He waited until you were asleep, making sure that no trace of sunlight might find you in your bed. And for a time he remained there, watching you, mesmerized by your form and figure and by the fragments of his own, slowly eroding thoughts.
But it does not last forever. In time, he rose, disappearing first to shadow and then to his home at the Center of All Things. Slowly he undressed, looking at himself in one unshrouded mirror. Amid candlelight and nothing else, he washed himself, and then to his own bed, he went.
He slept soundly for twelve hours while you slumbered through four. For him, it has been three days; three days of high-protein meals and leafy green vegetables, of maintaining his own quiet cornered empire and of shopping (and thieving) in the marketplaces of his mother's kingdom.
Three days, with him measuring every shadowy tick-tock of the moments between this world and that...
And now he returns. Shadows part for him as the sun begins to set in Tours, Gwilym clad in the blue and white which marks his mother's kingdom. White shirt, dark blue trousers, black boots, and a flowing sapphire cloak. He has left off the circlet; it would raise too many questions.
The cloak floats free of his shoulders and crumples to your floor as he crosses to your bed, easing himself down onto the edge of it. And he waits. Waits for sunlight to die, so that you might live.
He rests exactly as he did when you left: mostly on his back with a slight turn, his face turned toward where you sat. Dark curls lie against his face here and there, tumbling into one another otherwise. The shirt is still on the floor; his pants no longer clinging to him from not having dried off before putting them on. Or for the other reason either.
No movement, no sound, no nothing. It remains so until the sun has squatted beneath the horizon in Tours, disappearing behind the cathedral. Though light still exists in the sky where pink and bronze hover at the horizon, there is sudden movement on the bed. What seemed a statue suddenly warms with returned life. The dark eyes open, and the body moves, hands to the flat of the mattress and pushing him upwards.
It is that movement that reminds him he is wounded.
The wounds no longer glisten with fresh blood (or not so fresh as the case may be) at the surface, but have knitted together, the flesh around them bruised but at least they are scabbed. Still, no matter the refreshment of the previous evening, he is taxed by them, pale olive once more. He had not wanted to admit how hurt he was, but his body speaks it loud and clear. Painfully clear.
And you are here, as you promised. "Amice," he mumbles, rubbing his eyes, running his hand through the black curls. He looks at you then. It is a fixed look, a stare, at you, your clothing, the cloak on the floor. Iovis sits slowly up, fully up. He looks at his carved arms and then to you, a smile playing at his mouth. The bruises on his face are gone, his lips no longer swollen but back to their normal fullness. "You look better, si. Better than me, no?" He chuckles to that. He can at least chuckle now without killing himself.
"I've had more time than you have," Gwilym says cryptically. His eyes remain on you, moving over you, and he shifts, rising to his feet and moving around the bed to its other side. He puts a knee on it, leaning towards you a little. "How are you? You look," he adds, " like hell. But better than your last night."
He says it, he smiles at you faintly, and lightly, he puts a hand on your shoulder; then pulls it away. A fleeting touch, that. He turns his head, looking at the ceiling for a moment before he adds in that light tone of voice he uses when saying important things, "I brought you dinner."
"Your Other Place has Other Time," he wonders, both eyebrows lifting slightly. "Does it have its own sun and stars as well?" He seems genuinely interested. He is not saying such to be facetious. To your mention of dinner, he grins like the very devil, a fallen angel to be sure.
Your light touch, your hesitation. He has none of this, nor does he allow you yours. He takes your hand and he pulls you to him. You receive a kiss upon each cheek, his hands lifting to your shoulders as he does so. "That is how we do it where I am from. I am not going to break. Don't be so tentative." He pats you on your cheek and then roughly on the arms.
"I look like hell, I feel like hades," he lilts, grinning again as he rests against the leather of the headboard. "So... tell me of your home with its swirling time and its other sun and moon. It is ... on the other side of shadows? Past the hell-dogs," Iovis tacks on, snorting a laugh.
Your comprehension is immediate, and he relaxes minutely; a faint frisson of tension, released. It returns just as quickly as you grasp at him and draw him closer, though, red-gold eyebrows shooting up in his surprise. There is a rolling of his muscles in reaction, though he does not seek to pull away, merely the tension of surprise and anticipation. He is as he was, remains on edge.
"It does have its own time," Gwilym agrees quietly. He adjusts his position, settling slowly next to you; and then he sits up, pulling off the white tunic with its faint silver-leaf embroidery. On his chest between nipples and collarbone is that swathe of midnight sky with its embroidery of stars. "The Red Fox," he murmurs, reaching for your hand and guiding it to the leftmost part of his chest. "It reaches for the Vine's Harvest, over here."
He looks to you for a moment, emerald eyes affixed to your face; then his gaze dips, and he draws your hand over a little. "In the east, the Spring Maidens dance, while down here," your hand is slid down and to the middle of the stars, "the Sailor's Knot tries to pull everything into its tangle. There are more. But they have their stories. It is an old world. I am very young."
He smiles a little, and releases your hand, his smile one of surpassing sweetness for a moment. And he leans back against your headboard, shaking his head. "Not past the hounds, not exactly. It is not something I could give directions to. It is not to the left or the right, so much as it is deeper and further in. I was born there, not here, though I have always known of here, and spent some time here, even from when I was a baby."
He looks at your stars very intently. Each story is absorbed, and he follows the tracks of those burning orbs even as your hand guides his. His hand remains on your chest. He re-traces the Red Fox to Vine's Harvest to Spring Maidens to Sailor's Knot again, slowly, his black eyes lifting to your own. "I am very old," he counters. "Maybe not to you," he thinks to say suddenly, "...with your different sun and stars. I wonder if your sun would burn my flesh from my bones as this one would."
His fingers splay against the night sky on your chest. He grips them, rolls them in his fingers like jewels. "I was born in 1572... in Genoa," Iovis offers quietly. "I do not know the month, people did not keep up with that sort of thing like they do now. But my mother said only that it was cold when I was born." He tilts his head, his eyes on your stars again. His finger slides over a nipple, then squeezes. "It is ...deeper," he echoes, as if by that to understand what you say. "Like the sea...?" Dark eyes lift to you again.
"The shadow realm is a part of it, but it is deeper than that. Just as a bay is a part of the sea, but the sea is deeper than the bay...I do like these stars," Iovis remarks. "Were you born with these or you earn them in some act, some victory..."
He speaks and his hand is still in motion, sliding against those stars, splaying there, pressing and squeezing.
Gwilym laughs quietly, shaking his head a little as he looks at you. "By my time, I am twenty-three years old," he tells you, voice rolling out with mirth. "By your time? I'd have been born, let me see... oh, maybe three or four years ago." He looks to you, as if considering if you will believe him, though he is in fact considering adding more details. He still does not know why he is telling you these things.
His breath hisses out, and suddenly it does not matter so much why. The way you touch him, it has its effect, oes? Gwilym blinks once, biting at his lower lip. "... Like the sea, in a way," he agrees. He is distracted. "It is not here. Have you ever read, have you ever heard the stories of Britain? If you are familiar with them, then maybe that will mean something to you. But where I am from, there are many kinds of people. Most of them are not what you would call human, but they are people. It is ... different there. There are likenesses to this world, but it is a world which has passed beyond this one. They overlap only seldom. I suppose you might say I am one of those overlaps."
You squeeze, and his eyes close, white teeth scraping at his lower lip again, making it red against pale flesh, and his hand comes up to seek to trap yours. "I was not born with any marks, no. These, on my chest, they ... the closest I could explain is that they came from my brother. My twin," he adds, eyes opening, and he smiles at you. "Fraternal twin, oes - we do not look alike. But we were born in the same hour."
"I do not know much about England. This is my first time out of Italy," he admits. "I stayed in Genoa, then in Italy, Rome. Most of my long life. I have traveled some of the Middle East, but... this is as far north as I have been." Iovis watches you as he touches you. How your complexion increases, the blood shifting beneath his fingers. How your temperature changes. How your breathing changes.
"Better twenty three than three, I think," he chuckles. "I may be an amoral killer, but I am not a pedophile." You trap his hand, his lifts his eyebrows, his hand clasping your own before his fingers steal away again, replaced by his mouth. "You must get dizzy, si? With how quickly your time moves There. After a while," Iovis whispers against your chest, "...you stop counting and then stop noticing."
You can feel his focus, some quality of the air tightening between you as he bends, turning his head to brush his lips against your nipple. "I am ...four-hundred-and-forty-four this year, hmm... that is a special number. In your world, I would be over three-thousand years old." He grins, his eyes lifting to you past your dark sky and stars. "But I am still far older than you. Does that bother you?"
He rolls his tongue against the nub of your nipple, his eyes closing. He tastes your skin, and your complexion darkens as he coaxes the blood to the surface. The bed sounds with his movement. Iovis turns, straddling your legs, his hands braced upon the bed's surface. His dark curls drape downward to partially hide his face in this position. His hair is not overly long, but it is cut in layers, some longer than others.
"It can be dizzying," Gwilym admits to you quietly. "Confusing. I can stop time, in places, when I need to - in my home, I can. In my mother's -" He stops himself. He is getting too far ahead of himself. A little at a time, Gwi. Not all at once.
You bend your head, and he sucks in air shallowly, swallowing it as his eyes darken, as he watches your lips move against his skin and then in words. He swallows, then shakes his head mutely before he can force words onto his tongue. "Bother me? No. There are older than you there. Some of my own family are older than you. My father ... is ..."
The words fall away as you tease at his nipple, and he makes a small sound, trapped in the back of his throat. His hand lifts, then falls, fingers grabbing at the blanket, squeezing the life of it. His other hand lifts, carefully, gently, delicately sliding into your curls. His lips remain parted, but he is stuck; watching you.
His hair is softer than it has right to be. Tendrils curl around your fingers like vines. Iovis opens his eyes to see you gripping the blanket as if you were using it to stay glued to the world. You defend against everything. With a tug, he pulls from your chest and places his hands on your face. "You do not have to hold on so tightly. The world is not going to be pulled from your grasp, amice. What you say to me... stays with me."
His hand pats your face gently, his eyes holding sympathy in their dark color. His face close to yours, he feigns a kiss -- a kiss does not land, not yet. "I felt comfortable saying these things to you, you seemed to understand that there was more in the world than what most people perceive. It is what drew me to you during our battles. That, and your annoying habit of out-maneuvering me." Iovis cuts a ribald grin, his mouth covering yours with a sudden and deep embrace. "I hate to lose," he whispers. "But being bested by you made me want to know you. I should hate you for being so much younger than me and so much more skilled, but... I will not hate you," he winks. "Why would I hate you when I can taste you instead? That is a much better deal for Iovis."
His mouth teases yours again, feigning another intense covering and exploration only to dip to the juncture of your shoulder and neck. Still, he does not bite. Not yet. His mouth parts widely, lewdly. He enjoys your skin, tastes it, chews it without breaking it. "It can be dizzying," Iovis breathes at your ear. But he is not speaking of Time.
"I trust you."
The words come softly, so quietly that it is as well you have such supernaturally exceptional hearing. He looks at you, at your face, his expression one of such earnestness - such desperation. "It is myself I don't trust."
The truth of it is in his eyes. He is not lying to you. You come close, you do not kiss him, and his head bobs forward a little. Fooled. Gwilym inhales deeply, allowing the exhale to be slow, steady. And cut off, when your mouth suddenly does land on his. He grumbles a little, his hand releasing from the blankets to clasp at the nape of your neck, rubbing, squeezing, then massaging.
"It is in my blood, to be a thief," Gwilym murmurs to you. Your mouth moves downwards, along his skin, and he lets his head fall back, eyes closed. "My mother ... my father ... my family has a foot in either world, Iovis." He rolls your name across his tongue. He uses it so seldom; names have such power. "My father is something like six hundred years old, as time is counted here. He looks only a little older than me. My mother..." He smiles a little. "My mother is younger than I am. She's probably about twenty, maybe twenty-one or so, here. But she has lived a very active life."
His hand slowly winds and unwinds through your hair, and his fingers trace against your cheek. "...I have no excuse for being a thief," Gwilym tells you quietly. "None at all, except that my father was one before me. He is still better at it than I am. I do not have the excuse of poverty. I do not have the excuse of class struggle. My father holds a kingdom; my mother, a kingdom of her own. And my grandfather, the father of my brother, is the High King of all the kingdoms." His mouth twists, but he does not leave off watching your face. "Our family has something in common with prime time television, oes? And medieval tapestries."
He is watching to see how you react to this. Will you accept it? Will you be shocked? Will you laugh? Will you want to know more? Will you be disgusted... with it, and with him...
He lifts his head from your neck, his black eyes on your face. "A place where kingdoms still exist," with blood such as yours it is no wonder. "You father, he will want to hunt me down, yes? I am a rapscallion, a rogue, a common and uncommon thief!" He grins, amused at the idea. "You do not steal for money. You steal for the excitement, si? To be caught, or maybe not." He tilts his head. "You do it because you can, hmm? Because you are faster, you are smarter than many. A thief must have a sharp mind if he is to be much of a thief. And you... walk the shadows, they are born from your fingertips."
Stealing a crown jewel, now this is exciting. Iovis, you have captured a crown at last. Shall you cap it on your own head and cackle in the arms of a throne?
His mouth is sudden on you, parting yours beneath him. Distended canines scratch the sides of your tongue, he sucks the sting away. "You do it to hope to be seen," he wonders, his mouth dipping to lock at your breast before lifting to your mouth again. His dark curls in disarray, he looks like a poet-angel gone horribly awry. Seductive with his darkness, his dark features. "I have known few thieves who ever needed an excuse. It is a lifestyle, whether you choose it or it is chosen for you. I could have joined the clergy," he notes with amusement. "But I chose to steal instead. It is still a choice, even though I was hungry."
And I am hungry now. His hand moves against the stars at your chest again, squeezing before he bends, his mouth parting warmly (though not all that warmly) against your skin. "So the prince likes to be with the paupers," he teases, grinning where his tongue insinuates against your skin. From chest to torso to navel. "You like to rough it, si? To be in the dirt and the mud, the darkness and the blood. I understand. Some creatures are simply nocturnal, no? Preferring the darkness, preferring the edge of life to comfort. You do not know how to be comfortable, do you. Or if you feel it, it terrifies you with its lure of security. You do not want to be safe. You want to be alive... and so you walk the road you walk, with men of no name like me..." Iovis grins, his tongue swirling in your navel. He wants you twisting beneath his mouth, your body desiring to be a bottle to be opened.
"My father," Gwilym retorts drolly, "is the one who taught me how to pick locks. He is perhaps the one person in my entire family who is easy-going by inclination. I look like him, but he says I take after my mother in everything else. Her and my grandfather." Pray you never meet him. "He, on the other hand ... you wouldn't like to think how he reacted to finding out when my brother was in love."
And the less we say on that topic, the better. I do not need to make myself visibly known a hypocrite.
Your mouth moves against his, and he groans, a sound held in the back of his throat. His hand lifts, cradling your hair with a light-fingered touch, and he follows your mouth in its retreat. "They feed people in the church, I hear," Gwilym murmurs, voice gone a bit uneven. "It is a choice, oes..."
You move against him, and you speak; and it is your words which make him squirm, more than just your touch. You could say the same words from the other side of the room and he would be fidgeting, shifting restlessly. With you so close, every reaction he has is signaled to you, transmitted loud and clear. "I like comfort," he mutters, his protest given. "It's fun to get dirty, oes, but I like being able to get clean again. I..." He bites down on his lower lip, clamping the words away as he shifts against you. You can feel his tension, and, yes, his arousal.
It is not just security which terrifies him...
"No, I do not think you do," he says quietly. "If you craved comfort, you would not be here. That is not what excites you, that is not what you crave. You think you should crave comfort," his tongue trails fire from your navel up the center of your body and flicks against your lips. "Because everyone else says how wonderful it is. You try it, perhaps, but it never lasts long...does it...hmm, amice? Soon, you are back to the shadows, back to the edge. You would cut yourself and bleed into those shadows if you thought it would make you feel more free, more alive. You do not seem to wish control. You seem to wish its opposite." Or, again, you would not be here in his bed.
Iovis flicks his tongue against your lips and then between them in an invading, stealing kiss. His teeth press against the fullness of your bottom lip, just shy of drawing blood, and his mouth suckles strongly though there is nothing to drink. He stares at you, black eyes between the curtains of black lashes. "You come from a life," he murmurs as his parted mouth brushes against your own, tongue teasing, a kiss teased but not granted, "... a life of every possible comfort. And you are not there, you are here. You are afraid of being comfortable. As if you should die should you lie your head on the golden pillow of a prince."
He tugs at your lips again then pulls from them, his mouth descending to your stomach. Lower, as his tongue steals beneath the waistband of your pants. "So I think," Iovis speaks against your stomach, his hands beginning to unfasten your pants, to free you and your arousal. Is it about freedom, or is it about baring you of everything, looking at you, naked beneath him -- body and soul. Isn't that the real fear? Being naked. "Being visible... that is something else I think you are fighting. You move beneath me... it is desire, but it is also fear. You fear me, amice? You fear me or what I represent?" His hands part the fabric of your dark blue trousers, revealing your excitement, and in it he feels the tumbles of a lock fitting into place as he opens you and peers within.
"I..." He is on the edge of panic, mouth contorting with the urge of denial. No, it isn't true, it isn't me, you must be thinking of someone else - surely, somewhere in his bag of tricks he has an illusion, a deception which will fit the need at hand, that will deceive you, will turn you away. Everyone else is sooner or later deceived; sooner or later, everyone else is placated, mollified. Their eyes turn elsewhere as the master magician makes his symbols and passes.
But apparently, not you...
His body reacts to you as strongly as you can imagine. His internal and external life are crossing over, mingling, and it is having a perhaps predictable result. Where creatures of Chaos, of Hell itself, get no real fear from him, you have him trembling. One hand knots itself in your blankets again; the thinnest of things keeping him from letting shadows take him out from under you. You can tell how close to the mark you are, yes? "I am not afraid," Gwilym insists, emerald eyes sparking as he looks down along himself at you. You moves down, your hands wander, and he jerks as if to sit up, falling back. "I am not afraid of anything."
The lock opens with a sound of heavy metal moving. Si, some locks are more difficult than others. They are a burden on the soul to carry around forever. "Shhh, amice," sitting up, Iovis presses his finger at your mouth, "... it is alright, hmm? You want to run, I know, but it is alright. Your secret is safe with me. Who would I tell, hmm? To whom does it matter but to you and I?"
No one else could make sense of this conversation. His hand slides into your trousers, clasping and grasping you. His fingers press, flit as is feeling out a safe's combination. Sliding, as if to learn how a lock is put together. "Fear is the most natural emotion, it is the emotion that keeps you alive. It is healthy to have it, but only remains healthy if you control it." A thief's hands... more talented than a courtesan's, more capable than a physician's... they move against you; sometimes both at once, one at the root and the other at the head, and sometimes singly.
"You are beautiful," Iovis looks at you, your face, your length in his hands. "You are coveted, I have seen it. You are what everyone wants, but no one knows you. They do not even know the possibilities of what they could hold in their hands before you are gone," he whistles, "...like a dream." His mouth dips down. Iovis rolls you in his mouth, his lascivious tongue swirling and flicking.
"Such a mirage," he goes on to murmur, his lips moving along the side of your erection. "You pass unseen by so many, don't you?" His mouth sinks over you, taking as much of you in it at once as he can, the flat of his tongue pressing as he draws his mouth away. He buries his mouth against your neck suddenly, his mouth parting widely, clamping as his sharp teeth sink into your flesh. The surging blood fills his mouth. Aroused, it moves easily, as easy as a fountain. His hand jerks around your cock as he drinks. It is a swallow, two... and then the wound is healed.
Though the bite was brief, the pleasure it creates is nevertheless intense, and it lingers after the sting is gone. "But you are real, no matter how unreal you seem, for those with eyes to see, who are undaunted by pitfalls and traps, who have the patience of thieves who know the pay-out shall be... enormous..." Iovis grins upon that word, his eyes glancing down to what his hand holds and strokes.
Things are breaking apart inside of him. At least, that is how it feels. He gives you a look of utter astonishment - he is completely at odds with himself and with the world. Your finger presses to his lips, then slides away, and he is lost.
You and I. What are we to one another? I don't know. I don't even begin to know. It's as if this is happening in a language I should have learned but forgot to study while still in school. I am drowning in it, I am seeing the edges of the world crumble into sand, growing ever nearer to where I am lying. On your bed, not mine. You call me amice, and I don't know anymore what it means. It is a good thing to be, oes? Or no?
Gwilym swallows hard, then groans again as you grasp at him. He is more than just fully erect; it is almost painfully swollen. Your every movement across him has seen to it; in combination with the emotional torture, the sensation of crumbling, of leaking at the edges, he is more shaken than he himself could imagine him being.
"They see me," he says suddenly, his voice quieter than yours, pitched low. "But they don't see me. I am everyone's reflection, oes? Their shadow. I am Peter Pan. I am a Lost Boy. But ..."
But he has no desire for a Wendy. No desire for mothering little arms to smother his freedom, no perfect painted rosebud mouth to chide him and scold him for being bad, to tell him how to be Peter instead of Pan. He shudders as your mouth moves on him, mouth opening in a surging gasp. The cool air falling on his skin where your mouth has been almost burns him, and he pulses in your gasp.
"No one sees me," Gwilym whispers, his eyes closing as you rise against him. Your mouth moves, then, and his hips jerk up, pushing himself into your hand with an inarticulate cry as you so abruptly sink fangs in past his skin.
You hold him on the palm of your hand, more than just literally, right now. He shudders, trying to catch his breath with the crowding pleasure threatening to push him out of his mind. For a moment, the balance turns, and he is not struggling to escape you, recumbent instead beneath you, a faint whimpering sound pushed down in his chest as he reaches for air. "I ... think you will be disappointed by what I have to offer," Gwilym whispers. "I am not so very special, after all. Don't be deceived by gilt coverings."
"Who do you think you are talking to, eh?" He chuckles softly, his complexion coming to life with the life he has stolen from you. The swarthy quality, that olive tone returns where the wounds and blood magic used to heal them had beaten it pale. And as your blood fills him, energizes him, thrills him in his gut. "I am not some fool, so easily tricked. Am I," his fingers squeeze around the root of you, his fingers tracing then along the swollen length to teasingly tug the skin near the tip. "No, I am not. Your masks will do you no good here, I'm afraid. This is not Carnivale in Venice..."
He teases you, and there is some amount of perverse delight in seeing how he has affected you, how his taunting has hardened you, how swollen you are, braced against both pleasure and fear until pleasure and fear combine, the lines blurred. "You are so hard," he whispers. "So resolute, hmm? You do not want to lose. But I am not here to steal your soul, amice. Only to look at you. For I see you... where other eyes see shadow and darkness, phantoms, mirages, I see flesh and blood. The others... were not looking very closely, hmm...no, I do not think so..."
Iovis traces your lips with his tongue, as if he can taste the blood dripping from them. Half-masted by lashes, his eyes fix on yours. "I have tasted what you have to offer," he whispers. "I know what I have in my hands. You can deny it all you want, but you deny your power. The baby is out with the bathwater, Gwilym." Iovis leans back, his body descending, his mouth covering the painful swelling in his grasp. His mouth is heated from the blood he has swallowed, and that heat grips you, tightly sucking. He tastes the salt of your arousal on the back of his throat as he swallows you deeply, his throat muscles massaging as he takes all of you in -- not an easy feat for most.
Twisting his mouth, turning his head this way and that, his mouth joins in that spasming massage. And you feel a sting -- and unimaginable pleasure. Blood merges with aroused salt-essence streaming into his mouth. Pumping heart and swollen cock add pressure to the stream. He controls it with his tongue, coaxing blood then damming the flow, healing the small pricking cut before pricking it again in another spot to drink blood and orgasm all at once.
It is no use pretending, no use trying to hide from you. No matter how he twists and contorts in his effort to escape (and do not be mistaken, that is what he has been doing), it still returns to exactly this : him here beneath you. He is as pinned as if you were using physical force to hold him in place, as helpless as that. And it tantalizes him. It delights and infuriates him, washes over him with such waves of helplessness at being so exposed.
Powerless to prevent it, unable to escape it, and, in the end - you are winning. That is what it means to him. Just like in the vision...
"I am nothing," Gwilym whispers, his gaze darting along you. Taking in your form, the lines of your body; the fading marks of the wounds you have suffered are of as much interest to him as the way you hold your head when you are speaking. "If I should give in, I would go up like straw." He can be on one side of that line or the other, only. And he fights so hard, despite in his heart of hearts - he wants to lose.
He shudders, a deep, wracking tremor that shakes him and threatens to shake the bed. Your mouth on his hardness has such effect on him, with the sting of your words. "Duw!" He groans it.
I am so hard. I do not think I have ever been this hard before. I feel as if...
Thoughts and words are just - cut off. He shudders as your mouth twists and rubs at him, this way and that, and then - and then, indeed. Sound gurgles in the back of his throat as he stiffens (all over, not just the bit you have in your mouth), his back arching. His eyes are closed; he would not be able to bear light right now, even if he were capable of peeling his eyelids open. He twists his upper body against the bed, hands tightening in convulsion on your sheets.
And upon your tongue you can taste his essence...
Blood and semen, the essences of life. The quickening of it contains the quintessence of his self, in flashes; sunlight, again, in the taste, and memories of other moments. There are still the sun-warmed strawberries of youth, picked in the dappled field after riding across the fields of Avalon. Here, too, the grit and steel of effort, the velvet and cool fire of stealth. He disappeared into the alleys of the once-nameless kingdom the first time when he was all of eight.
There is the delight of dicing with devils, and escaping to tell the tale; the spit and fervour and temporary blind hatred of a thousand youthful squabbles, always forgotten five minutes later. There is the weight of eyes, too; a weight which brought about a velvet and iron shell into which he could retreat, and then steal away entirely, unobserved while all those gazes rested on what they thought they saw, rather than what was.
Habits gained early are not easily set aside. For Gwilym, they became another tool in his repertoire. Where his brother was studious and solemn and every inch himself, he was gay and charming, showing noone the truth except in rare flashes, until even he became hard-pressed to tell where truth and lie became distinct.
There is courage flavoured with aniseed and devotion tinted with peppermint; moments of childhood brought back in hints of scent and flavour. They are blurred, blinding, indistinct, one running into the next too quickly to be easily distinguished, combined in the tablespoons of blood and salt on your tongue. The pressure behind it, behind him, was, is immense...
Another lock pops free, even as you do from my mouth, loudly, wetly. No trace of blood or semen left, no evidence in fact that you have been bitten. Your flesh twitches, like your heart, like your soul. That is enough for now. You have felt enough for now, revealed enough for a night.
His mouth sliding off of you with an audible pop, Iovis sits back on his knees. His own arousal is evident, but he will suffer it. There is no move for him to relieve it. No, it has been enough tonight. The back of his hand swipes against his mouth, though there is nothing but saliva to wipe away.
And it is as if you have left -- perhaps he is leaving you to the comfort of your shadows, your masks, your anonymity to recover from so much revelation. Iovis looks at himself. Scars that were prominent begin to shrink and soften. The lesser wounds are healed, only pink lash marks left behind. Those will be gone tomorrow. His mouth is no longer bruised and sore, and previous bruises from the previous night's healing are also gone. He is restored by you.
Like magic...
"Would you like a drink," Iovis wonders suddenly, his dark eyes shifting from his wounds back to your face. He looks at you as casually as if you weren't half-unclothed on his bed with your cock against your stomach, shining with the wetness of his mouth. "I will get some wine, brandy if you want. And I will call for food, if you need it, want it. I am full," he chuckles, his hand going to his stomach. "Hmm... but you never know, by midnight I may be hungry again."
Could you stand it, his mouth on you again on the same night?
He lies beneath you, shuddering again, though now it is in the aftermath of his release. He feels as if there should be marks; as if the marks which were on you should now be transferred to his own flesh, long scars from all this struggle, all this revelation. It is exhausting. It leaves him weaker than a child.
If he had the strength, he would roll onto his side and curl up, maybe. But he doesn't. You are talking, and it takes all his available resources to bring his focus onto you, to make sense of your words. What is this? Is this English? Italian? What language are you speaking, anyway?
"I ... don't know," Gwilym murmurs, a long pause before he speaks. The words come slowly. He looks at you, and there is still a vulnerability in the air for him, right now. He is not fighting you, at the moment. But he is suddenly almost shy, embarrassed. He closes his eyes, turning his face slightly away. "I don't need anything, no."
It is halfway to being a lie. But it is not a drink he wants. And he is utterly unable in this moment to put his desires, his wants, into words. So instead, he closes his eyes, putting space between those desires and himself by not looking at you. Ostrich.
"I'm not hungry," Gwilym murmurs to you. Blindly, his hand seeks yours, a brief touch where he thinks you are. As if to reassure himself; take a crumb where he wants a cake.
Your hand is seen, and suddenly Iovis is there. He moves five motions for every one of a normal mortal. His hand covers yours, grips it as if making a vow of hands in a contract, in a promise. He knows you are hiding, he sees you. The turning of your head, the closing of your eyes. But he does not stop you this time. You need your refuge after such release -- emotional, spiritual, psychological, physical.
Iovis sits on the edge of the bed, his hand lifting from yours to brush at your hair. "I took to the streets of Genoa," he murmurs between you, his story, his life falling easily from his lips, "...a boy of six. My mother, my father died when I was ten. From then forward, I lived by my wits, by my crimes. I journeyed to Rome when I was eighteen, fleeing the law of Genoa. I met Caravaggio Merisi, the painter, there. He and I fought in brawls, cheated at cards. He was a masterful painter, a troubled soul. He was obsessed with me. He wanted to fuck me. It tortured him. It made for wonderful art. A shitty life."
His fingers move through your hair, finer than gold this. His touch is oddly gentle, soothing where it had tortured you before. "It was a disastrous love affair. He painted me. I did not give in to him. I did not give him what he wanted. It haunted him, his life with unfulfilled lusts. We killed a man after a bad run of betting. He thrust his knife in the man's gut, even as I knew he wanted to thrust into me. We both fled Rome. He went to Milan. I returned home to Genoa. Within two years, I was running the streets. I led the guild of the black hearts, the most powerful confederation of bastards ever to assemble in one place. One night, I went out into the narrow alleys of my city, and I was stolen by one more powerful than I. He made me what I am."
His hand rests upon your chest lightly. He pats you, rubbing gently before his hand draws away. "This life of shadows, of blood, of dark magics is all I have known. I do not mourn life as unfair. I have never known it to be fair that I should mourn fairness' lacking." Iovis quirks a smile to that. "Meeting you in the shadows, Gwilym, has been... for the first time," he changes course, "... I can sympathize with Caravaggio."
"Except," Gwilym murmurs, "I gave in to you." He is listening; he points out the difference without rancor, without sounding like he is changing the topic. His eyes do not open; he does not look at you just yet, his breathing slow, returning to something like normal. And when your hand begins to draw away, his follows. I do not want you to go...
Slowly, he opens his eyes, looking at you now, where before he would not - could not. "I told you that there are people where I am from who you would not consider human," Gwilym murmurs. He is slow to rise, but he does lift his upper body slightly, leaning against the pillows while keeping hold of your hand. He slides his fingers through yours, gaze intent on your face. "Things are ... different there. There is so much magic, it is commonplace. What I can do is unusual - but in the depth, not that I can do it at all."
He tugs at your hand a little, more in invitation then command and refusing to speak of it. He wants you close to him right now, but to say so is a risk. One he is afraid of taking. It is covered by his continued speech. "My mother's marriage is unusual even there, though not so unusual there as to draw derision. She is married to two men. My father is one. My brother's father is the other; and his father is the father of my father. My brother, you see, is thus also my uncle. And they have their roles to play, when they are there. La Regina Bianca," he says it in Italian, looking to you; it is an instinct that prompts it, "the Oak King - the King of Summer, and the Holly King, Lord of the Harvest. They are themselves, but they are many things, you see?"
Now his hand slowly pulls away from yours, though he goes on looking at you, still. "I wish," Gwilym tells you finally, "I could have seen you when Caravaggio knew you. But I think you would not have given me a second look, then. I was going somewhere with this. Where was I going, Iovis? Where am I going now?"
"You did not miss much," Iovis laughs at himself. "I was dirty, unwashed and ill-mannered. I did not have this sophistication you see today." He grins at that, as if he were sophisticated now. But in comparison...
Iovis joins you, understanding your meaning as you tug on him. He comes to lie beside you, his arms coming around you. He kisses your shoulder. "La Regina Bianca," he murmurs against your skin. "La Donna Bianca." The White Lady, the White Queen. There are not many stories like this in Italy, its paganism long ago replaced and only tenuously held before that. "I do not know it," he whispers at your ear. "But ... I am not a scholar, si? A student. I do not know about mythology." He does not apologize for his ignorance, he merely explains it.
"But it sounds complicated. How do you know what to call one another," he smiles at your ear. "I will not speak about a man's mother, that is sacred ground, si? But she must be a very tired woman." Maybe as tired as you are now. Iovis nuzzles at your ear. He closes his eyes, inhaling you, sensing you out by taste and hearing and touch. "Do not worry about the destination, it will find you," Iovis notes.
He breathes at your neck, his tongue coming out to press spirals against your skin, your nape, the space beneath and behind your ear. "I want you beyond reason," he whispers, it is a hiss of intensity. "I taste the sunlight and magic on your blood. It shows me worlds I have never known. I want to know them." His head dips and his makes a sound in the back of his throat as his mouth parts wetly, warmly, lewdly at your neck. He knows he cannot drink from you again, not yet. But to taste your skin is enough, it is intoxication enough. His fingers trail along your chest and back down your stomach to reach between your thighs.
"You are in my blood," he groans, "... like Caravaggio's disease. You burn there, and I find no rest from my want, amice." His body presses against your back, and you feel him against your back, surging thickly beneath the thick, cotton cloth.
"You know enough." Gwilym murmurs it to you, his arms around you. You join him, and it does more to set him at his ease than you can imagine. It is comfort and solace where before he has found little or even none. "My mother ... I do not know, we do not know how she does it. To us, she's mum, yeah? But she is also other things. It seems to be the way we all are. My father," he twitches a smile at you, "says I'm like her. In temperament, anyway."
You tell him not to worry, and for once, he does just that. He concentrates instead on you, turning to catch at your mouth for a moment, shivering as you wander against his skin. He curls in on himself, pressing back against you, breath hissing like serpents in its escape from between his lips.
I want to tell you, show you everything. How strange this is, to find myself opening to you. To feel my heart tugged as you pick my locks. Even though it makes me afraid, I want to be here. With you...
"I would show you everything, if I could," Gwilym whispers, his head tipping back with a heartfelt groan as you reach along his stomach and further below. "I want to give you everything. Anything you want, I would give you." He rolls his hips back with slow and deliberate intent, pressing against your erection. It is a lazy rub of him against you, but it is no accident. "I want... so many things, Iovis. I have ... so many thoughts. Ideas. Dreams. They crowd into my head when I look at you."
His hands move to his hips, pushing down the fabric of his trousers until they are around his knees, until they tangle around his ankles. He is already shirtless. He is almost nude, now, and he reaches back, reaching to grasp at that cotton, feeling the shape of you partially defined there.
"Ask me any question..."signaled
"Ask me any gift..."
"Anything you want, right now, it's yours..."
Posted by rowan at November 13, 2006 08:00 PM
