[Can’t Opt Out]

“Soooo…” Levi breathed out, swallowing around the sudden surge of nerves flooding his system. That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t normal at all. Was the mystery Dyad man doing something to him? Levi didn’t think so—he had enough experience working with Coral and her abilities to be pretty confident in his ability to know when someone was actively trying to mess with his emotions. This guy might be feeling him out, but he doubted he was doing anything more than that—or, if he was, it was such a soft thing that Levi doubted he would be able to stop it.

Even then, however, there was still the aether there, telling him he was safe—trying to force the reality that this man wouldn’t hurt him into his mind before the drugs wore off and he would need to decide whether to take another dose or rely on his Censor once again.

“So,” the man echoed, although his voice wasn’t as high as Levi’s, his word not so strung out or sounding as though he didn’t speak Lüshanian every day of his life. “You are not Lüshanian.”

“Uh… no?” Levi said—or had he more asked? It had felt like a question, but he clearly knew he wasn’t Lüshanian. “Baalphorian, for like… thousands of years? I think there are some rumours that my family’s ancestors came from the Grey Sands or another southern Free Colony—and Baylie might have once said he heard a rumour than some Baalphorians have ancestors from the southern continent, but it was all a very big rumour and then I stopped listening because Baylie can talk forever about myths and legends and things and while it’s all really interesting if you let him get started he’ll just never stop and there were cookies to eat—really good cookies, except the ones BJ likes. Those are terrible cookies and they don’t like me.”

Was he talking a lot and talking really fast? It kinda felt like it, but honestly, he couldn’t be sure—usually, Levi relied on a function in his Censor to smack him if he lost control of his mouth. It wasn’t always the most effective of functions, which was why there was a skill that could be used to shut him up— Well, technically, it could be used to shut anyone up with a jolt to their nervous system, but mostly it was used on him and Emilia and occasionally Baylor when their mouths and ADHD and passion got away from them, although, did Baylor have ADHD? It felt like he couldn’t, because he was a clone, but Baylor had always been a bit of a broken clone and was ADHD a genetic thing or something else?

“I believe it is the result of a combination of factors,” the man replied because Levi was talking too much and had just babbled all of that out loud. “I have heard there are some knots that interact with ADHD and similar neurodivergences, which can augment or worsen them, depending on perspective and person, so I assume it is at least partially genetic. You would need to ask an expert to be sure. The cookies don’t like you?”

The man’s head tilted, that power of his pushing a little firmer into Levi as he stammered out that no, in fact, the cookies BJ liked didn’t like him. “They’re always… disappearing when I go to pick up cookies for us? Everything thinks I mess with the order, but I don’t. The cookies just don’t like coming close to me?” he added, trying to breathe and let the man in because despite how stupid it was to let the guy’s energy in, he wanted it.

Years of practicing letting both Coral and the people his mentor had him train with let Levi drop his barriers, the man’s ability and energy both spiralling into him. Was it a smart thing to do? Maybe. Maybe not. Levi had yet to be led astray by the aether, and it had told him to trust this man.

A shudder racketed its way through Levi’s meridians, his mouth falling open in a small gasp. Across from him, the man’s eyes widened—clearly, he hadn’t been expecting Levi to actually let him in, and the surprise on his face was somewhat gratifying.

Too bad his Censor was dead to the world—Levi would have quite liked to take a photo of the beautiful man. At the same time, had his Censor been available, it wouldn’t have let the guy’s energy inside him. His abilities? Yes—those were more an effect on the aether, after all. His energy? Absolutely not.

Mentally, Levi tried to focus and figure out how long he had before his Censor came back—it wouldn’t be happy to find him with someone else’s energy winding its way through him, and he neither wanted it freaking out and throwing a tantrum, or potentially worse, attempting to throw the man away from him in a burst of pure aether from his aetherstores. With how much of his own energy the man still had swirling around them, controlling the aether, it was possible even a brute force attack wouldn’t do much; at the same time, Levi’s aetherstores were huge and full, and he could do some serious damage.

“You have a Censor, then?” the man asked, the fingers of the hand not curled around Levi’s waist brushing Levi’s hair back to press at the base of his neck.

Despite himself, Levi had to cringe—his hair must have been covered in dirt and grime and sweat, even though he’d pulled the longer back section into a complicated braid to keep it out of the way. ****Levi didn’t know what the man was looking for, no surge of energy or aether slipping through the man’s fingers to where his Censor was installed, but he still saw the recognition that it was there in the flicker of his eyes.

“I took a drug, to disconnect it for a while,” Levi explained. If he was supposed to trust this guy, he might as well be honest with him, especially since the man clearly wasn’t an idiot. It was one thing to lie to stupid people, knowing they were unlikely to realize the truth until explicitly told it or seeing some obvious sign of the lie. This man, on top of likely being able to feel when he was lying—possibly, he’d even be able to feel his lies even if Levi pulled on all his experience training for Coral—didn’t seem stupid, and Levi would be the stupid one for lying to him over something like this.

Plus…

“It’ll probably come back in the next few minutes—maybe longer, though? It should be back now, but it seems like… more distant than it usually would be by now? Which, really isn’t a thing, cause it’s completely gone, but I feel like I can tell that’ll it’ll be a bit yet, even though it should already be back? When it comes back, though, I doubt it’ll like it if your energy is still, uh, inside me,” Levi added, his cheeks heating and really! When was the last time he had blushed!? Had he ever blushed!? It was possible that he hadn’t because black knots didn’t get embarrassed like this!

“Is that so…” the man replied, eyes flicking between Levi’s own.

The hand at the base of his neck shifted, softly massaging the tender area. Like most of his friends, Levi had upgraded his Censor a few months ago, and while the readjustment period had mostly disappeared into his memory, the installation still ached in a sort of background noise way. When his Censor was active, there was a function that would redirect his awareness away from the ache, but without it—

A moan—a fucking moan!—of pleasure leaked out him as the man’s hand worked, Levi’s hands digging into the soft fabric of the man’s shirt as his head tilted back, his back arching because fuck, did that feel like the best thing ever!?

Within him, the man’s energy was a slow shift—apparently, despite the warning about his Censor potentially throwing a fit whenever it came back to life, the guy was confident enough in his defences to tempt fate. Levi couldn’t complain; he had always liked the feeling of someone else’s energy slithering through his meridians. Due to the fact that he wasn’t technically supposed to be training in Dion, he really only got to see his mentor, the Blood Rain General, and the man’s more trustworthy students while there. Occasionally, Yujao and Hurinren would drag him to bed with them, Yujao brushing his energy over the edges of Levi’s meridians—apparently Hurinren wasn’t a huge fan of the sensation, but also didn’t want his partner fully fucking Levi with his energy.

This man’s energy wasn’t fucking Levi, but fuck if Levi didn’t want it to.

“Are you related to all the Baalphorians running about the city, causing problems?” the man asked, his fingers not stilling and oh, so that’s how he was planning to make Levi talk? By giving him so much pleasure he would lose track of his mouth?

Joke was on him: Levi would have spilled most of the information he had without the massage. It was nice, though, and he wasn’t about to volunteer that it wasn’t required.

“All of them?” Levi asked, mostly because he’d been offaether for so long he could only guess at who exactly the man was referring to. Had the rest of their group managed to make it into the city through the cave system? Had Coral’s group gotten through the papers checkpoint? Levi had no idea, and while he was supposed to trust this man, he also wanted to know what he knew.

Trust, after all, went both ways.

Amazingly, the man didn’t hesitate to tell Levi everything he knew about the Baalphorians currently causing chaos in the city. Then again, considering how powerful and confident he was, perhaps it wasn’t surprising or amazing; instead, perhaps the man just felt he had nothing to fear from Levi. The other possibility, Levi thought, as he told the man that he and his friends—who the guy already knew about from the oddly behaving group that had attacked them—were only loosely associated with Olivier de la Rue’s students, was that the man had also felt something through the aether.

Perhaps Levi wasn’t the only one being pushed to trust by the universe itself? Not that he would be asking the man that, having been told long ago to keep his belief in the will of the aether pulled as tightly to his chest as anything. It was one thing if people realized he could use his core, but to let people know he could become a puppet for the aether was something else entirely—something definitely not to be shared with the world.

“I don’t think any of us will care much if they get themselves killed,” Levi told the man, as they shared what they knew about the stupid students. “Like you said, the clones are trying to herd them back to the embassy, but really, people stupid enough to run off when their teacher vanishes don’t deserve to have someone else die trying to save them.”

“And their teacher?” the man asked.

Levi shrugged. “Emmie wants to save him—Halen as well? Which is weird, cause I think Halen and Olivier de la Rue only met yesterday? I don’t care what Halen wants, but I don’t want Emmie to be sad.”

“And she’ll be sad if the teacher dies?”

“Probably,” Levi said, nose scrunching as he admitted Emilia was the sort of person to feel bad, no matter who died. “Even earlier, when she killed a random criminal and was there when some Drini who were threatening her were killed! It wasn’t that she was sad they died—they weren’t good people—but she’s still the sort of person who will feel bad that they ended up bad people? Like, she took a moment to mourn for the children they had once been, cause they had to have been innocent at one point, before something fucked them up enough to threaten to assault her, kill her, and then fuck her corpse?”

Recognition flashed in the man’s eyes, and even before he asked if Emilia was a silverstrain, Levi had already guessed it: this was him—this was the man Emilia had referred to as the scary man.

“I can be rather scary,” the man laugh, the sound soft and unoffended when Levi confirmed the man had saved his friend from the Drinarna, adding in that the room had been weird and made it seem like Emilia had been dead, resulting in a bunch of them falling off the aetherstream. Levi even dramatically pointed out where his clothing had been ripped during the fall. Could he have enacted the defensive skill Halen had built into his fast-travel skill in order to avoid such damage to his clothing? Yes, but he hadn’t felt like it.

What did it matter if his clothing got a little battered up? He’d rather keep his aetherstores full, some of the skills Emilia and Halen had designed for him leveraging their massive size.

“Emmie also said she didn’t think you’d have attacked her without a good reason,” Levi added, comforted by the fact that Emilia had felt the same way about this man as he himself did.

Was the man clearly dangerous and powerful? Absolutely. Knowing now that he could literally reduce people to gore and bone just added to Levi’s perception that the man was terrifying. Still, he felt exactly as Emilia had: unless he gave this man a reason, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt him or anyone else.

“Do you know where either of them are?” Levi asked, wondering if the man would let him go—he was still a captive, more or less—or even help him find them. Hopefully, by the time his Censor came back, someone would have located either Emilia or Olivier de la Rue, and really, assuming Emilia wasn’t dead—in which case, Levi might very well die on the spot—they might be able to message each other again.

The man hummed, pulling Levi a little closer, lips twitching when Levi’s dick pressed against the man’s hip. It wasn’t completely hard, but it was hard enough to give away what the man’s energy, still softly winding through him, and that hand still massaging his neck, were doing to him.

“Possibly. I believe the teacher was taken by the leader of another group in order to cause chaos within the Drinarna, and set them on some attempt to dismantle my group. The success of that plan has been questionable.” The way the man sighed, his eyes rolling ever so slightly, Levi didn’t think he had much respect for this leader of another group. It was vague, but having already guessed that the man was some sort of crime lord, as well as having heard Emilia’s thoughts on the situation, he thought it likely this leader of another group was that Fräthk person. “At least one of their more valuable captives has escaped, and shortly before we… met, he released a burst of their power nearby—”

“Oh! I felt that too!” Levi interrupted, bouncing in the man’s grasp—something that was doing nothing to help the predicament in his pants, but also! “So, you think Olivier de la Rue or Emmie might have helped this person escape?”

“It is possible. I was going to go look, although the aether is still… stressed, and finding the little mind eater or anyone else may take some effort. You are free to come with me.”

A smile broke out across Levi’s face as he agreed, happy and amazed that following his instincts had brought him to this man and situation. So much for being bad at making decisions! This had actually been a great decision! How dare he doubt himself!?

Ironically, the moment he had this thought, another split through his mind: the man was going to kiss him. Immediately, he brushed it aside.

In what world would someone so much older and more beautiful than he was see anything but a creature of chaos in him? He wasn’t the sort of person someone like this kissed after barely more than a few minutes of chatting.

Then, the man was leaning in, pulling Levi closer by the back of his neck, and their lips were meeting in an immediately searing kiss, and yeah, he really needed to stop doubting himself.