and the lingering effects of the drug, and his teeth were starting to chatter. "I ... don't suppose that was much fun for you. I don't know how to -- to apolog--"
"I enjoyed it," G'Kar said. He threw the fresh sheet over the bed and tugged Mollari onto it. "Most of it. I would not mind doing it again someday, if you want to, under more agreeable circumstances."
"Really .... er, what?" Mollari raised his head, frowning.
G'Kar pulled a fresh sheet over them and then reached for the nearest heavy coverlet that had been flung aside. From the touch of Mollari's skin and the way he was shivering, he needed to be warmed up. G'Kar pulling the blankets over both of them managed to silence him briefly. He still looked sleepily confused, especially when G'Kar pulled him closer.
"If there's going to be any more talking about this, it'll happen tomorrow," G'Kar said. He did not want to deal with a conversation about this or anything else with a Mollari who was exhausted, half drugged, and still raw with incoherent guilt. And, although he would very definitely be seeking out this Lord Ordan or whoever in the morning, he found that he regretted little about the actual sex except that the time and place of it had been chosen for them, rather than choosing it themselves, and also that Mollari had not really had a chance to enjoy it. G'Kar had done far worse things in his life than have necessary sex with someone he wanted to take to bed anyway. He would like to make it up to Mollari. Do it properly next time.
Even so, he hadn't thought it would be that easy to shut Mollari up tonight. But Mollari made a slightly incoherent, wordless noise, somewhere halfway between agreement and protest, and let G'Kar hold him. Still drugged, probably. It took a little shifting around to end up in a halfway comfortable position where Mollari's hair wasn't jabbing him in the face and G'Kar wasn't lying on anything tentacle-shaped -- and, of course, where he could feel Mollari's heartbeat with an arm across his chest.
"You do of course owe me a deep cleaning of my armor in the morning," G'Kar said, and Mollari must have still been awake, at least a little bit, because he hissed out a faint sound like a laugh and turned his face against G'Kar's neck.