"They say the gods can see everything but they do not see human cruelty, or tragedy. I saw the world from the outside, it's a hard place. A lonely one." Sometimes he would have twenty or thirty or forty years worth of memories of belonging added only for him to know that he'd long gone beyond being able to belong in society.
"I didn't ask for happiness, either. Once it was because the young don't think to ask for what you have and then because the sacrifice seemed small in comparison. By the time I realized how large a thing it truly was -" But he's made his...peace with that, at least, a long time ago.
Jedao hasn't asked for happiness because he doesn't deserve it. Horseriver makes him happy anyway, in quiet moments and sly dour glimpses and simple companionship. Bittersweet, always, with the knowledge that he can do very little to return the favor. He lifts Horseriver's hands instead of saying it, presses dry, warm kisses to his knuckles.
"Very lonely," he agrees, voice a little deeper than he meant it to be.
Horseriver leans his forehead against Jedao's a second, an echo of the moment of connection, stars fill the dark sky, seen from a raft in the middle of the lake. Years before he understood loneliness.
"I remember the first time I woke in the body of a child. Holytree was an abandoned was an abandoned waste by then..." The twisted trees, knotted with cysts from which ooze sap like blood; the trees, glorious above and around, the heart of the world beating and joy from that life (both are there, he doesn't know which cuts deepest).
He blinks, the room is full of light around them. "By then, every one who had been there was dead, by battle or accident or age - those few who had escaped the massacre. Save one." The familiar ironic twist to the words. "The resistance went ill, there were many deaths in quick succession, and then I found myself - all of my selves - in one far too young to fight. There was no experience, no history, to hold a self against my mind." He'd ate him and he doesn't think anything's left. "They thought me mad... they couldn't begin to fathom the truth to that." He looks toward the wall. "They locked him away, I spent most of that life in darkness. The next death - perhaps it was the break in the continuity of faces, perhaps the time simply forced me to realize what it was to be alone."
He goes - not staticky, but feathered around the edges, dagged and frayed like fabric slashed with a knife, a momentary lapse in the illusion of coherence, a moment where sympathy and sorrow yank him hard enough to unravel his unseamed threads. Black wisps trail him in the air as he moves forward, propelled by an instinctual, visceral necessity, catches up Horseriver's face in both his hands. Jedao kisses him, fierce but especially sensual. The kiss isn't seduction so much as an assertion of presence, the weight of them and the nature of the dream between them humming with it, a slightly less nonsensical way than verbally to say you aren't alone now.
Even when he pulls back, he doesn't immediately let go.
"I...beg pardon, my lord," he says after a breath, with no idea whether or how much he's supposed to mean it, but willing to go through the motions for whatever cues he's given.
When he was a child, Wehr used to try to catch the morning mist in his hands. In the middle of a fog he would reach out in an attempt to touch what he could see and yet which always slipped away. He poked at shadows, part of him convinced that the person they trailed should be able to feel it. He reaches out to try to catch the black wisp of of shadow and catches Jedao instead.
There's a moment -
He has plenty of memories of kisses, the memories of men dead and voiceless inside of him. It's been a very long time since he touched someone without being fully aware that they're holding a corpse. But he's alive here, more alive in a dream than he has been in a long time, and Jedao's seen the shape of the shadows that follow him, just as he's seen the darkness that both holds Jedao and has tried to make him just a shadow.
But Jedao's not a shadow. Horseriver can still see/feel the bond of light between them, the anchor of the dream that gives them both weight. He can feel Jedao's hands, his kiss, the cloth of his tunic as Horseriver holds on tightly.
"If there was any offense given, it would something I would have to ask of you. There are things a king can't demand; yet can take as a gift."
He leans forward to kiss Jedao. There's the anchor of their connection (light in the darkness, a bond sworn and accepted) and just an almost forgotten joy of physicality; being able to touch with his own hands, his own mouth; the warmth of the sun, light refracting against the slightly shimmering table; not being alone.
He would gasp into it, except that he's forgotten slightly to breathe; he thinks of bells ringing, echoing and blending into each other. Things a king can't demand vibrates through his bones, and it feels like more light, or part of the light, and the light is kingship and trust so maybe it is. Kingship and trust and joy, and Jedao's chest is full of the wild triumph of exceeding his own carefully curtailed expectations, knowing Horseriver had every reason not to want, content to accept him precisely as he almost always is, misery and all.
His mouth opens for the kiss, ardent and yielding; his hands rove and search for purchase on the familiar sleek fabric of the uniform, simultaneously riveting and unnerving. But Horseriver isn't really a Kel, isn't his soldier; and he isn't Khiaz wearing it to bait Jedao either. If anyone put him in it, it was Jedao himself, and he lets it be what it is, illicit and yet appropriate, a perfect resonant thrill.
Yes, he thinks, not sure if he can communicate that way here or not, but his body says it clearly enough if he can't. He wants to give it, yes, yes, yes.
They're in a space that isn't a dream and isn't waking; the bright in-between that's more real, in it's way, than either. What they see and feel is filter through the perceptions of the world they're familiar with but it's more, too.
It's also been a very long time so he's not sure if the heat and almost unfamiliar tendrils of desire feel larger in brightness of the spirit or are just other things he's forgotten in centuries of growing colder. As he holds onto Jedao's shoulder so he can lean into the kiss, he doesn't care what the answer is beyond the power of the sensation.
The yes isn't exactly a word but the feeling of it comes through, Horseriver's is a telepathy of emotions that can match themselves to words. His own response is easy enough to read: searching for what Jedao wants; a fierce sort of - not really protectiveness or possessiveness but what he'd call a keeping of faith, what is given by each side of someone making an oath; the intensity and power he wears easily here.
The intimacy of the response, in the coiled soul-space of the dream, and Horseriver's ease with it, are each as arresting for Jedao as nearly-forgotten sensation is for Horseriver. Jedao shudders for a moment against him, breaks off the kiss after a lingering moment to gasp, lean in, murmur against his neck.
"I really want to get on my knees for you." He wanted it before, in rueful futility, and he wants it more now, the chance to give Horseriver more shocking-bright pleasure, earthy desire of his own, and the reinforcing echoes of power and position, allusion as heavy and luxurious as a fur coat. Jedao wants to roll around all over it.
He feels greedy, too, like he's pushing, going too fast for a man who hasn't enjoyed his body in as many centuries as Jedao hasn't had one, and he might not have said it if he had't felt Horseriver's urging, asking, in the flow between them. But he doesn't know how long the dream will last or when they're likely to get the chance again. And Horseriver did ask; he wants.
"May I, please?" he asks, sincere and puckish at the same time.
Horseriver huffs something close to a laugh. There's still that faintly ironic edge just as his eyes are still shadowed and there's a certain brittleness beneath some of his words because they're themselves here; fractures and history and weight. But there's true amusement in it too, warmth in the hand he rests on the back of Jedao's neck, affection in his look.
"I am not a harsh lord,the sort to refuse a reasonable request," his teasing tone matches the slight smirk that would ruin an attempt to look truly sober. For all that Horseriver has always known patience, even before having it ground into his bones for centuries, he's never been someone who'd chose to move slowly.
"On your knees, Ser Fox." Still a hint of teasing, but also a response to more than just this request. Service. The echoes of power and position, many have knelt for him before, for many different reasons, it's always important.
He cackles delightedly at the teasing, leans in for one more kiss and nips Horseriver's lips just before he pulls away and folds gracefully down. His hands, splayed flat over Horseriver's chest, never break contact, sliding down to catch on the hidden microseals of the uniform pants.
He rubs his cheek once against the front of the sleek fabric, pressure and self-indulgent catlike affection, before he tugs them open.
Something trills in his head, a sweet animal delight, and he tilts automatically into the petting.
"It's a good uniform. I'm really fond of it." There's layers to that that go deep, build up in chthonic places and warp under pressure like shale into slate. But he is capable of laughing at himself in this moment, in letting buried things stay mostly buried.
Jedao gives Horseriver a few easy, exploratory strokes, listening - and feeling - for a few preliminary hints on how he likes it, before leaning in on one side, pressing a wet kiss near the base of his dick, working gradually back towards the head.
Horseriver has rarely been anything that could called hesitant, he certainly isn't now, not with Jedao, feeling his hair under his hands and a warm point of bright connection everywhere they touch - but there's an unfamiliarity that he registers with a certain dark amusement. He's almost forgotten what it felt like to be in his body at all, let alone what he'd enjoyed (he knows intimately how different that can be from body to body). He could almost be learning this for the first time but he's not and there's an edge to that but one that's mostly buried in this moment. He trusts Jedao and he hasn't forgotten preferring that.
Still, he's glad his body is quicker at remembering than he is at finding the right words. Not that he doesn't have other words.
"Ah, by the separate hells , Jedao -" On the occasions he uses Jedao's name, it curves slightly in his accent, the affection wrapped in it is generally not broadcast quite so openly, not with Horseriver's dark, sardonic moods but they're in the light now and there's a physicality to the feelings as much as the physicality is a feeling, a literal warmth settling with his words.
"In the old way of things, as the year turned all would come to eat and laugh and dance in a hall built just for the witnessing of a king. In this place connected to the heart of the world - I would fuck you there, where the night is long but the fire always outlasts the darkness. All swear themselves and are given the same in return and then I would go to you for matters both different and yet not. A start of the year." His hands stay in Jedao's hair, not pulling but making sure to maintain the point of contact. There's none of his usual measure to his words, but even with the extra clarity of this place connecting words to immediate feelings is difficult. That he even tries is...different.
"Or perhaps you'd kneel for me, since you request it so politely." If there's teasing to that there's no mockery.
He's not properly psychic, but he's had plenty of practice focusing and directing his feelings with his anchors; he takes full advantage of the thrumming connection to offer reactions and responses, even as he takes Horseriver deeper in his throat. There's an almost delicate shiver at what Horseriver's accent does to his name; as much as he loves Ser Fox, for a moment it leaves him more breathless than the brisk, deep pace he's set for himself.
Dancing is one of his favorite blood sports; that gets a flare of intrigued enthusiasm. But he groans for the rest of it, the intimacy and the echoes and the secondhand memory of the fire. He feels so many things, flickering colors braided together. There's a sneaky, rebellious thrill at the place where people swear themselves, not completely unlike the copper-bright excitement of a child getting away with something, staying out late or stealing a plate of cookies: the Kel never let him in to their world of oaths and honor, not completely, but they never lived by it as purely as the Old Weald, and his King would place him first there, hold him closest. There's a petty proud possessive streak to that feeling, a greedy mine that has nothing to do with jealousy or monogamy and everything to do with old loneliness and fierce, self-indulgent longing. There's something he half-tries to hide under the rest, half offers anyway, as the truest gift he knows, even if it's an old secret between them: the quicksilver thread of fear at the long dark, the sweet twists of gratitude and relief and tentative tenderness at the idea of surviving it by a fire kin to this fire, being held close and never left alone, the whole night through. Raw simple desire weaves through it all, fierce and crackling, yes, yes he would like to be fucked.
You asshole, Jedao thinks at the teasing, indignant and languid as a cat, his mouth trying and failing to curl into a grin around Horseriver's cock, even though no bit of him is actually mad. He loves that about Horseriver too, maybe loves that most of all, and the surge of it feels like a small stampede in his chest, a rough-edged ground-rattling animal force.
There’s a fierce pride in the memory of those oaths. The kin of the old Weald were a group of arrogant, stiff-necked, bloody-mind bastards by their own proud admission. The power of kingship helped hold them together, provided focus on tasks more important than petty grudges, but blind obedience had never been part of its makeup and if any king tried they would find themselves with a rebellion and a new king chosen. Every oath, every time they put their honor in his hands and trusted him to use it was a belief that he would keep faith with them, just as he knew he could trust in the honor of all those who would fight besides and for him.
He shares as much meaning as he knows how to form in flickering shards of light (shadows are formed where there is light but right now, here, the light is stronger). It’s easier to share feelings than words he’s forgotten how to say. The mirror of loneliness and longing that makes him hold close. The bright possessiveness - his, because of Jedao’s own pride and will because it would mean nothing without that. And fiercer still in the feeling of connection, in that he’s only sworn to keep his faith with one here. There’s the fear that is not a secret between them yet he can still take as a gift, enough for him to find his voice, to use the solidness of words.
“I will not leave you in the dark.” The promise of an arrogant, stiff-necked, bloody-minded bastard who had spent centuries fighting invaders and the gods and his own dissolution.
He huffs something that might have been a laugh if he was less caught in the threads of his own desire, wrapped up too in Jedao. He lightly tweaks a strand of hair. “I would not have it said I’m not a giving king...”
He almost chokes with the urge to laugh, and sends Horseriver amusement and indignation together as strongly as he can manage. He pulls off carefully, panting a little, and gives Horseriver a few lazy strokes with his hands while he rests his cheek against the other man's thigh.
"I would never say such a thing, my lord," he promises, voice puckish but rich with the deeper sincerity underlying it. "Where do you want me?"
"You ask the complicated questions, my fox." Amusement but a deeper honesty too. He wants Jedao with him in that world that doesn't exist; he wants Jedao someplace he has a purpose that means something; hardest for him to ever to say, he wants the companionship he's been given here on the barge.
But he's always known the many shades of 'want', even when only in absence. It's been a very long time since he's felt physical arousal without having to to push a ghostly remnant to the fore.
He pulls Jedao up, the difference in their heights is smaller in this body, though there's still more than an inch between them. "Sit." He pushes him back onto the table, carvings of woodlands appearing again in the solid wood where he brushes against it. The tunic and light undershirt are familiar and easily removed so he can run his hands against his skin. Horseriver's hands are warmer now, if not quite warm, and the touch isn't light. He presses hard against Jedao, holding on tightly; he rests his head against Jedao's shoulder, sensation shared and doubled and, despite what's come before, not quite able to initiate a kiss.
He goes where he's put, deftly and obligingly, enjoying the blunt tactile direction. Jedao runs to almost as much scar as skin, in half a dozen different flavors, neat lines for blades and shrapnel, shiny asterisms from stun bolt burns, the ragged puffy mess the burrower left behind, a strange abraded wrongness where the edge of one arm was warped by a storm field, and more muddled marks. None of it bothers him; he shudders and sighs for every place Horseriver touches.
He savors the particularity of the pose; the weight on his shoulder, the hard steady edge of Horseriver's jawbone where it presses against muscle. Nothing so simple as romantic, that - there's a resonance of the weary soldiers they both are, the ways they lurch and lean on each other, the way they share the weight. And the hesitation, too - a very small moment, in some ways, a negative gesture, a tiny gap, but one that he treasures.
Horseriver is nothing but welcome; he spreads his legs a little wider, as well as he can with the way he's perched, and tugs Horseriver's hair gently so that Jedao can press another kiss against his mouth, this one slower and softer than those that came before.
Scars are a sign of a life lived, Horseriver wouldn’t say lived good or ill but perhaps familiar. A soldiers life, shown even those scars caused by weapons he can only conceive of in what they’ve left behind. He maps them out with hands marked with their own scars; calluses from a sword he hadn’t yet used so often yet, a ropy scar where he hadn’t lost his fingers in a fight six years on from taking the hallowed crown, a circular burn on a thumb gained three bodies on - four hundred years of history written are written under his skin, here, some of the letters come to the surface. Jedao lived four centuries without a body to record such history, a gap in history filled in through other means (he thinks fleetingly of the fox-shadow). He digs his fingers into a scar a moment, just holding on.
He meets the kiss, the welcome easing something he couldn't quite name. He lost anything he might call softness a long time ago but the edge isn't made of broken glass, just the quiet intensity of being able to find a few long moments just live in. Then he catches Jedao's hands, kissing his palms with a mixture of his usual gravity and the humor that rarely lasts more than a few moments in the waking world.
"I would say something about the possible discomfort of fucking on a table, but I'm not sure you'd mind."
There are no gloves in the livery, which is appropriate to the occasion but strikes Jedao as slightly brazen all the same; he shivers at the touch of lips on his bare hands.
"I asked," Jedao says, with warm careful enunciation, "And I was answered." I want to be where you want me.
He squeezes Horseriver's hands for a moment, in proper black full gloves, to suit the dream's fancy of the uniform, a perverse inequality that feels more quelling than intriguingly transgressive. "Take these off, please. I mind that more bruises that won't even last - or will they?" He asks at the sudden idea, not quite repressing the note of hopeful interest that invades his voice.
"Indeed." The same slight playfulness that's behind the a gesture that can be far more ceremonious. Jedao had answered, but there are things he likes to hear again, whatever he can feel.
He smirks slightly at the question. "These ones will last, though not quite the same." Waking up with old bruises, almost half-way healed, yet, he thinks, still a reminder of the in between nature, of what can last where normal dreams don' linger.
He removes the gloves carefully, they have no real meaning to him but they're part of a whole that has meaning to Jedao. He leans forward a little to kiss Jedao again, holding on, this time, with bare hands.
"Good," he says firmly; even if they'll likely be lost in the ordinary dapple of bruises from regularly training with Fives and Steve, he likes that they'll be there, blood-shadows of physical proof that this happened, inscribed under his skin. He shivers into the kiss, desire tripping and spiking hot in his belly, whimpering for the briefest moment after the kiss ends.
He catches his breath and lies back when he's told to, the hard wood of the table forcing the alacrity of eagerness to slow just a little, and he melts as he settles, the easy relaxation of trust, of willingly giving himself up - not just for a semi-anonymous night, this time, but as a joyful confirmation of the deeper truth.
His slight huff is something close to amusement; or possibly agreement, it's certainly not an idea he minds. He wraps a bare hand tightly around one Jedao's wrists, feeling the pulse against his palm.
He moves so he can kiss Jedao again, running his fingers down the inside of his arm. It's not the easiest angle he could've chosen but that wasn't the point. Here, more than anywhere else he knows, there's nothing that could be called anonymous. Even though he doesn't chose to go look for it, they're themselves, with all the danger and trust that entails.
There's no doubting that the slow, careful methodical remapping is from Horseriver's steady confidence, not from his earlier uncertainty in settling into his body. If he wasn't otherwise occupied, he might have said something about what can be learned by patience, as he stretches out his mind to catch any and all signals.
He shudders when Horseriver grips his wrist, heartbeat spiking for a moment under his fingers, something white and bright and blissfully blank flashing through his mind, peace and hunger inextricably tangled on its edges. He kisses back languidly, ardently, and the slight awkwardness of the position only feeds into the sweet settled ease Horseriver gives him, which ebbs and flows in terms of how much other cognizance it edges out, but doesn't disappear even when Horseriver lets his wrist go.
Jedao leaves his arm where it is as long as Horseriver is touching it, then lifts it out of the way, over his head when Horseriver starts exploring in earnest, wrapping his other hand around the same wrist in as close to the same place as he can manage.
There's a faint nervousness around his reconstructed ribs - less actual weakness than psychosomatic, at the joints from bone to ceramatrix do still ache periodically. Some scars he has no feeling in at all, and some the nerves are a little funny at the edges, a fizzing feeling when Horseriver traces them that makes him squirm and struggle to muffle giggles. He loves being touched with an omnivorous, ravenous enjoyment, loves the feel of Horseriver's hands, the strength and the sword callouses, deliberate fingertips and broad palms. He whines in his throat for attention to his sternum and clavicle, jerks in surprise at his own greedy reaction if Horseriver touches his nipples, goes a little more soft and pliable when Horseriver reaches the vulnerable plane of his stomach, goes smaller inside his own head, tentative but still trusting.
It would only take a moment (a choice) of disregard for him to shatter Jedao's ribs. Most of his strength is a simple translation of what was: a hunter used to spear and bow and the animal itself; a soldier who had learned the meaning of the word as he had taken up a sword and ax and the body of the man next to him. But, here, there's more than just a shaman's enhanced strength, or perhaps it's exactly that, the gravity he carries as the anchor of the dream-vision. The weight of it could snap bone, not in directed viciousness - there are far less physical cracks he would search for then - but in the careless cruelty of simply not caring. His touch isn't soft but it's the focused intensity on the reactions he draws from his exploration.
He opens himself to reflected reactions, letting himself be moved by the feelings in turn. His own pleasure at the physicality of it all is amplified and tied to Jedao's love for it. He rests fingers against a scar with no feeling before retracing the edge of another to make him squirm, a teasing amusement but without the walls of bitterness and protective sharp edged irony that his humor is usually hidden within. He runs his hands across Jedao's clavicle and then down, the edges of his palms resting on his sternum as he sees how much of Jedao's chest he can cover with his hands extended, noting both the surprise and reaction when he brushes over his nipples. He leaves his hands as a solid weight against his chest as he kisses him more deeply for a few long moments.
His hands are lighter as he traces them across Jedao's stomach but he moves with no less confidence. He can feel the ease, the shape of it, changing but never gone. It would be easy for him to push there, shape the peace into something that would drag Jedao completely in. But trust, freely given, is a gift he still holds precious.
He reaches up again, half-pining Jedao as he grips his wrist again, his hold firm and sure, with a warmth to it of words lost.
"Get me off." The angle isn't really any less angle but Jedao has a free hand and Horseriver's faith in his abilities, not that it's a particularly difficult challenge either, after the doubled back pleasure of his exploration.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"I didn't ask for happiness, either. Once it was because the young don't think to ask for what you have and then because the sacrifice seemed small in comparison. By the time I realized how large a thing it truly was -" But he's made his...peace with that, at least, a long time ago.
no subject
"Very lonely," he agrees, voice a little deeper than he meant it to be.
no subject
"I remember the first time I woke in the body of a child. Holytree was an abandoned was an abandoned waste by then..." The twisted trees, knotted with cysts from which ooze sap like blood; the trees, glorious above and around, the heart of the world beating and joy from that life (both are there, he doesn't know which cuts deepest).
He blinks, the room is full of light around them. "By then, every one who had been there was dead, by battle or accident or age - those few who had escaped the massacre. Save one." The familiar ironic twist to the words. "The resistance went ill, there were many deaths in quick succession, and then I found myself - all of my selves - in one far too young to fight. There was no experience, no history, to hold a self against my mind." He'd ate him and he doesn't think anything's left. "They thought me mad... they couldn't begin to fathom the truth to that." He looks toward the wall. "They locked him away, I spent most of that life in darkness. The next death - perhaps it was the break in the continuity of faces, perhaps the time simply forced me to realize what it was to be alone."
no subject
Even when he pulls back, he doesn't immediately let go.
"I...beg pardon, my lord," he says after a breath, with no idea whether or how much he's supposed to mean it, but willing to go through the motions for whatever cues he's given.
no subject
There's a moment -
He has plenty of memories of kisses, the memories of men dead and voiceless inside of him. It's been a very long time since he touched someone without being fully aware that they're holding a corpse. But he's alive here, more alive in a dream than he has been in a long time, and Jedao's seen the shape of the shadows that follow him, just as he's seen the darkness that both holds Jedao and has tried to make him just a shadow.
But Jedao's not a shadow. Horseriver can still see/feel the bond of light between them, the anchor of the dream that gives them both weight. He can feel Jedao's hands, his kiss, the cloth of his tunic as Horseriver holds on tightly.
"If there was any offense given, it would something I would have to ask of you. There are things a king can't demand; yet can take as a gift."
He leans forward to kiss Jedao. There's the anchor of their connection (light in the darkness, a bond sworn and accepted) and just an almost forgotten joy of physicality; being able to touch with his own hands, his own mouth; the warmth of the sun, light refracting against the slightly shimmering table; not being alone.
no subject
His mouth opens for the kiss, ardent and yielding; his hands rove and search for purchase on the familiar sleek fabric of the uniform, simultaneously riveting and unnerving. But Horseriver isn't really a Kel, isn't his soldier; and he isn't Khiaz wearing it to bait Jedao either. If anyone put him in it, it was Jedao himself, and he lets it be what it is, illicit and yet appropriate, a perfect resonant thrill.
Yes, he thinks, not sure if he can communicate that way here or not, but his body says it clearly enough if he can't. He wants to give it, yes, yes, yes.
no subject
It's also been a very long time so he's not sure if the heat and almost unfamiliar tendrils of desire feel larger in brightness of the spirit or are just other things he's forgotten in centuries of growing colder. As he holds onto Jedao's shoulder so he can lean into the kiss, he doesn't care what the answer is beyond the power of the sensation.
The yes isn't exactly a word but the feeling of it comes through, Horseriver's is a telepathy of emotions that can match themselves to words. His own response is easy enough to read: searching for what Jedao wants; a fierce sort of - not really protectiveness or possessiveness but what he'd call a keeping of faith, what is given by each side of someone making an oath; the intensity and power he wears easily here.
no subject
"I really want to get on my knees for you." He wanted it before, in rueful futility, and he wants it more now, the chance to give Horseriver more shocking-bright pleasure, earthy desire of his own, and the reinforcing echoes of power and position, allusion as heavy and luxurious as a fur coat. Jedao wants to roll around all over it.
He feels greedy, too, like he's pushing, going too fast for a man who hasn't enjoyed his body in as many centuries as Jedao hasn't had one, and he might not have said it if he had't felt Horseriver's urging, asking, in the flow between them. But he doesn't know how long the dream will last or when they're likely to get the chance again. And Horseriver did ask; he wants.
"May I, please?" he asks, sincere and puckish at the same time.
no subject
"I am not a harsh lord,the sort to refuse a reasonable request," his teasing tone matches the slight smirk that would ruin an attempt to look truly sober. For all that Horseriver has always known patience, even before having it ground into his bones for centuries, he's never been someone who'd chose to move slowly.
"On your knees, Ser Fox." Still a hint of teasing, but also a response to more than just this request. Service. The echoes of power and position, many have knelt for him before, for many different reasons, it's always important.
no subject
He rubs his cheek once against the front of the sleek fabric, pressure and self-indulgent catlike affection, before he tugs them open.
no subject
"More comfortable than buttons, I'll give them that much."
no subject
"It's a good uniform. I'm really fond of it." There's layers to that that go deep, build up in chthonic places and warp under pressure like shale into slate. But he is capable of laughing at himself in this moment, in letting buried things stay mostly buried.
Jedao gives Horseriver a few easy, exploratory strokes, listening - and feeling - for a few preliminary hints on how he likes it, before leaning in on one side, pressing a wet kiss near the base of his dick, working gradually back towards the head.
no subject
Still, he's glad his body is quicker at remembering than he is at finding the right words. Not that he doesn't have other words.
"Ah, by the separate hells , Jedao -" On the occasions he uses Jedao's name, it curves slightly in his accent, the affection wrapped in it is generally not broadcast quite so openly, not with Horseriver's dark, sardonic moods but they're in the light now and there's a physicality to the feelings as much as the physicality is a feeling, a literal warmth settling with his words.
"In the old way of things, as the year turned all would come to eat and laugh and dance in a hall built just for the witnessing of a king. In this place connected to the heart of the world - I would fuck you there, where the night is long but the fire always outlasts the darkness. All swear themselves and are given the same in return and then I would go to you for matters both different and yet not. A start of the year." His hands stay in Jedao's hair, not pulling but making sure to maintain the point of contact. There's none of his usual measure to his words, but even with the extra clarity of this place connecting words to immediate feelings is difficult. That he even tries is...different.
"Or perhaps you'd kneel for me, since you request it so politely." If there's teasing to that there's no mockery.
no subject
Dancing is one of his favorite blood sports; that gets a flare of intrigued enthusiasm. But he groans for the rest of it, the intimacy and the echoes and the secondhand memory of the fire. He feels so many things, flickering colors braided together. There's a sneaky, rebellious thrill at the place where people swear themselves, not completely unlike the copper-bright excitement of a child getting away with something, staying out late or stealing a plate of cookies: the Kel never let him in to their world of oaths and honor, not completely, but they never lived by it as purely as the Old Weald, and his King would place him first there, hold him closest. There's a petty proud possessive streak to that feeling, a greedy mine that has nothing to do with jealousy or monogamy and everything to do with old loneliness and fierce, self-indulgent longing. There's something he half-tries to hide under the rest, half offers anyway, as the truest gift he knows, even if it's an old secret between them: the quicksilver thread of fear at the long dark, the sweet twists of gratitude and relief and tentative tenderness at the idea of surviving it by a fire kin to this fire, being held close and never left alone, the whole night through. Raw simple desire weaves through it all, fierce and crackling, yes, yes he would like to be fucked.
You asshole, Jedao thinks at the teasing, indignant and languid as a cat, his mouth trying and failing to curl into a grin around Horseriver's cock, even though no bit of him is actually mad. He loves that about Horseriver too, maybe loves that most of all, and the surge of it feels like a small stampede in his chest, a rough-edged ground-rattling animal force.
no subject
He shares as much meaning as he knows how to form in flickering shards of light (shadows are formed where there is light but right now, here, the light is stronger). It’s easier to share feelings than words he’s forgotten how to say. The mirror of loneliness and longing that makes him hold close. The bright possessiveness - his, because of Jedao’s own pride and will because it would mean nothing without that. And fiercer still in the feeling of connection, in that he’s only sworn to keep his faith with one here. There’s the fear that is not a secret between them yet he can still take as a gift, enough for him to find his voice, to use the solidness of words.
“I will not leave you in the dark.” The promise of an arrogant, stiff-necked, bloody-minded bastard who had spent centuries fighting invaders and the gods and his own dissolution.
He huffs something that might have been a laugh if he was less caught in the threads of his own desire, wrapped up too in Jedao. He lightly tweaks a strand of hair. “I would not have it said I’m not a giving king...”
no subject
"I would never say such a thing, my lord," he promises, voice puckish but rich with the deeper sincerity underlying it. "Where do you want me?"
no subject
But he's always known the many shades of 'want', even when only in absence. It's been a very long time since he's felt physical arousal without having to to push a ghostly remnant to the fore.
He pulls Jedao up, the difference in their heights is smaller in this body, though there's still more than an inch between them. "Sit." He pushes him back onto the table, carvings of woodlands appearing again in the solid wood where he brushes against it. The tunic and light undershirt are familiar and easily removed so he can run his hands against his skin. Horseriver's hands are warmer now, if not quite warm, and the touch isn't light. He presses hard against Jedao, holding on tightly; he rests his head against Jedao's shoulder, sensation shared and doubled and, despite what's come before, not quite able to initiate a kiss.
no subject
He savors the particularity of the pose; the weight on his shoulder, the hard steady edge of Horseriver's jawbone where it presses against muscle. Nothing so simple as romantic, that - there's a resonance of the weary soldiers they both are, the ways they lurch and lean on each other, the way they share the weight. And the hesitation, too - a very small moment, in some ways, a negative gesture, a tiny gap, but one that he treasures.
Horseriver is nothing but welcome; he spreads his legs a little wider, as well as he can with the way he's perched, and tugs Horseriver's hair gently so that Jedao can press another kiss against his mouth, this one slower and softer than those that came before.
no subject
He meets the kiss, the welcome easing something he couldn't quite name. He lost anything he might call softness a long time ago but the edge isn't made of broken glass, just the quiet intensity of being able to find a few long moments just live in. Then he catches Jedao's hands, kissing his palms with a mixture of his usual gravity and the humor that rarely lasts more than a few moments in the waking world.
"I would say something about the possible discomfort of fucking on a table, but I'm not sure you'd mind."
no subject
"I asked," Jedao says, with warm careful enunciation, "And I was answered." I want to be where you want me.
He squeezes Horseriver's hands for a moment, in proper black full gloves, to suit the dream's fancy of the uniform, a perverse inequality that feels more quelling than intriguingly transgressive. "Take these off, please. I mind that more bruises that won't even last - or will they?" He asks at the sudden idea, not quite repressing the note of hopeful interest that invades his voice.
no subject
He smirks slightly at the question. "These ones will last, though not quite the same." Waking up with old bruises, almost half-way healed, yet, he thinks, still a reminder of the in between nature, of what can last where normal dreams don' linger.
He removes the gloves carefully, they have no real meaning to him but they're part of a whole that has meaning to Jedao. He leans forward a little to kiss Jedao again, holding on, this time, with bare hands.
"Lie down."
no subject
He catches his breath and lies back when he's told to, the hard wood of the table forcing the alacrity of eagerness to slow just a little, and he melts as he settles, the easy relaxation of trust, of willingly giving himself up - not just for a semi-anonymous night, this time, but as a joyful confirmation of the deeper truth.
no subject
He moves so he can kiss Jedao again, running his fingers down the inside of his arm. It's not the easiest angle he could've chosen but that wasn't the point. Here, more than anywhere else he knows, there's nothing that could be called anonymous. Even though he doesn't chose to go look for it, they're themselves, with all the danger and trust that entails.
There's no doubting that the slow, careful methodical remapping is from Horseriver's steady confidence, not from his earlier uncertainty in settling into his body. If he wasn't otherwise occupied, he might have said something about what can be learned by patience, as he stretches out his mind to catch any and all signals.
no subject
Jedao leaves his arm where it is as long as Horseriver is touching it, then lifts it out of the way, over his head when Horseriver starts exploring in earnest, wrapping his other hand around the same wrist in as close to the same place as he can manage.
There's a faint nervousness around his reconstructed ribs - less actual weakness than psychosomatic, at the joints from bone to ceramatrix do still ache periodically. Some scars he has no feeling in at all, and some the nerves are a little funny at the edges, a fizzing feeling when Horseriver traces them that makes him squirm and struggle to muffle giggles. He loves being touched with an omnivorous, ravenous enjoyment, loves the feel of Horseriver's hands, the strength and the sword callouses, deliberate fingertips and broad palms. He whines in his throat for attention to his sternum and clavicle, jerks in surprise at his own greedy reaction if Horseriver touches his nipples, goes a little more soft and pliable when Horseriver reaches the vulnerable plane of his stomach, goes smaller inside his own head, tentative but still trusting.
no subject
He opens himself to reflected reactions, letting himself be moved by the feelings in turn. His own pleasure at the physicality of it all is amplified and tied to Jedao's love for it. He rests fingers against a scar with no feeling before retracing the edge of another to make him squirm, a teasing amusement but without the walls of bitterness and protective sharp edged irony that his humor is usually hidden within. He runs his hands across Jedao's clavicle and then down, the edges of his palms resting on his sternum as he sees how much of Jedao's chest he can cover with his hands extended, noting both the surprise and reaction when he brushes over his nipples. He leaves his hands as a solid weight against his chest as he kisses him more deeply for a few long moments.
His hands are lighter as he traces them across Jedao's stomach but he moves with no less confidence. He can feel the ease, the shape of it, changing but never gone. It would be easy for him to push there, shape the peace into something that would drag Jedao completely in. But trust, freely given, is a gift he still holds precious.
He reaches up again, half-pining Jedao as he grips his wrist again, his hold firm and sure, with a warmth to it of words lost.
"Get me off." The angle isn't really any less angle but Jedao has a free hand and Horseriver's faith in his abilities, not that it's a particularly difficult challenge either, after the doubled back pleasure of his exploration.