2025-05-21 13:01:44 ¶ ●

unnerving proximity. also on bsky

The steam in Saren’s private ablutions chamber was a living thing, thick with the cloying sweetness of Terran sandalwood warring with the sharper, ozonic tang the Rogue Trader always seemed to exude – a scent that now felt dangerously close, almost a second skin upon Heinrix himself. He sat ramrod straight on the attendant’s plasteel stool, its chill a contrast to the heat radiating from von Aurastor’s body so near behind him as he worked.
Stripped of his ostentatious greatcoat, Saren’s forearms were bare, a surprising landscape of old scars – pale lines stark against void-tanned skin – moving with an unnerving, focused grace as the straight razor, a sliver of hungry silver, whispered against Heinrix’s bared throat. Each pass of the blade was a drawn-out moment of absolute vulnerability, making his own skin crawl with a complex, unwelcome current that was equal parts dread and a shameful, thrumming awareness he refused to name, leaving him to wonder if this, too, was just another of the Lord Captain’s meticulously crafted games.