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No-Alt Insurance

Part 8

For Taiko

By Draconicon

As would be the case in many such life-threatening situations, the appropriate response was given.

"FUCK!"

Nor yanked on the controls at random, barely having more than a guess as to what any of the buttons actually did. There was no joystick as there might have been in a helicopter or a plane, nor was there any obvious button that said 'press this to do that.' All he had were his best guesses, the little bit of information that Lil had managed to give him before he left, and - hopefully - more luck than he'd had since the start of this whole mess.

The time machine dropped into the vortex as he pressed the first glowing button, and barely in time for all that. A great clawed hand stabbed through the space he'd been in, and the buffeting winds of the vortex around him spun the time machine around and around again, leaving him clinging to the console in the center of the cylinder for dear life.

His feet came off the ground as he climbed this way and that across the rounded center of the time machine, hitting whatever buttons looked like they'd help. Some of them lit up as he watched, and out of the desperate, delusional hope that there was some sentience to the machine, he hit them like a kid playing a horrible, deadly game of Simon Says.

Tap, tap, tap he went, the spinning cylinder darting this way and that, and a holographic representation of the world outside showed him flitting about like a hummingbird, a drunken one that was barely ahead of the person that was trying to slap it out of the sky.

Nor wanted to scream, but the mule's air supply was more devoted to getting him around the console than it was to giving voice to his fear at that point in time. He dragged himself around the rim, hitting the latest button -

Too late, this time. The great flickering multi-tiger managed to hit him.

The blow didn't feel so bad at first, barely more than the beat of a stronger-than-average person against a door...But then there was another...and another...and another, each one coming in faster and faster succession until there was almost no time between the beats of the blow hitting the ship at all.

He finally managed to swing the ship out from under the attack, panting as it slowed its spinning. He managed to get his feet under him again, and he tapped the console again.

"Playback," Nor said, hoping that it could work with voice commands.

It could. The hologram showed what had happened. The actual hit hadn't been that bad, but just as before, it was as if a hundred, a thousand, more of the blows came speeding through time, hitting him in rapid succession. It was as if he was in a game, and rather than the single blow from an enemy hitting him and leaving him a chance to recover, it was as if the metaphorical i-frames had been turned off, the hits continuing and getting worse as long as even a portion of the tiger's limbs were in contact with him.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

Throwing the time machine into another spin, he darted around the tiger's limb, pulling the ship into a tailspin that drove him further down, dropping past the level of the giant's arms and down towards his waist.

Gotta get out of here, fast, but where...

He had to find the exit, but he had no idea where it was. Holt was completely silent, but he didn't dare try something like that. Not now, not when he had already blown up all the other time machines. The human might just find a way to break free of his cock addiction and fight back if he showed up and revealed that set-back. No, he needed to figure this out on his own.

And he had to do it fast. Lil needed the time machine as intact as possible, and that last hit had nearly ruptured the outer casing of the time machine. It was one thing to show up with a computer system that was ready to travel through time, it was another thing to show up with nothing but the computer system, with the chassis completely destroyed.

Priorities.

"Download navigation system!"

"Downloading navigation system."

"Thank god..."

Another surging attack was coming, and Nor wrenched the ship in another direction, darting for the space between the giant tiger's legs. He swooped down, feeling his face stretching out along the sides of his muzzle in the process, groaning as he felt the g-forces hitting him hard. He groaned, leaning his head back, barely able to hold onto the console table in the process.

He slid through the gap -

WHAM!

Only for another attack to hit the top of the time machine, sending it spiraling off into the vortex.

"What the fuck?! I wasn't - how did he - not fair!"

The machine showed him what had happened. The tiger's tail had come sweeping out, striking in the place where he would have been in two seconds. It had struck, disappeared, and -

"Is he hitting me from the future?! How the - come on!"

With a valiant effort, he managed to stabilize the ship before it could completely fall into the vortex and slip past the dead zone that was the vault. However, now the tiger was between him and the way out, and he had no idea of how he was going to get by that.

Come on, come on...

"Um...scan for exits from the vortex?"

"Please clarify your request."

"Oh, for the love of..."

He wasn't a scientist. He didn't know how this worked, or what the jargon was. Nor groaned, tapping buttons that lit up as fast as he could as the next attack came down, more than three dozen tails trying to slap him out of the sky at once.

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

"Please define here."

"Define - are you that stupid?!"

"I was not designed with a brain, merely to respond to orders. Please define here."

"I'm going to die here, aren't I?"

"You may be doomed to die in the time vortex, yes, sir."

"WHY DO YOU NEED ME TO DEFINE HERE WHEN YOU KNOW WHERE WE ARE?!"

"Oh, you wish to get out of HERE."

"YES! GET ME OUT!"

"Mapping escape trajectory. Estimated time until completion: thirty seconds."

"GAH!"

Nor barely avoided the tails, the cylinder rolling along one of them as it shot towards the base of the tiger's spine, and then up along his back. For a moment or two, Nor thought that he might have found the big guy's blind spot.

And then, he found the other tiger staring down at him from behind. Cloned. Again.

"Oh, for the love of - nope!"

Throwing the giant spinning rolling pin of a time machine into a bounce, he managed to avoid the hand dropped to try and slow him down, going back in the air and flying as fast as he could.

"Doesn't this thing have any defenses?"

"Negative, sir."

"Oh, wonderful..."

Ping.

"Navigation system downloaded, sir."

Well, at least he would be able to bring all the maps and such to Lil, even if the machine itself was broken down and destroyed in the process. That had to be worth something, even if it wasn't the machine itself. That was the reason they were after it, wasn't it? And to keep anyone else from being able to use it?

He hoped that was the case.

Shoving the info-stick into the same pocket that John-James's journal had been in, he went back to hitting the buttons, flying the ship around the limbs that seemed to multiply more and more with each passing second. He dodged one arm, two, four, sixteen, but the number kept going up exponentially, making it harder and harder to find his way out.

The seconds seemed to tick by impossibly slowly, and he wondered if there was a time death going on around him even now, if this tiger, this Erwin, was trying to stop him from getting out by killing his ability to move through time, space, and everything else.

Nor was on the verge of breaking down when the console beeped at him again.

"Escape trajectory found."

"Launch!"

"Command not recognized."

"Oh for the love of -[/i]"

BANG!

The cylinder went flying off-course again, knocked around like it was little more than a fly. One wall caved in with the impression of a finger against it, a giant finger that should have poked through, the wall coming to a point like the end of a claw reaching for him, stopping just in front of his face.

The mule meeped slightly at that, and he barely kept control of his bladder, as well.

The buffeting storms of the tiger's attacks were getting worse, and he couldn't keep up with them anymore. He was being slapped every which way, the walls caving in, the systems running the ship starting to short out. Sparks were flying from the console, from the walls, from the ceiling, from everything.

The only thing still working were the engines and the hologram. There was nothing left in the voice commands, nothing to respond to him as he screamed. But...

But he could see the way out.

There was a single hole in the vortex around him, something that led to somewhere else. He could only hope that it was Lil's universe, or out to the Novus Ager that he had been in. Anything, anything at all, was better than being stuck in here with the angry time tiger for the rest of his life.

Nor slapped every button on the console, and he felt the ship go into what could only be called emergency burn, shooting through the time vortex at full speed and then some. He was slammed back against the far wall, no longer able to reach for the console, and the g-forces kept him pinned there, not letting him up, not even letting him bend a finger.

But he was free. He was almost there, and -

SMACK!

Another bang from outside, and one of the walls ripped free. Nor watched the panel come loose, saw the tiger in the distance. Time left, and his android parts were put to work, restoring him even as the time stream tried to age him. He felt the years rushing out, then coming back, then rushing out again. They were constantly sliding out, and his bio-android features were barely able to keep up, his internal power supply already running low, the battery beeping at him in warning about the whole thing coming apart.

And then, then, he was through. The tiger face disappeared, and he...

He was in...outer...space...

Fuck...

Blackness closed in, and his eyes closed slowly, drifting off into the endless void. The last thing he heard was the soft beep, beep, beep of some machine drifting over him.

Ting, ting. Ting, ting.

The sound of metal on metal, he realized. That meant that either the afterlife was a chop-shop of some sort, or he wasn't dead. Nor chose to believe that he wasn't dead, and tried to focus on the good things that could mean. Either he had been dug out of the depths of the void by some supernatural creature, or there had been someone waiting for him on the other side of the time vortex.

The mule groaned, slowly sitting up. He realized that he was on a bed, a sort of rough pallet that had been covered by a few sheets. Obviously not a well-off place, then. Scavengers, maybe?

He turned, and he breathed the biggest sigh of relief that he'd been able to let loose over the course of the last week. Standing there by the wrecked hulk of the time machine was Lil, and the Great Dane was slowly circling the machine. Nor groaned, flopping back down, the purple mule smiling to himself.

Okay...okay. I did it. I got through...I did it. He found me. I did it. It's done. I did it. I did it. I did it.

Nor had no idea that there had been that much tension built up through his body over the course of the last few weeks, nor had he understood just how much pain he had been in from it. The sudden release of tension through his muscles, the sudden relaxation that followed, was more than he had ever expected from completing a mission. In the past, Lil had offered him pleasure for when he was done, special roleplays, fun times with the Dane in bed. This time, he didn't think anything that he got would measure up to the raw relief of just being able to go home again.

He was still getting used to the feeling of being all relaxed when he realized that he was hearing disgruntled, almost annoyed noises from his boyfriend. And that...that concerned him. He slowly sat up again, looking across the room once more.

In the chop-shop of a room that they were both in, Lil looked...unhappy. Admittedly, all the halogen bulbs around were throwing the Great Dane's face into a different sort of light than he was used to seeing the austere man in, but that didn't mean that it wasn't there. The way that the canine's face was pulled down made him think that something was wrong, and the purple mule sat up again, groaning as he did.

"Um...Lil?"

"You're awake."

He winced slightly at the distracted tone in his boyfriend's voice. He was back to obsessing again, focused on something else. Go figure, though. It was a bit par for the course. Still, he managed to push himself to his feet, walking over to stand beside the large dog.

"Um, is everything okay?"

"What happened?"

"I..."

The mule rubbed the back of his neck.

"I know it's going to sound stupid, but I think there was a giant time-controlling tiger underneath Novus Ager."

"..." Lil slowly turned to look back at him. "A time-controlling tiger?"

"Erwin. His name was Erwin. And...he didn't really like what I was doing."

"...Fascinating. I will have to build a file on him. Do you remember him very well?"

"Well enough."

"Then we'll talk about him tomorrow," Lil said, looking back at the machine. "He was responsible for the damage?"

"Yeah. It's not...too bad, is it? I did get the navigation system downloaded, and I managed to get all the maps that it had. Just in case it got too beaten up."

"No, no, the internal functions are working well enough; they responded to my probes quite efficiently, and the information I found in your pouch is easily readable."

There was something that his boyfriend wasn't telling him, and the longer that the positives went on, the worse that the mule started to feel. But for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what the problem could be. He had done the right thing as far as he knew. He had gotten everything that they needed out of the time machine before any real damage could occur. He had the maps, he had the central programming that it ran on...

Lil looked back at him, gesturing at the wall that had been beaten in by one of Erwin's claws, at the way that it had almost punched right through the core.

"The core isn't the problem. The chassis, on the other hand..."

"...You..."

"I'm afraid the one thing that you managed to save was the one thing that I had no interest in."

"..."

"The chassis is made of a flexible time-resistant alloy, something that shrugs off the worst of the effects of time dilation, yes, but also can be used for a myriad of other purposes. It has the potential to uplift all the bits of tech that we currently have."

"And..."

"And you broke it. Or rather, Erwin did."

Nor shook his head. Even though Lil had obviously tried to soften that last bit, the realization that he had managed to screw up the whole thing, that he had managed to completely fail to get what his boyfriend needed had shaken him. Nor stumbled backwards a step, then another, and then fell right on his ass.

All the tears from the stress of the mission, all the whimpers and shakes that he'd forced down in the last part of the mission, finally came bubbling up. He hugged his legs to his chest, his knees grinding against his torso, and he whimpered as he leaned his head against his legs.

"I...I fucked up the whole thing, then."

"...No."

"Yes, yes, I did. I tried to protect the wrong thing. I didn't get - I fucked up. I fucked up."

Nor was on the verge of beating his head against his legs when the Dane knelt down beside him, gently lifting him up. It was hard for him to allow the other man to unfold him, but he did. It was harder to walk, but Lil gently tugged him along, supporting him the whole way so that he barely had to drag his legs along.

His boyfriend sat him down in the bed again, the two of them sitting on the pallet. Nor pulled back, but Lil gently gripped him by the ankle, shaking his head.

"You didn't screw up."

"I let everything that mattered get smashed to kingdom come."

"Yes, but you still brought it back."

"Hmmph. How much is it going to take to fix it?"

"A lot," Lil admitted, "but not as much as it would have taken to get it in the first place. You did what I needed you to do, and I couldn't ask more than that."

"You could ask that I got it done right."

"I could ask for the moon, Nor. And knowing you, you would have tried to get the impossible. And this time, you basically did."

The Dane gently stroked his leg, pulling his foot into the dog's lap. Nor tried to keep up the moping, but it was rather hard to do that when there was a massage going on, particularly one that was digging right into his sore feet and helping him relax in a way that the world had seemed hell-bent on keeping him from doing for all too long.

He sighed under his breath, shaking his head a few times as the relaxation crept up his limb. Letting his arms fall a bit, he looked back at his boyfriend.

"Did I really manage to help at all?"

"You did something that would have cost me much more, Nor, if I had tried to do it," Lil admitted. "I could have made it happen, perhaps, but it would have been riskier, and it would have been far more costly. You...you did what nobody else could have done on their own, and while I admit that it would have been better for it to come back whole...the fact that you returned at all gives us a place to start.

"Not to mention the tiger...I will have to...take steps with him."

There was a slight chill in the air, and the purple mule shivered a bit as he heard the villain side of his boyfriend in those words. There was always the possibility of Lil going a bit...rougher on people that hurt those that he cared about. There were very few things on the list that the Dane did care about, but when someone threatened them...

He still remembered what had happened to Nemean in his world after the whole competition mission to get the goods back from the lion. Lil might have lost that bet, but he had given the lion a little 'present' before they were forced to take a different tack. The Dane hadn't told him what had occurred, but Nemean hadn't been seen since. He wasn't dead, but he had been...handled. 'Rebuked', as Lil had said.

He imagined Lil and Erwin having it out, and he could only see chaos erupting from that. He honestly wasn't sure which side would win, but knowing his boyfriend...

Knowing his boyfriend, he still didn't know if he could actually cancel out what was going on with Erwin's power. There was too much chaos there, too much insanity, and...and he doubted that it would be something so easily cancelled out.

Nevertheless, he allowed himself to settle into the soft, gentle rubs of those thumbs along the bottom of his foot, closing his eyes. He allowed himself to stop worrying, to let the tension in his body start to slip away. It was good. Good to be with his boyfriend, good to be able to close his eyes and relax, and good to be able to feel more himself again.

No more insane Novus Ager.

No more utterly horny villains.

No more mean tigers that were trying to rip him through time.

Just...just the two of them...

He started to lie down, but Lil kept up the massage, rubbing up to his toes and then down again. The Great Dane leaned in, kissing the digits softly, his lips working down along the arch of the foot, moving towards the sole. He kissed over the ball of the mule's foot, and then along the lifted arch, and all the way down to the heel.

As he did, those massaging hands ran along Nor's calf, rubbing the muscles in the back, and then further up. He groaned as the knots in his thighs, minor as they were, were finally undone by his boyfriend's touch, almost like the tension was stolen away.

Considering what Lil was, he wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

He opened one eye again as the canine leaned in, his hands resting on the mule's thighs. He chuckled a little bit at how close they had come to a more intimate touch, shaking his head.

"Did you miss me that much?"

"Would you believe me if I said yes?"

"I'd believe you more than the rest of the world would."

"Then yes."

They leaned together, sharing a kiss, and then Nor sat up, pulling his Dane in close. They nuzzled one another, holding each other, pressing themselves against one another. For a moment, at least, hero and villain, crime-fighter and thief, were forgotten, and they were just themselves once more.

Nor savored the moment, feeling his boyfriend pressed against him as tightly as he could imagine, and he hugged Lil as much as he could bring himself to hug the dignified man. He knew that the other male didn't go into such displays of affection as readily, knew that this was something that was being done for him more than anything else, but for that reason, he wanted to show that he valued it all the more as a result.

As they squeezed each other, it was hard not to think about the fact that they were also crotch to crotch, allowing them to grind on each other ever so slightly. The sexuality of it was not lost on either of them, either, and they looked one another in the eye.

It wasn't the right time to go for a full rut, Nor knew, but he couldn't help but reach down, giving it a soft fondle. His Lil, and that lovely shaft.

"Do you want to..." he asked.

"That depends. Do you want to?" Lil asked.

"I don't want to think about what happened to me."

"Would me being on top make you think of that?"

He thought about all that he had gone through, from the gangbang to the body possession, to Holt throwing him around. He knew that there was a way for him to get past that, but he also knew that it was going to be a while before he was that comfortable with someone else basically controlling his body again. A little shiver ran down his spine, and Nor slowly shook his head.

"I don't think so. Not tonight."

"Soon, though."

"Yeah."

"Then let's just...relax."

The mule's shaft filled the Dane's hand, and the pair of them sat together on the pallet. Nor gently eased his boyfriend's cock out of his pants, and they fondled each other. Not hard, not in great enthusiasm or sudden lust, but more just as this way of being together, of touching each other and knowing one another's body.

They sat looking at the time machine. Nothing needed to be said about the way that it had been busted up. They would be able to make that better, make it something that Lil could use for...whatever purposes that he wanted. But that was another thing. As his cock started rising, Nor turned to face the Dane again.

"Lil?"

"Hmm?"

"I want to ask for something."

"What's that?"

"When that's working again, I want to take a vacation."

"Oh, really, now?"

"Yeah. You and me. Somewhere where we can be more normal. Where you can stop doing all this plotting and planning. Somewhere where you're not a Lord, where I'm not a hero. Where we can just be on vacation together."

"..."

"Lil."

"What?" the Dane said, looking away.

"I know that silence, and I know that stare. You had plans, and you were going to just run off."

"Not just...run off. I just -"

"Lil." Nor gently squeezed at the base of the dog's shaft, holding him right at the bottom of his cock, keeping it throbbing. "I need you to be with me, actually with me, for a while. Please. I just did all of this for you. Do this for me."

"..."

"Please."

"...As long as nothing important requires the time machine, I'll do my best to make it work. That's all I can promise."

Nor nodded. He supposed that was all he could push for. Part of dating someone like Lil, he supposed. There was something inherently different between the two of them, almost like how he imagined there was something hugely different between Erwin and everyone else in Novus Ager. The tiger existed on a different sort of playing field, knew more about the universe, could manipulate it to a greater level than anyone else there.

Lil was like that, too, and while it meant that the two of them had some insanely amazing opportunities, it meant that they were...disconnected, in a way. They had to work to stay together, to make their relationship work, to not take anything for granted.

Or at least, Nor had to push Lil to not take anything for granted. The Dane could be affectionate, but as he had just been reminded, his thoughts and priorities were divided to the nth degree. It took a great deal to hold his focus, and there were times where Nor worried if he'd ever be enough to actually keep it.

It's a good thing that we're open about it, I guess, he thought, shaking his head.

They went back to gently stroking each other, touching one another, savoring the feelings of their bodies. Soon, they had to turn towards each other, forehead to forehead, their cocks touching head to head. It was a gentle bit of fun, nothing more than a little bit of teasing, but they were happy. They were happy together.

Stroke, stroke, stroke, pulling closer together until their shafts were measured up against one another, Nor's throbbing over Lil's, their balls touching gently. The old joke came back, and he chuckled. Lil just smiled, not asking why.

They thrust against each other, Lil's hand at the base, Nor's hand at the tip, holding them together as they thrust, ground, thrust against one another. They tilted their heads for a soft kiss, but it was a soft thing, a quick thing as they savored the pleasure as much as they did.

Thrust, grind, rub, thrust. They were dripping, they were together, they were grinding and moaning.

Suddenly, Nor pushed forward, and Lil let him. They laid together, mule on top of dog. He looked Lil right in the eye, and he said something that he hadn't actually said to Lil before.

"I want you."

"You changed your mind?"

"No, not like that."

He slid forward a little, balls to balls, then cock to cock. He shook his head as the sex was distracting, but not unpleasant.

"I want you. We've been together for a while, but I want you to know. I want you. I've been with...a lot...but you..."

Lil didn't say anything, but the Dane did slowly reach out, pulling him into a tight embrace. One that wrapped around his hips as much as his back, admittedly, but one that still held them together.

"I want you, too."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Thank you."

They rolled together, the soft frotting continuing as they held each other. Nor was still shaky, still not quite himself, but he was slowly getting better, slowly feeling a little more secure, both in himself and in this relationship.

They were going to make it. They were going to be better. There was no doubt about that, and there was every chance to believe that they'd be okay.

The two of them huffed and grunted as they got closer, their cocks sliming one another up, grinding between each other. Nor held them, then Lil, then Nor again as they changed positions and rolled together, keeping the slow, teasing, friendly intimacy together for as long as they could, intentionally edging rather than immediately going over the edge. The soft smell of their play filled the room, overwhelming the mechanical smell around them, right up until the point of orgasm.

They came together, and they covered one another with enough gunk that neither knew just who was soaked with what. They laughed, and then got up, with Lil allowing him the chance to have first shower. Nor was happy to take it, but not alone, and pulled his boyfriend along with him for a second round.

The End