Chapter Text
Why am I so obsessed with making Kazuha the bottomest bottom to ever bottom in Teyvat? I’m honestly not sure. As I said in the original version of this chapter, I love him, but he has got these absolute gap-year-guy-being-obnoxious-to-everybody-he-meets-while-he-backpacks-through-Europe vibes. And it makes me want to wreck him!
This started as an April Fool's Day gag over on The Proxy, a complete departure from the trials of Childe to switch focus to his predecessor in Ayato and Thoma's version of a polyamorous relationship with Kazuha. The April Fool's gag ended on a cliffhanger; this version has some new additions, and is going to get another chapter to finish it out. But now that it's its own story, I can give it accurate tags and all the other related malarkey.
As ever: these characters are fun and interesting, but this is not necessarily best BDSM practice! Thoma is evil! No one will ever be in genuine peril, but tread lightly and do your research before trying at home!
“But that’s what I’m saying,” Thoma’s voice was beginning to fray just a little with impatience, which was exciting. “You’re not actually helpless.”
Kazuha shrugged modestly. “I admit that I have abilities which others do not—“
“Forget the Visions. Put aside the Visions. I am tired of talking about Visions all the time.” Thoma exhaled sharply through his nose, and then very, very gently put down his tea. Kazuha watched his hands with great interest. He knew Thoma had learned the gestures of tea ceremonies slowly, second-hand. He could put on those practiced motions, but it required effort. If he was making the effort now, then it was because he was trying to look calm.
Kazuha wasn’t sure if he was trying to look calm because he was trying to keep their conversation friendly, or if he was afraid of the consequences of losing his temper at a friend of the leader of the Kamisato Clan.
The idea that Thoma was thinking about that even now, even if the privacy of his own bedroom, sitting with his own invited guest drinking tea with his own tea set, made Kazuha's stomach flip uncomfortably. Every time he thought he understood Thoma a little better, something else crept up and threw his perception of the situation head over heels.
Hence today’s exercise.
“Look,” Thoma’s voice had dropped several notes in his efforts to stay calm. “You make this big thing about wandering the country, sleeping outside, having no money, being reliant on the kindness of strangers.”
“And friends,” Kazuha put in gently. Winding Thoma up to finally learn a little more about what made him tick had absolutely been his aim today, but he hoped they would still be friends by the end of this conversation.
“But they’re not strangers,” Thoma continued firmly. “They know you.”
“They don’t know me.”
“They think they know you. You have a name.”
Kazuha smiled. “It’s not worth much anymore.”
“But it means you’re not actually a stranger. You are not an anonymous blank slate drifting on the wind—“
(Kazuha noted the dreadful way Thoma mixed up his metaphors when he was upset.)
“—at the total mercy of the elements. You don’t think people around here take some pride in being able to help someone from a famous family?”
“Then I am at the mercy of their pride,” Kazuha shrugged. “And not everyone feels compelled to help a nobleman who may have once had power over them, and now does not. Some people see that as an opportunity to do quite the opposite.”
“That’s still different than being anonymous,” Thoma insisted.
Kazuha pressed his lips together while he inhaled deeply, trying to ground himself with the scent of the room and their surroundings. The steam of the tea cut across the faint taste of the lavender Kazuha knew Thoma used in his cleaning. Outside, a soft breeze was pushing pollen across the yard.
“If you went somewhere else,” Thoma continued, “somewhere completely new without a single connection and started from there, then maybe I’d be a little more impressed with this,” he gestured towards Kazuha generally, “free spirit philosophy, but that’s not your situation.”
There were many different ideas clattering against each other in Thoma’s words. Kazuha picked one.
“You feel that if my situation was more like yours was when you first came here, I would think differently.”
Thoma flushed bright scarlet and was quiet for several moments.
Finally, he said, “Maybe.”
“And that’s why you dislike me.”
“I like you!”
“You seem to,” Kazuha agreed. He knew he was pushing this too far, but he also wanted to be sure. “You’ve certainly never been unkind. Do you feel somewhat compelled to? The name, after all.”
“I like you,” Thoma repeated firmly.
“And Ayato likes me, and can be seen with me, and that can’t be easy either.”
Thoma rolled his eyes. “I can be jealous of all that and still like you.”
Kazuha took a long, slow sip of his tea.
Finally, he said, “I probably need to take more time to think about this. I suppose I won’t know the answer until I do as you say and travel.”
Thoma looked up, startled. “Travel where?”
Kazuha shrugged.
“When? Does Ayato know? It’s not soon, is it, he—“
Kazuha gave a soft chuckle. “Oh dear, that’s not what I meant. I was just trying to say that you may have a point.”
The concession didn’t seem to please Thoma at all. “I wasn’t saying that to chase you off.”
Thoma had settled back on his haunches, clearly still uneasy. Kazuha felt guilty about that. It had taken so much work to get Thoma to speak his mind and now he looked like he was regretting it. This wasn’t progress.
Kazuha could not think of a single time he had seen Thoma truly and openly express an opinion, or a situation in which he could done so without severe consequences. The picture was becoming clearer and clearer, why Thoma still seemed uncomfortable with him at times. Kazuha had little to no power at all, and yet still had more than Thoma could claim.
“I know,” Kazuha smiled at him. “But it’s an interesting idea nonetheless and I think I should consider it. As you say, I probably don’t quite know what it is to be truly helpless.”
It was time to change the subject, and Kazuha had some idea of how to tease Thoma back into a better frame of mind. He put down his tea and reached for his arm. “Perhaps,” he said slowly, keeping his gaze low and demure, “I need to be shown.”
Kazuha wanted to turn to watch what Thoma was doing behind him, but his head felt very heavy on his neck at this angle. It seemed easier to hang loose and let himself dangle.
Thoma had removed the tie from his hair, and now hanks of it fell about his face like a curtain. To be honest, that alone had planted more trepidation in Kazuha’s stomach than any rope or position or tie could.
But the dread had soon melted away. It had taken Thoma a pleasingly short amount of time to produce rope, assemble the rigging, strip Kazuha of his clothing, and weave him into a fibrous net hanging just a few precarious feet above the ground. Kazuha felt at ease in all this. Thoma was very steady when it came to rope work, and Kazuha adored ropes.
Never one to settle for basic ties at the wrists and ankles, Thoma had wrapped him in an intricate latticework of knots and braids that pressed faint diamonds into Kazuha’s bare flesh. The ropes moved with his ribs as he breathed. It wasn’t so tight as to be painful, but the work was a constant presence on him, constraining him insistently and, of course, making it very difficult to move.
Well, Kazuha thought ruefully, I did ask.
His legs had been bent at the knee, calves secured to thighs and ankles tethered to the ring from which all the ropes gathered. The tie lifted his hips slightly, presenting the bare flesh of his ass, his balls and cock heavy underneath. His arms were similarly bent at the elbow, forearms layered over each other at the small of his back to create a neat square.
It was well done. His weight was distributed evenly across the whole entrapment, ropes placed so they did not strain or cut into any joint.
He had let himself be malleable in Thoma’s hands, utterly obedient to his every gesture. But when he felt Thoma’s fingers retreat, he allowed himself to test the ropes just a little. He had very little leeway to move, but the small amount he was able to budge made him sway in the air.
“Hmm,” he heard Thoma say as he paced around somewhere to his left. “I suppose the way to amend that would be to tether you to the floor. But that seems over the top.”
Kazuha chuckled at the idea that Thoma had not yet reached his definition of over-the-top.
“It provides no incentive, which I think you require. You do tend to wiggle.” More shuffling somewhere out of sight, and then noises below him. Thoma made his way into Kazuha’s line of sight, sitting comfortably beneath him. He took a moment to stop and smile up at Kazuha. Kazuha smiled back.
“Okay so far?”
Kazuha nodded. Thoma leaned up to reward him with a small kiss.
As he did, he raised a hand to brush over Kazuha’s skin, finding him through the ropes. Kazuha gasped slightly into his mouth, moaning as his fingers settled over one nipple and pinched lightly.
The touch didn’t stay light. The pressure increased, slowly, patiently, working at his flesh until the little nub became hard. Then Kazuha felt something different, colder, pinching there instead, and gasped again.
“I’ll ease you into it,” Thoma told him softly. “But this is the lightest in the set. You should be able to handle this.”
Kazuha’s brow creased for a moment, but then as Thoma’s hand drew away he felt the pinch extend into a pull, dragging at his flesh. It was hard to say when Thoma released his hold on the weight attached to the clamp completely. But when he finally did, Kazuha felt as if his entire body was dipping lower against the ropes, trying to ease the pain.
“Good.” Then his hands searched out the other nipple and began the process again.
When he was finished, he sat back to survey Kazuha critically.
“Try struggling now.”
Kazuha hesitated. He wanted to look away, but Thoma’s gaze on him had an intensity that demanded his attention. He waited without saying a word until Kazuha did as he had been ordered.
It took far less movement than before to set the weights swinging painfully under him like pendulums. Every new pull seemed to shoot straight from his chest down to his groin, adding new drops of heat to the energy already simmering there. He stopped as soon as he dared, hissing air that tasted faintly of salt from the water far below them between his teeth as he waited for gravity to settle their motion and stop torturing him.
Thoma watched all of this with a faint smile. “Better.”
Kazuha tried to smile back.
“Your neck must be getting sore,” Thoma said, reaching for something new—a scarf, made of some kind of silk. “Raise your head for me, it’ll feel better in a second.”
When Thoma stood, Kazuha chased the movement with his chin. He realized he had been positioned just so his mouth could meet Thoma’s cock, if that was what he wanted. That made sense. He had vague notions of what this afternoon would entail. Ropes were a way of exposing the body to pleasure and use, so it made sense to him that Thoma had arranged him to be open and available.
The scarf was wrapped neatly around his forehead and secured somewhere back, supporting the weight of his head like a hammock. It was a genuine relief; Kazuha hadn’t realized how sore his neck was becoming until the pressure was removed.
He opened his mouth to thank Thoma, but found Thoma’s fingers at his chin, his thumb pressing into his mouth. Holding his head in place for inspection. He swallowed his thanks and focused on lapping at Thoma’s thumb, demonstrating his gratitude instead.
Eventually Thoma pulled his hand away, and Kazuha watched him blur by as he sank back down to sit underneath him. But with his head now secured at this new angle, he realized he couldn’t strain his eyes down far enough to actually see Thoma sitting under him. His range of vision was suddenly very, very limited.
The dread was back in his stomach.
He felt, rather than saw, Thoma reach out to tap one of the weights, setting it into motion again. Kazuha gasped and struggled to stay grounded, to endure the concentrated bit of sensation.
The air of the room was very still; he still tasted lavender, and now sweat, since rigging could be quite hard work, and faintly the plain onigiri they had been snacking on during the original, tense conversation Kazuha was now not sure he had been entirely wise to pursue. A lone guard was making the rounds outside, kicking up small puffs of dust as he made his circuit around the estate.
“You’re still holding yourself very tightly,” Thoma commented somewhere below. “It’s best to settle into it.”
Kazuha felt him reach up through the still air to brush a few fingers across his navel and flinched before his fingers even met his flesh. But once they found him, his touch made Kazuha gasp again, squeezing his eyes shut. The sun was settling lower now, giving the dust of the afternoon a burnt taste—
“Hmm,” he heard Thoma muttering under him. “What can we do about that?”
More shuffling, and Kazuha felt the warmth that always indicated Thoma’s presence retreat. Kazuha’s eyes flew open, straining to find Thoma. It was like a sunbeam moving quickly, abandoning him to the cold for a few moments before returning to warm him again. Kazuha caught the clean scent of incense derived from maple wood.
The mask was something like what Kazuha had seen Treasure Hoarders wear, designed to cover the nose and mouth. But this had slightly more structure, and a grill attached to the front.
“I tried to pick something with a fairly gentle scent,” Thoma said as he showed him the mask. “I thought if it was too floral it would give you a headache.”
Kazuha eyed the mask. He thought he understood what Thoma was up to. “Like a blindfold,” he hazarded, trying to understand the concept rather than feel the apprehension. “But for me specifically, I suppose.”
“You said you wanted to understand real helplessness,” said Thoma.
He had.
“I’m surprised you don’t want to have access to my mouth,” he said as breezily as he dared. “I’m told it’s one of my finest features.”
Thoma chuckled, but Kazuha could tell he was just indulging him, trying to soothe his nerves.
Thoma knelt before him. “I won’t secure it. I’ll just hold it up to you, to test.”
Kazuha knew the ropes wrapped around him were showing, very clearly, how rapidly his breath was coming and going as he watched Thoma move the straps of the thing out of the way so he could hold it up to his mouth and nose.
Before he pressed the mask to him, Thoma gave him a kind look, considering him carefully. “Have you ever tried anything like this before?”
He couldn’t shake or nod his head. He had to say it out loud. The “no” that came out was very weak.
“We’ll start small,” Thoma promised him. “Ten seconds.”
Kazuha sucked in breath as if he was preparing to dive.
Before he started, Thoma settled one hand on the back of Kazuha’s head. It made Kazuha think of a nervous dog being soothed. It also made him think of someone having their head pushed under the waves to be drowned.
It also made him think of Tomo’s hand taking up a similar position, not so much pushing him down as resting on him as Kazuha tongued slowly at his cock. But Tomo was miles away and that was very beside the point.
The maple wood was a very gentle scent, and Thoma had been wise to choose it. He had clearly put some thought into how to disarm Kazuha effectively. But he couldn’t think too deeply about that as he inhaled.
The lavender was gone. The salt was gone. Kazuha tried to sense in which direction the guard outside had wandered and couldn’t. He breathed the maple wood again deeply, desperately, and felt the world shrink.
Thoma was massaging the back of his head very gently with his fingers. Suddenly it was the only thing that felt real.
His next gasp of breath was of fresh air, with fresh scents from the room.
The change was extremely sudden. Kazuha gasped again in panic, and then again and again.
Thoma’s hand held his head steady through all of it. His mouth quickly pressed through the silk across his forehead to breathe calming words against his temple to kiss his brow. He breathed deep and slow, modelling what calm looked like until Kazuha could recover himself enough to notice and copy him, sobbing breathlessly.
It took several tries to explain that the problem hadn’t been putting the mask on but taking the mask off. Switching back and forth so quickly was painful.
“I see,” Thoma was breathing against him. “I see. That’s alright. I thought a short test would be helpful, but that’s where the difficulty was. I see. So what you need is time to settle.”
Kazuha nodded, face burning. He couldn’t think of the last time he had felt anything like real panic. He suspected Thoma wasn’t entirely sorry for causing it, though he knew very well it was his own fault if that was the case. He had baited him mercilessly and then invited him to take revenge.
But then he said, “Thank you for telling me,” and pressed another soft kiss to his mouth, and Kazuha’s misgivings melted away. He adored the way Thoma kissed him. It was gentle and sweet. He never pushed too hard, instead letting Kazuha taste him at his own pace.
When he was finished, he drew back and said thoughtfully, “So, if we’re going to do this, it needs to be for a proper length of time.”
“It’s very effective,” Kazuha admitted quietly. He was happy to give that him confession, that acknowledgment of the power Thoma currently held over him, for free. He really wasn’t the sort to fight for control, whatever Thoma seemed to think. He wanted the other man to understand that.
“Was it too strong?”
Kazuha tried to shrug in his bonds, wincing as the motion set the weights swinging again. “I don’t know. It just made everything feel smaller somehow.”
“It gets you to focus,” said Thoma, suggesting rather than informing.
It binds me to you completely, Kazuha thought.
Thoma let him recover for another moment or two before raising the mask to his face again. Kazuha took a slow deep breath and closed his eyes, submitting as calmly as he could. He hadn’t been lying before. He did want to try this.
He let the maple wood wipe out his sense of the room, reorienting himself to what little knowledge the taste of the incense gave him before opening his eyes. He was mildly startled to notice his vision swimming a little. But Thoma was there, watching him carefully, carding his fingers gently through his loosened hair.
When Kazuha inhaled now, the drag of air felt slow. The ropes creaked around his chest like a boat settling over waves. He felt Thoma’s finger moving at the back of his head, securing the mask.
Somewhere, very far in the back of his mind, something was telling him that he should be much more upset about all of this then he currently was. But he didn't worry too much about it.
Thoma was telling him that he was being very good, which was odd because he was barely doing anything.
Soon Thoma sank away, his hands disappearing from his temple, the back of his head. His flesh felt very cool in the absence of his touch.
Straining seemed pointless. He stared straight ahead, wondering if Thoma was still beneath him or had perhaps crawled away to find some new way of throwing his equilibrium.
He hadn’t, mainly because he didn’t need to. Fingers reached up and brushed his navel again, catching him completely by surprise. He gasped and jerked as the weights pulled at him.
Somewhere down below, Thoma chuckled. “That’s much better.”
His hand moved along to stroke at his sides, feeling him breathe in and out. Then up to his chest, circling around the clamps, teasing the strained flesh there. Then down, down, finally to his neglected cock, where the hand wrapped around his length and pumped slowly a few times. Kazuha gave a gratified, muffled moan.
“I am sorry to have lost access to your mouth,” he heard Thoma admit. “But if this is what it takes to get you into such a lovely state, then I’m happy to make that sacrifice.”
His hand retreated; Kazuha whined gently but could do nothing.
“You’re still a bit tense. There’s more to do,” Thoma told him gently. “I know you think you’ve come a long way, and I suppose you have. But you can go further.”
Kazuha thought he heard movement, but he couldn’t track it. Part of him was startled at how little he could sense Thoma. But then he felt pulling at the ropes and was settled again. Thoma was behind him, adjusting his configuration. After a few moments of fiddling, Kazuha felt his legs spreading wider, wider, cool air brushing over the sweat collecting on his thighs.
He closed his eyes with a contented sigh. He had wondered when they would get to the good part. If his mouth was at the right height for Thoma’s cock, then of course his ass was too.
But after long, long moments of hanging still, Kazuha felt nothing touch him.
He tried to think if he had heard footsteps. He strained his senses to find Thoma’s warmth.
Suddenly, something thin and hard flicked a painful mark across his inner left thigh.
He yelped into the mask, more out of shock than pain. After the initial sting faded, the little mark throbbed sharply.
Then a new blow landed lower down his right leg, closer to the knee, catching him across both the thigh and calf.
Another followed, back on the left leg. very, very close to the groin.
That one made him struggle, and swing. The weights attached to him dragged in low circles, turning his sharp cry into an anguished groan.
“Easy, now,” Thoma shushed him. Kazuha felt his hand wrap firmly around his cock and balls, not for pleasure but to hold him in place. “Settle. Tension creates more movement.”
Thoma introduced happy variety in his attacks, finding new target points across his ass, the soles of his feet, some carefully chosen areas on his sides and chest. A few light, but nonetheless cruel, strikes even landed on the shaft of his cock, making him howl. Without his full senses, it was impossible to anticipate where Thoma would strike next. He felt heat rising across the entire expanse of his flesh, further obscuring Thoma’s presence.
It took several more blows for Kazuha to understand what Thoma was trying to teach him. Without taste and smell, Kazuha couldn’t track his movements, so held himself braced against the next blow. But eventually, as his body sagged with exhaustion and pain and the knowledge that no amount of struggling would help him escape, he began to notice that if he let himself relax into the ropes, he swung less no matter where the blows landed, reducing the ripple effect of pain and pressure across the rest of his body.
Although he now allowed himself to sink freely into the ropes, he trembled from head to foot. The heady mix of adrenaline and blood rush and lust made him throb and ache and wish to be touched properly.
His reward, finally, at last, came when Thoma put down the cane and began running his hands gently over the welts Kazuha had collected on his flesh during his beating. He moaned into the mask, trying to convey gratitude.
Thoma let one hand rest on his ass, kneading the flesh there. His other hand came to rest again on the back of Kazuha’s head, steadying him. Those two points of touch felt like the entire world.
“That’s much better. Do you feel the difference now?”
His fingers disappeared for a moment, then returned slick, dipping into the cleft of Kazuha’s ass to find the puckered hole there. Kazuha was tempted to help, to spread his legs wider or raise his hips to give Thoma greater access. But he knew he couldn’t. Moreover, he knew that wasn’t what Thoma wanted from him. Thoma wanted him pliant and submissive and receptive to whatever he chose to provide. Helpless.
He let himself moan freely as Thoma worked one finger, then two, into him. He wished he could use his mouth. He wished he could beg.
Thoma fucked his fingers in and out at a leisurely pace that Kazuha knew was deliberate and meaningful. Thoma had wonderful stamina and self-control. Kazuha had noticed before that he liked showing that off when he had the opportunity. But before, there had been things he could do about that, ways to chase and encourage and entice Thoma to let go and indulge himself, for once. Now there was nothing.
Thoma’s other hand stroked Kazuha’s hair lovingly.
Kazuha wished desperately that he would move things along. He ached for Thoma's cock, his unique heat. The stretch of taking two fingers was absolutely nothing; he wanted to be filled. He wondered if Thoma would even release him after he came or just let him hang there, dripping like some obscene ornament.
The fingers retreated, and were replaced with something disappointingly cold, hard, and round that popped past the tight ring of muscle and slid deeply into him. He felt a cool, thin strip of metal settle between his ass cheeks before the whole thing began to pull slightly, angling his hips even higher. Thoma’s other hand left his head to help secure this, and Kazuha felt the ropes holding him up tremble as Thoma secured a new line into the collection above him.
As Thoma worked to secure him in this new position, Kazuha blearily sorted through his mental inventory of the toys Ayato and Thoma kept on hand and realized this must be a hook.
The ball at the end of it felt larger than he remembered, and it pressed inside him with unforgiving force. The dread that had been coiling in his stomach gave way to utter despair as he realized Thoma had no intention of using him at all.
The extra pressure of the hook could only have raised his hips by another few inches. But somehow, he felt far, far more exposed than before.
He heard Thoma give a happy sigh. “Now that is stunning.”
Then rustling, then silence.
Before he could worry, he felt fingers lightly brush his neck, as if reaching up from below. “I’m still here. I’m not leaving the room; I’m here to take care of you. But frankly that was hard work and I’d like to relax and enjoy the sight of you for a while.”
Kazuha let his gaze become unfocused, dazed with the desperate need to be touched and the knowledge that it wasn’t going to happen. Or at least, not in the way he craved.
He was hardly a static object; Thoma surely would have become bored if he held too still. He couldn’t help the occasional, violent shudder as his body screamed for attention in the only way it could, or the aftershocks as the motion set the weights swinging, shifted the hook, made the welts crisscrossing his skin feel newly set alight.
Occasionally, he felt something brush his navel, or the inside of his thighs, tracing the welts there. Once, something he was sure was the flat of Thoma’s foot pressed his cock flat against his belly, and Kazuha thought he was going to lose his mind.
When he wailed, Thoma shushed him gently.