[CHAPTER 1]

Mike was getting the particular kind of fidgety that meant he should take a break. The painting was coming together, but 'coming together' meant 'still a lot of work to do', and he could feel himself sliding increasingly out of the mental space he needed to be in to focus.

He was still working on the underpainting, cohering out shaded volumes from the brute mathematics of 3-point perspective (since this was a more representational piece), so all he really had to do was put down the gesso and chalk. He stretched with a groan, muscle flexing inside his shell, shoulders a little tense, and let the sleeves of his paint-splattered hoodie slide back down his forearms from where he'd had them shoved up to his elbows.

He padded across the studio, to the inviting rectangle of sunlight by the windows, slowly advancing across the bare floor. Definitely too many south-facing windows to be ideal for a studio (any), but Mike liked to bask, so it'd balanced out in the end. Stepping into the sunlight always did something like waking him up; reminded him he was in his body after getting absorbed in working.

The view was not much to speak of. Sidewalk, street, framing studio-slash-coffee-shop on the first floor of the building across the street, and then rows of windows up 18 stories. Bus stop opposite.

Having his own studio was good considering the sheer variety of media he worked with, but there were times he got a little worried it just let him pile up even more stuff. The studio was an open rectangular space, punctuated by three big concrete support pillars down the middle, with the only concession to habitability a sink and kitchenette (by which he meant several countertops where he'd placed a minifridge) plus a tiny bathroom crammed in the corner. The bathroom ceiling was a few feet lower than the true ceiling, and extending off that concrete shelf was a wooden loft over the kitchenette, creating a tight, dark storage space near the ceiling. The south wall, one of the long sides, was lined with industrial windows.

Currently, perpetually, the space was crammed with dozens of half-finished projects: stacks of framed canvas, other stacks of finished paintings, clay figures, piles of dyed fabric, the odd piece of woodworking; the shelves and tabletops were in constant disarray. The open space was vaguely broken up by a handful of folding screens, partitioning space between the series of tables and the easel he had set up in the east half of the studio, the workspace, from the heap on the west half: tub after tub of art supplies, tools, brushes, copper wire, skeins of thread, wax chunks, dyes, glaze powers, wood stains, tubes and tubs of paints, all stacked up and heaped with loose canvas on top. The worst of the pile was shoved against the west wall, by the bathroom, around the old cot Mike kept for crashing in when he stayed overnight. That was more of a nest than anything else. He'd had the place for a few years, and it was starting to get a nice, well-used feeling.

Through the window, a bus, Z5 southbound, pulled up at the bus stop with a screech that was clearly audible three stories up. The local bus routes had been getting more use after the expansion of the Stillwell Avenue - Zalum Central line under the lower bay had ended up digging into an heretofore-uncharted prong of the Zalum, and now the whole line was closed for archaeological excavation. The buses were picking up the slack. The bus disgorged several people including, last, an enormous half-dressed turtle-man. He turned to wait for some connecting route, giving Mike a flash of his jagged shell and a look at his craggy face.

The guy was, uh. Extremely hot. Real big, incredibly muscular. Presumably heading to or from a gym: dressed in nothing but a pair of incredibly stretched-out black sweats, with a duffel bag haphazardly slung over his shoulder. The strap was caught on a spur of his shell, right by his neck, and the fabric curved against his skin as the guy idly shifted his weight from foot to foot. He had a mess of tattoos up both arms, and the design extended to some degree across the rest of his upper body. Mike could make out glimmering red lines across his shell when the guy looked up the street, standing in profile for a half-second. His sweats wrapped around the upper section of his tail, and _that_ was so thick it stretched the fabric obscenely around its girth. His tail, in general, was obscene. It was so long it draped most of the way down to the pavement. He had shallow, chunky ridges spanning across the back of his tail, and they grew broader and more ridged on the way up, still extremely visible at the base, under his sweats. Fuck.

Mike put a serious moment's thought to flat-out jerking off staring at him. That was, uh, another way to remind him he was in his body. Before he could really act on that, though, another bus pulled up -- Z16 -- hiding the guy from view. Probably a bad idea. The guy was presumably getting on the bus, and then Mike would never see him again, just a momentary view of a stranger. But then the bus drove off and the guy was still there, waiting. There were only the three routes that stopped there, which meant he was presumably waiting for the third, which meant he was gonna be standing there for a real long time.

Mike had _some_ standards, even if he was a hair away from his dick popping out just from creepily watching some guy across the street. He got out his phone.

He had a variety of hookup apps installed, but there was always the old standby, {grindr}. The thing was, as Mike opened it up, that...

The guy was on {grindr}. 83 feet away, 29 years old, 7'9, 641 lbs, turtle yokai, single, {raph}. His profile had a face pic. And a lot of shots of him at the gym, looking very similar to how he did now: sweats revealing more than they hid, scute scintillating slightly in the light. Fuck, he was hot.

Mike was not very good at impulse control.

	{mikey}: dude i can see you out my window & yr incredibly hot
	{mikey}: if you're waiting for the 13 you just missed it & the next one is in like 20 minutes
	{mikey}: & if you want you could spend some of those 20 minutes up here while i suck yr dick

The guy's phone was in his pocket. Him shoving a hand inside to fish it out stretched the fabric across his thighs in an appealing way. It was very voyeuristic, watching the guy scowl down at his phone, then look around.

	{raph}: wow
	{mikey}: what, too forward?
The guy peered around him some more.
	{mikey}: across the street and three stories up. idk if you can see me in the window.
Mike stepped right up to the window and waved. There wasn't actually any hope of the guy seeing him; at this hour the sun was shining right into the window, and from the angle the guy was at he was probably just seeing a flat glare. The guy looked up, one hand over his brows to shade his eyes, and scanned entirely past where Mike was.
	{raph}: i thought that was all artist studios
	{mikey}: yeah i'm one of those artists
	{mikey}: but theres only so long i can revise an undersketch before it makes me want to die
	{mikey}: i can buzz you in

There was a pause as the guy stared at his phone. Hopefully considering it.

	{raph}: fuck it sure
	{raph}: youre cute too btw

Hooking up with other turtles was different. Not bad, just, with a human Mike was some giant, muscular turtle-man, but with another turtle his build was decidedly twinkish in comparison. The kinds of humans who were into him were very different from the kinds of demihumans. The guy looked both ways before jogging across the street; Mike lost sight of him under the building's entryway.

Mike was thinking with his dick here, but, definitionally having a hookup was all about thinking with your dick. Having the guy in his studio was a little more dicey. His studio wasn't exactly sexy and Mike intended to keep it that way. It was for _art_. And there was a lot of art he didn't want to get wrecked if the guy, who knew, turned out to be super closeted and neurotic. He had real expensive tools he didn't want messed with if the guy turned out to be crazy. He only had a handful of mystic pigments here and they were safely locked and sealed away in an unobtrusive safe tucked behind a stack of old oil-wrapped cloth in the middle of the heap, but somebody as big as {raph} could probably lift the safe. But also, it was only 20-or-so minutes until the next Z13 came round, which hopefully limited the magnitude of problems that could arise with a shitty hookup. Like, it was probably fine, but also this was exactly why it was a bad idea to invite total strangers up to his studio, even if they were maybe one of the hottest guys Mike had ever seen.

	{mikey}: its suite 303 on the board

There were a few seconds of tension ratcheting up, before the old intercom buzzed.

"Yo?" The guy's voice came through, clipped and distorted by the old system. Maybe he said more than that; it was impossible to say.

"The intercom is super busted," Mike said into it, mostly just to produce what he knew would be an incoherent rising-and-falling vox humana tone through the other end. Mike hit the second button and it buzzed loudly, unlocking the entry door; there was the _clunk_ through the intercom as the guy yanked the door open, and then another _clunk_ as it swung shut before the intercom shut off.

Mike leaned out his doorway and took off down the hallway to the central stairwell. There was a fenced-in elevator shaft (long ago rendered decorative) in the middle of the stairwell, with the stairs in a boxy square around it. The fact that the building had been originally drafted at Triceraton scale was the only reason the guy fit up the stairs. The heavy thud of the guy's feet easily echoed two stories up, where Mike was perched against the wall.

The guy saw him once he cleared the second floor landing, but it was Mike who actually said "Hey," once he was only a quarter-turn away.

"Hey," the guy said. He was even hotter up close and personal. When he spoke, Mike got a flash of his mouth, full of craggy fangs. He'd been coming from the gym; Mike could smell the workout on him. He'd showered, but there was an earthy musk around him that made Mike wanna press their bodies together and sniff all across the crook of his neck.

Instead, he jerked a thumb back down the hallway. "Down here," he said. The guy's heavy footfalls followed him to his door, which he slid open.

"This yer place? Looks nice," the guy said. He had a thick Brooklyn accent. It was endearing.

While he was still taking in the space Mike dropped to his knees and yanked the guy's sweats down his thighs. "Fuck!" the guy yelped, shell scraping against the door behind him. His hands shoved under Mike's unzipped hoodie and found his shoulders, clenching tight around them. His fingertips curled down into short, dark claws.

He pressed his mouth to the lower seam of the guy's plastron, and then the guy flexed his tail forward, still tangled up in his pants. His giant, chunky tail smacked across Mike's throat with a dull _slap_, and Mike immediately leaned into it, mouthing across the underside of his tail until his lips got to his bulging vent. "Fuck," the guy repeated, rougher and a lot more drawn-out, as Mike hungrily lapped over his swollen vent lips, already feeling the throb of the guy's cock, still sunk inside his tail.

The guy's leathery hide got smoother and more pebbly across his inner thighs, and Mike dragged his hands across his skin, fingers tapping along the underside of his tail. Mike's thumbs dragged along the rim of his vent, tongue digging between his fattening lips, and the guy arched forward. His giant hands clenched, calluses scraping over Mike's skin, and his dark claw-tips dug into the meat of Mike's shoulders. "Fuck, you get right to work, huh?"

Mike whined incoherently against his vent before pulling back enough to wetly pant for breath. "You're really fuckin' hot, man," he said, and punctuated with a long, probing swipe along the inner curve of the guy's vent that had him groaning and spreading his legs so he could haul Mike's head solidly between his giant fucking thighs. "Plus," Mike said, between swipes across his lips, "You're kinda on a deadline."

Mike ate him out, lips scraping across the soft scute framing his vent, and the guy's lips bulged, mounding out. His cockhead shoved against them from inside, forming a broader and broader swell that Mike rutted his face against, until with a sharp _squelch_ his cocktip popped out into the open, smacking all across Mike's head in a slobbery wash of pre. They both groaned, Mike's voice already clotted as he lapped runny trails of pre up the guy's cockhead.

The guy was huge all over: spiky tail a chest-wide wedge draped behind him, and his cock was broader than one of Mike's legs. The tip spread out into a plunger-like flare, with the slick, rubbery rim bulging further out along the lower half, forming a rubbery shelf as thick as one of Mike's fingers. Beneath that, as his cock wetly gurgled out of his vent, Mike got to see the flushed and ruddy purple-red flesh of his shaft slide out, gnarled and banded with pulsing knobs. Mike let out a whine and lapped all across the underside, tongue catching slimy runnels of faintly salty pre. The guy's expression shifted: moaning when Mike dug his tongue in to the underside, a guttural groan when he lapped along the puffy rim.

Mike needed that thing in him. It was enormous, rubbery and heavy, drooping under its own massive bulk to spill in taut curves across Mike's face. Even with such a huge, fat tail, the guy had to shift his weight to counterbalance the bulk of his dropped dick.

Mike opened wide and hungrily slurped part of the ridge of his cockflare into his mouth, cheeks bulging as he stuffed his mouth. The whole thing shuddered, making his head jerk to the side, and his mouth was abruptly full of a mess of slick pre, faintly salt-bitter, acrid, as it sloppily poured over his lips and sheeted down his jaw.

Mike curled his hands around the tip, squeezing it down to make it fractionally more manageable, and the guy said "You're not gonna--" just before Mike managed to properly stuff the entire plunger-flare cocktip into his mouth. "Fuck, nevermind," he said, and stroked a hand across Mike's jaw, fingers cupping his head. "Fuck, man." Mike had more than a little experience with giant dicks.

Mike's lips stretched around the immense swell of the guy's shaft. His throat lurched, swelling, and he burbled out a foamy breath before sinking forward, letting the slick, rubbery weight of the guy's dick push down his throat and then, with a dizzying shove under his plastron, into his chest. He burbled, distended throat lazily rippling along the guy's length, and from the guy's groan above him -- and the way his dick lurched -- he liked the feeling. Pre splattered directly into his stomach with a heavy spill, sluggishly filling him with heat, and Mike silently groaned, drooling froth against the guy's vent in slobbery lines. "Holy fuck," the guy groaned. His tail wagged side-to-side and stirred his cock around in Mike's throat, audibly squelching and slurping, working up slimy gushes of phlegm that burbled in cords past his lips.

The guy's hands gingerly cupped his head, callused palms sliding over his cheek, and he minutely tipped Mike's head up, lining up his throat with the curve of his dropped shaft so he could push in smoothly, knocking his cocktip against the inner walls of Mike's stomach. When Mike tried to inhale, the flex of his diaphragm applied suction across the guy's dick, sending him lurching forward, faceplanting on the guy's swollen vent, cock pinned inside him, lips spread obscenely around the guy's fat, gnarled cockroot.

Between having a swallowing reflex instead of a gag reflex and being able to hold his breath for ten minutes easy, Mike kinda had it easy when it came to swallowing huge dicks. Guys who weren't turtle-men were usually pretty impressed by that.

Mike wetly gurgled around the dick, moving with the guy's slow tugs to sloppily milk his shaft. The guy groaned, his brilliant gold eyes staring down at him, breath coming faster. Mike pulled back, throat squelching as each rubbery knob along the guy's shaft popped up back into his mouth. He drooled messily, throat clogged with slime as the guy spewed fresh pre all across his jaw, before he spat his cocktip out with a rubbery _spang_ and a fresh cord of pre arced between them, splattering down between Mike's spread knees.

"You can be a lot rougher than that, y'know," Mike said, voice thick and clotted. "I can take it."

"Fuckin' hell," the guy groaned, and he flexed his tail, bashing his cock across Mike's face in slimy splatters. "Ya really need dick, huh?"

Mike whined, wetly mouthing across the guy's shuddering cocktip. "What I need is for you to fuck my face, dude."

The guy rumbled. "Well, open yer fuckin' mouth, man," he said, and Mike obediently opened wide, letting the heavy ridge of his cocktip rest across his tongue. The guy squeezed his dick, milking out a slimy gush of pre all across Mike's face as he compressed his dick down to fit back between his lips. His other hand spanned across the back of Mike's head, and his fingertips slowly dug in as he gently but inexorably pulled Mike back down his dick: cramming the plunger-flare of his cockhead back into Mike's mouth, sinking down his throat, until his lips met the guy's vent in an obscene kiss.

The guy held him there for a second, cock pulsing rhythmically, before he hauled Mike back. His fingers curled across Mike's head, angling him just-so. Getting his throat the way that felt best around his dick. He pumped in, a pressurized gurgle of scum scouring down Mike's throat in a burning rush, and then pulled back, wet suction wrenching a slobbery plume of slime up around his dick, gurgling from Mike's throat and sheeting down his chest. Back and forth, back and forth, slowly building up a steady rhythm: smacking Mike's face down against his tail, pulling back out with a wet squelch, not letting his pulsing cockhead leave the tight, clenching confines of Mike's throat.

Mike's tail burned, cocktip jammed up against his pants. He squirmed, whining around the guy's dick, fingers clenching around his fat tail.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," the guy said, words slowly turning into a continual buzzing rumble deep in his chest. He messily mated Mike's face, slamming his head down onto his dick with more and more force until he was plowing forward with full strength. Slime squirted from Mike's nose and mouth on each thrust, with glossy dollops of ooze splattering across the guy's thighs. He used Mike's body as a clenching, milking hole around his dick. Mike's eyes were squeezed shut, entire body jolting, tail lashing back and forth, and his pinned dick was achingly hard and so wet he was leaking into his pants.

His guy's cock shuddered, a ripple going down its length, and Mike squealed in anticipation, messily blowing bubbles around the gnarled root of his cock, before the guy came with a bellow: cock lurching so hard inside Mike it shook his body side-to-side, erupting in a spray of thick, heavy issue that poured directly into Mike's stomach. The guy sagged against the wall, lazily hauling Mike's head back and forth over the final few inches of his dick with one hand, letting out a low groan as he unloaded. Mike didn't even have to swallow; the bulk of his dick was enough to force his load down on its own.

The forceful spray of his load lasted what had to be at least thirty seconds. Pulse after pulse of cum gurgled into him, slowly settling into a sick, nauseating weight sloshing in his stomach. Mike mouthed around the base of the guy's cock, drooling and slobbering down his tail. The guy's slow thrusts eventually stilled as he rested there: shell braced against the wall, his oozing cock sunk down Mike's throat. The guy started to soften, cock scraping its way out of Mike's body as it sunk back into his vent, and Mike kept milking it with his throat, wringing out the last watery spurts of cum, until the guy finally stopped leaking. His shaft emerged frothy and slick, with the worst of the mess scraped off by Mike's throat, and he lapped and sucked, tongue catching foaming mouthfuls of churned-up cum and swallowing it back down, until with a final heavy _spang_ the plunger-flare of his cocktip lurched out of Mike's throat, bloating his mouth. Mike spat it out, letting the pulpy flesh smack heavily against the guy's thighs, and sucked in a wet, rattling breath.

The guy looked down at him: panting on his knees, front slathered and dripping with his load, paint-stained hoodie soaked and dripping. The concrete under them was soaked with a shiny, slimy layer of slime. Mike's face was planted against his thigh, hoarse breath rasping through his bruised neck, his own tail throbbing.

"Ya, uh, want me to do anythin'...?" The guy asked.

"I'm good," Mike said, voice a wet rasp. "I'm gonna jerk off thinking about this for weeks though." His voice was hoarse and rough, and each plosive worked up a fresh burble of cum in the back of his mouth. He coughed, drool spilling freely down his face, and spit onto the slime-splattered concrete floor, then looked over at the old analog clock he had on the wall: "Your bus was supposed t' be here five minutes ago." He took a second to cough again, wet. "So it'll be here any second."

"Fuck!" the guy yelped, and hauled his sweats up -- black fabric splattered with watery lines of cum in more than a few places, tail still wedged between his thighs in a bulging lump -- and dashed out the door without even a 'bye'.

Mike rested his forehead against the wall -- still warm from the guy's body heat -- for a moment, but the guy hadn't even shut the sliding door. He got to his feet and lurched against the door, sliding it shut with body weight. He shrugged out of his sodden hoodie, unbuttoning his pants, and went over to the row of windows, where he caught the guy yelling and dashing across the street just in time to stagger into the now-arriving bus.

The message came a minute afterward, while Mike was panting against the windowframe, feeling the ache in his jaw, cock in hand:

	{raph}: that was hot as hell btw
	{raph}: i really needed my nuts drained ;)

Cute.

Well. That was enough of a break. He needed to rinse off, but after that it was back to work.




[CHAPTER 2]



Mike had thought the guy had been a one-time thing. Obviously, right? Total stranger, random bus connection, et cetera. He checked the guy's {grindr} account the next day, and he wasn't blocked either; plenty of guys did that: got their nut and then used their block list as a list of successful hookups. He thought about messaging the guy, but, it would probably be for the best if he didn't.

Except then three days later he saw the dude at the bus stop again. More-or-less the same time.

	{mikey}: yo i can literally see yr bus up the street so youll def miss it but you wanna come up anyway??
Mike caught the craggy grin that broke out on the guy's face when he fished his phone out of his pants.
	{raph}: fuck yea

The guy was a lot less hesitant that time. "Fuck, yer needy," he groaned as he sunk Mike down his dick, plugging up his throat with a forceful thrust. "Real good at taking cock, huh? Been thinkin' about usin' yer throat for days."

He ended with both hands on the back of Mike's head, holding him in place as he bashed his vent against Mike's face, cock squelching in his throat. He blew a load just as big as the first one straight into his stomach. "Fuck, yeah, take it all," the guy groaned, tail rhythmically smacking against Mike's chest the whole time. He flexed his cock in time with his pulses, pressure rippling across Mike's throat and down under his plastron, and the guy held him there for minutes, sloppily nursing on his softening cock, before he dragged him off with a wet squelch, letting Mike wetly gurgle up some of the gallon-and-change of his load. "Fuck, that's hot," he said, idly tugging on his cock, watching Mike cough and sputter, cum sluicing down his front in sloppy waves.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the guy thudded down to his knees in front of him, giant hand curling around the back of Mike's head to tilt him up, and then he was violently kissing him, licking his own cum out of Mike's mouth. His craggy fangs left Mike's lips scraped raw.

The guy had a schedule: gym bus Mondays and Thursdays, and Mike might have made sure to come down to his studio those days in the afternoon, matching his schedule a little to his mystery hookup's.

It was their third time meeting before the guy actually introduced himself:

"Your listing says, uh, {michelangelo studios}? That yer name? Uh, everybody just calls me Red."

"Mike," Mike said. The guy offered a hand, and Mike didn't really see the point in shaking after he'd had his dick down his throat, but, whatever. From this angle the calluses on his hand were distinctly identifiable as from weapon use, which was a little interesting.

"Get on yer knees," the guy -- Red -- said.

"Don't gotta tell me," Mike said, dropping down easy, yanking Red's sweats down with one hand, groping his tail with the other. Red's vent was already swollen, and his cock half-everted out with a wet _pop_ just from the touch. Mike was gonna say that was the anticipation of walking up two flights of stairs, knowing he was about to get his dick sucked. He leaned in, licking a wet stripe up his tail, and moaned at the heady, earthy scent of Red's body, heavier across his bulging lips, mixed with the salt-bitter taste of his pre.

"I wanna see yer dick," Red said. His calf shoved between Mike's knees, grinding against his tail, and Mike groaned, hunching forward.

Mike unbuttoned his pants one-handed, wagging his tail to lurch them down his thighs. Unlike Red, whose sweats were all yokai-sized with a bonus tube for the tail, Mike's own tail was more of a stubby two-handspan length that he didn't have to shop specifically for. Red ground his calf up, hot pressure digging into his own swollen vent, sensation sharp enough that Mike let out a shaky squawk.

Mike's cocktip burned, bearing down against his vent for a half-second, stretch stinging, before it burst out and then immediately spread out with a meaty _slap_. Where Red's cockhead was banded around itself, forming a conical swell, Mike's dick fully unfurled: his cockhead split into twin lobes that splayed apart into a broad fan, shovel-like, nearly as wide as his chest. It flexed and shuddered, sluggishly flexing over itself in meaty rolls.

Red groaned, dropping down to his knees, and slimed his hands with his own pre before reaching out to curl his fingers across Mike's fanning cockhead. He dug in, feeling across the dense, muscular flesh, fingers following the wet spill of pre burbling up the split ridge along the underside, already slick and dripping. Red's fingers, huge and rough, sent an overwhelming rush of pleasure from the touch, dragging heavily across his cockhead.

Red was big enough that he could jerk Mike off, one-handed, while Mike sucked his dick without any real contortion required. "Yeah, fuck, c'mon," he groaned, tail wetly flexing up to smack against Mike's jaw. "I wanna see you cum with yer mouth wrapped around my dick."

Mike swallowed his cock down, burbling froth from his nose, while he humped up across Red's arm, cockhead slurping against his elbow, wetly grasping around the giant, rough-edged swell of Red's muscular forearm. Red wasn't gentle. His fingers groped and tugged at his dick, feeling intensely across the prongs lining his shaft, and Mike found himself hunching forward, whining. The wet squelch of his pre slurping across Red's hand overlapped with the slimy slurps of Red's cock shoving over his lips.

"Yeah, c'mon, cum for me," Red said. "Lemme see you blow."

He sure got to see it. Mike gurgled around his dick, face buried between his thighs, and his cock erupted in a messy spray, splattering in every direction. He keened, eyes squeezed shut tight, and blindly humped against Red's arm. Above him, Red groaned too, a low buzz Mike could feel in his bones. Red came about five seconds later, bellowing.

So, Red's visits rapidly turned into a semi-regular thing. Red was big, and incredibly hot, and apparently pretty interested in getting off using Mike. Mike tried not to get into the habit of expecting him, since it wasn't like they met up like clockwork twice a week, but they hooked up much more often than not. It was a welcome distraction from getting, alternatingly, stuck in his own head while working on a piece, and getting so fidgety and distracted that he didn't make any progress on anything. Turns out a brutal facefucking worked real good as a mental reset.

The other thing was, well. Historically, it'd been more trouble than it was worth to get a proper hookup parter, which meant it'd been a while since he'd actually gotten fucked. And Red... well, fuck, he could only get brutally facefucked so many times before thinking about what it'd feel like for Red to slam into his vent with the same force.

---

He'd been distracted, unable to focus, the entire Thursday. He walked down to the pizza place in Little Molox, by the depot station (Lou Mike Tony's Pizza, "Best Pizza in the Six Boroughs! Authentic Triceraton-style!", which Mike thought was self-aggrandizing but not inaccurate, and also was a large factor in renting a studio in otherwise-unremarkable uptown Zalum) in the hopes the walk, and also the pizza, would clear his head, but, nope. He'd had a hungry itch of anticipation, waiting for Red to show up or not.

It wasn't difficult to finger himself open, lube-slick fingers digging into his vent while he used his other arm to cup the shuddering, flexing mass of his everted dick. It would've been easier if he'd thought to bring a dildo over. He was thinking of Red's giant, callused fingers splaying him open with more eagerness than caution, of the slick pressure of his giant cock shoving into him, and he found himself sloppily finger-fucking himself, one knee braced against the tabletop, as he messily squirted all down his fingers and tail. Afterwards he was slick and loose, open enough that his vent lips dragged against each other every time he absently twitched his tail.

He was feeling utterly wound up by the time Red usually showed up, or not. He counted himself very lucky that Red actually _did_ show up, or else he was gonna be a total wreck. All of this was exactly the problem he'd been anticipating in having a sexy studio. He'd have to bring over his sex toys. He'd have to clear all the paints off the table if he wanted to properly fuck himself over it table. It would be a hassle.

Red, when he got up the stairs and into Mike's studio, came inside with a rumbled "Hey" and a nod, totally ignorant of how wound up Mike had gotten himself.

"Hey," Mike said, and lunged. He dropped to his knees, hand tangled in Red's sweats, mouth mashed against Red's swollen vent. Red's dick obediently popped out, and Mike hungrily lapped at it, giving it a sloppy lick as it dropped into his hands in a series of slimy pulses. Instead of cramming it straight down his throat, he sat back, keeping some distance.

"So, y'know, uh, if you wanted," he started with. "I opened myself up some before you got here. So if you wanted to fuck me, be my guest."

Red looked a little wild-eyed at that. "Uh. I don't wanna hurt you, y'know?"

Mike rolled his eyes. "Man, you don't gotta worry." He patted the underside of Red's dick. "It's cute that you're concerned about me, though."

Red snorted. "Yeah, don't get me wrong, havin' some guy rip himself open on my dick ain't 'xactly a fun time for me either."

Mike tugged Red down, and he obediently knelt in front of him, cock stabbing up between them. Mike straddled Red's thighs. He was seriously huge all over. The size difference was like a kid sitting in somebody's lap. "Not to brag, but you wouldn't even be the biggest guy I ever fucked. Alligator-man. Way bigger _and_ way more rigid. I could feel the thing pulsing against my heart when he got all the way in."

Mike squirmed out of his pants, showing off his own slick tail, vent mounded out under his dick. "I'm just saying, like, gimmie a minute to adjust and it's really not gonna be a problem." He stroked his hands across Red's dick appreciatively. "And I've been wanting this monster inside me for a while."

Red flushed.

"All you gotta do is sit back," Mike started, rocking his tail against Red's dick. "And let me ride you." Red let out a groaning rumble, one arm swinging around Mike's side so Red could cup his shell, stabilizing him as Mike rose up -- and up, and up -- until Red's cocktip was finally lined up against Mike's vent.

Red's fingers smeared across his vent, teasing, and Mike groaned, cocktip everting out with a squelch. His dick dropped in pulses, internal muscles pushing, and Mike could feel the space open up inside him as his dick pushed out. Red traced the frill of Mike's dick with his tongue, careful with his teeth, while Mike spread himself open, fingers wetly fucking himself. He nocked Red's broad flare beneath his dick, lodged between his lips.

The first stretch was the hardest part: vent lips stretched taut, warped wide around the stiff, rubbery ridge of Red's cock. "Oh, fuck," Mike groaned. Yeah, sure, Red wasn't the biggest guy. But he was still real fucking big, and it'd been a while.

"You okay?"

"Y-yeah." Mike let out another guttural groan, shakily rocking on Red's dick. The flange of his dick pulsed inside him, rippling, putting a wobbling pressure along the underside of his plastron. "Fuck, it's been a while." Mike rocked his knees against Red's thighs, shallowly pumping a few inches of cock inside him, feeling the way the huge, broad tip lurched into his guts.

There was always a certain intensity to something pushing past his cloaca and into his guts proper. Red's cocktip slammed against the twist of his guts, and Mike ground down, shakily gasping until he hit the right angle and abruptly sunk another foot of dick into him in a single plunge. Red groaned, chest buzzing under Mike's fingers, and he very visibly resisted the urge to thrust up. His tail lurched, twisting his cock inside him, and Mike arched into it, eyes rolling back in his head as he sunk himself down to the root with a sharp jerk: smashing his tail down against Red's, body impaled on Red's monster of a cock. It throbbed inside him, pulsing sharply enough that he found himself swaying back and forth with its motions. Mike blinked, eyes slowly focusing, and looked up to see Red just as dazed: eyes bleary, mouth hanging open, panting hoarsely. Mike clenched, guts rippling around Red's dick, and Red crooned, hips lurching up to splat their tails together again.

"You--," Mike said, voice a little reedy. When he inhaled deeply he felt the pressure of Red's dick against his lungs. "You wanna do some work, or d'you just want me to ride you?" Mike said, experimentally flexing his thighs, rocking himself on the final few inches of Red's cock.

"Don't wanna hurt you," Red said, hands on Mike's thighs, slowly guiding his rolling hips.

Mike groaned. "Dude, I'm really not delicate at all." He grinned up at him, expression loose as he focused on the scrape and shift, the raw wrench of Red's giant plunger-cap of a cockhead mashing against his guts. "'M I gonna have to train you how to fuck my tail too?"

That wrenched a hungry rumble from Red's chest and a wash of hot breath, billowing down across Mike's front. Red shifted under him, thighs bracing as he prepared to stand, and the way that flexed his tail sent his cock ramming against Mike's lungs, knocking the breath out of him with a _whoof_. Red rose up, effortlessly balancing Mike's weight with his hands, and made an experimental thrust: hauling Mike bodily up and down his dick, tail curling up to punctuate the thrust with a sharp _clap_. Mike groaned, panting against Red's plastron, and Red did it again, and again, starting a steady tempo as he fucked up into Mike's guts.

"Fuck, dude," Mike groaned, clenching his vent around Red's gnarled dick. "Harder, I can take it!"

Red growled in response, clawtips digging into Mike's ass, and he pulled Mike back and slammed him down, fucking up into him like he was using a sex toy. Mike whined, cock flexing between them to smack against their plastrons, and Red grinned down at him, eyes a little feral, and his thrusts came faster and harder. He braced Mike's knees against his elbows, folding him up to get at his tail easier, and he slammed him down. Mike writhed and groaned, vent messily squirting against Red's tail, voice squeaking each time Red bottomed out inside him.

His tail wetly smacked against Red's own, half-entangled together as Red bounced him on his dick. The steady pounding built and built inside him, resonating until he was keening and whining with each thrust. Heat built and built, until Mike felt himself overflow. He came with a squeaking groan, vent spasming, cock erupting like a fountain between them, splattering salty and rich in Mike's open and panting mouth. Red's pace hardly changed. His grip shifted, hauling Mike up to pin his spurting cock solidly between them, and the added hard, pebbled pressure of their plastrons against his dick made Mike cum harder, whining and keening.

"Fuck, Mike," Red groaned, kissing the top of Mike's head. "Y' feel so fuckin' good around my dick," he said, hammering steadily into him, cock carving up Mike's guts as he spasmed and clenched around his shaft. Red slammed him down harder, claws digging hard into Mike's hips as he fucked up into his burning tail. Red's dick shuddered inside him, gushing pre.

Red made a few final, bone-rattling thrusts that left Mike feeling cored-out, organs all rearranged, before he came with a bellow. Heat blossomed inside Mike's guts, heavy and slick pumping deeper inside him or bursting out around Red's pistoning cock. Cum drizzled down Red's shaft and burbled out from his upturned tail in globs, splattering loudly on the concrete and probably making a mess all across Red's feet. Red fucked him through his orgasm, as the wet splatter of cum leaking out of him turned into a constant scummy slurp, load churned up into froth inside him and erupting in fat dollops down his tail as Red hammered methodically, panting and snorting the whole time, until his dick finally went turgid, only sluggishly oozing cum into Mike's flooded guts.

Red knelt down, letting Mike's feet find purchase on the floor before he eased him off his dick, and Mike wobbled upright, pulling himself off Red's dick with a slow, heavy pang of flesh sliding against flesh.

"Fuck," Mike said, breathing hard. "Well. Sorry for making you miss like three buses."

Red snorted. "Fuck that," he said, leaning in until his mouth was pressed against Mike's neck, hand sliding down Mike's plastron to cup his half-dropped dick, fingers sloppily curling over his bruised lips to lazily fingerfuck his splayed vent. Mike groaned, squirming into the touch. "Worth it."




[CHAPTER 3]


So, Jason, gecko yaoguai, who had a studio in #314, and who mostly made wind chimes and stained glass, was also in a band. Sometimes he practiced his guitar, which when acoustic was a gentle kind of strumming that echoed pleasantly down the hall, and when was electric got a lot of other people mad. Having put up with living with Donny for 17 years, Mike had a high tolerance for loud noises; it didn't really bother him.

Anyway, apparently his band ('Mondo Gecko and the Electric Pigeons') had a show down in Southside tonight, and he'd been handing out flyers to everybody he saw for the past week and a half. Downtime was important.

The place in question was a two-story concrete shack directly across from some old rail lines, tucked away in a desolate cubby in the post-industrial wasteland of Zalum Southside. The exposed bulk of Zalum itself loomed overhead, a miniature mountain long-ago encrusted with buildings. Decent place. All the volumes -- narrow alley, chunky wooden stairs up beside an old fire escape, drooping awning -- make Mike's fingers itch to start partitioning space. He'd been having architecture dreams recently, which were nice but they made real life a little disorienting sometimes. He needed something to rattle his brain loose, and extremely loud music had historically been a good contender.

Inside, the space was a circuit of bare concrete rooms only haphazardly assembled into a show space. The big room was where the stage had been set up, just a set of riser platforms and racks of speakers, with a nest of cables taped to the floor. It was mostly lit by colored spotlights aimed at the ceiling, illuminating the space in a riot of dim, shifting color. People drifted between rooms, half drunk or high, dressed somewhere between grungy punks and shiny clubwear.

Mike got there after the bands had started. They were currently between performances, stage empty while people constantly cycled back and forth through backstage, and there was some dancy techno going through the speakers, hooked up to a table where, unexpectedly, there was Shelldon doing the DJing. Huh. Good for him. His chassis was all lit up, purple lights reflecting off the gold trim. He was bent over one of Donny's repurposed shells, fingers playing with the mixer controls as he bobbed his head in time with the beat. He was chatting with a spindly firefly-guy who looked about his age (developmental, not chronological) in between fiddling with his mixer knobs and plugs. He gesticulated, explaining something about synthesizers. He looked happy.

His mixer had a big sticker on it: 'DJ Shell'. A little obvious as far as names went. And this chassis didn't even have a shell, after Shelldon had asked Donny for something slimmer. But Mike wasn't gonna give him any grief for it. 

Mike waited for the firefly-guy to cycle away, drink in hand, and then as Shelldon looked around, taking in the room, he caught Mike stepping closer.

"Mikey?!" he yelped, and his antenna all swiveled up.

Mike waved. "Good set, man," he said. Shelldon still looked nervous. Mike rolled his eyes. "I'm gonna assume Donny doesn't know about this. Don't worry, I'm not gonna tell, but you might wanna spill the beans yourself. You're still leaking mystic energy all over; it's kind of a giveaway."

"Oh," Shelldon said. "I thought it was good enough...?"

Mike took in his aura. Swirls of purple and gold were starting to alloy together into something like iridescent bronze. Pretty unusual color tone, but that was to be expected, considering. Considerably more intense than the vague flutterings the spiritually-attuned might pick up off the amateur mystic dabbler. "It's definitely not. I mean, it doesn't really matter _here_, but..." He shrugged. "Donny's worried for a reason."

"Oh." Shelldon's shoulders slumped. "My actual set is in like 30 minutes. Can I at least stay until then?"

Mike rolled his eyes. "Dude, you can do whatever you want. I'm just saying, keep an eye out. I'll be around for the whole night, anyway, I guess?"

Shelldon grinned at him. Well, his faceplate lit up with an emoticon XD, which was effectively the same thing. "Thanks, uncle Mike," he said.

Mike grimaced. "Don't call me _that_, dude! It makes me feel so old."

Shelldon just snorted. Teenagers. "This is, uh, only my third show? I asked Mondo Gecko if I could play. I'm just kinda noodling around while the next band finishes their setup, really. I got an actual slot later, too."

"Oh, no shit? I got the invitation from Jason, y'know."

Shelldon emoted a '!'. "I should've seen that coming, huh?"

"Yeah, he literally has a studio in the same building as me. If I was ranking you on keeping your identity hidden, you'd get a failing grade." He mussed up Shelldon's antennae, ignoring the offended squawk. "Good for you, though. Just gotta keep at it, man, and we'll finally get a musician in the family."

Shelldon laughed at that. "Don't let Donny hear you say _that_, brah."

"One day Donny will stop listening and/or composing exclusively experimental harmonic elaborations that make your ears bleed. But until then I think I'm safe in saying you'd be the first _actual_ musician." Mike said, and fistbumped Shelldon. "So I'll--" The next band took the stage, and the strum of the electric guitar blasting through the speakers made further verbal conversation impossible. Mike signed _I'll see your set_, and Shelldon bobbed his head.

Good kid.

The next band was _loud_. The acoustics of the place didn't muffle the sound so much as distort it, so two open rooms away from the stage and the sound was less musical and more _intense_, a wall of sound that Mike could feel passing through him, leaving his flesh buzzing. It got him into that space where he wasn't thinking of anything at all, just feeling the way his body felt the music, floating in space.

But then eventually it did start to give him a headache, so he stepped outside for a minute.

The deafening guitar became a muted thrum through the concrete, all the treble cut off while the bass rumbled through the metal railing, making it hum under Mike's fingers. The night air was cool and dry, refreshing after the heat and humidity from the club. He took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled slowly, watching a barely-visible wisp of breath spill up in curls. Fall was on its way. It was a nice night.

Mike stood there for a few minutes, just breathing.

There was a surprised "Mike?" from the shadows. Out of nowhere, Red ambled up out of the alleyway, into the flickering overhead light. It was weird seeing him out of the context of waiting half-naked for the bus, or fully-naked in Mike's studio. He actually had clothes on: red sneakers, ripped jeans, a half-shredded dark grey sleeveless shirt, tightly-clinging black elbow pads, and a red-and-black baseball cap. He looked like a split between somebody going out clubbing and a prowling mugger. Which, really, meant that he looked like somebody who might've gone out planning on fucking in the alleyway he'd just walked out of.

"Oh," Mike said. "Huh, hey man," he said, and gave a lazy wave.

"Out for the night, huh?" Red asked, taking a few steps closer.

Mike jerked a thumb towards the building behind him, bass rumble echoing out into the night. "Yeah, I know one of -- well, I guess I know a few of the people performing." Mike shrugged. "Good to take some time to relax, anyway. Kinda sucks to get cooped up in your head all the time."

Red bobbed his head in agreement. "Yeah, I know the feelin'. I guess ya' know a lot of artists, huh? But not a lot of musicians in that building."

"Hah, nah, man, the soundproofing is terrible. The lead singer of the next band has a studio a few doors down from mine, though. You might've actually seen him around."

"Huh," Red said. "Small world." Red shifted his weight. "Uh, how's the music?"

Mike shrugged. "Good enough."

"Oh, that good, huh? Well, I won't tell yer studio neighbor if you won't."

"I mean, they're fine. But I dunno, I think there's value in stuff that's not good," Mike said, idly drumming a beat on the railing. "Nobody expects a new band to actually be good, really. They're just doing it for the pleasure of doing it."

"Sure," Red hedged. "But that doesn't mean you gotta listen to it."

"Man, if I expected to enjoy everything I experienced I'd have a bad time everywhere," Mike said.

Red snorted. "Yeah, that's what my whole life feels like sometimes," he said, but it was with an undertone of humor.

"Out clubbing?" Mike said, gesturing at Red's clothes.

"Yeah, somethin' like that," Red said.

"Well, don't let me keep you, man."

"Nah, it's fine. Good t' see you, y'know," Red gestured expansively, _in the world_. "Out an' about."

There was the _clunk_ of the door engaging. Shelldon poked his head out, and Red's gaze immediately latched on him. "Mikey?"

Mike turned to Shelldon. "Oh, sorry dude, I lost track of time." He shot a lingering glance to Red, still lurking in the shadows. "Seeya around, yeah?"

Red waved. "Yeah."

Mike slid through the closing door and followed Shelldon back inside.

---

The next Monday after the weekend concert, Red came up when Mike was in the middle of lacquering. He had the windows vented, upper frame tilted open, and the fans going, but the place still stunk. Mike enjoyed the smell, but the way Red's beak wrinkled up when he stepped inside said the feeling was not mutual.

Woodworking wasn't exactly his main focus, but he did enjoy the process of peeling and etching and sanding wood, so, it was a 'make little wooden sculptures' week. This latest one had a base of smooth, spiraling shapes that abruptly erupted up into crystal facets, and it had been engaging to work out the seam between the two volumes. There was a matte lacquer for the base, which he did more painterly, and a smoother, shinier lacquer for the crystal.

"Huh," Red said, peering at it. "Neat."

Mike wasn't really doing this for any reason other than to do it, so 'neat' was an acceptable response. "It's kind of a technique practice," he said. "I'm a little rusty with lacquers, so I figured, might as well make some stuff to lacquer." He gestured at the table: a collection of little wooden shapes. Some conjoined polyhedra, some figurines, some looping circular spiral shapes with curving surfaces, some spiky knots. He'd mostly made them to prank his future self with how annoying it would be to reach all their surfaces with a brush.

"You do woodworking too, huh?" Red said. "What all do you do, anyway?"

"Oh, anything," Mike said, still focused on his brushstrokes. "I try to at least dabble in everything. I think it's important to have a broad base to draw on. Gives you a better view of the artistic field, y'know?"

"Sure, I guess," Red said. "'Everything''s a whole lotta stuff, though."

"Oh, yeah, for sure. Also, like, it _is_ all physical media, which is already a pretty small slice of 'everything'. No photography, or digital stuff, or music, or whatever. But. I mean I'm not gonna claim to be an _expert_ in anything, but like, I think weaving some textiles myself actually did influence how I look at canvas when painting, y'know? Plus, figuring out how to do something in a new medium is fun. Inventing some new technique or whatever and then looking it up and learning something like it was pioneered thousands of years ago."

"Like I'm just lacquering these things, but like, lacquers are thousands of years old, right? Or like, that's an important part of instruments, right? The lacquer formulation has different _acoustic_ properties, in addition to how it seals wood, or not, or reflects like, or not, and all of that is important in different contexts. I actually wanna try making some more instruments one day and messing around with that."

"Some _more_?" Red asked.

"Oh, I mean, I've done that thing where you just clip a pickup to a shovel with a guitar string to make an electric guitar, but like, who hasn't--" ("Uh, most people", Red said) "--but I was thinking something with an actual sound chamber. Or like, a marimba. Figuring out tuning from first principles could be fun. The whole, physical resonance of materials thing."

Red snorted. "You got an interesting idea of 'fun'."

"Well, I mean, like, it's like Stradivariuses? People talk about how the sound for them is unparalleled, and the sound depends on the specific materials and techniques -- everything that went into making it. And those techniques were kept as trade secrets, and they were lost. So there's a dwindling number of genuine Stradivarius instruments, and they have to be used, or else what's the point, right? But that it's a _Stradivarius_ isn't the important part. The important part is the _technique_."

"But," Mike said. "There's actually no difference between the old Stradivarius sound and something replicable with modern instruments. People have discovered equivalent ways to make that same sound. I care about _technique_. The name is just a historical accident. Anybody who cares about having a genuine Stradivarius, as opposed to something with the sound they're aiming for, is pathetic. Historical vintage is ephemeral! Technique, processes, those are the things that are important to learn and pass down!"

"That's a little intense," Red observed mildly. "Y' gonna go on a big supervillain rant about woodwinds too?"

"Oh, yeah, totally," Mike said. "But, hey, don't expect an artist not to have opinions about art. You really set yourself up by expressing any interest whatsoever in what I was doing." He straightened up, resting his brush on the lacquer lid. "Anyway, you want your dick sucked or what?"

Anyway, then Mike sucked Red's dick, although that time he left quick afterwards, complaining about the smell. Reasonable enough.

---

The thing with Red was that Mike didn't know anything at all about Red, not really. He knew he worked out at some gym somewhere north along the Z5 route Mondays and Thursdays and took the Z13 west to connect on the way back, and also that he really liked fucking Mike. The thing with hookups with random guys was that the guys were truly _random_, plucked from the full tapestry of men who existed and arranged mostly by dick size. Mike didn't even know what Red's taste in music was, much less his political and philosophical leanings.

So. Red was extremely hot and fucked Mikey extremely vigorously. He was reserved, but when his personality bled through he had with enough acerbic bite to get Mikey's attention. He had a pretty grim sense of humor. Mikey had to admit it to himself: he was catching feelings. This was a problem for multiple reasons. One, there was no way Mikey could have an honest relationship with anybody, ever, so even if Red was perfect it was gonna be a heart-breaking mess, and two, Red was undoubtedly not perfect, and the more Mikey leaned into his crush the worse it would be when Red, say, offhandedly revealed he was into eugenics conspiracy theories, or was actually involved in a MLM scam for protein powder and wouldn't shut up about it, or whatever, and brought it all crashing down.

So that was why Mikey was increasingly focusing on just enjoying Red's dick. It was a really good dick. Red was really hot. That was all there was to it. But sometimes he said things that sent a pang deep in Mike's chest. Or he looked at him and there was something about the way light played across his face. Not just _visually_; yes yes, Red was incredibly attractive, Mike was used to that by now. Just, you know. Emotions.

Red made it hard.

"So, what you don't got any hobbies or anythin'?" Red was saying, ass perched on one of Mike's heavy-duty tables.

"Man, whenever I get bored I just pick up a new medium," Mike said. "Learning to cast metal was wild." The table Red was sitting on was the one Mike'd set up to handle the 400lb metal chunks he'd hauled up, only to realize, right, that was too much weight to put anywhere except for directly on the floor. Not his most insightful moment. "I don't really get what people who _aren't_ artists do for fun. Like, sports? I guess I know how to play tennis," Mike said. "And I'm pretty decent at surfing."

Red's brow ridges rose. "Surfing? Huh. Y' don't really seem like the type."

"Cowabunga, dude," he said dryly, and made a shaka sign. Which was just his index finger down, since he only had the two fingers. "What about you?"

"What, sports? Uh, I can wrestle, I guess. And play hockey. Shoot hoops. But don't really get a chance to do any of it much."

Mike cut his eyes over to Red, taking in his giant frame. "Yeah, uh, pretty sure nobody'd want to play regulation hockey with you, dude. If you were the goalie you could just lie down in front of the goal."

Red snorted. "You'd be surprised. One of my exes was super into hockey, so he dragged me out onto th' ice a bunch. Beat me black an' blue when I went up against him, an' he _still_ made all his goals." His voice was warm, fond. That was literally the first thing Red had ever said about himself or his history.

"Huh," Mike said. "Well, sounds like a cool guy. Especially if he can get a dude like you into ice skates."

"He plays professionally now!" Red said proudly, and then immediately looked like he regretted saying that.

Mike couldn't resist prying a little. "Oh shit, really? Anybody I'd know of?"

"Oh, uh," Red said, and scraped a hand across the back of his neck. "Casey Jones?"

Mike blinked. "Casey Jones like NYC Rangers Casey Jones?"

"That's the one," Red said, awkward and embarrassed.

"Well, cool," Mike said, and let the subject drop.

"So, uh," Red said, after a brief pause. "Yer life's just paintin'?" Red said. "Yer here like all the time."

Mike shifted his feet. "Uh, I maybe realized pretty early on what days you swing by the gym," he said. "I'm only here like four days a week."

Red let out a loud guffaw and slapped his knee. "They closed the fuckin' subway line. I had to take the _bus_ for their detour." His eyes cut over to Mike. "But now I'm still takin' the bus, with a dumb transfer, just to see yer ass."

Mike laughed. "You can just message me, bro. Better than hoping I'm here when you do your transfer. I do actually have an apartment, you know." Not that it was a good place to hook up.

"It's, uh." Red said, a little shifty. "A good way to unwind after the gym."

Mike let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Just a way to get your rocks off on schedule, I get it totally." His tail loudly slapped against his thighs. "Well. I don't mind you using me whenever you want."

Red flushed real easy, and this was no exception. He held Mike up against the wall with one hand, fucking up into Mike's tail as Mike writhed and moaned, and then after he came he sloppily ate out Mike's vent, fingers prying him open so wide it burned as Red guzzled his own load off the base of Mike's dick.

---

{raph}: hey you free?

It was still on a Thursday, but it was a good hour-or-so earlier than Red usually swung by. Mike's latest painting, a mess of thin washes to build up a complex patterning of semi-translucent tones, was close to reaching a point where he could pause it, but right in the moment he only had so long before the freshly-mixed paints started to dry. Mike tapped out a response, absently:

{mikey}: yeah i'm here

Mike looked out the window: Red was beside the bus stop, looking down at his phone.

{mikey}: i'll buzz you up but it'll be a few minutes
{raph}: k

He hit the buzzer when the intercom went off, and then soon there was the clatter of the door rolling open as Red pushed inside. Mike didn't even turn to look at him, just spoke: "I'm kinda in the zone and I kinda want to finish this layer, so, cocksucking's gonna have to wait for a bit."

Red made an amused chuckle. "Sure. Y'mind if I look around?"

Mike kinda winced internally. "Sure, just don't move anything around. Or touch anything."

"Yeah. Don't worry, I won't fuck with yer stuff."

Just the presence Red radiated could be distracting; Mike could feel him at his back. But he was in the middle of painting, so he ignored the low scuff of feet against the concrete and turned his attention back to his paint mix.

By the time Mike had reached a suitable stopping point, Red was prowling through the mess, looking just as much at his art supplies as the half-finished pieces scattered throughout. Currently, he was inspecting a painting Mike'd left propped up against the wall. Mike stepped close, and when he turned towards Red, around the corner of a table, his wrist caught against a stray cup he'd been using to hold paintbrushes, and it neatly toppled off the table with a sharp _chime_. Red acted on reflex, twisting around to catch it in midair; all the paintbrushes clattered out onto the floor.

"Yikes," Mike said. "Thanks," he said, as Red righted the glass and knelt with him to pick up the scattered brushes. "Cleaning up glass shards would not be a good way to start on us fucking."

"Mmn," Red hummed, rising up. "You got some wild shit back here," he said, thumb jerking back to the heap. Mike thought he could see some of his old bronze sculptures peeking out, all geometric right angles. Then, somewhat concerningly, to a slightly-squashed scroll painting, partially unfolded across the table.

"I thought I _said_," Mike started.

Red bobbed his head, doing a good job of feigning contrition. "Uh, sorry? I thought it was gonna get totally flattened." The fabric was visibly creased from having, uh, something on top of it at some point. Nothing that some dry cleaning wouldn't fix. It wasn't actually relevant anyway, since the thing was unfinished and unlikely to ever be sold, hence, why it was flattened under... probably the tub of french curves and muslin bolts.

"Whatever, it's fine."

"It's super good, man!" Red said. "I mean, uh it caught my attention, since," he said, and jerked his thumb behind him. It took a second for Mike to piece that together. Right, [shell kanji tattoo]; the scroll painting was suiboku-ga, ink wash painting on silk, and specifically in the style of kanō-ha: stark, near-monochrome landscapes, rock and water and gnarled tree branches, elaborating across the panels. Very classically Japanese. This one was unfinished, and as Mike grudgingly unfolded the entire thing, lumpy draped over most of the table to fit, there were only vague strokes across the final few panels, vaguely suggesting form.

"Oh, sure," Mike said. "Yeah, when I said I did everything, I meant it. Silk painting is kind of a hassle, and I definitely prefer my stuff to be less, uh, monochrome, but it was an interesting experiment."

"Yeah," Red said. "It's, uh, in the style of Kanō Takenobu, right? There were all those headlines about a bunch of his originals being discovered an' going on auction, an' then bigger headlines later about them being forgeries, right?"

Mike blinked. "Wow, uh, yeah. Yeah, I saw all that too and it got me thinking? The style at the time was to totally copy older historical works; Takenobu was actually mostly famous for his exacting reproductions of older works. So that was pretty funny. And I hadn't done much silk painting stuff, so that kinda got me interested in it? The way ink on silk diffuses is totally different to canvas. Plus it's a very, like, stark, minimal style. I actually kinda thought about painting on my folding screens, but that was maybe a little too utilitarian for my tastes." Mike shrugged. "But, uh, there's only so long I can paint craggy mountains and calm seas and cyprus branches, so I kinda shelved it. I kept getting tempted to add a giant robot or something to the final panel."

Red snorted. "That'd be hilarious. You should totally do that."

"I mean I don't really wanna turn it into pop culture kitsch either; I do have _some_ standards." Mike paused. "But, uh, I'm kinda surprised you heard about that? Like it was big in a corner of the art world, but I didn't think it was _that_ big news."

Red shrugged, head tilted down. "I got a few artist friends, y'know. They talk about all sorts a' shit."

"A ha," Mike said, "You've been holding out on me. I see how it is."

Red looked up at him. "You should totally finish that and add, I dunno. A sea monster or somethin' to it. I'd buy it."

"I was actually thinking like... I mean, it'd have to be something anachronistic, right? That'd be the point. Hence giant robot. But not _actually_ a giant robot. So like... modern-day Edo, or like, a rocket launch, a giant meteor, or-- actually, something like the Zalum crashing could be fun. Make it a lot more ominous. All that beautiful natural landscape is gonna get fucking obliterated." Mike tapped his fingers on the table, thinking. "That being said, dude, you know how much art costs, right? I'm not gonna give you a discount just 'cause we're fucking."

"Man, I can afford one fancy painting, don't worry about it," Red said.

"Sure, sure," Mike said. "Anyway, lemme wash my hands and then you can fuck me or whatever."

Red snorted, following behind as Mike went to the sink and started scrubbing the paint residue off his fingers.

"Wow, ya don't gotta pretty yerself up fer my sake," Red growled in his earslit, and then he dropped down behind Mike and started eating out his vent from behind. He ended up fucking Mike against the kitchen counter, giant hands clamped around his shell, dick slamming into his upturned tail. That angle slopped his enormous plunger-flare right across Mike's prostate. Mike ended up blowing his load all over the cupboard doors, sobbing. Twice. It was fine; it blended in with the layers of spilled dye and bleach.

---

"So, I think there's something up with my hookup," Mike said, next time he was talking to Donny.

"Your gym himbo?" Donny's voice was a vague mumble through the phone, distracted. To be clear, _he'd_ never referred to Red as a himbo to Donny. Donny just made some assumptions.

"Yeah, that guy. It's, uh, basically been only him for like a month or two now actually." Mike could hear the crinkle of Don's eyeridges raising at that. "So, y'know how I have that old half-finished Kanō display scroll lying around my studio? Red looked at it and instantly recognized the style. Like, down to the artist."

"I keep telling you, you need to more thoroughly partition your criminal and non-criminal arts." In his defense, Mike hadn't been _expecting_ his paintings to be revealed as forgeries quite so rapidly. It had been a big blow to his ego. Fucking Hamato Yoshi. It was cheating for reincarnators to work as historical art verifiers, as far as he was concerned. No fair if you _remembered the artist_ and knew he couldn't have painted that. Unfair.

Anyway, Mike rolled his eyes. "I don't wanna maintain _three_ studios! It's already frustrating enough keeping most of the mystic stuff separately. I'd need so many duplicate supplies."

"Ah, yes, a pack of $5 brushes; that's much more expensive than the consequences of being caught in the act."

"Whatever, you never leave your _secret lair_ except in disguise; you don't know how obnoxious actually maintaining a secret identity is. I have a tube of lapis that's always at the other studio no matter which one I'm at. I swear it's actually cursed."

"So he recognized the artist. That's not that unusual. It was headline news."

"Yeah, that's what _he_ said. But... I don't know. Y'know he's also a martial artist? I bumped a glass off a table and he caught it midair even though he wasn't even looking in the right direction. No mystic aura, though. And I mean, he'd have to be _pretty good_ at aura suppression, considering how deep his dick's been in me."

"Gross," Donny said, flatly.

"Oh, yeah, also he said he used to date Casey Jones."

"_Purple Dragons_ Casey Jones?"

"That's the one. I mean. He only talked about him as a hockey player? It's not like his dad's public knowledge; _Red_ could not know about it."

"He's a turtle yokai, correct?"

"Yeah." Mike leaned against the wall, thinking about Red. "Real big. Tattoos all over. Got some red kanji[mike should be able to say what the kanji are] on his shell. Gold eyes. Hot as hell."

"Ah, thank you, I'll just look up the Purple Dragons' personnel database and sort by hotness," Don said. There was the sound of typing. "I'll see if I can dig up anything on him. It could be nothing, but..."

Mike groaned. "He better not have a whole secret identity he's hiding from me."

"Yes, I can't imagine if someone you were having sex was keeping important parts of their life hidden from you," Don said, extremely dryly. "Whatever could that be like."

"Oh, fuck off," Mike said, laughing. "You know what I mean."

There was more typing. Mike idly tapped his fingers against the table at the lull in conversation. "So, any news on the project?"

"Not yet. Well. Othello von Ryan, amethyst mine heir, has been invited to tour the mystic jewelery collection of Takeshi Sancho. I'll likely have more to say afterwards, but I'm not particularly optimistic about him having anything worthwhile."

Mike rolled his eyes. Donny really enjoyed the super spy aspects of their whole situation, and had a list of aliases and false identities a mile long, which was pretty impressive given that Donny was also a giant mutant turtle. Not exactly the least conspicuous for in-person meetings, but somehow Donny kept pulling it off. Personally, Mike thought it was because Donny was a theater kid who loved drama. "I'm impressed with your restraint. Amethysts are only a semi-precious gem."

Donny scoffed, offended. "I'll have you know they're the world's only source of the rare _Tempest Amythest_, unparalleled for their vibrancy and--"

Mike groaned loudly, cutting off Donny's expository monologue. "Okay, okay, whatever. That it?"

"Unless you feel like trying to take down a dozen Foot clan mystic ninja at one of their fortified safehouses. There's been a little shuffling around, but not as much as I was hoping for. Things should pick up after we manage to repurpose a few more pieces. How's progress on your end?"

"Well, I got kinda impatient, so I'm picking up pottery again. Some new original Tang Shens will probably get some attention."

Donny let out a huff. "Are you doing that _specifically_ to pique Hamato Yoshi?" ("Yes, absolutely," Mike mumbled.) Donny sighed. "Well, I'm not going to veto that, but I will say that you might be biting off more than you can chew." Then, in a lighter tone: "I'm going to assume you're _also_ planning on resuming constantly complaining about how annoying it is to infuse mystic energy into wet clay?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely. At least now I'm not gonna blow anything up."

"I'm going to hold you to that one," Donny said.







[CHAPTER 4]



"Pottery, huh?" Red looked at the unfired vessels, haphazardly scattered all across the table.

Mike was starting with Jōmon period and working his way forward, which mostly meant he could do whatever he wanted. These were the vessels people made when they had first discovered that you could fire clay and were trying to figure out what made a good shape. There was a lot of rope patterning, because before pottery rope was the most advanced technology they had.

"Yeah!" Mike talked as he carried vessels to the kiln for the next firing. "I'm kinda excited to get going with it again. Pottery is fun. It, like, removes your inhibitions about creation, I think," he said. "Because so much is out of your control. I can't count the number of times I've made something that I think is just... really good. And then it explodes in the kiln, or the glaze drips weird, or something _else_ exploding in the kiln breaks it in two. The weight was wrong and something snapped off. And so on."

"That sounds bad," Red said.

"Nah, like... people think they have control over their lives. But making pottery reminds you that's just wishful thinking. No matter what you do, the world will do what it wants, and all you can really do is respond. Pick yourself up and try again. The world's got nothing to do with what you're trying, or what you want. It's freeing." Mikey set down a pot with a dry _clunk_. "That's what I think, at least."

That was all true. But, obviously, the actual reason he was picking up pottery again was that he wanted to refamiliarize himself with the pottery styles that had influenced Tang Shen. Usually Mike's forgeries were just for fun, or to extract money from somebody they didn't like and who had bad taste in art.

Donny's regular spy shit was sufficient to make inroads with most mystic collectors, but Foot clan artifacts, much less the Oroku-kai legacy, were _pretty difficult_ to get eyes on without something to lead the way. Like, say, new Tang Shens surfacing. That would get the attention of Foot clan higher-ups. The main problem with that, of course, was that _would_ get the attention of Foot clan higher-ups. Hamato Yoshi being the foremost problem, since, Tang Shen was his 700-years-dead wife and all. But, whatever, Mike could handle it. Ultimately, Yoshi was just another Yakuza goon.

Tang Shen was regarded as the first true master Japanese glazier, by her mastery and reinvention of glazing techniques imported from China, and by her pioneering of the school of _emotional infusion_, placing fragments of memories and feelings into her creations. Her work with mystic infusion produced four surviving tea serving sets, a single tea-serving jar, two incense burners, and the Three Funerary Vessels (Oroku Sawaki's, Hamato Yoshi's, and her own). The largest mundane collection of her work was a set of 13 storage vessels, as well as the recovered shards of 3 shattered vessels, held at the Tokyo National Museum. There was a water jug in a separate collection.

The future of objects always quietly amused Mike: she had made these things to store food and water; they were the equivalent of kitchen bins for the Kamakura era. And now hundreds of years later they were priceless cultural artifacts; examples of craft of an ancient art, and relics of ancient history. They would, in Mike's mind, be better off being used to hold food and water, but people tended to get sentimental about things.

That being said, Tang Shen had also died at 26, and there was only so masterful somebody could be at anything at the age of 26. People whose interest in pottery was mostly for food and drink and ashes weren't particularly noted for their intricate work. {The particulars of her style was where it was at, which was obviously the crux of the issue with _any_ forgery, but it was always a little obnoxious.} Sure, the wistera-blossom glazed paints looked nice, but they wouldn't be particularly hard to replicate. Faux-aging was one of the bigger steps in the process.

For every surviving Tang Shen, Mike was sure she'd fired six and found them shattered, or chipped, or leaky. And where were those pots now? Shards thrown into the ocean, or buried in a fire pit; lost siblings to the surviving vessels. His replicas would be the same. Time had a way of taking everything.

Red looked somber, expression flat as he took in the clay forms. "That's rough," he said.

Mike shrugged. "It is what it is."



	"...So, there's this one story," Mike said, to lighten the mood, "about this pottery class, and the person who graded it? Before the class started, they were like, 'I'm gonna divide you into two groups. One group will be graded by the _quantity_ of your pottery. Make 50 things, you get a passing grade. Make 100 things and you get an A. No matter how bad they are, only quantity matters for your grade. The other group will be graded by the _quality_ of your best work. You could make only a single pot for the entire class, but if it's a great pot, you get an A.' Pick which group you wanna be a part of. How d'you think that went?"

	Red shrugged. "Dunno?"

	"All the best pottery was from the quantity group. They said a bunch of the students would've gotten As from the quality of their work, too. Nobody in the quality group got As. They didn't put in enough work to really get good." He shrugged. "I take it as a parable about how you gotta keep trying. If you make a hundred things and learn something from each one, well, a hundred insights is nothing to sneeze at. If you just want to make one perfect thing, then all you've done is make one thing." He loaded the last of the current set of pots into the kiln and latched it shut. When he hit the button to turn the kiln on low for the prebake, all the lights in the studio flickered for a barely-perceptible moment. He tapped the kiln top: "Don't touch this unless you wanna get seriously burned. So, you wanna fuck now?"

	Red fucked him across the room from the kiln and Mike was still a little concerned of the impact of his thrusts jolting the pottery. The guy had some hips on him.




---

After a few weeks of pottery tests, in his studio; and mystic infusion tests, in the other studio in Donny's secret lab (where he didn't explode anything at all, thank you very much), Mike was approaching something serviceable with regard to mimicking Tang Shen's style. Donny helped with the faux-aging, though at this point it was mostly Donny going on and on about erosive weathering patterns and what chemical reactions occurred in pigment over time while Mike did all the actual hard work.

Tang Shen's specialty was emotional infusion; those were the mystic enchantments on her tea set and the funerary urns. Personally, Mike absolutely hated them. A tea set that put you in the mood for tea. Funerary urns that made you think about death and rebirth. Gross. Tedious. You might as well paint a painting that was just the words "this is a painting", except of course if you did _that_ you'd be making commentary on the construction of art and the vacuous nature of the work. The functional sincerity of Tang Shen's work blurred the line between tool and art, and not even in an _interesting_ way.

(Yes, yes, Tang Shen's surviving tea serving set was considered an incredible historical artifact for revealing the subjective experience of performing a tea ceremony in the Kamakura era, and the way the emotional working elaborated on itself through the stages of the ceremony, mingling the consciousness of the user with the overtones of diligence, labor, longing, satisfaction, _et cetera_, was something many people found profoundly moving and had reportedly caused a Muromachi shogun to abdicate and spend the rest of his life as an itinerant monk. It was still crass and Mike hated it.)

Anyway, Mike approached it the way he approached everything else: as a complex technical exercise. He was making, first, a duplicate of the existing tea set, brand new, and then planning on branching out a little, elaborating on the concept to make a few variations on the theme. He'd done a few emotional infusion pieces before, because even though conceptually they disgusted him, he was interested in exploring some of that disgust.

So, that was all going well. He got to see Donny in person more, which Donny stopped appreciating after roughly a week. ("Are we sure your shell isn't like that just because you never get any sunlight? I made you a whole underground basking garden, it's literally right next to your lab, and you _still_ look like a weird pale zombie! You gotta take care of yourself better, c'mon." Mike also tolerated Donny's flavorless nutrient shakes for all of two days before bringing back armfuls of actual groceries and spices. Donny immediately started complaining about the smell of cooking. Family. And the music. Oh, the music. There was a reason why Mike had moved out.)

He even spent some time teaching Shelldon some pointers for managing his aura, which was still, uh, bad, but making steps towards not being a dangerous liability.

That being said, it was also art crawl season, so in addition to all of the dramatic criminal forgeries he was also finishing up some regular paintings, scrawling out some stuff in ink, dropping by the print shop to get prints and posters made in preparation. He kind of wanted to do some woodblock prints himself, but then he'd have to _make all his own prints_, too. Tang Shen may have been a masterful potter but she would've had a total breakdown if she'd had to get prints printed on time, too.

Anyway, even with all of that Mike still found the time to finish up the Kanō scroll. Might as well, and alter the style a little too; otherwise it was just some criminal evidence lying around his studio.

---

Mike finished the scroll over the weekend, and the Monday after he interrupted Red getting handsy with his tail and lead him over to where it was laid out on a mostly-cleared table, panels furled up for transport. "I actually got something to show you," he said, and started unrolling it panel-by-panel as he continued. "Dude, be glad I took some time out of my schedule to finish this fucking thing. The big art crawl is coming up in like a week and things are gonna get real hectic, so this is basically the last thing I got to finish before I gotta start reorganizing."

Mike untied the ribbons on the scroll and unrolled each panel, one by one, revealing craggy rocks, deep blue sea, wind-blown trees, until the final two panels did in fact feature the sky alight with an enormous plume of fire, the sharp planes of the starcruiser Zalum visible, surrounded by rippling lines denoting the ruptured clouds it was crashing through. The landscape had been more based off Hakone than Hoboken, but whatever, it was fine.

Red let out a guffaw. "That's fuckin' great," he said.

"Yeah, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out," Mike said. "Eat shit, beautiful natural landscape. I just don't think the... style's artistic focus on the stark purity of nature is really _for me_, y'know? Bring on the explosions."

"I mean, the actual art looks great too! Can't imagine bein' able to like. Make shit like all'a this." Red gestured expansively, at the whole studio. "All yer stuff is real good, man."

Mike shrugged. He didn't really like compliments. "Art's a skill like anything else, y'know. All you gotta do is pick up a pencil sometime."

"I guess," Red said, screwing up his beak. "But, c'mon, nothin' like this. Also, uh, I don't got the money on me right now," ("Why would you," Mike said) "But I can get it, like, tomorrow! He's gonna fucking love this, it's great!"

"'He'?" Mike asked.

"Oh, uh. My brother." Red scuffed the back of his neck with a hand. "He's nuts about old Japanese shit; he loves this guy's stuff. I'm gonna say I got a totally legit original or something, it'll be great."

"Aww, you finally buy some of my art and it's not even for you, huh? I see how it is," Mike said, teasing, and he wasn't prepared for how Red flushed and stammered in response.


[it's like... $800? $2000? who knows. mike internally is like, the replicas went for $35k on auction. red is like, sure i can get that by tomorrow, and mike is glad he doesn't try to haggle or seem shocked or anything]


Red swung by the next day, actually dressed and looking like a normal person, and he pulled out his wallet and then pulled out eight crisp $100 bills, just like that. That really raised some further questions, and Mike was tempted to say that you know, he _did_ take checks, but, he was a little focused on just enjoying Red's dick as long as practical by not asking questions with complex answers. Maybe Red just liked paying in cash. Mike didn't know anything about him.

"This is gonna be great," Red said, as he gingerly picked up the bundled scroll.

"I dunno how I feel about my work basically being bought for a prank," Mike said, but not seriously. "Well, tell me how it goes, I guess?"

[...]


---

The next time they fucked, the next Monday since Red didn't show up that Thursday, Red put an arm out, stopping Mike from dropping down and stripping off his sweats like usual.

Mike looked at him. "Uh?"

"Uh, before we fuck, I, uh," Red shifted his weight, looking a little nervous. "I was thinkin', uh, you could try fuckin' me?"

Mike raised his eyebrow ridges. "Sure?" and then immediately afterwards, "Uh, I should warn you, I get kinda... bitey when I top."

Red flushed, mottled brown across his green skin. "That's, uh. Yeah, that's fine."

Mike grinned at him. "Well, in that case," he said, and completed the motion, peeling down Red's sweats to reveal his tail. He had a fat plug shoved between his lips, base a bulky mound spreading them out. Mike looked up at him, grinning. "Wow, some planning went into this, huh? Did you exercise in that?"

Red nodded mutely.

"That's really fucking hot, dude," Mike said, fingers sliding up Red's inner thigh, knuckles tapping against the flared base. "What were you gonna say if I said _no_?"

"Didn't think that far ahead," Red said, and Mike laughed. He curled his fingers around the base and adjusted the plug: not trying to pull it out, just watching as Red's vent lips bulged and clenched. He was swollen up, lips fat and heavy, from the plug being in for, what? An hour? More? It was a pretty fucking big plug, too. Mike teased the base of the plug against Red's vent, feeling Red shudder above him.

"Fuck," he said. "Guess just draining your nuts wasn't enough to take care of you, huh? You also gotta get railed hard." Mike looked up at Red, a little surprised to see him staring down: face flushed, eyes wet, lips slightly parted.

Mike grasped hold of the plug and tugged, slow but inexorable. Red clenched around it, breath buzzing low, as the plug dragged harder and harder against his lips, until with a sudden rush he relaxed, pushing, letting Mike yank the whole thing out of him with an obscene _pop_. The thing was bigger than one of Mike's fists, egg-shaped with a conical point, made from heavy, stiff silicone. Red's vent was a mess in the aftermath: bruised lips splayed wide, wet muscle of his dick pulsing erratically, giving Mike a show of his dick thickening and then everting out into the open, easily spilling out past his swollen lips.

"Fuck," Mike groaned, low, fingers slick with Red's juices as he stroked over his lips. He leaned in and licked a messy stripe up his vent, grinning as Red jolted, tail shuddering forward. Mike undid his pants, squirming out of them as he sloppily made out with Red's swollen vent. Red's dick dropped out past his face and started drooling pre all down his shoulder and back.

Mike cupped his own everting cockhead, keeping his fanning cocktip pinned tight together in anticipation. He pulled back with a wet sound, lips slick with Red's juices. "You wanna sit back?" he said, and Red stumbled down, face flushed, eyes unfocused, to kneel in front of him, knees widely spread, showing off the florid swell of his yawning-wide vent.

Mike crawled up onto his lap, knees on Red's thighs, and flexed their tails together. Red's huge trunk half-enveloped Mike's comparatively-stubby tail. Mike's dick fluttered, rubbery rim wetly slapping across the base of Red's shaft. Their dicks slopped against each other, flesh slick and slimy, forming frothy strings of their mingled pre. Mike probed beneath their dicks, fingers tracing across Red's already-swollen lips, feeling them easily part at the slightest pressure. Red groaned, hips arching up, and his tail wetly smacked across the back of Mike's hand.

Mike curled his tail back, cock smearing down Red's shaft until it slotted against his vent with a meaty _thunk_. Red's whole body arched up, a shaky groan bursting from his lips, and he ground down, mashing his tail against Mike's enormous cockhead. Mike cupped his hand around his cockhead, slowly easing one fold over Red's flushed vent, sinking his cock asymmetrically inside. Red was slick and wet, guts already sopping with his juices, and it was shockingly easy to slide to the side, flexing his cock, and shove the entire enormous swell into Red with a thick, meaty squelch.

Red bellowed, guts spasming around Mike's dick. Mike's dick slid across the bulging, spasming muscle of Red's cockroot, sunk inside his vent, and then past that, to the planes of thick, smooth muscle of his guts. Mike usually had some trouble topping, since, unless his partner was a turtle they usually weren't prepared for a chest-wide dick. But Red _was_ a turtle, and a big one at that; his dick was snug inside his guts, fanning out to its full expanse and wrenching Red's guts open around it.

Red's hands curled around Mike's arms, holding him in place as they flexed their tails against each other. Mike rolled forward, cock sawing through Red's guts and then back, bashing through the tight clench of his body, and again, starting a slow, heavy rhythm to fuck his guts open wide.

Red took dick real well. He flushed dark, and the flush spread down his neck, staining his emerald scute a muddy brown. He keened, sound rumbling in his chest, and his cock throbbed between them, drizzling pre all across his plastron in messy gushes. His vent shuddered, needily milking Mike's dick. His fat folds tugged against the gnarls of Mike's own dick as he thrust, pushing and pulling, and whenever the tension burst and his fat vent loudly slurped around Mike's dick, the added mess coaxed out heavier squirts of pre from Mike's dick. Mike perched on top of Red's thighs, hands spanning up his plastron, and sawed his cock through Red's needy cunt, working out a slimy spill of their mingled fluids all down his thighs and tail in a shiny mess.

Red blinked repeatedly, trying to clear his eyes. He was crying, cheeks wet with tears.

"Y'know, your eyes turn red when yer turned on," Red said, voice shaky. "It's hot."

Mike shifted, cock still rhythmically thudding against Red's guts. "_You're_ hot," he groaned, and arched forward, grinding their sopping tails together. Red's hand shuddered against his shell, and he dragged Mike forward to plant raw, stinging kisses across his jaw. He wetly panted into Mike's mouth, chest buzzing at the slow, heavy shift of his cock inside him.

Mike leaned in and nipped at his side. Red let out a sharp yelp and his entire body shuddered. Mike groaned hungrily, breath buzzing across Red's skin, and bit again, chewing his way up Red's side until he was gnawing across the huge swell of his shoulder, enjoying every whine and hiss. Red's cock shuddered between them. Mike slowly rolled his hips, to shallowly pump his cock into Red's increasingly-wet vent, knocking the sledgehammer-head fan of his cock against the smooth muscle of Red's guts. Red let out a sound like a sob and flung an arm over his face, wetly snuffling as Mike steadily pumped into him, biting a constellation of bruises across his shoulders and neck.

"Ah fuck, ah fuck, fuck, fuck," Red groaned, hips rolling up to wetly _splat_ his soaked tail against Mike's hips. "Oh, fuck, _Mikey!_" he bellowed, and then his vent clenched hard and he climaxed with a roar, vent spasming hard around Mike's dick. He hunched his dick between them, just a little friction away from cumming, and instead of leaning in Mike sat back, pounding harder into Red's sloppy vent. Mike's hands were braced across his stomach, Red's mammoth cock writhing between them, and Red's other hand shot out, fingers curling around Mike's forearm, holding him tight as Mike fucked him through a second orgasm, then a third, Red wailing the entire time. It wasn't until Red started desperately slapping his cock against his plastron that he actually came with a roar, cock flexing so hard the tip folded over itself before he explosively sprayed bolts of cum over his head and all up the wall behind him.

Mike groaned, hips jerking forward to plunge his cock into Red's spasming vent, and he came only a few moments later, absolutely flooding Red's guts. His fan flexed hard, warping Red's guts and partially locking them together as Mike panted out his orgasm, tail jerking in shudders to smack against Red's. His cock sluggishly squirmed inside Red's sloppy cunt, and cum burbled down his length. Red started to overflow, with heavy, glistening bubbles of Mike's load slurping out of his stretched vent. Red shakily arched into him, fucking himself on Mike's pronged shaft until he came again, sloppily squirting frothy streamers of their mingled issue out across Mike's hips.

When Red opened his eyes, he looked concussed: eyes wet with tears, pupils blown and unfocused. He panted for breath, making a low, continual rumble that peaked into a whine whenever their bodies moved against each other, tugging and twisting the gnarls of Mike's cock against his inner folds.

"Fuck," Mike groaned, slowly tugging back, hissing as his overstimulated cock dragged against the inside of Red's vent. "You should've said you liked to bottom before, we could've been doing this the whole time, fuck."

Red was out of it. His only response was a groan. Dazed, he leaned into Mike's side, plastering their slime-sheened skin together with a _squelch_. His vent sluggishly clenched, squirting messily around Mike's half-embedded cock. Mike kept tugging, making Red's vent mound out in a swollen lump before his fanning cockhead finally jerked free from between his lips with a squelch and a fresh splatter of slime. Mike's cockhead smacked against Red's thigh and stuck there, dark purple flesh slathered in their mingled loads. Red's vent was a gaping, drooling wreck: puffy lips fluttering, florid and drooping over themselves in meaty folds. Red let out a sad whine, tail flexing in a slow clench.

Mike hauled himself off Red's lap, wobbling to his feet, and the heavy anchor of his dick threw off his weight, making him stagger backwards.

Red groaned, stretching his arms and legs, and the movement made his vent wink, sloppily flexing around the base of his dick. Red was a lot, ah, _jucier_ than Mike was. Each clench made him overflow, sending a filmy burble of slime sheeting down his tail, webbing in cords all between his thighs and tail. He looked debauched. His thighs shuddered as Red rocked upright, not quite ready to take his weight, and when he lumbered to his feet there was the loud, obscene gurgle of Mike's load spilling out between his puffy, bruised vent lips in globs, streaking all down his tail. Any other time and he'd be irritated at the mess Red was making in his studio, but... 

There was a heavy lurch in Mike's tail as his half-hard cock throbbed, fattening up again at the sight. "You, uh," he said, voice a rough rasp. "Think you could go again?"

Red jolted, gaze going from Mike's face to his dick and back. His flush, which had never really fully faded, spread back down his neck in blotches. "Uh," he said, and swallowed heavily. "yeah?"

So Mike ended up fucking Red a second time, this time with Red on his knees in front of Mike's bed, tail wagging so aggressively between his thighs that Mike had to pin it in place with his knees. Mike fucked him steadily through another series of bellowing orgasms while he chomped a series of bites all across Red's chest. "Sorry," he mumbled, after biting so hard the mark started to bleed sluggishly, but that didn't stop him from doing it another half-dozen times.

By the time they were done they were both a mess: juices puddled beneath them, slathered up into foamy clumps across their thighs, sweat soaking down their sides. Red's vent was a florid bruise, lips peaked up into rubbery purple folds, perpetually glazed and dripping when Mike finally hauled his heavy, turgid cock free from Red's hungry depths. Red's shoulders and chest were dotted with bloody imprints from Mike's teeth and beak, sharp crescents that devolved into ragged stripes as Mike had gotten more worked up.

"Fuck, Mike," Red said, wobbling to his feet again, and the puffy, swollen mound of his vent shifting, lips slurping against each other, made Mike want to go for a third round.

It was considerably later than their hookups usually went for. The room was dim now that the sun had shifted behind a building, and it was only as Red stumbled forward that Mike realized they'd been fucking in increasing gloom for a while. He turned on more lamps, and grimaced at the wide arc of splatter they'd both painted across the floor and, in Red's case, up the wall. His bed was a sodden mess, which seemed unfair given they hadn't actually fucked in it at all.

Red grimaced down at his blood-smeared chest. "What're you, some kinda vampire?" he said, but there was no actual heat in it.

"I did warn you," Mike said, not abashed in the least. There was the strong temptation to lean in and dig into the bruises with his fingers while he continued the pattern all the way up Red's throat, but he did have _actual_ work to do. He couldn't just fuck and mark up Red all day, no matter how tempting that was. "Hope you don't got a job where you gotta look professional."

Red laughed, still gingerly prodding across his chest. "Nah, it'll be fine." He pressed down on a mark, and the pained hiss he made sent a bolt of arousal through Mike's body.

"There's, uh, a shower in the corner," Mike said, gesturing with his head. "There's only like thirty seconds of hot water, though."

Also, after all that, Mike got to rinse off Red's lube-crusted plug and then slowly slot it back into his vent, one hand keeping Red's dick inside until the full bulk of the plug pinned it in place. Red crooned the whole way through, voice rough. His bruised vent and raw guts shuddered around its girth, and his tail was awkwardly stiff behind him when he finally shambled out of Mike's studio in the evening.

So, that had been considerably more intense than Mike had been expecting.




[CHAPTER 5?]

---

Summer was making way for fall. The trees on the street were busy turning yellow and red. The season of gathering. Red started wearing a hoodie to go with his sweats. Dark grey, unmarked. It was a little unfortunate Mike couldn't ogle him as much when he caught Red at the bus stop, but in exchange he could shove his hands up the hoodie waist and shove it off over Red's shoulders to bare the chunky ridges of his plastron. Stripping was more erotic than being naked, sometimes.

Which was all well and good, except that the third time Red showed up like that and Mike went to haul off his hoodie, Red went "Uh, wait," while Mike was already halfway through the motion, and when he pulled on his sleeves his right sleeve lurched inside-out, damp with blood, and revealed a line of deeply shredded scute beneath that spanned from his bicep down just past his elbow.

"What the fuck, dude!" Mike said.

"Uh, I was sparring at the gym and I got thrown off the mats. Friction burn." There was a big chunk of scute torn out where he'd landed on his elbow, where the bone pressed most firmly against his skin. Most of the bleeding was just because his skin had stuck to the hoodie, so when Mike'd ripped the whole thing off all the forming scabs came with it, starting the whole bleeding process over again.

"What'd they throw you on, _sandpaper_? That's so unsanitary, don't drip blood all over my studio."

Red blinked. "Uh, sorry."

"Hold on," Mike said, already headed to the first aid chest. Instead of holding on, Red followed him. The first aid chest was a big cooler under a table on the far east wall of the room; Mike pulled it out with a loud scrape and started rifling through the supplies.

Red peered over his shoulder. "Is that an _IFAK_?"

"Dude, I have a lathe, a kiln, _and_ an autoclave in here." ("Why do you have an _autoclave_?" Red mumbled.) "If anything this is underdoing it. You want iodine?"

Red nodded.

Mike kept talking. "Like the whole, sucking chest wound stuff is always a little scary to flip past. Kind of an intense situation to think about needing. Oh, pressure cooker too. That thing's basically always a bomb. Once I had one break. Doing batik. Pressure cap blew off and it started spewing scalding-hot dye water everywhere. Better than what would've happened if the cap _hadn't_ blown off though." He pulled back from the cooler with a roll of bandages, a pack of cotton swabs, and a bottle of iodine splayed between his fingers.

"You better not have dripped anywhere." Mike turned towards him, pulling Red down into a kneel so he could more easily reach his arm. "Seriously, they didn't have first aid at the gym? What kinda amateur place are you going to?"

"...I may've stormed off before that."

Mike rolled his eyes. He swiped down Red's arm in practiced motions, ignoring the hiss as he dragged over the sluggishly-oozing wounds. He bandaged up his arms with neat back-and-forth cabling around his elbow, to keep it in place when he bent his arm, and tied it off with a knot across his bicep.

"This is kinda overdoing it; you really only needed a little more than a band-aid. Aside from the scute you tore up on the elbow you should be totally fine to take it all off in like, an hour. I just didn't want you _bleeding all over my studio_."

"Well sor_ry_, man," Red said, a little sarcastic.

Mike snorted, taking a step back. "Your tattoo might need a touch-up, though. But it's a good look on you. You really do pull off the whole, y'know, big scary tough guy look."

Red glowered at him. "'Pull off'?"

"Yeah, c'mon, you're a huge softie really, huh."

Red flushed, ducking his head.

"So, you wanna fuck or get fucked? I guess I should say you shouldn't try to hold me up with an injured arm, but, whatever, I'm not your doctor."

"Uh, get fucked," Red said. Mike leered at him.

Fucking Red always felt different than getting fucked. When he topped, Red was a fucking machine: brutal, hip-pounding thrusts that left Mike wobbly-legged for the rest of the day, snarling and huffing as he used Mike's body to get off. It was super hot. But when Mike topped, well. Basically every time it felt like Red was holding back the urge to cry? He buried his face against his arm and whimpered and sobbed his way through getting fucked. Also, Mike got to bite him. Seeing him flinch and yelp when Mike chomped on his shoulder never got old. But this time felt more, you know. Emotional. Especially with the lead-up being light teasing and first aid.

Afterwards, once Mike had fucked Red into a sweaty and slightly bloody mess, he staggered to his feet, wincing at the chill air against his unfurled dick. He tossed a damp towel across Red's chest, letting him sponge himself off.

"I really gotta get something for your shell," Mike said. "So you don't gotta brace against my bed all the time."

Red just mumbled in response, before stretching with a groan and lumbering to his feet, vent still slick and wet, shining between his thighs. "Y' don't gotta," he said.

"I mean, I don't wanna be fucking you and crack one of your spurs, dude, that would kinda suck for both of us."

Red snorted. "I'm tough."

"Anyway," Mike said. "The big art crawl is over the weekend. I'm actually gonna be like, super busy next Thursday moving everything around, so I won't have time for any sex."

Red looked over at him. "Uh, I could help you move stuff around? I'm gonna be at the bus stop anyway." He flexed. "Figure all these tables would be a two-person job."

"Huh. I mean, if you wanted? I usually just ask some of the other people around since we're all gonna be setting up. You might get drafted by somebody else if you show up. I don't exactly know how things are gonna go, I'm gonna be in and out all day getting supplies and stuff."

Mike had already removed the safe with the mystic pigments last night, boxed up in a cardboard box so it didn't look like Mike was casually carrying around a huge safe. Everything left in the studio was strictly legit.

"Friday and Saturday are the big days. You can come if you want, but like-- you've already seen most of my stuff, so really it's only if you wanna see it again next to white walls, while a bunch of strangers meander in and out. There'll be cheese cubes and pretzels."

Red snorted. "Ya make it sound so invitin'."

---

Red showed up on Thursday. He didn't even buzz up; there were so many people going in and out in preparation he'd clearly been able to just grab the door and come on up. Mike was in the middle of shuffling the first table in position with Jason's help. The old lady from #305 was chattering loudly as she made her way up the stairs, talking about her wire-and-tissue-paper sculptures to somebody, and Mike thought both he and Jason did a double take when she turned into the hallway followed by Red, carrying a giant bin of craft supplies and looking a little baffled. Red waved awkwardly as he passed by to #305.

Jason was out in the hallway when Red stepped back out, apparently, so Mike could hear their conversation as he flapped out a tablecloth over the worktable.

"You're Mike's guy, right?" Jason said, probably going for a fistbump, and Mike clenched his teeth.

"Uh, yeah, I guess," Red said.

"Cool, cool. I'm Jason."

"Red," Red said, simply.

"Hey, man," Mike said, when Red loomed into his doorway. "You almost missed the table-moving." He'd already cleared all the half-finished works and miscellaneous clutter off the tables and relegated them to flat surfaces in the 'mess' half of the space. He'd rehung some stuff on the walls, little unframed 5''x7'', 18''x12'' canvases, he had a stack of ink prints laid out across the kitchenette counter, by the door. Most of the tables would be laid out in a grid, since Mike was very lazy, with a few shoved against the walls. With Red's help that step of the process only took fifteen minutes.

"Y' got a bunch of artists here, huh?" Red said, and Mike just looked at him, _duh_, across the table they were shimmying up against the wall. "I mean, obviously, but... it's weird seein' it bustlin'."

"Yeah. People put themselves into their art. It's always a little, like, humbling to see it all? Kinda sad I don't get to walk around and see everybody's shit, but, y'know, I got the rest of the year, since I'm here all the time."

"You seen that old lady's stuff?" Red said, jerking his thumb in the direction of #305.

"Oh yeah, sure," Mike said. "Her stuff is all bad amateur work." Red let out an offended-sounding guffaw.

"I don't mean that insultingly," Mike said. ("How can you _not_," Red said.) "I just mean it's something that anybody can do, tearing up and gluing craft shop supplies with their hands. _But_. It's like anybody who sees modern art and says 'I could've made that': so make it! Actually make something and see how you feel. She's not using any intricate technique, or trying to make some grand, lasting piece. She's... participating in the process of constructing meaning and intentionality out of something she's invested herself in. She's struggling to express concepts in her medium. She's refining her process and discovering what she enjoys doing or seeing in a finished piece. She's _creating art_, and I think that's really admirable." A pause. "Even if I do think it looks like garbage. But I'm kind of a petty bitch like that."

That got Red; he snorted before bursting out laughing. "You do got some self-awareness in yer skull somewhere, huh?" he said, mussing a hand across Mike's head. He looked across the space. "What's next?"

Mike laid out another table cloth. "Oh, I excavated the old sofa, I was gonna put it against the wall." It had been squashed under some wood beams he'd used as support for some casting molds, back when he'd been doing metal casting a few years ago. They moved the sofa, then added chairs from the storage loft over the kitchenette; Mike balanced on the ladder up while he handed them down to Red. Then Mike kicked the new giant beanbag chairs over. Shell support when sitting down was a challenge. He needed some better seating anyway, and he may have gotten the XXXL one specifically thinking of Red.

"What next?" Red said, profoundly patient even as Mike started rearranging shit. He'd been in and out as other people had learned there was a giant muscular guy around who could effortlessly move furniture. Mike had ordered pizza, so at least he was feeding Red for his labor. Well, Mike had pitched in for the building's pizza order, so all the pizzas were a little boring, but it still counted. Red liked the mashed-potato-and-bacon one.

("Do you know the guy with the bones?" he'd said once on coming back in, excited, and Mike let out a laugh.

"Dude, that guy has a piece up at the depot station," Mike said. "It's like 12 feet tall. And 30 wide. Concrete, rebar, and fake dinosaur bones. It's super impressive." He made these immense relief sculptures, fake fossils emerging from poured concrete, complete with false archaeological histories. Mike liked his little anatomical reconstructions of monster bones.)

"Well, now I move stuff back over, and then rearrange it for the next twelve hours until I think it looks decent." He hauled some porcelain plates out and left them on the table, then started rooting around in the heap for where he'd put the plate stands. "I'm thinking paintings mostly on those walls, prints on that table, the raw-earth and glazed pottery there." Mike said, pointing in turn. "But I'll probably rearrange everything again after that. Oh, and I gotta get out the folding table for snacks." He rummaged around in the heap by the wall, slowly scraping a slightly-squashed folding table out from behind a giant chunk of plywood. "All the stuff I'm gonna display is in that heap over there," he said, pointing. "So just pick something up and plunk it down and I'll rearrange it later. Carefully, though."

"Got it," Red said.

By the time everything was mostly placed it was getting late. Early evening. Mike still had to redo the lighting and move around all the folding screens.

"That about it?" Red said.

"Yeah." Mike checked the time on his phone and swore. "Fuck, I gotta go pick up the last set of prints before the shop closes." He looked over at Red. "Well, sorry I don't got time to thank you with a blowjob or whatever. I just cleaned the place anyway; I don't want it smelling like cum again _already_."

Red snorted. "Don't worry about it," he said.

"Well, uh," Mike said. "Seeya?"

"Yeah, man," Red said, clapping him on the arm.

That had been, by far, the longest amount of time he'd spent with Red without the two of them fucking. It hadn't been unpleasant.

---

Mike's sweet feelings about Red were interrupted later that night, on the phone with Donny.

"Ah, I did turn up something on your hookup, I think," Donny said.

"What? Really?!" There was a _bleep_ on his phone as Don sent him a file. And old grainy surveillance photo of an alley at night, facing a raised side door lit with an overhead light, with two figures visible: one human, teenager, leaning against the entryway railing, another more shadow than person, only faintly visible at the base of the stairs as a giant looming figure. Their eyes caught the reflection of the light, making them shine. Definitely not human. The timestamp on the surveillance photo said 2009-10-15 23:17:45.

Then another few photos, all from the same small segment of time: the other figure with an arm raised, revealing the edge of a shell at the shoulder; the human and the figure turning to leave, which showed off a huge, craggy shell and a thick, dragging tail between his legs.

"That's Casey Jones, circa 2009, and I _think_ that's your hookup. This would've been thirteen years ago. Jones was 17, and if his {grindr} information is accurate, your hookup would've been 16. Information is patchy, but reportedly he and Jones ran together for a few years, maybe as early as 13 or 14."

It certainly _could've_ been Red as a teenager. Still big, but closer to six feet than eight. "Huh." Mike paused. "Wait, how did you even _find_ this?!"

"I have my ways." Don loved being vague. "This is verging into speculation, but I _think_ he wasn't with the Purple Dragons. That was when their human-only bylaw was more aggressively enforced. There was another local gang, Old Hobs', that was demihuman only; I think your hookup might've been Jones' contact with them. They had at least two notable terrapin members at that time, Spike and Slash. Either of them could've been your guy, or he could've been some less notable hanger-on."

"Huh. Okay, so, that's interesting, but that doesn't actually connect at all to why he'd recognize the Kanō painting."

Mike could _hear_ Donny's eyeroll. "Perhaps he just has an artist friend. What does he do now?"

"Like, job? I have no clue. Literally all I know about him is that he goes to the gym twice weekly." There was some judgmental silence. "Hey, that's just how hookups go! We're not-- _dating_, he just has a really nice dick, okay?!"

"I'll have to take your word on that," Don said, dryly. "Anyway, if that is him, the trail goes cold only a month or two after that photo was taken: Jones breaks with the Purple Dragons and goes legit; most of Old Hobs' gang get caught up by an EPF raid for smuggling Triceraton artifacts, and whoever that mystery turtle is isn't heard from again. I'll keep looking, but..."

"Sure. That's still... way more than I was expecting. The guy's got hidden depths to him."

"Who could imagine. Somebody not being entirely upfront about their criminal past. Shocking."

"You already made that joke last time."

"I'll keep making it! It's very funny."

So. Ex-gangster, maybe. Casey Jones had gone legit, maybe Red had too. Or maybe not. So much for just being a fun, sweet, mean hookup.

---

"If you just want some handmade plates," Mike was saying, "there's somebody on the fourth floor who does a bunch of brownware pottery. Food safe, pretty durable. Probably oven safe? I dunno about microwaves. They're like, I dunno, in the $30-50 range for most of 'em?" He gestured at the painted porcelain plates he had on display. "This is like... I mean, if you _wanted_ to drop a few thousand dollars for a set of fine porcelain in this style, we can talk, but it'd take a while, and I don't really take style commissions." A familiar shape out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he mumbled some conversation-ender and swayed past the prospective plate-buyer, waving. "Holy shit, you actually came!" It was Red.

Red loomed in his doorway, blinking at the studio. It was different seeing the space full of people, Mike had to admit. The lighting was all different, too. He'd done that after Red had left. He usually had the work lights on, aimed at the tables, and of course during the day the entire place was lit up by the sun. But now he was actually using the rattling track lighting to aim spotlights at the paintings on the walls, with more diffuse lighting across the tables. The tables, which were also draped in clean white tablecloths instead of revealing their stained, paint-splattered, clay-encrusted surfaces. There were fairy lights strung up between the support pillars. The space looked shockingly different.

More importantly, it lit Red up differently. The dim, indirect lighting brought out the faint shimmer of his skin to the point where he almost looked sparkly, coated in glitter. He was wearing a well-fitted white button-down tucked into a pair of chunky black fabric pants. The same red sneakers he'd had on the other time, outside the {show}. His shirt was very obviously tailored, since, if it wasn't there was no way it would've looked even halfway decent over his craggy shell. The sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, and the pants had suspenders but they were undone, smacking against his thighs. The dangling suspenders magnetically drew Mike's attention to the way the waist of the pants was tight around his hips but sagged out minutely from his plastron, revealing an inviting hollow between his shirt and pants that Mike ached to shove his hand down.

"Uh, hey, Mike," he said. Mike wanted to tackle him and strip his clothes off before fucking him. Potentially dragging him into the tiny bathroom first instead of doing it in front of everybody. Maybe inviting him hadn't been the best idea. His body had certain expectations seeing Red in his studio.

Mike hopped up and slung an arm over Red's shoulders, which meant basically climbing him like a tree. He had to brace his feet against Red's calves, which tugged his pants a tantalizing inch lower. Red sputtered but didn't push him off. "I'm glad you came, dude," Mike said, and then hopped off him before Red's blush could get any worse.

"Figure it'd be weird to help ya set up and then miss out the actual event," Red said.

Mike nodded. "You wanna wander around the building or hang around here for a while? I got some friends around but they're mostly circulating." He pointed at the folding table with food on it: cheese, crackers, sliced salami, popcorn, pretzels, grapes, with a jug of punch and bottle of wine next to some clear plastic cups to the side. "There's food. Well, kind of. There's some beer in the minifridge if you want."

"I saw some stuff when I was comin' up," Red said. "Uh, I'll take a beer."

"Sure," Mike said, and went over to the countertop that semi-defined the kitchenette. "I gotta actually manage and shit," he said, returning with a cheap canned beer. Red made a face. If Mike couldn't enjoy getting drunk, neither could anybody else. "But if you wanna chill there are some people around." He jerked a thumb to the corner with the couch and the beanbag chains.

Red kinda awkwardly stood there for a few minutes, just watching. Sure, he walked with the rest of the people cycling into and around Mike's studio, peering down at the various things Mike had on display. Then he stepped back in a corner and popped the tab on his beer and just stood there, silent, watching. Mike was getting the sense Red was not particularly good with people. Or crowds?

Eventually, during a lull, Mike took pity on him and turned away from his chatting with strangers and selling poster prints to haul Red over to the corner with the chairs. There were a handful of Mike's acquaintances around -- Woody (human), from the pizza place; Wyrm (flatworm amalgamate) from #110, since he didn't really do the whole art crawl thing; Lindsey (human), who had been mostly bopping around between his studio and Jason's; Traxiumus (triceraton), who was the only other person Mike knew who needed one of the XXXL beanbag chairs to sit down. Plus an assortment of their friends, most of whom Mike only vaguely recognized.

Wyrm and Traxiumus had been having their perennial debate over the use of reverse-engineered Triceraton technology and the various laws restricting or subsidizing it. It was a little obnoxiously political, but given what Mike did in his free time he could hardly complain. Mike shoved himself physically between them on the way to shove Red down on the other giant beanbag. Red sunk into the seat and immediately became part of the scenery.

"--Even the _Triceratons_ have regulations about revealing their technology to primitive civilizations," Traxiumus was saying. ("Hey," Woody complained, not super enthused about having his culture called primitive. They ignored him.)

Wyrm wetly scoffed, spewing a mess of worms across the floor that slowly rippled their way back into his bulk. "Then they shouldn't have crashed their ship here," he said. "Or at least they should've picked it up. They had like a millenium to do it, too! Finders keepers! If you leave something like that lying around long enough for technology to get developed around it--" All Wyrm's art was made with found materials, mostly scavenged from the dump or taken directly from a dumpster. He had some really strong opinions about reuse.

"--you can't just say 'technology to get developed'; we have no clue how awareness of the Triceraton Empire influenced technological development on Earth to begin with--" Traxiumus responded.

Red's gaze ping-ponged between the two as they kept arguing at each other.

("They're dating," Mike whispered in his ear. "I'm pretty sure this is just how they flirt."

Red blinked. "What, really?! Uh, how..." he trailed off, looking at Wyrm's looming, slimy body, made up of tens of thousands of squirming worms.

Mike snorted. "I thought you were more creative than that, dude. Where there's a will there's a way." As somebody who had gotten an earful going past Wyrm's workshop more than a few times, he could absolutely attest that they had found a wide variety of ways.)

"Shelldon!" Mike bellowed, taking the first opportunity to cut off their conversation. "Get your ass over here!"

Shelldon had been mostly hanging out in Jason's studio. There was the faint sound of acoustic guitar with some backing percussive _thumps_ echoing down the hallway. Shelldon had... Mike wasn't gonna call it a _crush_ since he was pretty sure it was non-sexual, but, some kind of admiration thing going on with Jason. Semi-professional musician in a decent band, that kind of thing. But he'd been wandering around the building, and when Mike saw him poke his head in through the doorway he seized the moment.

Shelldon had made further strides in not blaring his mystic aura all over the place all the time, but it was still distinctly noticeable to anybody with any skill. His soul was considerably more alloyed now, into a rippling iridescent, scintillating metallic tone. From when he'd heard from Donny, Shelldon was still grappling with the basics of internal/external styles, which to be fair, Mike as a kid had had some trouble with too. Probably he should offer to actually coach him, because the kid could clearly use the help. That brought up a lot of weird feelings, though. It was a _little_ more dicey to have him around in the building, given there were a handful of dabbling mystical artists who might be able to sense something was up with him, but, well, there were a handful of dabbling mystical artists around. Wyrm radiated a sea-green wash of mystic energy, since, you know, psionic amalgamate. Shelldon's aura was more than a few shades past 'dabbling practictioner', but aside from that he fit right in.

Shelldon ambled over, a little nervous. "Uh, hey Mike."

"Oh, yeah," Mike said, gesturing. "Uh, Red, Shelldon; Shelldon, Red."

Red extended a hand. "You were at that club, right...?" he said, as he shook.

Shelldon looked over at Mike as if to verify it was okay to say 'yes'. "Yeah!" he said. "I do DJing."

"Nice," Red said.

"So, uh, that guy has a studio here...?" Red asked quietly into Mike's earslit, a while later, gesturing over at Wyrm.

"What, Wyrm? Yeah. He does sculpture stuff on the first floor, but he doesn't really like showing off his workspace. Uh, but he's on {grindr} too? You might've seen him pop up there? I think mostly just because he likes to annoy all the like, parasite infestation chasers or whatever that message him."

"Uh, you and he didn't...?" Red said.

Mike shrugged. "Like, once? It was too ticklish for me. On account of the worms."

Red blinked at that. "Huh." And then: "Wait, are you ticklish?"

"You try it and you die, dude."

Red snorted. Then, a little slowly: "Uh, I don't actually use {grindr} much. After my last breakup my brother signed me up as a joke. He was hopin' I'd find some new guy to date or something." Red shrugged. "I just hooked up with random guys a few times. I don't think he gets what {Grindr}'s like."

Mike snorted. He thought of Donny: "Yeah, I got somebody a lot the same. Keeps asking if I've met anybody, and I have to keep saying, that's not really how it works."

Left unsaid but echoing silently between them was, _well, but I did meet _you.

Later: "--so I was diggin' out the basement," Wyrm was saying, gesticulating. "And instead a' hittin' the foundation we discovered they actually had a false floor that was just like, two inches of rebar concrete over the _actual_ basement, which was like, ten feet down. An' there was a _door_ down there. Bolted shut with a huge chain. So we cut it open and there's a stairway. Goin' _down_."

"Nooo," Woody whined, who did not have the disposition for creepy renovation stories.

"So it turned out the place had been built over an old Triceraton barracks, and _that_ had cut all the way into Zalum herself, and the route down through there went all the way down to the old Hidden City ruins. The whole building got sealed off for like three months while the Feds tried to seal off the access route. She was just tryin' to turn the basement into a rec room; it's a fuckin' nightmare."

"Man, that's like a bomb waiting to go off, though. Wild mystic emanations is like radon on steroids. They're lucky they didn't wake up dead and cursed," Lindsey said.

Wyrm rolled his eyes. "It's not _that_ dangerous. Shit coming up from the Hidden City is just angry spirits nine times out a' ten."

"Man, angry spirits is already way too much for me," Woody said. "I don't wanna know what the one time is. Mystic stuff freaks me out."

"Don't you have one of Monique's magic lamps, though?" somebody Mike didn't recognize said, and several people winced. Woody mumbled awkwardly.

"That chick making all the lights up on the seventh floor...?" somebody else said.

Red looked at Mike, clueless. Mike explained: "Well, you didn't hear it from me, but yeah some of the people do some dabbling in mystic infusion, stuff like that. It's not super legal, but I mean. Not to shock you but some people here are _on drugs_. We're a hotbed of vice and crime."

"Somebody's making mystic artifacts in here?" Red said, eye-ridges pulled down into a concerned furrow. "Ain't that dangerous?"

Mike looked at Red askance. "Man, there's a gallery two buildings over that's got a license? They don't really do much for the art crawls, though. But it's all like, seals to make tea taste better, man, dream shit, not bombs. Monique makes little shadow-play illusions on her lamps. I think we're fine."

"What, _you_ know mystic seals?"

Mike rolled his eyes. "Uh, yeah dude, this shit comes up all the time in old pottery. I'm not gonna call myself an expert or anything--" That would be Donny, ha ha, "-- but half the glazing designs in the old books are attempts at mystic seals, so you kinda pick up some stuff. Tea seals have all the loops and spirals, bomb ones are all spiky and have a lot of cross intersections." The loopy bits were the basis for a sensory manipulation interaction; the crosses were the basis for the external manipulation necessary to make something explode. 

"There's this whole fun historical thing where the sealmasters wanted to keep their seals secret so they developed this double-glaze procedure, right -- stamp the seal on the raw clay and fire that, and then glaze it heavily for a second firing and buff that smooth, so the array is hidden under the glazework but still functional. Ancient copy protection!" ("Boo!" Shelldon jeered). "But then _that_ started to be suspicious since there were a bunch of ninja assassinations using booby-trapped seals, so they started having to show enough of the raw vessel and sealwork to prove that it wasn't secretly an exploding tea pot, and then ninja sealmasters came up with more complicated seals that were bombs _and_ made tea taste good, and all that got copied piecemeal throughout every part of that process and you got it turned into a solely aesthetic thing of complex depth work on the fired clay plus partial coating with glazes with more stylized symbols, or just poetry or whatever, but then you also had like, several layers of seal work on several layers of glaze, and it's this huge rabbithole of aesthetic design."

Red had started looking quietly amused about halfway through Mike's monologue.

Later: "Nah, I mean, I think creation is useless and unjustifiable?" Mike was monologuing again. "Like. There are terminal goals and instrumental goals? If you get a job because you want money because you want to buy a video game because you want to play it and have fun, it's the _fun_ that's the terminal goal. Everything else is just about getting to that. You don't really care about money; you care about what money _gets_ you." ("Some people really care about money," Wyrm said. "Yeah, and that's a disease," Mike responded.) "Art is its own justification. If you do art mostly thinking about what it _gets_ you that's like, profaning the drive. It's prioritizing something petty like money or survival over the sheer joy of creation." ("That's real easy to say when your survival isn't at risk, dude," Woody said.) "I'm just _saying_, everything anybody genuinely cares about is by definition unjustifiable. 'I want to do it' is the ultimate justification. But once any practical consideration comes into play, like, you're actually making a tool for a specific purpose, that constrains the expression, since now you have a metric to rate something as more or less _useful_."

Lindsey interrupted him. "That's everything, though. Like nobody's just sitting around in the creative ether doing some masturbatory self-expression to the void. Even on the most fundamental level, people have constraints like time, or scope, or cost of materials. And some of the most moving art is _about_ being limited by constraints. Something that's totally unconstrained by practical considerations is something that has no connection to _reality_."

"Uh, who do I pay for these prints...?" Someone nervously interrupted.

Mike hauled himself up, waving a hand. "Artist here, gimmie a sec," he said, and by the time he handled that and also the other two people who had been milling around waiting for a moment to actually purchase some postcards, the group was talking about bombs or something.

"I leave you people alone for a _minute_," he complained as he heavily settled back down next to Red.

"Leave us alone _longer_," Woody said, laughing. "Aren't you supposed to be selling stuff?"

Mike shrugged. "Uh, I'm supposed to be _displaying art_ for you fucking philistines to admire," he said, and Woody loudy booed. "I see I gotta instruct you all on what real art is like!"

"Please don't," Shelldon said, and Mike stuck his tongue out at him.

"...so what are you talking about," Mike said, to a chorus of groans.

"Ephemeral art," Traximus rumbled. "Like bombs."

"_Not_ like bombs, you violent sociopath," Wyrm said, slapping him with an enormous limb.

To head off more flirting, Mike jumped in. "Ephemeral art is like, _food plating_. Sand mandalas. Explosions aren't that artsy."

"Once I made something," Wyrm rumbled, "that was just two big pendulums with giant glass bubbles on the ends. Filled with paint. The art was bein' there when they finally smashed into each other and made a big mess."

("That sounds fun," Red mumbled into Mike's ear.)

"I didn't know you did installation pieces," Mike said.

"Nah, that was just for fun," Wyrm said. Mike rolled his eyes.

Traximus: "So, what, you don't think weapons can be artistic?"

"I mean, not really?" Mike said. "There's a reason why ceremonial weapons are shitty as actual weapons, right? If you wanna kill somebody the best thing is just to get a really big rock, and carving some fancy patterns on the rock before you hit somebody with it doesn't really change anything about its purpose. A weapon is just a particularly limited kind of tool, and tools having a practical purpose constrains the conceptual space in a way that can be difficult to square with aesthetic considerations. Art is unnecessary by definition."

"Art's definitely necessary!" Lindsey interrupted. "People have been making art since before recorded history! Language comes from song, not the other way around! You can't just draw a dividing line between practical things and unnecessary things, like that means anything!"

"I just mean," Mike hedged, "That a sculpture and like, a trowel, have to be judged differently, because the intended use of a trowel informs that judgment. Art doesn't have an intended use."

"Like everybody who got medieval portraiture of themselves would probably disagree with you there," Woody said. "Art is about showing off you're powerful enough to get art."

"Well, sure, but that's _boring_," Mike said. There was a general ripple of heckling. "I'm just saying, _I'm_ the most interested in art that's not clearly defined. Art that people have to actually grapple with and figure out for themselves what meaning they can construct. Not just mega-rich money laundering."

"Yeah, but you're a filthy post-modernist," Woody said.

Mike laughed. "Guilty as charged, I guess."

Traxiumus spoke up: "So you don't think somebody could balance the considerations of a weapon and its artistic meaning?"

"Well, I'm sure _somebody_ could, but that's definitely not me, y'know? Seems like a waste of good art."

"Man, don't let Ashley down on the first floor hear you say that, he actually makes weapons," Wyrm said.

"Yeah, for LARPers! Or cool looking video game ones that never had practical considerations to begin with. Making a fun lazer blaster design is totally different than making an _actual_ death laser. I actually have a timber axe he made! That's a tool with a point."

Traxiumus: "That's splitting hairs! It can chop people up just as well as chop trees."

"No it can't! It's not a butcher's cleaver; these are different tools and their use informs their design. But even if it was, it wouldn't really matter? That's just misusing a tool. There's not _really_ a sharp line between tool and weapon, just a sliding set of influences. All taxonomies are constructs anyway," Mike said, to a chorus of groans.

When talking with Mike it was only a matter of time before he got to 'actually it's impossible to define anything since all meaning is a social construct'. Most of the people sitting around had experienced it more than a few times before. Mike got up and did a victory clasp, ignoring the continued booing. Woody threw a piece of popcorn at his face. "Okay, somebody else start up a different debate, I gotta get out more snacks," he said.

Red lumbered up and followed him, having to mumble his way past some of the ambient crowd to get to the dim kitchenette.

It was the first time Red had actually been anywhere with him where there were other people, and the closeness was overtly intimate. People could see him and Red, a half-inch apart in the otherwise-empty kitchen, and make a pretty good guess what that meant.

Red leaned in, mouth brushing against Mike's earslit. "You and yer friends are all assholes," he said, low and fond, and Mike squawked out a laugh and smacked him in the chest with a bag of pretzels.

"Didn't get enough commentary in with the group, huh," Mike said, up against Red's chest. "Had to come over here to heckle me personally. I see how it is." Mike grinned up at him, both their voices low and even. Red grinned back. Mike used his free hand to grasp Red's forearm and lever himself up to press a quick kiss against his jaw. "Okay, c'mon, you've volunteered yourself to help with snacks, grab a bag," he said, and Red obligingly helped him pour more snacks into the various platters and bowls set out by the door.

---

"Out, out," Mike said, hands planted on Woody's back as he guided him towards the door. "You don't gotta go home but you can't stay here."

Mike was acutely aware of Red behind him as he ushered the final stragglers out and slid the door shut with a _clunk_. Turning around, Red loomed up in the darkness, eyes gleaming.

Mike sagged against the door for a second, then pushed himself up with a groan and started cycling around the space, cleaning. Unfinished bags of snacks collected, clothespinned shut, and dumped on the counter. Stray paper plates and plastic cups thrown in the trash.

"Somebody left their bag," Mike observed, and fished it out where it'd been pinned between the couch and one of the smaller beanbags. He tossed it on the table by the door. "That's gonna be an issue."

He looked at Red, who was just standing there, watching him. Red threw some wadded-up napkins at the trash can.

"Fuck, all that takes it outta me," Mike said. "I always forget how much energy, like, Interfacing with the Public takes."

"Mmmn," Red rumbled, and stepped close, then hauled Mike forward against his chest. "You were real hot." Mike snorted, breath going a bit pressured when Red scraped a giant hand down his chest, shoving his fingers up his hoodie and plucking at his pants.

"When I first saw you," Mike said, kicking against Red's calves as Red hauled him up one-handed, other hand playing across his front, tapping down between his thighs. "I really just wanted to fuck you right there."

Red let out a rumbling groan, fingers curling around his tail. "Issat still on th' table?" he mumbled against Mike's neck, strokes getting more intense. He popped open the button of Mike's pants with just his thumb. "Or should I fuck you? Hard seein' you talk with everybody else and not get to jus' reach out and take you."

Mike groaned. "Fuck, yeah, if you just wanna fuck me, be my guest. 'M tired." He lazily wagged his tail, helping Red unzip his pants and haul them down his thighs, and when Red's fingers ground against his bare vent Mike saw stars. He groaned loud, arching into Red's front, and let Red haul him backwards, settling down on the big beanbag with Mike perched on his lap.

"C'mere," Red said, and kissed him. Mike could taste the flat beer and cheese cubes on his breath. It was painfully endearing.

"Clothes off," Mike mumbled against Red's face, fingers fumbling at the buttons of Red's shirt.

Stripped, Red ground their swollen vents together, breath rumbling up into a groan as his dick lurched out into the open with a _pop_. They panted, sharing breath as they twisted their tails together, and Red sunk Mike onto his cock before Mike's dick was even everted. Mike groaned, penetration hot and burning. Their mingled pre drooled out of him in sloppy cords. Red groaned, and the baritone buzz of his voice, chest rumbling under Mike's fingers, was enough for his vent to spasm and clench, cock lurching out into the open with a splatter of slime. Mike rolled his hips, tail swaying as he fucked himself on Red's still-dropping cock.

Somebody pounded on the door.

"Fuck's sake," Red growled against Mike's throat. "Jus' ignore it."

"Are you still there?" somebody called out. Nobody Mike could identify just by voice. "I left my bag in there, I think?" There was a _clunk_ as they tried the locked door.

Mike groaned. "I should get that," he said, squirming in Red's grip.

"They'll go away eventually," Red said, cock rippling in Mike's guts. "Ignore 'em."

Mike smacked him on the chest, trying to get his legs under him. "Yeah, after like five minutes when we can't focus 'cause they keep banging on the door," he said. "Lemme up."

Red obligingly let him up, and even caught him when Mike hauled himself off Red's dick too fast and nearly toppled over, vent spasming hard.

The studio was chilly outside of the furnace of Red's embrace. "Gimmie a second," Mike yelled, wobbling over, cock smacking between his legs, bouncing up and down with each step. "What color's your bag?" He could hear Red chuckling behind him.

"Uh, green?" the person shouted through the door.

It was a green bag. He grabbed the bag from the table, unlatched the door and opened it just wide enough to shove an arm through, bent halfway over so his giant fucking dick wasn't on display, and shoved the bag against the person's front. "Oh thank fuck--" the person started, and Mike cut them off: "Okay cool bye!" and slammed the door shut again.

Red was laughing more. "We could'a been fuckin' that whole time," Red said, and when Mike turned around --

_Fuck_, Red was hot. The initial awareness had faded a little as they'd started fucking more regularly, but now -- having Red sprawled back, bare-ass naked in his studio, brought it all back. The light from the side illuminated his features in gold, giving his dark eyes a red-green tinge. His giant tail pressed forward between his legs, with the raw purple-red length of his dick on sharp display, like a pillar jutting out from his vent. One of Red's arms was slung back, the other reaching forward, giant bicep flexed from keeping his dick upright, fingers curled around the base of his shaft.

The sight sent a shockingly-intense pulse of heat through Mike's body. His vent winked, a needy pang going through his guts. He was missing Red's dick being inside him. Juices spilled out of him and drizzled over his swollen lips, and Red must've seen some measure of the desire in Mike's gaze, because he gestured him close and then leaned in and hauled Mike back into his lap wordlessly, sinking his mammoth shaft back into Mike's tail with an easy glide. Red wasn't just hot, he was _hot_, heat billowing off him. Mike groaned, needy, and Red crooned against his throat, hilting himself inside.

"Fuck," Mike groaned. "C'mon, Red, fuck, yeah," he groaned, face pressed against Red's throat. "Fuck me, yeah,"

Red rumbled beneath him. "I like it when y' call my name," he said, hands curled around Mike's sides.

Obligingly: "Fuck, _Red_," Mike said, voice going a little squeaky when Red hauled him down, slamming the full length of his cock into him with a brutal _crack_ of impact. "Red, Red, c'mon, I've been wanting your dick for hours," he said, voice hitching between thrusts. It was an embarrassingly-short time before Mike spasmed around Red's dick, messily squirting as Red hammered ceaselessly up into him. Mike's groans quieted down into shaky whimpers, body exhausted from the long day.

"Fuck, Mikey," Red said, fingers tracing over his jaw, and Mike let out a sleepy whine, nuzzling into the touch.

"C'mon, keep fucking me," he mumbled, cradled across Red's chest, and there was something extremely rewarding about Red continuing to use him: hauling his limp body up and down his cock, groaning and snorting, until Red tipped his head back, bellowing loud, and spent his load into Mike's guts in heavy pulses. Red wasn't spent just from that; he kept rolling his tail, stirring his half-hard cock inside Mike's guts, until he got hard again and started thrusting properly. It was really tempting to give in and fall asleep with Red fucking him, and that thought more than anything else woke Mike up with a jolt. He was getting compromised.

Afterward, Mike hauled himself up on wobbly legs and staggered through the dark studio, tail dripping cum all over the floor. So much for the place not smelling like cum. He was gonna have to mop again before tomorrow afternoon. Red followed behind him, his heat billowing out against Mike's shell.

"Um," Mike said. "That was-- real nice." He put his head against the door with a _thunk_. "Now I gotta do all that again for the next two days."

Red patted his shell supportively. "Suck it up, y' big baby," and Mike laughed a little hysterically.

---

Red didn't show for the other two nights of the art crawl. It was fine. Mike hadn't explicitly invited him, anyway. It was already a kind of big ask, for some... total stranger, apparently, to come hang out with his friends all evening. But this was gonna be a mess.




[CHAPTER 6?]

When things happened, they happened fast. The world had a way of intruding in the fantasy bubble Mike had blown around himself.

"I've got an actionable lead on an armor shard," was how Donny opened the conversation. "I think the instability is starting to show. There's been a lot more movement. I think the curve was off my estimations-- it was semi-stable for longer, but with a sharper ramp-up when it does go. Which it is doing, right now."

So, after the Kuroi Yoroi had been blown up by a giant mystic meteor the last time _somebody_ unwisely assembled all the pieces back in the nineteenth century, its fragments had been scattered across the entire planet. Remnants of that explosion had been located all across the planet, and most notably (if you were Donny and thus obsessed with mystic minutiae) it was shown in 1920 through geomantic analysis that that's where the floating rocks above Alĭ ṣonak (now the state capital) came from: shattered fragments of what had once been the island of Suwanosejima, translocated half the planet away.

So while the Oroku-kai had a stated claim to the entire set of armor, in practice there was a continual process of the shards being unearthed somewhere and quietly shuttled around the mystic memorabilia black market. Now, the collectors were starting to play hot potato with the armor shards. They were always dangerous and valuable, and now that both the danger and the value were fluctuating erratically there was a lot more exchange going on.

"Somebody tried a novel sealing approach on a fragment," Donny explained, pulling up surveillance photographs of a blackened chamber, scorch marks all up the walls. "It did not go well. The uncontained reaction burnt the two sealing masters to a crisp, and the resonance caused a dozen other pieces -- that I'm aware of -- to spontaneously rupture their seals all across the planet. That, to put things colloquially, freaked everybody the fuck out."

Mike leaned in to peer at the monitor. The stone floor had been flash-cooked into glassy obsidian. For the reaction to be that intense they must have been rerouting the mystic energy improperly. Not venting and dissipating. Maybe trying to reroute the excess energy to empower the seal, so it built up and up? Or maybe something else; there was only so much analysis he could do from grainy photos of an explosion.

Donny's hands played across the computer console, bringing up a half-dozen different shards: penthouse gallery, industrial warehouse, isolated mansion, et cetera. "These are the shards I've identified as being the most weakly protected. Most have been shuffled into place recently among collectors with more arrogance than sense.  You should probably be able to swing in completely solo and take any of them without much difficulty." Mike was better at infiltration and Donny was better at management, so a lot of their heists were Mike as the frontman with Donny running command & intel, unless they both needed to be there physically to bring out the heavy guns. Literally.

Donny continued: "But because of that, there's a little time pressure; who knows how long the window of opportunity will last before somebody else grabs them."

"Has that been a problem so far?"

"Well, the Oroku-kai has been a little more aggressive about enforcing their stated claim on the entire armor. Clan historical artifact and all. However, I get the sense they don't particularly know what to do with them, either. There are more than a few wannabe-users getting pieces the old-fashioned way." Murder, usually. People who possessed a shard were already not the friendliest, and that was _before_ the frenzy aura of the armor was stoking their bloodlust and driving them to higher and higher reaches of mania. At least the collectors mostly tried to keep the thing sealed away as a trophy; the people who wanted to actually _use_ it were a whole other level of nasty.

The main issue with tracking down the armor shards was that the primary group that wanted them was mystic Yakuza. Even Donny had had limited success extracting information from their networks. Hence all the in-person spy shit, and the in-progress Tang Shen forgeries. Donny needed something to get a foot in the door, and that would be a good way to get at least a direction pointing at _those_ galleries. When the Oroku-kai got pieces of the armor, as often as not they shuttled them over to Japan, to whatever compound they had for storing the armor, and that was currently beyond Mike & Donny's reach. They were anticipating a big showdown somewhere in the Foot headquarters after they'd mopped up the rest of the shards.

Mike rolled his eyes. "Sure would be convenient if we could just walk up to them and offer to take the thing off their hands."

Donny snorted.

The thing with historical mystical weapons was that a lot of them were not particularly impressive in the post-atomic age. The Gáe Bolg could horribly murder individual people, but it couldn't really compare to a {M95}, much less an incendiary bomb. Caledfwlch had been on display in the Tower of London for centuries since, ultimately, it was just a really good sword. Meanwhile, say, the Ame-no-nuhoko was kept under twelve layers of vaults and seals on 24-hour watch at an undisclosed location somewhere in Japan, because that thing could _move continental plates_. That a series of serial killers had used the currently at-large Muramasa to murder a few hundred people in the past 50 years was small fries. The Ame-no-nuhoko could trigger a volcanic eruption that would _blot out the sun_. Anybody even trying to approach it, no matter the context, was to be shot on sight.

The Kuroi Yoroi, as one of the three pre-modern extraterrestrial mystic artifacts (the other two being the crashed Triceraton starcruiser, Zalum, that made up the foundation for the borough of the same name; and Sh'Okanabo's {gene seed} from the moon) had well-estimated power levels, but everything about it always ended with a big asterisk, since literally no one on the entire planet knew _exactly_ what was up with Kraang mystic artificy. Its overall death count since it was forged {in ~1400} via Oroku Sawaki's occult pact with an ancient Kraang was somewhere in the mid-to-upper 300,000s. Not exactly the kind of thing you loaned out. There was a reason why the people who wanted them were mostly organized crime, ruthless murderer types.

"Personally, I'd recommend this one first," Donny said, metal limbs clacking against one of the monitors. Held in a Foot clan warehouse, sealed away in a giant chunk of obsidian and wrapped in talisman-draped chains that were constantly fuming. "Should be easy to extract, and I think its harmonics would fill a gap in the armature's spectrum. The test working with Shelldon revealed some serious deficits in its capacity."

The mystic armature spanned up Donny's spine, from base of the tail to the nape of the neck, and it branched out across the shoulders in something like a T-shape. From Donny's shoulders, arms of light were starting to sprout. They were the characteristic so-bright-it-looked-white purple of Donny's mystic energy, forming a second set of arms that Donny could, apparently, articulate with no extra effort. The mystic-energy arms could, and did, overlap with Donny's flesh-and-blood arms, and watching biceps and forearms smoothly move through each other was a little bizarre. The new arms were faded, translucent at most angles, but at this stage it was clearly just a matter of having more power. This was in addition to the metal arms erupting from Donny's more mundane cybershell; those were old hat by now. Donny had gotten way too into Invader ZIM as a kid, was Mike's opinion.

("You can finally achieve your life's ambition," Mike had said dryly, when the arms had first started coming in after they'd reforged the third shard into the armature. "Using two computers at once." Donny had scoffed and smacked him in the face with a glowing hand.)

Ensouling Shelldon had been the first for-real live test of the armature's power. It was coming up on a year ago now; Mike was debating the comedy value of throwing Shelldon a "happy 1st soul-day" party. The _traditional_ method for providing a soul -- well, human sacrifice was one of them, but the only one that actually worked well at creating anything other than weapons and murder golems was this nightmarishly-complex 256-person, 16-wall array formation, the _Heaven-Provoking Samsara Apotheosis Formation_, which failed completely more often than it worked, and when it _did_ work usually ended up with about half of the casters dead or permanently disabled from having their souls shredded apart to construct a new one for the target. With Donny's prototype armature, they'd done it themselves, just Donny and Mike, and they'd both already regrown the slivers of soul they'd flensed off to give Shelldon a soul seed.

(Shelldon had been less interested in the, 'caught up eternally in the cycle of life and death' part of having a soul, and more excited to get to use mystic powers finally. Teenagers. It had been very touching when he'd asked Mike to contribute to his soul, though.)

So in Mike's mind, that was already a profound success. Donny had scowled at the energy recordings in the aftermath and immediately started complaining about inefficiencies. The armature was mostly just infused palladium, with some chelated mercury amalagam for its mystic harmonics. But down near Donny's spine were the bits of reforged mystic metal they'd repurposed from the Kuroi Yoroi. Mystic Kraang bioalloy was basically the perfect material for this, and there was only a single source of that on the planet.

"Mm," Mike said. "How's Shelldon, anyway?"

"Grounded," Donny said, with a little severity. "_Someone_ failed to inform me he was routinely sneaking out. When he, _and you_, know full well how dangerous it is for all of us if he's caught while he's still unable to mask his mystic abilities!"

Mike shrugged. "I figured if he's old enough to sneak out, he's old enough to deal with the consequences."

"I'm not exactly looking forward to having the assassination talk with him," Donny said. "So don't traumatize my kid for fun."

"_He_ was the one having fun," Mike said, a little mulishly.

Anyway, so, with each piece of the Kuroi Yoroi they cursebroke and reforged, the remaining pieces got a little less stable. The armor was getting upset. Pieces that had been lost for over a century, since the armor was obliterated by a mystic meteor c. 1877 and the shards teleported across the planet, were turning up all over the place. It was trying very hard to reassemble itself. Which was great news for _them_; fewer archaeological digs and more getting shards neatly delivered to New York City as part of the underground trade in dangerous mystic artifacts, but it was probably bad news for literally everybody else in the trade, since they didn't actually know what they were doing. Mike and Donny were doing them a profound favor by taking the armor off their hands. Not that telling them that would do any good; it wasn't like historical armor-seekers had {comported themselves particularly well} when they'd got it. There was a reasonable amount of suspicion. Plus, they _were_ using it to elevate Donny to having god-like powers.

"Anyway, fine, I'll get your armor piece," Mike said. "It'll be something to do, at least."