"Thank you. — and yes, please." 

Kirasu lifts up his robes, showing a line of bruises around his mid-thigh and a wicked-looking device he made out of spikes. 

"It's probably easier if I put it on you."

"It looks like it, yes," and he takes off exactly as many of his clothes as Kirasu will need to put that on him and — shies away from that thought — 

Kirasu kneels before Sataro. He gently and tenderly wraps the spike thing around his thigh and tightens the straps. His fingers brush lightly against the inside of Sataro's thigh. 

"Feel okay?"

Just fuck already.

He shivers, very slightly. "Yeah. 

Thank you." 

Kirasu lingers for a moment, his fingers on Sataro's thigh, his breath warm on Sataro's skin.

Then he stands. "You'll have to tell me what you think."

"I'll make sure to do that," he says, and puts — those thoughts — out of his mind. 

"Unfortunately, we have another load of heretics coming on tonight, so I'll have to be going. It was nice to see you."

Seeeeeeriously Tholassi did not become a great god in order to observe the details of GROSS HUMAN MATING RITUALS.

"It was nice seeing you." He's very sincere. 

He really doesn't want to go.

He doesn't want him to go either. 

(Wishing an Inquisitor would put down his duties and talk to you so you can think about — that — is the sort of thing he'd ordinarily fast for. He isn't sure whether a day with these spikes is more or less severe than a day of fasting, yet.) 

Tholassi can see the incredibly dull future stretching ahead of him. Even if he manages to keep his believer from doing anything life-threatening, it's going to be all "hours of prayer and singing and baths and handwashing and ritual" and "getting distracted when carrying out your duties because there are spikes in your skin" and "spending money on alms instead of on advancing Tholassi's goals" from here on out.

"You are pure," Tholassi says. "I have touched you with my radiance. Do you think a passing thought can tarnish it?"

"— Of course not, Your radiance," he says. 

(Yes, screams part of his mind, yes, of course, because I am not pure and never have been and never will be, the core of me is rotten — he tries to silence that part; he doesn't succeed —) 

Most humans stop having self-esteem issues when their god tells them they've been chosen for their particular holiness!

He tries a different tactic. "Perhaps a ritual bath would help your purity seem more real to you."

He nods and collects his coat — brings Tholassi with him, tucked into an internal pocket where he'll be warm and unseen — and goes to the baths. 

Walking with it hurts more than sitting does. It's — good, in a way he doesn't know how to put words to. 

Whyyyyyy is his believer full of weird gross self-harm/human reproduction thoughts.

Captain Ashka is already in the baths, naked and soaping himself up.

He's a very beautiful man, and well-built enough to be used as an anatomy textbook.

He smiles to Captain Ashka and strips, careful not to dislodge the salamander in his pocket, and unbraids his hair and sinks into the water. 

Cleaning the genitals is part of the ritual bath process, the genitals being a source of all sorts of impurity. Most people do not seem to do it with quite as much attention as Captain Ashka. Perhaps it is due to his great piety. 

(His genitals are large and well-formed.)

Sataro is not looking. 

(He wants to, for a brief moment — shuts the thought down.) 

The first soap has bits of charcoal, so as to scrape away impurities from the skin; he's always liked the feeling of it on his shoulders. 

The bathhouse is very warm. Tholassi likes it. This is the sort of thing you have to be worried about if you're a salamander.

Ashka leans against the side of the bath and says, "can you do my back?"

"Of course." 

His hands are gentle on Ashka's back.