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You relish each chance you have to play with his hair. You play with your own all the time, despite the danger of going blind, but it’s quite, quite different with his: it’s heavy-glossy-thick, water-straight, completely black even under bright lights--yours sparks purple even in the black bits when he shines a bright light on you to check on your horntip--utterly biddable hair, unlike your wavy annoying mess which needs a hell of a lot of work even to look artfully disheveled rather than just gross.
And in playing with his hair you are so careful of his ruined horn, running your fingers around it the way cropgrowers run their plows round dangerous outcrops, careful not to touch, not to snag, not to hurt. Because you are so careful of the broken horn you are hesitant to touch its whole counterpart, and when you do by accident (by accident, honestly, you actually swear) you are at first desperately contrite because he shudders all over and he makes a helpless deep sound in his chest and you are so afraid you’ve hurt him.
You stop what you’re doing at once and wrap your arms round his neck and kiss the back of his shoulder. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to--”
“No,” he says, and his hand rises to cover your clasped hands under his chin. “No. It’s...it’s quite all right. You could...continue doing that. If you wished.”
All of a sudden you realize the shaky hoarseness in his voice is not hurt but astonished, helpless desire, and it shocks cold through you like a hard dose of seawater to the gills: oh. Oh. Oh. How...wonderful.
And so you unclasp your hands and you stroke your way back round the sharp angles of his jaw and you sink your fingers into the heaviness of his hair, playing now, not combing, rubbing tiny circles with your fingertips, loving the weight of the black strands as they pour over your knuckles, and you take your time working up to the proud curve of the horn above his left ear and eyebrow. Like yours, it’s deep rust-red at the base shading through vivid orange to a bright gold at the tip; like yours it’s velvety-soft to the touch, warm, hard but vulnerable, and you fancy you can feel the thrum of the blood inside it as you first stroke gently with your fingertips, long careful touches from the root to the wonderful hollow beneath his pointed conical tip, and then, harder, as you drift faint fluttering kisses after your fingertips.
Equius has lost the rhythm of his breathing about halfway up the first stroke and you really can feel the powerful pressure of his heart all along the points where your body touches his; you’re settled on the couch, he’s on the floor between your knees, you’re leaning over to breathe warmth down the bright shaft of his horn. You can feel the shuddering urgency of his breathing, the not-quite-controlled heave of ribs between your knees, the pounding of his heart, and he’s trying so hard to be quiet, so hard, and you realize suddenly with a bizarre thrill that you are harder than you have ever been and for what, for playing with his hair and touching his horn, jegus fuck you are utterly and completely lost in retardation for Equius Zahhak and deliriously happy for it.
You aren’t even sure what you’re going to do next but your body seems to have worked it out just fine and without thinking at all you bend your head and very, very gently, very carefully, take the tip of his horn in your mouth. He makes a desperate breathless keening noise you have never heard from him. Instead of making you wonder if it’s too much, you smile around him, and you let your tongue-tip draw a spiral over the apex of the cone-tip and then explore the perfect little valley underneath its flange.
He is shivering now in long rolling waves like combers breaking on a beach and you think you might explode fairly shortly but you are not going to rush this, you are not, and you lick a finger and let it take the place of your tongue stroking the tip of his horn while you kiss your way back to its base, the deep red newest-growth, velvet-soft and blood-warm beneath your lips. Distantly you are aware that his breath is coming harder than ever, strangled gasps, and you let your other hand--the one that is not busy with his horntip--slide down his arm and capture his hand. It hurts how hard he grips your fingers but right now you do not care a tiny little bit, and you guide his hand where it really, really wants to go, under the waistband of his shorts, where it is most urgently required--and, well, you might as well be of at least tacit assistance there as well, it’s the least you can do. Oh God he is so hot under your fingers, fever-hot, slick, the chill of his blood utterly forgotten in the brilliant immediacy of what you are doing to him.
You can tell he’s nearing the end of his tolerance for this kind of nonsense, you can feel it in the tremors running through him like little wonderful seizures, and you decide to take pity and you move to take his horn back into your mouth as deep as you can go, your own bulge bright-hot-hard against his back, and you suck--and just, just when you can tell he is almost about to fall to pieces entirely you let the very glassy-tip-points of your teeth ghost along the swell of the horn up to its pointed head, and he cries out and comes in your hand, in your arms, in your embrace.
In hindsight you should probably have made some sort of preparations before you started messing with his headgear, because now there is somewhat of a mess not only in shades of ultramarine but royal violet which you know is going to stain the hell out of the couch and the floor if you don’t do something about it. Right now you’re leaned against his back gasping and dizzy with sweetness, feeling him fighting for breath just as you are, and you nudge back a sweaty wing of his hair and kiss the side of his throat.
“Got...carried away,” you manage. “Sorry. Irresponsible.”
Equius manages to capture your hand-that-is-not-down-his-pants with his own, and kisses your fingertips, lips still fever-hot. You can feel his breath in warm puffs over your skin. “Ngh,” he says, and clears his throat and tries again. “--You may feel free to become carried away in just that fashion whenever you like,” he manages. “Although I have to admit towels might be advisable beforehand.”
You laugh against his neck and wrap yourself more tightly around him. “I will keep that firmly in mind, my dearest love. The, ah. The same and I hardly need mention this goes for you, a course.”
Equius does that deep rumbling thing you think is a purr, even if he’d never admit it, and twists his head to be able to kiss you properly--and while a moment ago you thought you were done for the evening, something about that kiss throws your certainty into question--and then his hand is drifting up to find the hard curves of your own horns, and now all bets are off.