"I would, but you already seem to have the hang of it," Ender teased. He leaned over and dropped a kiss right under Ben's jaw. "I don't mind you mostly naked, for what it's worth."

Ender obliged, though after a moment, he paused. "...as long as this isn't a bad time," he said against Ben's neck.

Sure, Ender, ask the king of repression if he wants to talk about his feelings some more.

"We'll discuss strategy in a little bit, then," Ender said. "You're being very distracting."

Or naked. Or both of those things.

He slid his hand down to touch Ben's thigh right above the towel and leaned in to kiss him properly.

"I'm still not sure you didn't do this on purpose," Ender told him, moving his hand until it was on a very particular part of the towel.

"Fail to change into something with pants and a shirt," Ender murmured, "and lounge around the bed looking damp and ruffled."

Shut up.

He was still a little stressed out and keyed up from what he'd done earlier that day, too. Though the naked was definitely a deciding factor.

He kissed Ben's neck, applying some pressure to his hand.

"They're not," Ender assured him. "But you are." Realizing how ridiculous that sounded, he wriggled his eyebrows.

And promptly slid his hand under the towel instead, onto Ben's thigh.

"That's common knowledge by now, and you don't earn any points for it," Ender told him, pushing the towel away and his hand further up.

"In a minute," Ender promised, sliding down to help Ben, uh, wake up.

Ender ran his fingers along Ben's thighs as he got to work coaxing a little more noise out of him.

Honest, he'd get to his own shirt any time now.

You know, clean Ben actually smelled really nice.

Which was about the most random stray thought he could be having right now.

He was still more than a little locked-in to take-control mode, that was the thing. Which... might have been something he should have thought of sooner, at least if his goal actually was to relax a little.

Right now, Ender decided, it was far more productive not to think about that and to think about Ben saying Kuso like that a little more. So he hummed in reply and squeezed Ben's leg in encouragement.

It skated a little along that danger zone. Ender pushed back a tiny amount just to be safe, wanting to keep control over the situation as much as he could.

That didn't, however, involve pulling away.

Pumping Ender's system full of not-quite-dispelled adrenaline over putting his people in danger? Yeah, let's do that more often.

That was language stronger than he was used to from Ben, though, and a shiver shot straight up his spine. Suddenly inspired to test the limits of his control, he pushed down to voluntarily take what Ben had just tried to push him to.