My mind does not have the opportunity to wander, even momentarily, during the course of my day. It is as ever focused upon the task at hand, be it maritime rights appeals, strategic planning meetings, or hearing arguments over, as it turns out, marketplace stalls. I did not have even so much as a moment's time to consider what my brother had told me just the night before.
     It wasn't until I sat in the large chair of my apartments, my eyes on the sinking of the sun and the rising of the stars in their pantomime courses, that I heard him, truly heard him.
     He had found someone, Jupiter of all people. Or a man whose name is Jove.
     As was so often the case in our relationship, I ventured forth as an intrepid Coronado, discovering worlds of experiences and bringing them back to him as if he were my king to be pleased by the treasure. And then, finding the treasure to his liking, he runs off with the whole lot!
     It is typical of him, really. And it is why I love him. Give him an inch, I swear...
     There is a soft sound of laughter from the prince's private chambers. Though he is not yet crowned, he is in truth a king in action. But with the setting of the sun, this king-to-be is taking his repose, his time to be shared with those he loves. He is in the remnants of the fine clothing he has worn this day, that of a man who strides two worlds -- the attire is both anachronistic and resoundingly modern, which is anachronistic to the Otherworld is it not? The shirt is gone, done away with to reveal the squirming, swarming reptiles that cover him shoulder to stomach. His pants of midnight leather cover black boots.
     His fiery hair is mid-length these days of burgeoning spring, cut in layers so the waves spark like flames. And as he sits slumped down in his large chair, relaxing to be sure, thinking to be sure, Iowerth Rhudd Draig tilts his head, his hair acting as a torch to light the way to him.

     For you it has been a long day; the day of being a king. For him, it has been a long day as well, but a different length, a different cut if you will. A day of consultation, of planning - examining numbers and setting them straight. Putting things in order.
     Is that not always his way?
     But it is the end of the day, mercifully. No business plagues him tonight. Instead, he has left his apartments behind him to make his way to yours, with a tapping of fingers idly drumming on the surface of your door. In his other hand, he holds a wicker basket covered with a cloth. Tiernan looks to your door, then smiles; he turns the door knob, and lets himself in.
     After all, doesn't he belong here, as much as anyone? And you knew he would be here, did you not? Your lover enters, closing and locking the door behind him before making his way in to where you sit. His hair has grown a bit long again; curling against the collar of his grey tunic in back, falling over his eyebrows in front. He has not yet noticed. "They were out of those apple pies you like, at the bakery in the Blue Quarter," he tells you. "So I've gotten orange spice ones, instead."
     A domestic moment. He sets the basket down, moving to you without self-consciousness, a hand to your shoulder as he bends to brush his lips against your forehead. "Good evening, your highness," Tiernan murmurs. "Sorry if I'm late with dinner. There was a problem with one of the ships."

     But do I begrudge you your Jove? As my Mercury comes into view? No, brother, I do not begrudge you this one that you have found. This one who interests you, who is interested in you. Why should it not be so? And who am I, of all, to say it should not be?
     He was in thought -- when is he ever out of it? -- but Iowerth sits up to receive not only your evening benediction but to put an end to his reverie. A lazy smile glides across his mouth like a solitary punter in a wide lolling river. "You've brought food," he intones, "...no apology needed."
     Iowerth rises from his seat, uncurling with those writhing seadragons, to wrap you in a hug. Your kiss is returned, first on the forehead, and then on your mouth. "I thought about this morning while I was taking my lunch with the mariners guild." His hand guides your face toward him and he puts himself in that vision, that memory, and it is reborn at your lips...
     How dawn pushed its way through the drapes of his bedroom and on your bodies as you moved on one another still half slumbering and tasting of the previous evening's wine.
     Parting the kiss, Iowerth smiles, his hand burying itself in dark locks. "I like this, how you let your hair curl as it wants to, however it wants to. How is your ship? Not a serious problem?" he wonders of your business, always attentive when it is mentioned, concerned when there are issues. "I will get us something to drink to go with the food," he notes in soft aside, his hand patting your hip as he moves out of your space and heads toward a collection of bottles. One might think them simply a display of grand glasswork, but each hand-blown bottle contains an even more selective concoction. It is art within art.

     He smiles at you as you rise, your tug welcomed as he moves to you, with you in return. Work has defined him; sharpened a bit what was soft, revealed the toughness that pairs so well with his gentleness. His hand comes up to your shoulder, grasping and then releasing. "If you had your way," Tiernan accuses in the mildest of voices, "I would be late for my own appointments every morning. But," his smile widens, "I was thinking of it, too."
     It echoes in the blue of his eyes, that smile, that memory. There is simple, honest affection in his expression, given to you with the closing of his eyes and the giving of his kiss. He pulls away when you speak, grinning a little and shaking his head. "Nothing which can't be fixed. A mix-up on some clerk's sheets; too little water, too much food. It's why I am always double-checking these things before I let a ship leave port."
     You prepare drinks; he accepts it so simply, moving to open the basket and pull out the food he's brought. Rolled up strips of beef and green onion skewered by bamboo and roasted with some sauce until sticky is wrapped in waxed paper, small crispy birds enveloped in peppers and fried in oil; rolls filled with quince jam and baked, and orange spice and lemon custard pies. The items are pulled out, arranged so that you can see them, and then he settles himself against the edge of the table, calloused palms resting there.
     "Did I interrupt much needed contemplation?" Tiernan inquires, a dark eyebrow lifting at you. "I like watching you think, even if it gives me bad ideas, sometimes. Your day went well?"

     "So long as I may inspire anyone to think about any thing, I am content," he notes. There is a galloping quality to his cadence, augmented by the laughter that bubbles up, trailing his words. "Provisions. I remember my first few jaunts. All I brought with me was biscuits and jam. It was a short few trips," he grins. And he was only nine at the time.
     "I could not help the way the day began," Iowerth continues, coming to join you at the table, his drink set aside after a swallow as you begin unveiling the evening's meal. "And even if I could have, I would not have bothered. There is little I love more than waking up to you, the feel of the sun on your skin, fumbling for you with clumsy, waking hands." He winks as he grins, taking one of the skewers and sliding beef and onions off. "Were you very late this morning?"
     "... I was thinking of you. Thinking of my brother," Iowerth moves on, answering your question with warm ease. "It seems he has taken a lover, a man," for lack of any other information, "... named Jove. Italian. I was thinking of...how happy," he says after a moment, "... that I am for him. How I hope he allows himself such happiness. He dare not care for threat of losing. But maybe he is learning to let someone else besides me into his heart..."

     "You'll make me blush," Tiernan quips, but it is not entirely a joke. Colour moves warmly into his face, his gaze flickering from your eyes and away and then back. His smile returns; it was not gone long, did you miss it? "Not very late, but late enough for my assistants to be looking curiously at me. I caught one of them looking through my drawers for any sign of perfumed letters; she does not think that I know."
     He has kept his personal life a secret from those who work with him. Time enough for shocking revelations later. Now he picks up one of the birds, crunching through flesh and bone in rapid succession, reaching for a napkin; he has always been a little on the fastidious side, yes? "I like it when you think of me," Tiernan encourages you, wiping his fingers decorously. "As for your brother - I don't know him that well. But he seems to me to make difficulties for himself. Happiness will take time... and if how he handled us is any indication, he will still be afraid of losing you, for having taken a lover of his own."
     He does not know of your other relationship with your brother; he has no need to know. His gaze is clear and untroubled, and he dips his fingers to the table to pick up a roll. "He's a thief, yes? Picking up something's easy - but if it's valuable to him, it's the letting go which is hard."

     "He does. As do I," his lips twist in self-awareness as he chews onion and beef and then bird. "He by running; me by burying myself in the whirlpool of activity, work, rule. It is the same impulse, I think. I am not afraid of losing anymore. But ... I have feared it enough to know what it feels like. All I can do is love him, which I do, and hope for him the best. And to leave himself alone long enough to enjoy something for once."
     Iowerth pauses, his mouth twisting now sardonically, and his eyebrows lift in fiery askance. "Do I sound as though I am worrying?" He knows he is by the look upon his face. Snorting a short laugh, he shrugs: What else is a twin brother to do?
     "I will worry later," he whispers. "You want to hear more of what I think? Of what I like? Won't you be embarrassed by my hyperbole? You sound better in the morning, eve more than you do in the evening, even more than you shall tonight," the king to be grins as he settles back with his drink. "I think it is because the memories of the evening feed the fumbling fingers at dawn. Just as the evening's clasping is inspired by how the day began. It's a vicious cycle," Iowerth intones lightly.
     "I think I will start writing you letters... under a pen-name of course," he tips his chin upward, periwinkle eyes scanning the ceiling and his wicked thoughts. "I will spray them with perfume and send them to your office to give her something to read. Oh," he grins now, arms folding against his chest, the seadragons swimming and swirling against his skin where musculature shifts, "... how I shall enjoy this. It shall make my every day complete."

     "No," Tiernan says simply, "you sound as if you care. If you were worrying, you wouldn't be smiling so soon - or so easily diverted." He smiles at you, turning to you and leaning forward, as if to pin you against the edge of the table. But he settles for brushing his mouth along your jaw and pulling back. "I doubt he wants you to leave him alone. He is easily frightened by intimacy, oes? His or other people's. On some level, he will probably hope you will rescue him from it. All the more reason to let him flail a bit, to see if he will sink or swim, first. I'm cruel, but - he's not my brother."
     He tugs at your hair a little, smiling the more broadly, skin going pink again. "I think," Tiernan says judiciously, "that you are insatiable, my prince. Evidence seems to bear it out. And wicked in your entertainments."
     He releases you, fingers brushing against your chest, down across your stomach, and then casually he reaches for one of the meat rolls. "I look forward to reading letters from you - ones which do not break my heart, yes?" Blue eyes glimmer in twilight amusement. "But what makes you think I never get any anonymous love letters as it is?"

     "My brother and I have done everything together." His voice has the hush of confession about it. Confession, or contemplation. "From the womb...we were never separate, never truly apart. When I took a lover," he looks to you, "... suddenly we were not in the same place at the same time." Iowerth smiles a touch. "Perhaps you are thankful for that. And now... now he is going where I cannot go. And ... there is a very real anxiety, a very real trepidation. What if he should walk a path and i never catch up? Hmm? And so... I know he has felt the same regarding you and I. We are happy for one another, but we are also afraid. Hands that have been so... constantly joined... when the grasp is loosed, how could it not be disconcerting?"
     He smiles more broadly as you do, your looks contagious. He enjoys being pawed; that is quite clear. Periwinkle eyes focus on you, on your face, despite how and where your hands wander. "I know I am insatiable. How can the hunger of the ocean ever be sated? You set it off in me," he breathes that lowly, as if such should not be uttered aloud. "Like the moon sets waves in the sea."
     Iowerth chuckles, fiery eyebrows streaking upward. "Oh, you receive other letters do you? From whom?" He looks you up and down, down and up, with a grin -- but with the rise of something far more dark. The rising of the sea, the swirling of waters that become a whirlpool, a swirling maw. "You are teasing me," he murmurs. "Whatever letters," his voice drags upon that word, "... you are receiving, or not, mine shall drown them all."
     Leaning across the table, his kiss is a sudden fury.

     "So redouble your grip." Tiernan says it as calmly as he says most things. By now, any hesitation he may have had regarding where he stands, with regard to your brother or otherwise, it is gone. He takes a bite out of the roll, savoring the warmth of fresh-baked bread.
     If he is afraid, or if you are - there's no harm in reminding one another that what is between you is still between you. It doesn't make either of you less of a man, or less able to face your own relationships. I only knew warmth once I met you. Losing you would break my heart.
     As it has, before. There is the knowledge of it in his eyes. Acknowledged, and then he moves on. "Just don't jump the gun, yes? Wait until he struggles with it. It will mean more. He will learn to appreciate it more if he has to work for it."
     He grins a little, looking over at you - does he sound like your older brother yet? And he brushes your hand with his own as you speak of the effect he has on you. Few words, as usual - but there is that look in his eyes, emotion unspoken, like a tear unshed.
     Tiernan responds to the rise of your energy before your words; he senses it, turns to it willingly. There is a caution there, but there are sparks in his eyes; turbulence welcomed, anticipated. Desired. His hands go to your hips as he blocks the impact of your body with his own, absorbs it, wrestling your mouth with his tongue, his lips all put into it, behind it. He nuzzles at your mouth, his lips parted, breath warm in exhalation against your chin, his hands coming up to your shoulders. They brace there, squeezing you.
     Anonymous, my captain, my king, means whose letters they are I don't know. I've read them, to be sure. But yours have been read and re-read, unlike those. Drown me, by all means. I look forward to trying to survive the experience.

Posted by rowan at November 30, 2006 08:50 PM