A hand to my heart. I am exposed. The cage of my ribs are cracked open. One. Two. Three ravens sit on the bones like branches, cawing: liar, lover, louse.
     He puts not one but three hallways between himself and you and them, three hallways and as many doors. A vacant room, though well-appointed, is dark. Only the sunlight slipping underneath the door gives any light. It is a spotlight, even so...
     There are hands, the press of fingers as he tugs you in and locks the door behind you, and his open mouth, seeking and promising darkness. He tastes of figs, dark and potent and destructive. Pressing himself against the exit, locked inside the uninhabited state room, Aeron pulls you into him, against him. Hinges rattle as joined weight shakes the old door. Bones rattle in the shadow realms, where they hang like prized possessions, trophies from the cages broken, the hearts rended. They are all yours.
     His is beating, rapidly. As his fingers lose themselves in your hair, his mouth in your mouth, his body trapped between your own and the door, he closes his eyes to Fate.
     In his mind, one...two...three ravens sit upon his chest, attempting to cover his exposed heart. Quick! Before everyone sees I care...

     He follows you at an easy lope, in nowhere near such hurry as yours. He picks up on your haste and your nervousness - how could he not, after all? His hands go to your hips as the door closes, as he and you press together. You are squeezed, and his hands come up to your face instead.
     You are so ashamed of what is mine. Gwilym kisses you, not savagely but sweetly, even if with the knife's edge of his tongue slipping past your lips. You shouldn't be, even if we don't share.

     I feel like my guts are all over the floor, and a lifetime worth of secrets have spilled from my lips. And I hold you tightly, tight within my chest, Gwilym. For I know what We Must Do. Only you know where my heart lives. Only you can walk the path to it, for I have constructed that labyrinth especially for you...
     Aeron sobs into your mouth, the kiss a tangle of mouths and breaths and a quiet groan of despair. I have designed it, built it since I was ten years old. And a bright shining light has ruined it all. Black-green eyes look to you, black lashes inky with water held. And now that you know where it is... you will not want to find it. My king... who knows the Trick better than you and I?
     The Truth is: secrets are necessary. You only want what you have to find yourself, what you have to steal. When it is given to you, both of you look at it for a moment, hold it for a moment, and then set it aside. A gem given is not worth half that of a gem stolen or purchased in guile.
     "She answered it," he whispers in his sob. "And it was for you to find... not her... "

     You said nothing which you should not. He soothes, he caresses, he grasps you and holds you close to him, tight within the circle of his arms. You have done nothing wrong. And you do not need Tricks with me. Don't you know that?
     He kisses you, parting your mouth with his own, dragging you to the floor with him, still held to his chest as he turns you, an arm wrapped around your waist so that your back is up against him, his mouth roaming the side of your neck to your ear.
     "You were the unknown," Gwilym whispers to you, in your ear. "You hid in plain sight, and you took me by surprise. You gave me what I needed and what I wanted, even when I did not think it was either of those. And you have stayed with me, and given me that all this time..."
     His fingers press in to your jaw, then drag back through your hair. Don't you know how much I love you? How much I adore you, because you give me that which I can't make myself ask for? Who, after all, can turn the tables on the Holly King, or have the balls bold as brass to tell me things instead of asking...

     And you give him what he needs, what he wants, even if he does not know that he wants and needs such things. Aeron gives his weight to you, his mouth, his hair, bones and flesh. The ravens at his chest scatter at the wave of the Holly King's hand. The corpse of a man in love lies against you. He sighs as you speak. He gives himself over to the covering of the earth and vines from your fingertips.
     "I have watched those who weren't clever lose you," he whispers. "And if that ever happens, I shall be a despairing thing. The Trick is the dance we move in, you and I," he says, tilting his head both to your mouth and to look at you. Those who haven't beguiled you, have not been clever, or have kept your interest litter the earth like autumn leaves. He knows them; those leaves have crunched beneath the boot-heels on his own feet.
     A corona of emerald, ghostly brilliant, rings his dark eyes as he looks to you. Never at, never through, always to. Aeron's blood-red lashes lift and lower. "You do not love me less for knowing that i can be hurt." That is a question, his question. "I...thought it would always be my undoing to show you how much I loved and cared for you. I would become... just like everybody else."
     His body squirms within your solid hold, both in thrill of being held by you and in the power of that primal fear. Oh, you know it well. Has it not been your own?

     "Others have not known me, not the real me," Gwilym points out quietly. He keeps hold of you to himself, his hands moving to undress you tenderly. "I have always hidden behind my armor, oes? The only ones who have known me for who I am are my brothers. And even they, often's not, have been taken in by my glamours."
     His mouth moves against the side of your throat hungrily, without a vampire's ravaging but hungrily nonetheless. "You are mine," Gwilym whispers. "And I am yours, oes? You will never be like everybody else. How could you, when you are so different from them? You are the one I entrust with my weaknesses, knowing and craving that you will take full advantage, oes?"
     He chuckles, dragging your shirt away and his hands moving to your trousers. I can seduce many. But I cannot love many.

     The ravens on his chest are written there for all Time. The shadows there are those you and he live in, create and command. And in that thicket, in that chest, his heart. It may as well be in your hands, beating in your palm for all it belongs to him.
     The tattoos that mark him are inscribed and enshrined there for no one but you. Have you known that? It is a revelation and a roadmap, a symbol of his loyalty and his love. But his covers his heart, as his brother's does not. It is shown to you in the removal of his shirt. your hands move to his trousers, and there is a sudden stillness. As still as shadows, far more still than the Center of All Things.
     In the center of your arms -- is that not the real Center of All Things -- Aeron turns. He faces you, one hand on the door, the other on the floor. His neck is marked by your mouth and by the insinuation of shadows, the first marks of the tattoos. His hand runs up your shirt, the buttons sliding free of their traps. "I am yours," Aeron whispers just short of your lips. "And you are mine." He speaks it with the conviction of your own truth, that which was given from your own lips. He seizes your mouth.
     Each of you have a hand on the ultimate treasure -- your hand on his heart, his on yours. It is a simultaneous theft. And in his eyes there is comfort, calm, his fears allayed. You know the truth, you've seen the answer to the riddle, you saw the sunlight on the labyrinth that revealed its twists and turns, and you still want him. "Seduce as you need and want, my king. Your love is enough."
     He smiles (again, with the smiling) against your belly, his hands unfastening your trousers. Aeron buries his face there, the warmth of his mouth finding his way through the maze of your skin. "I love you." His breath is warm as he laughs there, for the second time in a day, and he circles your hips with his arms as his mouth and his breath snake around you.
     From the time I was ten until now, everything has been to get your attention. A rabbit out of a hand, a sleight of hand to catch your eye...

     He smiles, closing his eyes as you turn on him, against him, in ways which are anything but betrayal. He clasps you to him, he kisses you, blind to everything except Truth. And I love you, brawd. Nobody knows me as you do. Nobody else understands me as you...
     The secrets held between you and he, by necessity. From society. From family. From all save so few, and each of those few examined with paranoid alarm, for fear of how it might come back to haunt.
     But still, Gwilym Gwyn Garu loves, and his heart is displayed to you, with emotion and arousal alike. Nobody else could replace you. There is only one of you.

Posted by rowan at June 28, 2009 05:46 PM