Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was supposed to be perfect. Exandria remained intact, and though the Red Moon was no more, most of its people were safe on the surface of the earth. His father had sent for him, as an equal, to discuss their path forward. Cyrus wasn’t there– would never be there again– but nevertheless, Dorian Storm had felt real hope when Coriolis’s hooves touched down on the clouds of the Silken Squall with his lover riding pillion, his arms wrapped warm around his waist.

His lover. It was all so new. But– so far, Dorian hadn’t disappointed anyone, even though his packed schedule made his eyes cross.

It was all going extremely well for once until Imogen’s voice cut into his head in the middle of an increasingly tense negotiation. “Is now an okay time?”

Dorian startled visibly, and then looked around furtively to see if any of the visiting dignitaries had noticed. “No!” 

He sucked in a steadying breath. It wasn’t fair to take his stress out on his friends. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just, you know, all these meetings…”

“Trust me. I know.”

The corner of Dorian’s mouth twitched up. Though Imogen was, along with her mother, now the de facto representative of the Ruidians on Exandria, and even busier than he was, his friends remained constantly themselves. A comfort, in a world whirling too fast for anyone to really keep up. The ambassador from Bassuras– and wasn’t that rich, given the state of diplomacy in that region– was complaining about his father’s proposal to offer the Reilorans the opportunity to shadow the Squall to see if a nomadic homeland would suit them. Dorian would like to see Bassuras offer a better option.

He needed to answer Imogen. “Tell me after dinner?”

“All right.” But the slight weight of Imogen’s mind in his didn’t fade immediately, and after a few minutes, she added: “You take care, all right?”

Warmed, Dorian restored his face to careful neutrality and tried to pay attention.

Dorian was getting dressed for bed in a state of increasing agitation. Dinnertime had come and gone, and Imogen hadn’t gotten back to him. Surely she was just busy. Nothing had gone wrong. If he was really worried, he could go find her in person. The convocation was huge, and the borders of everyone’s sovereign territory kept moving as new delegations arrived, but surely the guards would not deny him passage. The Hells had saved Exandria, and Dorian had made sure Exandria knew it.

The problem was that he didn’t want to leave his bedroom. Orym was reclining on their bed– their bed!-- bare-chested and almost glowing in the low light from the torches, watching him dress with hooded eyes. “You cover up more in here than you do out there.”

Dorian froze, fingers suddenly clumsy on the top button of his pajamas. “Is that a… problem?” His mind started racing. There wasn’t room for many merchants here, but if Orym wanted him to wear something else–

“Never.” Orym rolled with impossible grace over the silks covering their bed, kneeling up on the edge to extend his hand up toward Dorian.

Dorian sat, top button still undone. 

Orym shuffled forward onto his knees and pressed the side of his face to the side of Dorian’s. “Wear anything you like. I’m the one who gets to unwrap you.” 

His breath tickled the shell of Dorian’s ear, and Dorian shivered. Nimbler fingers than his own found the buttons he had just fastened and began to undo his work. Orym was so strong and so sure, so willing to teach. Dorian still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that somehow he was going to break Orym, or maybe just break the thing they had together. It had been a month since the fall of the red moon, and the luxury of nights together without the threat of the morrow hadn’t even begun to wear thin. A handful of nights where they’d both had the energy and courage to do more than hold each other. Dorian, although a still novice, very much wanted more of that kind of intimacy.

Naturally, a voice interrupted just as he had mustered the courage to reach for Orym’s belt buckle. “Dorian?”

Dorian winced, a string of heartfelt Marquesian drifting across the telepathic connection before he could cut it off.

Orym stilled before him, hand warm on Dorian’s hip. “Are you okay?”

In his head, Imogen said: “I’m sorry, it’s wild here, I can barely get a moment alone to think–”

Orym, out loud: “We don’t have to do anything tonight.”

Dorian shook his head to clear it. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then, out loud: “I forgot– I have to– I’m sorry– I just need to get–”

And then he fled into the parlour of their apportioned suite and shut the bedroom door behind his back, privately imagining a thousand shades of disappointment on Orym’s face. He couldn’t look. He couldn’t think about it. He sank onto a richly-upholstered divan with cold sweat on his back and answered Imogen. “What? What is it?”

“It’s Orym,” she said, and wasn’t that just like Dorian’s life. “I’m worried about him. He’s doing the thing.”

Dorian’s stomach sank. “Which thing?”

“You know.”

“I genuinely do not.”

A pause. “He’s not talking? I think there’s something hurting him.”

It sounded like a question, but Dorian knew Imogen wouldn’t bother him unless she was sure. He hadn’t noticed– he’d been so busy– at least he managed to keep the cursing to himself this time. “Don’t worry,” he assured Imogen. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks, Dorian. I knew we could count on you.”

Chapter Text

After Imogen had gone, Dorian had a lengthy and heated argument with himself over whether he could try to pick things up where they had left off. He wanted to, but emotion swirled in him like bad weather. The low-pressure system of this whole post-Ruidus mess had promised danger ever since they’d managed their mission, and all it had taken was a single high-pressure event to set a storm brewing inside him. If he was going to be a good partner to Orym, he had to take care of Orym. He wanted very badly to be a good partner.

He had opened the door, intending to get a second opinion, and had seen Orym curled into a nest of pillows, Tusk Love huge in his hands. Dorian had borrowed it off Ashton, tearing through the book in a desperate bid to distract himself from the utter tumult of that final confrontation. 

(“That good?” Orym had asked him, after Dorian had closed the book at the end of the last chapter.

Dorian had shrugged and passed it over. “Good enough.”) 

The low, flickering glow of the simple lantern hung close to the bed cast soft shadows over the pages and Orym’s face alike. With Dorian gone, Orym had sought comfort elsewhere. Dorian couldn’t blame him, even as a flurry of emotion swirled up into his chest. Disappointment mixed with guilt, and the taste rose acrid in the back of Dorian’s throat.

In the parlour, he had composed careful words, and now, he couldn’t remember a single one. Did the words even matter, with the softness of Orym’s curls catching the lamplight like gold in the bowels of a filthy dungeon? It was brown in the daylight, Dorian knew, but here it was treasure, and Dorian meant to honor that.

Shoving aside his own misgivings, Dorian settled lightly on the bed. Even absorbed in the book– Dorian hoped Orym was absorbed in the book– Orym rolled toward him immediately.

The simple grace of the act broke something in Dorian’s chest. For Orym to see him– for Orym to turn to him, even when he had abandoned Orym– for Orym, who had loved and lost a husband so much more competent than Dorian could ever be– Dorian cut himself off. He’d been staring too long, lost in his own penitence, and there was a perfect half-smile already fading from Orym’s face.

It took him effort to unstick his throat. “Tonight– may I simply hold you?” It was what he’d said that first night, what he’d said so many nights since then. Too many nights, nights when he’d wanted to kiss and lick and touch but hadn’t known how to ask.

Marking his place with a scrap of vine, Orym set Tusk Love aside and extinguished the lamp. “Long day?”

“No more than usual.” The small of Dorian’s back itched where he had been sweating. He shrugged off his pajama top and scrubbed at the dregs of salt and fear on his skin with the balled-up fabric. He didn’t know what to say, how much to share. The usual travails of the day were easy enough to share, so he started there, and apparently that was good enough to have Orym lift the covers and invite him under. Dorian lay back and lowered his voice, letting his meaningless account wrap around them both. Outside in the courtyard, through the windows draped in silk, torches guttered in their sconces and, slowly, went out.

There, in darkness barely broken by the thin light of waxing Catha, Dorian wound his tale to a close and came back into the sensations of his body. At some point during the recitation, Orym had curled in close, and the hair of his naked belly was pressed firmly against the bare flesh of Dorian’s side, an animal sensation so different from the smooth fabrics he was used to. Slow, even breaths unfurled over Dorian’s chest and brought his nipples to peaks. His body pulsed in time with each exhale, and he became intensely aware of the way the fingertips of the small hand draped over the bottom of his rib cage scraped rough over his skin. He ached to roll into the contact, to press the shameless length of himself back into Orym, to explore every intricately wrought detail of Orym’s body with his hands and then his mouth … and he absolutely could not do any of those things, because Orym was sleeping .

Flushed with a fresh wash of shame, Dorian stroked a soothing line down the column of Orym’s back, marveling at the texture of skin too scarred to be truly smooth, but nevertheless soft in relaxation.

Even this much closeness was comfort he didn’t deserve. He would figure out how to earn it.

The next morning, Dorian woke alone. He had struggled to fall asleep and, as a consequence, overslept. Orym had gone, leaving behind a single yellow flower on the pillow for Dorian to find.

Dorian found himself wholly incapable of coming up with a reasonable course of action. Over the course of his restless night, nothing useful had occurred to him. The harsh daylight forced him to admit the truth: he needed help. 

Once, he and Orym had shared a pair of Sending stones, but Orym had given his to Fearne before she had returned to the Feywild with Ashton. “If you need us, we will always be here for you,” he’d said.

Dorian had felt a sense of loss. The sending stones had been theirs for so long– but of course Orym was right. Orym and Dorian hardly needed a magical item to communicate, now that they shared a bed. Fearne had moved into an entirely different dimension.

It still stung. Pushing that aside, Dorian firmed his resolve and sent his message. “Fearne, Orym needs my help, but I have no time and no idea what he needs. What do I do?” He was whispering, even though their room was wrapped in the soft white noise of silk on silk in the breeze.

Fearne’s reply came instantly. “Oh, that’s easy.” 

Dorian sagged with relief. 

“Bring him here, to Nana’s.”

Chapter Text

Getting to the Feywild meant that Dorian needed to find Imogen. It was easier than he’d feared– all he had to do was wander through the semi-patrolled borders with his flute to his lips. Putative guards smiled at him and let him pass, their toes tapping in time to his tune.

It was also surprisingly easy to convince Imogen to leave Exandria. He caught up with her in one of the halls outside the meeting chambers, waved her into an alcove, and conveyed Fearne’s invitation in a few simple words. When he added a meaningful look, Imogen nodded. “You know what? I really could use a vacation.” 

“When can we go?” Dorian asked, feeling a bit breathless with success.

“Shoot.” Imogen pulled the glasses from her face to press her other hand to her forehead. “There’s the meeting with–”

This close, Dorian could see her knuckles had gone white, and dark circles lay heavy below her eyes.

Laudna cut between them. “I’ll cancel it.”

“But–”

Laudna brushed Imogen’s hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ears. “None of this is more important than you are.” 

Instead of arguing, Imogen crumpled, pressing her cheek into Laudna’s shoulder, and Laudna stroked Imogen’s hair so much more gently than she ever touched her own hair. Not wanting to intrude, Dorian started edging out of the alcove.

“I’ll take care of it, and we can be in the Feywild in two hours.” Very gently, Laudna pried the spectacles from Imogen’s unresisting fingers.

Dorian gave a double thumbs-up that even he could tell was awkward. “Two hours! Got it!”

She shot Dorian a sympathetic glance. “Sometimes, the only thing you can do is be there for them.”

After the morning, Dorian had felt assured of his own success, and therefore it was a nasty shock when it took him more than half of his allotted two hours to find Orym. He went from training camp to training camp, learning that Orym had run through drills with that group and then moved on to another. Had he been drilling all morning? A bit of exercise was healthy, obviously it was, but Orym must have been going through the various military exercises of Exandria for hours. Dorian was exhausted and panting just finding him. 

It took several minutes to get Orym’s attention. As the halfling approached, Dorian took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and caught the smell. It wasn’t exactly bad , though it was strong: musky sweat layered over sour sweat, with hints of metal and soil, and at its core, thickly and distinctively Orym. All right, objectively, maybe it wasn’t a very good smell, but it filled his nose and coated his tongue, and Dorian rolled it around in his mouth like it was the finest wine at his father’s table. Instead of what he’d meant to say, out tumbled: “You reek .” 

Orym gave him a lopsided smile. “Hi to you, too.”

That smile did something to Dorian’s insides. All the parts of him that produced words and thoughts turned to mush, and he found himself bound up in apologetic stammering.

“No, you’re right. Let’s go to the baths.” Orym jerked his head– were the baths really that way? The sun was high in the sky, and Dorian, totally disoriented, couldn’t even make out the cardinal directions. But Orym was reaching up to him, taking his hand, leading him through the crowd, with Dorian stumbling after.

He’d done this all wrong. Instead of taking care of Orym, Orym was taking care of both of them. Worse, the smell came along with them, reduced in intensity in a way that made it maddening. Dorian found himself trying to separate it from all the other scents on the wind: the warm scent of baking bread, the earthen tang of wet Bormodo, the green sharpness of crushed grass, the sweetness of perfume left in the wake of a group of passing dignitaries. 

It was all too much, and as much as he loved to perform, he loved the moments after a performance just as much, when he was alone in a quiet room with only those people who he loved.

He was thinking about moments alone as he navigated the bathhouse entry, dispensing pleasantries and coins at appropriate intervals like an aeormaton, and only started paying proper attention again when Orym took off his shirt and said: “You don’t have to do the ice bath with me.”

Dorian had never thought of himself as an “ice bath” kind of person, but on the one hand, there was an attendant standing right there looking bored, and on the other hand, Orym was bending over to shuck off his trousers and smallclothes, revealing finely-muscled thighs and a truly glorious backside. Dorian shifted nervously in his own increasingly uncomfortable trousers. Perhaps an ice bath would be just the thing.

Thus resolved, Dorian yanked his sheer shirt over his head, and could only hear the soft splash as Orym dropped into the pool.

“The first breath is the hardest.” There was gravel in Orym’s voice, the same kind of focused grit Dorian knew from too many combat encounters. “Fill your lungs and keep breathing. You’ll be fine.”

Dorian scrabbled at the last cord fastening his trousers in place, trying to hold his shirt strategically so that it would conceal his crotch. “Technically, I don’t have to breathe.”

The string came loose– finally!-- and Dorian dropped his clothes a scant second before he stepped into the water. 

It was cold. The chill pressed the air from his lungs, ripping an undignified squawk from his throat like some kind of evil spell. Next to him, he could hear Orym trying to take deep, even breaths, except there was a certain quality of snort on every inhale.

Dorian sputtered. The water came up to his collarbones, and his nipples felt like deadly icicles. “This might possibly be the worst thing I’ve ever felt, and– Are you laughing at me?”

“I’m sorry,” said Orym, not sounding the least bit repentant. He wiped tears of mirth away from his eyes. “It’s just– that noise–”

There was a real smile on his face, the whole smile, and Dorian had missed that smile so much it almost made up for the way his testicles were trying to climb fully into his thoracic cavity. Surely there were easier ways to make Orym laugh than turning his balls into freeze-dried raisins, and yet. “It’s fine. You can laugh at me any time.”

Orym shifted in the frigid water, turning toward him. “I’d rather laugh with you.”

The eye contact was as warm as the water was cold, and Dorian once again found himself barely able to breathe. “Okay,” he said, helpless to look away.

“Now, get out of here and wait for me in the hot tub. I can see you’re miserable.”

“I’d rather be here with you.” It would be a heroic sacrifice, but one that Dorian was prepared to make.

“I won’t be more than a few more minutes. Go on, now, your lips are turning blue.” Orym poked a floating piece of ice toward Dorian. It collided gently with his sternum.

“My lips are always blue,” Dorian pointed out, but he turned and climbed the ladder out of the pool. 

He emerged from the water shivering violently even as the bored attendant wrapped a thick towel around him. Orym looked serene, even with spheres of ice flocking around him like extremely chilly ducklings. His eyes had slid closed, and he looked– at peace, in a way that Dorian had so rarely seen him look.

A single green eye cracked open. “Two minutes,” Orym said again, and lobbed a chunk of ice at him.

“I’m going! I’m going!” Dorian beat a hasty retreat.

The hot tub was much more like it. Dorian sank into water and its heaping mound of fragrant bubbles, rubbing feeling back into his fingers and toes.

True to his word, Orym padded in only a few minutes later. 

Dorian budged over to make room. “Why do you do that to yourself?”

“It’s relaxing.” Shucking his towel, Orym slid into the water.

“Relaxing?” Incredulity suffused the phrase.

“It’s so cold, you can’t really think about much else.” Orym leaned in close, his body slotting neatly into place against Dorian’s. “Mmmm, you’re warm.”

“Hmmm, I wonder how that happened.” Dorian wrapped his arm around his lover and took a moment to enjoy the moment. The scent of soap and flowers and sweat, the heat of the bath and their bodies, the way the warm brown of Orym’s wet hair fanned out in the water and brushed over blue skin. “This isn’t how I imagined it would go.”

“No?”

“Well, I might have imagined sharing a bath with you. Once or twice.” Dorian felt another stirring– it had been a bit more than once or twice that he’d managed the indignities of the road by imagining the luxuries of civilization. Everything he’d learned from minstrels about the effects of ice baths had been lies, filthy lies, and exaggerations. He took a deep, steadying breath, and went on. “No, I imagined that once we saved the world, it would be done. That we would have a chance to explore.”

Orym sighed across his chest. “It’s never that easy, is it?” He unfurled the fingers of one small hand just a little bit, to better match its contour to the contour of Dorian’s flank.

Dorian felt unreasonably happy about it. The space between them was so small and intimate, the scant inches between the crown of Orym’s head and the point of Dorian’s chin just the right size to admit the truth. “I don’t want all these responsibilities, but I have them. Somehow, I want to live up to them. And, more than that, I want to be good to you. I’m so scared that I’m not good enough to have– both. ”

“You’re good to me.” There was a hoarse note to Orym’s voice, like he was back in the ice bath. He had gone preternaturally still, breathing shallowly, his back barely moving under Dorian’s arm.

“I want–” The humid air bore down on him, thick, heavy. Dorian swallowed and tried again. “I want to know what you want. I want to give you all of it. Everything in my power, I want to do that for you.”

“I don’t need much,” said Orym, haltingly, and Dorian knew, as certain as if Orym had whispered a greater truth in his ear, that while the halfling wasn’t lying, there was also a great deal that he hadn’t said.

But then Orym was angling his face up, and there were drops of water making his eyelashes bright, and his lips parted soft and seeking, and Dorian could do nothing but answer him with a kiss. He had to crunch his back into a horrible shape to close the distance, but it was all worth it for the way the base of Orym’s skull felt cradled in the palm of his hand, even as Orym’s tongue darted swift and teasing against– past!-- Dorian’s lower lip.

Dorian was increasingly aware that, under the thick obscuring layer of bubbles, they were both very, very naked, and that while the room was more or less private, the baths were most certainly not. An attendant could come by at any time with extra towels or the refreshments menu. Only that reality could make Dorian pull away from the kiss.

“Seriously, though,” he said, trying to rally. Some of the hair on the side of Orym’s hair was sticking straight up. His eyes were wide, his lips swollen, and they were both panting just a little. Dorian liked it all very much. He wanted more, starting immediately and as often as possible thereafter. “I’ve been so busy. I feel like I’m neglecting you.”

Orym shifted beneath him, kneeling up next to him so that they could stay together, pressed forehead to forehead and nose to nose. “I’ve had feelings for you for so long. I don’t mind waiting for you a little longer.”

That was so completely not even the point. Dorian surged upright in the bath, gesticulating in such inchoate frustration that he splashed soapsuds all over both of them. “ I mind waiting. I thought I could have it all– save the world, make my parents proud, keep my friends alive. Kiss you. And now I’m so busy I barely get to see you. I know there are people who depend on us, but– come on. We saved the world. Can’t they give us a break?”

He looked up expectantly. There were bubbles dripping from Orym’s hair and a dangerous gleam in his eyes. “Oh, I’ll give you a break, Dorian Storm.”

Dorian didn’t see it coming until the wave was already inexorably cresting, a wall of bubbles that reached from his barely-submerged nipples all the way up four feet into the air above his head. It broke over him in a torrent of warm water and– flower petals? “That’s cheating! Using magic in a splash fight is cheating!”

“Technically, you don’t need to breathe,” Orym pointed out, parroting the exact words Dorian had used not half an hour earlier.

“Oh, it’s on.”

Somehow, it was easier to cope with the proximity of Orym’s naked body when they were spluttering and dodging and spitting out mouthfuls of bubbles. It was still there, still absolutely maddening and desirable. Their legs brushed as they circled each other in the small pool– only their legs, Dorian told himself firmly, even though some of the flesh that found contact under the water was not remotely leg-shaped. But here, it was manageable. Here, there was no pressure to perform. 

He would have laughed out loud if he could have done so safely, and then Orym darted in close, pressing in to get his feet up on the bench just long enough so he could spring out of the water and drop back down in a cannonball, and Dorian found himself laughing anyway. The soap wasn’t so bitter with such sweet company.

And then Orym was laughing, too, with him, both of them drenched and short of breath with the world firmly shut outside the protective ring of ephemeral diamonds that enveloped them, the jewel drops that hung in the air for just a moment before they crashed to the ground, only to be replaced during the next furious attack.

It was perfect, and perfection couldn’t last. A musical trill came from the hall, and Dorian froze midsplash.

“Yoo-hoo! Dorian! Orym!” Laudna. That meant she must have come looking– and Dorian hadn’t even– they were barely packed.

“Do you mind going to visit Nana Morri?” he blurted out in a rush, as the water sloshed back into the tub.

Orym blinked soapy water from his eyes. “That’s… unexpected.”

“It’s like I was saying. I want them to give us a break, so I asked Fearne, and she invited us, and then Imogen said she would handle the transport, and then I came to find you.”

“You could have led with that.” But there was a wry smile dawning like the sun on Orym’s face.

Dorian flushed and leaned in to whisper. “I forgot. You’re very distracting.”

Orym seized the opportunity to put him in a headlock. “Oh, I’ll show you distracting–”

Laudna’s head poked around the corner. “Oh, there you are!” She studied them with her head tilted at an angle that really never stopped being alarming. Piles of soapy bubbles slid down the tiled walls to clump up on the floor next to the forlorn bundles of their clothes lying sodden and abandoned. “Are you decent?”

Dorian winced. “Not exactly.”

“Five more minutes?” suggested Orym.

Laudna nodded. “We’ll see you soon,” she said, and then, looking at the mess they’d made, as an afterthought: “Perhaps in dry clothes?”

She cast Prestidigitation as a parting shot, and really, Dorian deserved that one.

Chapter Text

Imogen’s spell spat them out onto dirt so soft Dorian went sprawling, his limbs tangled up with Laudna’s and Imogen’s. Only Orym seemed to have kept his feet.

Dorian struggled up onto his elbows. Less than ten feet away stood a tall figure holding an enormous pair of ivory-handled shears, blades gleaming sharp under the sun, the cutting edge longer than her spindly forearms. She tilted the upsetting length of her neck until her ear nearly met her shoulder, so clearly listening that Dorian held his breath by reflex. And then, abruptly, she unkinked her neck and turned to face them. The scissors disappeared somewhere around her nebulous waistline, hidden under mountainous layers of shawls.

There was something queasy about seeing the Fatestitcher in broad daylight. The fabrics she wore should have been the very picture of homeliness, woven and knit and tasseled in variegated shades of violet and mauve, but something about the way the strands twined together gave the illusion that they were pulsing, like someone had made an incision into the abdomen of the world and woven its very entrails into a cloak. And yet, as she approached them, the gnarls of her scowl dissolved into the wrinkles around a smile, and the great mouth on her midsection tipped up at its corners and showed its teeth.

“Ah! Guests! Fearne told me I could expect you.” The Morrigan loomed over them, treating Dorian to an exclusive view of the sparse thicket of hair inside her nostrils. “Come with me, little Ashari, and give your friends a moment to compose themselves. With your quest complete, we have much to discuss.”

She reached out a hand, and Orym only hesitated for the space of a breath before he took hold of her proffered fingers and followed her off toward the entrance to the great tree.

Dazed, Dorian lay there, not quite able to move. It could have been magic or just the force with which he’d hit the ground. Whatever it was, it passed quickly enough. When his muscles answered his call again, Dorian found that while he could theoretically extract himself from the tangle of Laudna and Imogen, it would require him to put a hand somewhere rude.

“Oooooh, what was that?” Laudna rolled herself free by means of jabbing an elbow into Dorian’s gut and pressing hard. “Did someone make a bargain?”

“Laudna,” said Imogen reproachfully, and offered Dorian a hand up.

He had almost recovered, brushing dirt from his elbows and backside, as they approached the great treehouse. Then a door slammed open, expelling a pale green blur of Fearne. She flew out of the opening and hit their group mid-body, gathering them all up in an enormous hug and showering kisses on the tops of their heads. “Dorian! Laudna! Imogen!”

“Orym is here, too,” said Dorian, sounding strangled. “Only– your grandmother took him–”

“Oh, don’t worry about him. It’s only Nana.” Fearne released him and beamed. “Now. Who wants cocktails? Ashton is helping Birdie with a new recipe.”

It turned out that there wasn’t just one new recipe. The bar bristled with glassware, glass flasks of mysterious liqueurs reflecting jewel-toned patches of light across the walls. Presiding over it were Birdie and Ashton: Birdie poured thick liquids into precise layers and Ashton operated a reinforced cocktail shaker with enthusiasm that might have crushed a lesser vessel. Someone had located a large ball covered with a million tiny mirrors and hung it from the ceiling, and Dorian found himself idly wondering where Fearne had stolen it.

“The others will be down soon,” said Fearne, herding Dorian, Laudna, and Imogen onto bar stools. “We’re all so excited to have everyone back together again!”

As if to prove her point, Chetney bellied up to the bar next to Dorian and elbowed him in the thigh. “Thank goodness you’re here,” he said. “I was worried the spell wouldn’t work, and we’d have to drink all this ourselves! Not that I wouldn’t take one for the team.”

Birdie pressed a cocktail on each of them, and Dorian clinked his glass against Chetney’s. There were worse places to pass time, and, as their friends who had chosen to leave the material plane filtered in, Dorian was hard-pressed to imagine better company. He sipped at his cocktail and let the atmosphere fill his senses.

Ashton poured the contents of their shaker into a glass and thrust it upon Dorian. “Everyone have drinks? Good. Pitchers under the bar if anyone needs a refill.” He came out from behind the bar and dragged a stool over to Laudna. “Now. Tell me what’s been happening in the world.”

After that, the party was in full swing. Dorian clutched both his drinks to his chest and willed himself to relax. By the time he had fled the bar, Birdie had tried to press three more upon him, and he had the sense he’d only barely escaped the bar without a full tray. His instinct was to take out his flute to hide behind the role of musician, but there was already some fluffy creature with pale feathers in tones of pink and blue singing in the corner, accompanying itself by forcing air through the holes in on its webbed frill.

Not wanting to step on toes, he slunk back into a corner and watched, enjoying the sounds of his friends in conversation. Laudna was exclaiming over some of Braius’s latest art. Imogen and Ollie huddled near Birdie, at the bar, with their heads bent together. Chetney was reenacting some outrageous tale with the assistance of Fearne, who had taken the shape of a Ruidian buffalo.

Somehow, he ended up talking: Fearne-the-buffalo had come over and turned back into a faun to pepper him with questions, and by the time she whisked off, he found himself slumped against the surprisingly comfortable flank of a snoring Bompers with Ashton leaning against the wall five feet away, halfway through telling them a story. It was a good one, a golden moment in the slog of the past few weeks, where he and his father had teamed up to subtly embarrass a irritatingly self-important provincial landowner from the outskirts of Westruun until he caved to the pressure and made a generous, if not entirely voluntary, contribution to the Ruidian resettlement fund.

Ashton reached across to clink his glass against Dorian’s, wobbled, and missed. “What’s it like, having a father who doesn’t suck?”

The question took Dorian by surprise. He’d spent so long at cross-purposes with his father. “I’m not really sure. What makes a good father?”  I was convinced, for so many years– but for everything my parents did, under that, they loved me.”

“See, that’s the question. You still talk to yours. Hell, you chose to work with him. All I know is, that guy–” Ashton flung his arm in the direction of an apparently blank wall. “The worst.”

It took Dorian several moments to remember that the tapestry of Sorrowlord Zathuda hung there under a shroud of invisibility.

“And my dad started a cult. So, you know, what do we know?”

Dorian’s eyebrows winged up. He leaned in and, for privacy’s sake, chose an undertone. “Ashton! Are congratulations in order?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Ashton emptied a glass, put it on the floor, pushed it up against the wall. “A new life to go with a new age. It just feels right. I don’t want to fuck it up.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this, it is that we are not our fathers. I was convinced, for so many years, that my father never truly saw me as a person. That my parents wanted to force me into a box that never quite fit, and Cyrus along with me. But– under it all– now I know that everything they did, they did because they loved us, and they wanted us to succeed.

“I’m not qualified to give parenting advice, but I can’t imagine you giving a child anything less than all your love. Even at your, ah, crankiest, I have never had any doubt about your loyalty or your affection. I know you, Ashton, and I know you will do your best, and that’s enough.”

“Fuck, I hope so.”

The words dropped into the air like cherry into a jar of honey. Dorian let them fall, and when they hit the bottom, he said, as casually as he could manage: “So, things are going well?”

Ashton recoiled a little, their body juddering like the collision of tectonic plates. They cradled one arm in the other. “Yeah. It might not last. Might, might not. But a child– that’s forever, even after you go your separate ways. And right now? This is good, as good as it gets. Better than I ever had any right to expect. It scares the crap out of me.”

“Me, too,” said Dorian, before he could think too much about it. 

“I figured that, out of all of us, you two would have worked it out. You’re both so level-headed.”

Groaning, Dorian slid further down onto the floor. Under his back, Bompers snorted in his sleep, his tail thrashing. Dorian eased his way off the sleeping creature very carefully to sit cross-legged on the floor, leaning in toward Ashton. The alcohol had blunted his usual anxious need to keep up appearances, but his courage only stretched so far. “Actually, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Ashton groped around on the floor for a bottle that wasn’t empty, found one, and then blinked. “Wait, are you coming to me for advice? That’s hilarious.” He offered the bottle to Dorian, who waved it off. “You must be desperate.”

That wasn’t quite fair. “I could remind you that you asked a scary barbarian lady we had all just met for advice.”

“That– that was private!”

As if Dorian hadn’t been standing right next to Yasha. “Bards! We hear all!” When Ashton just raised an eyebrow, he threw his hands in the air. “I was right next to that conversation! Playing the piano!”

For a second, Dorian thought he was about to get punched, and then Ashton leaned back and chuckled. “You know, that’s fair.”

“So.”

“So?”

“So what have you got for me?” Dorian gestured toward Fearne, who was huddled up with Imogen and Laudna.

Ashton shrugged, watching as Fearne wrinkled her nose in delight at something Laudna had whispered in her ear. “I just do what she tells me to do.” 

“What if he’s not telling me what to do?” The words I don’t need much ponged around Dorian’s head, the echoes growing more critical with each impact.

“Then you try things and find out what works.” Ashton took a long pull directly from the bottle. “Sometimes, even when you start out in the wrong direction, if you keep going, you loop around and end up in the right place.”

Dorian looked around the blurry warmth of Ligament Manor in full celebration mode, trying that idea on for size. Ashton and Fearne had become avatars of the primordial Emperor and Empress as part of the great conflict. Imogen and her mother had absorbed Predathos into the endless hunger that was their love for one another, offered holy Exandrians the choice to tether themselves to the earth itself to replace the ties they had to the gods who had fled or been eaten during the struggle.

Those were all bigger forces than Dorian could access. Maybe he could never reach Orym, no matter what way he went.

But Dorian had faced hopeless odds before, and he had never backed down. Sure, he’d lost a few times– more than a few times– but he wasn’t going to give up now, not while there was even a sliver of hope remaining.

Feeling equally heartened and hollowed, he climbed slowly to his feet, one of which had fallen asleep. He stamped it hard on the floor, trying to wake it up. In the shadowy depths of the manor, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed, but surely Orym had long since finished his conversation and joined the party. 

But, as he asked around in a state of increasing agitation, no one had seen him, and Dorian could see no trace, either– no telltale leaf or blossom that Orym might have left as a sign that he had been and gone, no muddy footprints even close to the right size among those the other guests had tracked in.

Suddenly, Fearne’s glib Don’t worry, it’s only Nana seemed a lot more sinister. And Dorian had brought Orym here– had never dreamed that this place might be unsafe for the one person in his life he held precious above all others. His stomach flipped and knotted, images of shears and looms and needles rending flesh smeared across the back of his eyelids every time he blinked. He couldn’t stay under the roof of this place for even one more second.

“Excuse me,” he murmured to no one in particular, abandoned his half-empty glass on a suspiciously gnarled side table, and barely made it outside before he was violently ill, holding desperately onto a topiary bush as he retched and heaved. When he felt he could stand again, he found that he had latched onto the chest of a bush in the shape of a screaming elf, their back arched, their limbs curled as if in pain. He dropped his hands hastily.

“Sorry about that,” he found himself saying to the elf, as if they could hear him. And, here, who could say? Maybe they could.

He backed away from the puddle of vomit until the smell no longer made his guts clench. Took a skin of water from his hip. Rinsed his mouth. Spat. Then he slumped down onto a low stone wall to continue his one-sided conversation. “You know, I thought that once we were here, once we were all together, it would be okay again. Or at least okay enough that I could fix it.” He gulped at his waterskin. The water was clean and clear and bracing, simple in a world that had always been too complex for Dorian to truly manage.

“Over the last several months, this is one of the few places where I’ve actually felt genuinely safe, as messed-up as that might seem.” He stared at the bush. Whoever that elf had been, Ligament Manor hadn’t been safe for them. “I really fucked up, huh.”

“You didn’t fuck up.” There was a rectangle of light from the house, a figure standing in it. Dorian hadn’t made it so far from the party after all, not if Orym had been able to find him so easily. He sagged in relief as Orym closed the door, and the lights and noises of partying winked out behind him. “This reckoning was a long time coming. It’s good to have it done.” 

“Yeah?” Dorian twisted around and watched as Orym crossed to the wall and sat next to him on it, but the halfling didn’t lean in like he usually did. They had held each other after so many horrible days, after deaths and betrayals and horrors and the end of the world as they knew it, found solace in sleeping in a pile all together, when Dorian’s feelings had been a closely-guarded secret. 

Now, Orym just sat there, six inches away or a million. Not talking, just sitting.

At a loss, Dorian opened his arm and beckoned, and Orym finally leaned over toward him, body stiff as a board, the point of his shoulder digging hard into the bottom of Dorian’s ribs.

And Dorian could think of nothing better to do than just sitting there beside him. He wrapped his arm around his lover, and sat, and waited. He’d comprehensively proven, to both of them, that he didn’t know what he was doing or what Orym needed. So he would wait, and hope that Orym would tell him.

Eventually, Orym scuffed a heel in the dirt. “You know, there was a time I thought I would live here forever.”

“Yeah?” Dorian asked again, braced for another long stretch of silence, but Orym continued.

“I thought, this is not a good place, but it’s good enough for me. It’s got all these flowers, all this life– it’s enough like home, but without the memories. And, if I was serving her, I would have a job. Something useful to do with my life. If only I could keep my friends alive, then– that was something. I would be something.”

Understanding bloomed in Dorian’s chest. He kept his voice low, encouraging, so that Orym could keep talking if he wanted. “So that’s what you offered her. You made a deal.”

“Yeah. My friends alive, in return for my service. And just now– she told me that it was finished. We’d seen it through, and my friends– not all my friends made it through alive.”

Dorian let his arm tighten around Orym’s shoulders, pushing aside the guilt that he hadn’t been there to save FCG, that he hadn’t saved anyone on that horrible day, because he needed to listen. He needed to hear this, to understand what Orym had needed then, to understand what Orym would need now and in the future.

“And I told her, I told her we might not have been able to do it without her. I owed her. And– I knew what that would mean for us when I said it, but it was true.”

A shiver shook Dorian’s spine, and Dorian was unable to suppress it. Orym reached out and put his hand on Dorian’s thigh. Gripped so tight that there would likely be bruises, and Dorian couldn’t bring himself to care, because Orym was whole, and there, and not made into some kind of tortured, sentient sweater after all. Instead, he covered Orym’s hand with his own, because he was there, because he was listening, because he was never going to give up without a fight.

Orym swallowed and went on, his voice thick. “She said with her Fearnie home, she didn’t need me around the place all the time cluttering it up. I was welcome to visit, sometimes, if Fearne invited me. She said, if it would make me feel better, I could make her a drink. But she was satisfied with her end of our bargain, and it wasn’t her job to give her life meaning. 

“She said that it would be more entertaining to watch me struggle to figure out what to do with my life without someone else’s mission to carry out.That meaning was something I would need to make for myself. It feels a little bit like the cruelest thing she can do to me, and it feels like a mercy I don’t deserve.”

“And?”

“Well, what could I do? I made her a drink, and then I came to find you.” Orym slumped, collapsing as if exhausted, but he was himself again, the whole of his body back where it belonged against Dorian’s side.

Dorian gathered him up into his lap, tucking Orym’s head under his chin and then changing his mind, pressing his cheek hard against Orym’s hair so he could say: “Don’t you do that again. Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

He was crying, he realized distantly, forcing the words out between silent sobs that shook his whole rib cage. Orym made a noise of protest or comfort, and he shook his head fiercely until Orym subsided, because he wasn’t done. “I know we just survived the end of the world. I know I’ve been busy, and we’ve both had to make sacrifices, and that we haven’t paid every bill in full, at least not yet. But now we have each other. So you tell me what’s going on with you.” His voice cracked. “I was so scared.”

Orym rubbed his cheek against Dorian’s chest. “I was scared, too.” His hand came up, found Dorian’s cheek, drew Dorian’s head down and twisted around until their eyes met, and Dorian found himself drowning in the deep green of Orym’s eyes, tumbling into algae-coated depths, equally unwilling and unable to stop his fall. “I didn’t know how to tell you I might have ruined everything because of a deal I made when I wasn’t sure I would ever get to see you again.”

“Can we be scared together?” Dorian gave a shaky little laugh. “What’s done is done, but– next time. I want to be with you, no matter how scared we both are.”

“Yeah.” Orym pressed his lips together, nodded. “I want to be with you, too.” And then he was twisting even more, until his knees hit the stone bench on either side of Dorian’s lap. He knelt up, and their chests pressed together, both of his hands reaching up to cradle the back of Dorian’s skull. Their mouths met hard, Dorian’s teeth scraping Orym’s bottom lip as Orym wriggled in his arms, looking for a good angle. 

Eventually, Dorian got his teeth safely contained and angled his nose away from where it had smashed into Orym’s cheekbone. Feeling brave, he licked out past Orym’s teeth and received a throaty moan as a reward when his tongue found the roof of Orym’s mouth and started to explore. The light evening breeze cut through the sheer fabric of Dorian’s shirt, and his back went all to goosebumps with Orym’s weight blazingly hot pressed against his chest. Orym’s lips were so soft, and his thighs hard and taut with tension, and against the front of him, Dorian could feel– he felt lightheaded about it, his own blood only too eager to respond to such sweetly blatant provocation.

When they broke the kiss, they were both panting. Orym let his hands drop to Dorian’s shoulders and gave his weight to the support of Dorian’s arms. Dorian could see the swollen traces of the kiss on Orym’s mouth, and he wanted to kiss him again, and he wanted to watch the shapes of Orym’s kiss-bruised mouth forever.

Since he couldn’t quite figure out how to do both at once, he settled for: “Tonight, I want to do a lot more than just hold you.” It came out in a rough, husky voice that he barely recognized in himself, something dark and a little bit uncomfortable. Something that felt disturbingly right.

“God. Yes. Please.” Shuddering full-body against him, Orym dug the pads of his fingers into Dorian’s shoulders and dragged them down the length of Dorian’s scapulae. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Dorian felt delirious with heat and joy. “You can ask any time.”

And then Orym was climbing down out of Dorian’s lap, which was a little bit terrible, except that Orym was saying “come to bed ” and Dorian felt like he ought to make some kind of protest; they were guests, there was etiquette, their friends would want to see Orym, but Orym’s hand was hot in his and tugging.

“The party–” he tried.

“Screw the party. Come to bed.”

Chapter Text

Sweat cooling on his skin, Dorian lay back on the rumpled sheets and wondered where he’d gone wrong.

It had started so promisingly. Tossing his usual rigid control to the winds, Orym had dragged Dorian all the way to their guest room, slammed the door behind them, and turned the key in the lock. He yanked off his boots, breathing like he’d run miles, hair ever so slightly askew. “Now.”

Dorian had barely had time to kick off his own boots before Orym sprang. He brought his arms up and fumbled the catch, but it didn’t matter: Orym locked his legs around Dorian’s waist and clasped his stocking feet in the small of Dorian’s back. On a nervous laugh, Dorian brushed his lips over the side of Orym’s neck. “Someday I’m going to get the hang of that.”

Orym barely looked up. “You didn’t let me fall.” He was furiously undoing buckles and straps at Dorian’s shoulders, fingers sure in spite of his frantic pace. Dorian’s cape tumbled to the ground, followed by his pauldrons, and Orym pulled at his shirt. “C’mon. Off. Off, off, off.”

Dorian could do nothing but murmur his consent, even though he had no idea how to help. His belt held the sheer mithral shirt firmly in place, but he couldn’t reach it. Its buckle was probably digging into one of Orym’s thighs. 

His brain was empty and his arms were full of wriggling halfling, and the sense that he ought to be helping haunted him. If nothing else, he knew every clasp on the Zephyr armor by heart, and he could reach all of those. He released them, setting each piece aside on the nearest surface– a dresser that melted into the wall, like Ligament Manor had grown it without actually understanding what furniture was for.

He had Orym down to the soft layer beneath the armor when he realized that they were stuck. Orym was tugging ineffectually at his shirt, over and over, so one side had come untucked. The loose fabric had bunched in a roll around his abdomen and was starting to chafe. There had to be something– Dorian cast his eyes around the room. Dresser, hope chest, bed– of course! Three steps and a pivot, and then Dorian was dropping down to sit on the mattress.

Orym pounced. Dorian fell obligingly back as Orym rocked back on his heels, made short work of the belt, and yanked the sheer shirt over Dorian’s head. There was a tangle for just a moment, and then Orym ran his hands over Dorian’s chest, scraping his rough swordsman’s callus over one of Dorian’s nipples, and Dorian’s vision went briefly white. 

It was almost absurd. Orym, a little bit ferocious and a little bit desperate, across his lap, tearing his clothes off. It felt wonderful, exhilarating, huge, overwhelming, and, if he was honest, a little bit scary. He couldn’t get enough, and at the same time, it was all too much. He was in imminent danger of making a mess of his pants.

Snatching at an impulse, he rolled Orym onto his back. He ended up with the edge of the mattress digging into the tops of his thighs, his knees dangling awkwardly above the floor, but that hardly mattered when Orym made a soft, ragged noise low in his throat. Dorian could barely believe he was allowed to hear it. A forbidden pleasure, sweet as an illicit pastry eaten before dinner. He wanted to savor every sound, let each groan melt slow and buttery over his tongue.

But there were still all these clothes. He snatched one kiss, then another, and it still gutted him when Orym made a small noise of protest when he rolled back onto his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said, dragging fabric down the length of his legs. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“You’re doing just fine.” Orym was just lying there, on his back on the mattress, watching as Dorian stripped off his pants. “You’re mouthwatering.”

A flush of pleasure swept Dorian’s body. He could feel himself visibly twitch, and Orym’s appreciative hum didn’t help. All of a sudden, it seemed vastly unfair that Orym was wearing clothing. “Your turn,” he said, because he didn’t know how much more he could handle, because everything was too raw and too vulnerable without clothes on, because maybe, if he could touch, he could stop thinking about it so much.

Except then Orym tossed his tank top across the room, planted his feet on the bed to lift his hips up and wriggle out of his smallclothes, and suddenly it was Dorian’s turn to stare, because he still hadn’t gotten used to seeing Orym naked.

Dorian had sought out and investigated a certain amount of literature that encompassed scenes like this– purely for research purposes!-- and reality surpassed every illustration of ambitiously-sized anatomy he’d ever considered. There were tattoos and tan lines and scars, shadows where muscles made shapes beneath Orym’s skin. Body hair decorated his legs and gathered at his underarm, and best of all, there was hair on his belly that drew the eye inexorably to his genitals. There, he was hard and ruddy with it, proportionate to his size. Mouthwatering was barely the beginning. Dorian’s palms began to sweat.

Orym met his eyes without shame. “You coming back? Or too busy looking?”

“Definitely coming back,” Dorian hastily reassured him. He got his knees on the bed first this time and then lowered himself down slowly until their chests met, surreptitiously wiping his hands dry on the sheet along the way. Underneath him, Orym squirmed until their groins lined up, hard against hard. This close, everything was sensation, and his blood pulsed hot as Orym nuzzled Dorian’s collarbone and pulled on his shoulders.

Feeling horribly uncertain, Dorian chose his most confidently seductive tone. “What do you want?”

“Fuck me like you mean it.” Orym rocked his hips a little, and they both shuddered. “Fuck me until I know all this is real.”

Something cracked in Dorian’s chest. “Of course this is real.” They’d both been so scared: of course Orym would want comfort. He wanted to kiss, but the angle was all wrong, so he murmured reassurances into the hair at the crown of Orym’s head as he groped between them to get a hand somewhere it could do some good. Once situated, he rolled his hips, bringing them together, filthy-slow and reveling in the textures.

Orym met him, moving under him, holding fast to Dorian’s shoulders. His mouth opened against Dorian’s chest, chasing teeth with tongue, hot and wet and sharply compelling in a way Dorian wasn’t ready to examine. The experience was enough.

And then the kisses were gone. Orym was mashing his cheek against Dorian’s chest, clinging a little, saying: “Dorian–”

“I’ve got you.” Dorian kissed at the top of Orym’s head. “I’ve got you.” Pleasure was building, sweat slick between their bellies. He could feel it in the hitch of Orym’s hips, in the tightening in his own body that signaled incipient release. 

Orym kept making soft sounds against Dorian’s pecs, slurred speech swallowed by pleasure. It made Dorian want to lick. He gave half an addled thought to sliding down his lover’s body and swallowing each noise by proxy, but then a flood of warm and wet hit his belly and that was it, he wasn’t going anywhere; two strokes later he was shuddering and spilling, too. In a panicked effort at consideration, he tipped to one side before he collapsed into his own pleasure, and then they were together, side by side with evidence of their shared pleasure smeared across their stomachs.

His legs felt like jelly, but they were both sticky, so Dorian heaved himself up and went looking for a cloth to clean up the mess.

That minor errand completed, Dorian felt marvellously accomplished right up until Orym curled up into his side. It was almost normal, the crown of Orym’s head just below his collarbone, the hunch in his back that made his shoulder blades wing out just a little. 

That hunch was supposed to be gone. They had saved the world. They had nothing more stressful in their lives than an upcoming day of relaxing with their friends. And, admittedly, each of their friends retained a certain amount of “undetonated time bomb” in their composition– but they were friends and teammates, trusted in spite of it all. The hunch should have been gone.

Something was still wrong. I don’t need much, Orym had said, and Dorian was still messing it all up.

He chewed on that for the next two days, during hours in the hot tub, in between cocktails, and even, for a short while, with paint splattered all over his face because Braius had dragooned everyone into participating in a group art project, with the Fatestitcher herself providing important creative contributions.

At the end of the second day, Dorian found himself draped over the questionable furniture after a dinner of waffles and berries, stuffed with too much sugar to actually want to attempt the hot tub. Imogen had slid off Laudna’s lap down to the floor between Laudna’s legs, and Laudna was braiding her hair, weaving in ornaments that Dorian couldn’t make out from across the room. (Which was, all things considered, probably for the best.)

“It’s our last night,” Laudna pointed out, wrapping lavender hair around a bauble that gleamed a soft oily white. “We should let ourselves be a little fancy.”

“The last time we got fancy, I got in a slap fight with a very bad man. And then he knocked me unconscious.” Ashton tipped his head back onto Fearne’s shoulder. “It was not a great time.”

Laudna’s hands went still. “Should I stop–”

“You can doll me up anytime you want.” Imogen nuzzled the inside of Laudna’s knee. “Even if you’re the only one there to appreciate it.”

“Are you sure? I’m only going to mess it up later.”

Imogen smiled a slow, sweet smile. "Then you'll mess it up later."

Even in this relaxed environment, there were lines on Imogen’s face that had not been there when he first met her, but over their time in the Fey realm, they had softened. The tension in her forehead had melted. 

Meanwhile, Orym was still curled up at the fringes of the room, one knee drawn up to his chest, silent and observing, like a part of him didn’t know how to stand down. If Imogen was almost ready to go back– Dorian was running out of time. “Excuse me,” he said abruptly. “I have to–” 

He escaped the room without anyone pressing him to finish his excuse.

The corridors seemed narrower than usual as he hurried along them. There was one– maybe two– more people he could turn to for help. But Ligament Manor had turned labyrinthine, capitalizing on Dorian’s weakness. The floor slithered away under his feet like it was covered in sand. There were hourglasses lined up along the walls, and it was all too easy to imagine himself in the bottom globe, sand falling inexorably over his shoulders, filling his mouth and throat and lungs until he suffocated, never really needing to breathe, never again tasting clean air on his tongue.

Dorian shook his head hard to clear it. The air was thick and musty, but it was just air. The fey realm had gotten under his skin. Somewhere, someone was probably having a laugh.

He walked faster, turned a corner, and nearly knocked full-body into the Morrigan.

She turned to him with a broad grin that stretched wider than the great expanse of her rib cage. “Are you lost?” She spoke from the belly in a voice that made every bone in Dorian’s body chatter like teeth.

The absurdly tall walls were even closer together here. There was barely room for him to pass, packed floor to soaring ceiling with hourglasses upon hourglasses, every beat of his pounding heart resonating through the room, marking another a lost chance slipping through his fingers, but he wasn’t going to give up. He would run the whole length of his luck, all the way to the bitter end.

Steeling himself, he held up his hands in surrender. “No, no, not lost, just looking for my friend.”

As he adjusted to the dim light, he noticed that the shape of the walls came not from hourglasses but from closely-packed spindles of yarn. The horrible pulsing was only the pendulous sway of a drop spindle dangling from one of the Fatestitcher’s hands. He didn’t know what kind of creature had produced the ochre wool she was spinning, and he didn’t want to stick around to find out, but he could face this known horror.

In the Morrigan’s hands, the yarn twisted over itself, her fingers expertly controlling the fibers. She extended the whole length of her equine neck to point. “You’ll want to go that way.” As he stumbled backward, she smiled and smiled. “Mind how you go.”

“Thank you,” Dorian said, and fled.

He had never been quite so glad to see a naked gnome. Chetney hadn’t quite started carving yet, though he was settled in a plush armchair near a roaring fire. Dorian did his best to word his question tactfully.

Chetney made an alarming gesture with his wood chisel. “I don’t know! Suck his brain out through his dick? Pull his hair?”

Dorian spluttered. “I can’t– wouldn’t that hurt?”

“Not if you do it right.” Chetney weighed the block of wood in his palm. “Or you could get really crazy and, I don’t know, ask him. But don’t listen to me! It’s not like I have hundreds of years of relationship experience or anything.”

“How–” Dorian began, but Chetney dove into his carving, and sawdust flew. A dismissal. Dorian took his cue and went.

Chapter Text

Dorian pushed open the door to the room where he’d left his friends. Only one small lamp remained lit, and it gleamed softly off the pale green of Fearne’s fur. Dorian blinked a few times to clear his vision. Fearne wasn’t alone. She had bent Ashton over a table. A figure wreathed in billowing shadow cupped Ashton’s head in huge dark hands, fingers wrapped around the purple crystals, steering. Dorian couldn’t see evidence of a single stitch of clothing, and counted himself fortunate that the angle was such that he couldn’t see anything that clothing should have covered, either. 

His throat constricted. “So sorry to interrupt.” It came out two ticks louder than the noise the door had made in opening. 

No one reacted. Did decency demand a better apology? No, no, if he hadn’t interrupted, it would be far ruder to make himself known. He closed the door as quietly as he could manage and slunk off, heading to his own room, hoping Orym would be there.

As he walked along the corridors, he heard a snatch of Imogen’s laughter, and then it cut off, blurring into a throaty moan. He felt hunted, surrounded by the evidence of everyone else’s intimate evenings. Presumably, Braius was also around here somewhere; as Dorian approached the door to his own guest room, he sent a fervent prayer into the universe that he wouldn’t find out anything more about that. 

Making a protective gesture to ward off amorous minotaurs, Dorian pushed open the door to his own room. But the only person in their room was Orym. He was naked from the waist up, doing push-ups. His tattoos rippled as his muscles strained through the movements. In one fluid motion, Orym’s hands came off the floor, his body coiled into a ball, and then, somehow, he was on his feet. “Hey.”

Dorian swallowed hard. His mouth had gone dry. “I feel like I should applaud."

Looking down at the floor, Orym shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

“I liked it.” He couldn’t stop looking. A droplet of sweat dripped down Orym’s neck into the hollow of his collarbone. 

Orym started to reach out, then visibly restrained himself. “Do you want another quiet night?”

“Is that what you thought I wanted?”

Orym lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug and tried to smile. It broke Dorian’s heart.

“Can I join you?” Dorian gestured to the floor in front of Orym. At his nod, Dorian folded forward onto his knees, gathering Orym in close. “You know I don’t know what I’m doing?”

“Do any of us?”

Dorian leaned back and looked Orym in the eyes. “More than this, yes. Sex– I’ve never done this before. There was never anyone– nothing more lasting than a dozen adolescent wet dreams. Nothing like this. Nothing like you. I don’t want to ask anything of you– I want to give you everything you want. And I don’t know–” His voice cracked. 

Orym took Dorian’s face between his hands. “I don’t want to pressure you into anything you’re not ready to do.” The eye contact seared, a brand burning through Dorian’s chest that made him ache. “We have our whole lives, and I mean for that to last for a long time. We can take this at your pace.”

“I don’t know what my pace is.” Internally, Dorian cursed himself. He should have spoken sooner. He was such a coward. His hands clenched on Orym’s arms convulsively, his fingers betraying every impulse he’d tried to quash. “The first night we spent together, that first night we were us, you told me you hadn’t been honest. Well, I haven’t been honest, either. I want you all the time. I want you so much it scares me. I’m so scared I’m going to ask for the wrong thing. I’m scared I’ll hurt you.”

“Scared together, huh?”

Dorian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Yeah.” 

“I was a soldier. Whatever you want, I promise you, it won’t shock me. And I will never judge you for wanting me.” His voice went hoarse on the last few words, like the fact of Dorian’s desire was itself enough to undo him.

Dorian gave a shaky little laugh. “I definitely want you.”

“Then that’s enough for me.” Orym leaned in and pressed his mouth to Dorian’s, a desperately sweet press of lips that made Dorian want to scream, because it wasn’t enough, because Orym deserved the entire world, and Dorian would burn down anything in their way without a single qualm, as long as that was what Orym wanted, too.

He knew, he knew that Orym was still holding something back, but Orym had one hand on the back of his head and the other sliding into the open front of his shirt, and it wasn’t Dorian’s fault that it rendered his brain fully inoperable every time Orym rolled one of his nipples between forefinger and thumb.

The problem was that, while Dorian could compose a pretty turn of phrase, that didn’t help when he didn’t know what he wanted to say. There was too much in his head– Ashton’s naked back, Imogen’s moan, Chetney’s words. Suck his brain out through his dick. Pull his hair. Talk to him.

“What do you want?” he tried, as Orym tiptoed up to slide the epaulettes off his shoulders by dint of tugging on the sheer fabric they were sewn to.

“You. Only you.”

Dorian gave up. Talking wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, and he couldn’t face the thought of pulling Orym’s hair. That left sucking dick, and, really, Dorian could hardly object to that. He scooped his lover up, barely feeling the weight, and perched him on the dresser, instantly forgiving it for its eerie unreality because it bridged the height difference like it had grown to suit their exact proportions.

From there, it was easy to drag off Orym’s pants and sink down to his knees once again. Dorian loved having all of Orym naked and delicious in front of him. He rubbed his cheek shamelessly across the fur of Orym’s belly for the sheer animal pleasure of it. “I don’t ever want there to be so much as a shred of doubt in your mind about how much I want this with you.”

“Bold words, blue boy.” Dorian risked a look up, and saw Orym’s eyes dark with lust.

The awareness rippled through him, lending him arousal and impulse to bolster his flagging confidence. It was easy to open his mouth and take Orym in, and he lay thick and heavy on the full length of Dorian’s tongue, perfectly filling his mouth without choking him.

He had done this much before, which meant he had at least some idea what he was doing. More than that, he relished the opportunity to practice, taking as much pleasure in playing Orym’s body as he would take in playing the flute or the mandolin. His mouth filled with the taste of Orym, and his nose with the scent of Orym, and he closed his eyes to savor the rehearsal. He knew how this song went: a series of small, repressed noises followed by a torrent of words that would slide out of Orym’s mouth like they’d been greased, until the words cut off and there was only pleasure for both of them. He knew this song, and he intended to nail every note.

Orym got his hands in Dorian’s hair, spread it out so it fell over his lap. “Did you know you have gorgeous hair? I love your hair.”

Dorian hollowed his cheeks and hummed acknowledgment. Orym’s hands went to fists, and as Dorian bobbed his head, it pulled at his hair. The sensation was a surprise, bright and crisp and startling. Dorian stilled, not quite sure if he’d liked that. 

“No?” asked Orym, letting go.

The loss brought Dorian instant clarity. “Yes,” he said, releasing his mouthful so it rubbed against the outside of his cheek, pushing his head back into Orym’s hands. Orym’s hands went back in his hair, nails on his scalp, little tugs to help Dorian find all the best ways to make Orym shudder, and the world was whole again.

It got impossibly better when Orym groaned and started whispering encouragement, his hands clenched in Dorian’s hair like the mass of black and blue was the only thing keeping him from tumbling off a skyship. “Yeah– yeah– just like that– fuck, Dorian–”

And then a wash of salt and bitter on Dorian’s tongue, and Orym’s chest heaving before him. Dorian felt exultant. Power thrummed like magic over his skin, like the vibration of a string or a reed, like something he could understand and control.

Dorian could have stayed there longer, savoring what he had wrought, but Orym slid off the dresser and landed on unsteady feet.

“Let me,” he said, scrabbling at Dorian’s trousers, and if it only took the barest curl of Orym’s fingers around Dorian’s length to bring Dorian off– humiliation was another country. Dorian wasn’t even on the same continent as shame.

“You liked that?” Orym’s eyes were huge, still dark with lust, their faces close in the afterglow.

“Yes.” That barely described half of it, but Dorian didn’t have words for the things he was feeling. To keep the words he couldn’t say from gumming in his throat, he spoke instead of the easy truths. “You, in the flesh, are so much better than anything I have ever imagined. I could watch you forever.”

“Yeah?” Orym wrapped his arms around Dorian’s neck, his legs around Dorian’s waist, and with his face buried in the crook of Dorian’s neck, he whispered: “I’m glad.”

The only problem was that they had to leave in the morning. Dorian felt like he was finally making progress, and some long-dormant instinct was blaring warnings. Orym was still holding back a secret. Dorian didn’t dare let it go, not while they were finally making progress.

He slid out of bed and tucked the blanket neatly over Orym’s sleeping body. He wouldn’t be gone long.

It wasn’t hard to find Braius. His was the only light left on in the dark of the night. The single sconce cast dark shadows over Braius’s canvas.

He shut the door behind him. “Bad time?”

Braius set his brush down and turned away from his art. “I’m always happy to entertain a beautiful man in the middle of the night.”

That was not an auspicious beginning, but Dorian had questions. “You have a certain amount of… experience.”

“Sexy experience,” Braius clarified.

Dorian nodded, a curt, sharp gesture. He steeled himself. “Hair pulling,” he began, and then realized that he had no idea how to word his question. “What the fuck is up with that?”

Braius’s eyebrows winged up in a way that made Dorian’s ears feel hot. “Perhaps I could offer you some… hands-on assistance?”

After so much doubt, the certainty felt like a benediction. “No. No, absolutely not. I can take it from here.” Amazingly, he even believed himself.

“I’m sure you can,” said Braius, in a tone steeped in so much innuendo that Dorian couldn’t even begin to excavate what sincerity might underlie the words, or if there was any sincerity at all. In a more normal tone, Braius continued: “But once upon a time, you gave me some solid advice, even though I’d only known you for a hundred hours, and it changed my life for the better. I heard you’d been asking around. So– here.” He held out a bundle of pamphlets.

Gingerly, Dorian took them. He thumbed the top one open and then hastily closed it. He had seen actual pornography less explicit than the contents.

Braius smiled winsomely. “I drew the illustrations myself.”

“I’m sure you did.” Dorian shoved the pamphlets into his pocket. He took a deep breath and composed himself. “Thank you.” 

“If you’re ever looking for a third, I have a very flexible… schedule.”

That was quite enough of that. And yet– Dorian was beginning to find his security. “You know what? If it ever comes up, I will definitely mention that you said that.”

“That’s all I ask,” said Braius, accompanied by a facial expression that suggested several increasingly lewd follow-on requests.

Dorian beat a hasty retreat before Braius could insinuate anything else.

Somehow, he felt good about it.

Chapter Text

As promised, they got back to Exandria scant hours after they’d left. Dorian’s to-do list was just as overwhelming as ever, but his heart felt as light as the renewed spring in Imogen’s step as they parted. 

He caught Orym’s hands before he could leave. “I will come home on time today,” he promised. “If the meetings run over– when the meetings run over– I will walk out of that meeting room and come home to you.”

Orym shifted his weight uncomfortably. “The meetings are important.”

“So are you.” It rang with the truth of it.

Orym’s lips parted in faint shock, and Dorian ached because he had to leave.

They had dinner together, some kind of meat fried in pastry that Dorian had brought home from a street vendor who had traveled to the Ruidian diplomatic encampment to seek their fortune. When their fingers and plates were clean, Orym took Dorian’s hand and led them both to bed.

Dorian let Orym set the pace, kissing, noses brushing softly on the silken sheets of the bed that befitted Dorian’s status. He cupped the back of Orym’s skull and gave them both time to settle, to become comfortable here in the real world, with all the weight of their responsibilities pressing down on them.

When the tension in the back of Orym’s neck went soft against Dorian’s wrist, he closed the fingers he’d tangled into Orym’s hair into a fist and pulled.

Orym’s eyes flew open and fixed on Dorian’s, like what was happening was too good to be true. His whole body came to rigid attention. Dorian did not look away, though he did eventually let go.

“No?” he asked softly, because Orym had asked him.

Orym was too dazed to answer for several long seconds, and when he finally answered, it was in a whisper, a secret rarely shared. “Yes.” 

“It’s not only hair-pulling that you want, is it? There’s more.”

“The hair-pulling’s good.”

“But it’s not enough. It’s not everything.”

Orym turned his face into the pillow.

Dorian narrowed his gaze and clarified. “I want to give you everything. And maybe there are things I can’t give you, or can’t give you yet. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m so far from perfect– but if you don’t tell me what it is you want, if you don’t explain it so I can understand, I can’t even try. That doesn’t seem fair to either of us.

“You don’t have to tell me anything. But please. Please don’t push me away. Please don’t tell me that there’s nothing important, just because you don’t think that anybody else cares about it. If there’s anything you want, if there’s anything that’s bothering you? It’s important to me.”

Orym blew out a long, slow breath. “When I met you, I started letting my hair grow out again.”

Dorian couldn’t quite connect those dots, but it didn’t matter, because it meant Orym was going to explain. He stroked along the length of Orym’s spine, comforting, giving him space to find the words. 

“I’ve kept it cropped close ever since Will died. Anything else– it seemed pointless, to mess around with tangles and hair in my face, when there was no one left to–” Emotion rose up and choked off the words.

Understanding dawned. “No one to pull your hair?”

“Yeah. And then there was you.”

“Twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t know that anyone might want their hair pulled.”

“And now?”

Dorian traced Orym’s jawbone with his fingers. Gently, so gently, he tipped Orym’s chin up so he could meet Orym’s wide eyes. “It would be my honor.”

The serious mood lasted for the space of a breath, and then Orym snickered. “It would be your honor to pull my hair?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Because he could, Dorian gave a curl at the base of Orym’s neck a playful tug.

Orym shivered, and then pulled himself visibly together. “It’s just sex.”

Dorian stopped dead. “It’s important to you.”

“It’s not–” Dorian held up a warning finger, and Orym huffed out a wry laugh. “Right. Sorry. Old habit.”

“You’ve been so withdrawn. Even Imogen noticed.” It wasn’t the moment to admit that Dorian had been so preoccupied with affairs of state that he had needed her to point it out to him.

“She’s pretty perceptive,” Orym tried, but Dorian wasn’t having that. He just gave Orym a pointed look and waited.

The sound of Orym’s breathing filled the space, the silk hangings eating the noise. Eventually, he rolled over onto his back and stared up at the canopy. “I don’t do well with nothing to do. That doesn’t mean I’m fragile.”

The silence stretched out again, until Dorian realized with a jolt he was meant to say something to that. “Of course you’re not fragile. You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

“Then why do you always fuck me like I’m going to break?”

“I don’t–” Dorian began. But Orym had a point. He cut himself off and tried again. “I’m gentle with you because you’re precious to me, and I want to take care of you. And, if I’m being honest, because I’m a little bit scared I’m going to break you.” He held up his hands, culpable, asking forgiveness. “Not because you’re fragile! Because I’m clumsy. This is all uncharted territory for me. I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you.”

“Even if I ask you to hurt me?”

“Why would you want that?” He held up his hands again, painfully conscious that he was messing up this conversation nearly every time he opened his mouth, but somehow it still felt like they were getting somewhere. “I’m not saying no. I just don’t understand. Why would you want me to hurt you?”

“Back when we were traveling, we would get in fights. Defending ourselves against monsters or the Ruby Vanguard or whatever else came up. I was getting bruised and bloodied every third day. Even more than that, toward the end. Here, there’s nothing like that. And I don’t want to go back to that. I have a place in the world, here, with you. But there’s a part of me that misses it.

“It’s like I told Keyleth. Giving up the things I have in the present doesn’t honor my past. But I don’t really know– I’m still trying to figure out how much of my past got left in Zephrah and how much lives inside my skin. I think maybe I’m still a fighter, even though I’m not a guard or an adventurer anymore. It feels like I have ants crawling under my skin. I want to keep doing this. We’re doing some real good in the diplomatic corps. But my body–” He rolled his hips against Dorian’s side, and the shape of his groin against Dorian’s flank gave Dorian some clear ideas of some things they could do with Orym’s body. “My body needs something more.”

Dorian’s voice came out in a whisper. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“You don’t have to. Just don’t treat me like I’m made of glass.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“Be rough with me. Not every time, but sometimes. Touch me like you know I don’t mind if I bruise. Fuck me so hard I can’t walk right the next day.”

“I can certainly try.” Dorian’s pulse was going too fast. There was an actual bruise on Orym’s forearm, fresh from that day’s sparring, and he was rubbing his thumb over it absently, like he cherished it. Suddenly, the thought of leaving his own marks on the ivory expanse of Orym’s skin seemed unbearably right. “What if I hurt you too much?”

“I don’t think you will. It takes a lot to take me down. But if you do really hurt me, then we’ll patch me up together.”

“How do we start?”

“You could bend me over something sturdy. Like your desk.”

That was oddly specific. The desk was made of heavy local oak, a simple design crafted and allotted to travelers who found themself suddenly needing to keep up with the overwhelming volume of diplomatic communiques from representatives from every corner of Exandria. Up until that very moment, Dorian had been looking forward to getting rid of it in hopes that the equally-heavy pile of paperwork would go, too. And yet, now– “You’ve been thinking dirty thoughts about my desk.”

A wry smile. “Since the day I helped move it in.”

“Show me what you had in mind?”

It had seemed like a perfectly safe, reasonable suggestion when he’d made it. The reality was less easily managed. They’d swept the paperwork onto the floor and laid out a towel effortlessly, but Dorian hadn’t expected that finding a bench the right height to give Orym somewhere to plant his feet was the easy part.

Bent over as promised, Orym grunted. “I thought you’d– oh– be holding me up.” The muscles in his arm rippled as he worked slick fingers between his legs, giving the illusion that winds tattooed on his arm were blowing. He was gloriously, overwhelmingly naked.

“Oh, I will.” Dorian wanted to, truly he did. He just needed a minute. Or several. Even watching felt insurmountable, like he was trying to fit an entire mountain’s worth of new concepts into the ten-foot-cube portable hole that was his brain. He couldn’t take it all in at once. 

The details felt a little more manageable. The rhythmic clench and release of Orym’s thighs. The graceful undulation of his ass. The rise and fall of his chest, increasing in tempo as he found the spots that pleased him best.

And he, Dorian, was supposed to go over there and– he took a deep breath to steady himself.

They were barely three feet apart. It should have been easy to cross it, but the distance felt like an entire ocean Dorian didn’t know how to sail. His fingers ached to hold, his heart ached to cherish, and other swelling parts of him just ached. He just didn’t know how or when or even what he’d do when he got there. It was three steps. It was the entire world.

And then Orym arched. “Fuck, Dorian.” He shuddered, long and slow down the whole length of his spine. “Need you to touch me.”

Then, all at once, it was easy. The fronts of Dorian’s thighs met the backs of Orym’s with a meaty smack, and Dorian didn’t know how he’d gotten there. Had he walked? Flown? Teleported? It didn’t matter, because Orym was still moving, and now that captivating pattern was pressed directly against Dorian’s crotch.

He gave a manly, dignified yelp and grabbed for Orym’s hips, dug his fingers into the hollows above Orym’s hip bones like he was clutching the shreds of his sanity.

Orym bucked under him. “Yeah. Like that. Harder.”

Dorian tightened his grip. 

“Fuck,” Orym whispered, barely audible. He rolled his hips, pressing into the contact, feeling out the limits.

That single, quiet word that Dorian had to strain to hear was everything he needed to bolster his confidence. Some people got loud during sex. Dorian had learned that traveling with the Hells, and tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to forget what his friends sounded like in the throes of passion. Inns really needed thicker walls.

It had therefore been a surprise to learn that when things got intense, Orym got quiet. He might grunt or groan, but the signs of his pleasure were obvious in the curve of his spine, the tension in his neck, the way his thighs trembled when he was close.

“What do you need?”

“Will you fuck me?”

Dorian looked down at his own naked body. This close to Orym, he looked impossibly huge. The panic rose in his chest. Braius’s illustrated pamphlets had dedicated several pages to this act. There had been a whole section about how bodies could stretch, emblazoned with many strict imprecations to “go slower” and “use more lube”. The pamphlets had said that many people didn’t want this at all, and there were many other equally-satisfying options. The pamphlets said–

It didn’t matter what the pamphlets said. Orym wanted this.

Dorian sucked in air through his teeth. “Orym, I swear by every god in the departed pantheon, I am not treating you like you are made of glass, but I have never done this before . I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Orym twisted his head back. His eyes were dark with pleasure. “You’ve pulled my hair before, yeah?”

“Yes.” Once. Twenty minutes previously. But who was counting?

“Do that. Start slow. It’ll be fine. I trust you.”

Then there was a small slick hand on him, guiding him, bringing their bodies together to join. Dorian’s skin felt too tight for his body. Orym’s body parted for him in slow degrees of mind-bending, white-hot pleasure so intense it almost hurt. It was nearly unbearable– it was unbearable, because Dorian was coming. He wasn’t even all the way in . His whole body tensed in humiliation.

There was a long, horrible stillness. For the interminable space of three heartbeats, neither of them moved at all.

“Did you–?”

“I’m so sorry– it’s just so–” Dorian’s vision tunneled, everything too much. He stared into the knob at the base of Orym’s spine, trying to find an anchor.

Orym reached back and rubbed comfort into the side of his hip. “It happens. Fingers?”

He was horribly oversensitive. The thought of moving was intolerable. “Give me a moment.” He turned his focus to his breath, the familiar expansion of rib cage and diaphragm. Piece by piece, the rest of the world came back into focus: the shape of his thumbs on Orym’s flanks, the curve of Orym’s ass, the place their bodies came together. It was– a compelling visual.

To his astonishment, Dorian realized he was rousing again.

Under him, Orym’s hips hitched. “Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

“Not that young.”

“Young enough, if you’re ready to go again like that.”

“As you like it.” His palms were sweating. He intended only to adjust his grip, but at the same time, Orym shifted under him, and all of a sudden, Orym’s ass was flush with Dorian’s hips. 

“Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” Orym sounded a little shaky. His hips were moving in tiny furtive jerks, like he was trying to hold himself back. Dorian could watch those little desperate motions for hours.

He remembered– suddenly, guiltily– that he had a job to do. It was a wrench to let go of Orym’s hips, but as a consolation, the line of Orym’s spine was poetry. Dorian traced his fingertips up that line until he could curve his hand along the base of Orym’s skull. The hair there had gone damp from sweat, waves becoming curls at the nape.

The first sharp tug earned him a full-body shudder. 

It was a rare occasion when Dorian Storm felt fully in control of himself and his destiny. Having Orym laid out under his hands was a heady thing. Wriggling under him, finding all the angles that suited him best while fully impaled. For a moment, Dorian lost the plot, transfixed, just watching Orym squirm.

Orym whined, then spoke. “Can I move?” Hoarse, hollow, desperate words.

“Move for me,” said Dorian, commanding, and what was he even saying? A simple yes would have done the job, and please rarely went amiss. He’d taken hold of Orym’s hair, not his reins.

But Orym wasn’t objecting. The muscles in his back bunched, and motion and pleasure followed. Wonder bloomed in Dorian’s chest. The sensation was right on the line between manageable and overstimulation, and it kept him present while the most beautiful man in the world moved under him. His own pleasure would come; right now, what mattered was Orym.

He wanted to touch, and it occurred to him that he could. He was allowed to draw the flat expanse of his palm down Orym’s side, to revel in the fuzzy plane of Orym’s belly, and eventually to find the long hard length of him with his palm and wrap his fingers around it. Orym surged into the contact, moving with reckless abandon, and Dorian found himself tentatively meeting him, gingerly at first and then with growing confidence. The meaty smack of flesh against flesh made Dorian thrill to the rhythm.

Hungry for contact, he parted Orym’s thighs with his own and bent over to press Orym’s torso into the desk. Every time Orym shuddered, he felt it on the skin of his abdomen, and a pulse of pleasure from inside his own body answered it. 

Since it seemed to be going well– since Orym was wild beneath him– he let the pace accelerate, meeting Orym’s rocking hips with greater and greater force. The knuckles of Orym’s hands went white where they held the lip of the desk’s top. 

Encouraged, Dorian twisted his hand  in Orym’s hair and pulled. Orym’s head came back with it, so he was arched back, his spine beautifully bow-taut against Dorian. His chest was heaving in time with–

No, wait. There was something wrong with the rhythm. Dorian slowed, feeling like a stick stuck in the spokes of a cart wheel as their steady tempo went erratic, but now he could hear the quiet sounds Orym had been making. He let go and drew his hands back like he’d been scalded. “Are you crying?”

Orym only arched under him, but Dorian was already craning his neck to see. Orym’s cheeks were damp with tears.

Dorian took a horrified step back, and tried to ignore the suggestively wet sound when they disconnected. “I never want to make you cry.”

Orym was quiet for a moment, coming slowly to rest. He twisted at the waist. “What if they were good tears?”

Dorian considered that. Weighed the part of him that wanted to believe that against the part of him that wanted to be a good boyfriend. Eventually, he asked,  “Were they?”

“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.”

Slowly, Dorian reached out and swiped a thumb over Orym’s cheek, wiping the tears away. “It always is, isn’t it? Complicated, I mean.”

It was meant as an invitation, but instead of explaining, Orym said: “Do you trust me to know what I want?”

“Always.”

“Let me cry?”

Dorian faltered. There had been nothing in the pamphlets about anything like this. He felt lost. “Do you want me to… hold you?”

“What, afterward?”

“Well, afterward, of course. But what do you need now?”

“Right now, I need you to come back here and finish what you started.” Orym wiggled his butt in a deliberately provocative way. Dorian felt a surge of lust, followed by a surge of guilt. Orym had been crying.

Except– Orym didn’t seem bothered. Orym had asked for what he wanted. Dorian needed to get out of his own way and prove to both of them that he could do this.

Even though Orym was still good to go, Dorian wasn’t quite. “Fingers still okay?” 

Orym arched pointedly. “Just get back inside me.”

Dorian’s hand shook on the flask of lubricant. Droplets splattered over his hand onto some of the paperwork on the floor. He squinted, trying to read the direction on the sealed envelope. Hopefully this– J’mon Sa Ord? – wouldn’t care. Or notice. 

But then he was sliding a finger inside his lover, and he forgot entirely about the paperwork. Orym was relaxed and shivery and slick, barely offering resistance. This wasn’t the intense, overwhelming pleasure of earlier, but Dorian loved it. For one thing, there was a lot less pressure. Instead of overwhelming his senses, it let him feel out Orym’s reactions.

Orym was moving again, rutting back against his hand. “More fingers.”

Dorian added a second finger, and it was easy, Orym stretching around him. Fluid motion, normal volume. Orym wasn’t made of glass. A few lazy, meditative thrusts later, Dorian gathered up his courage and went for a third.

Orym pressed his forehead hard against the desk and mumbled, “C’mon, big boy. I can take it.”

Orym had been calling him blue boy since Jrusar. This was different, and extremely interesting. “I need to get you worked up and talking more often,” murmured Dorian, working a fourth finger carefully in.  “You’re a marvel. Always up for a challenge, aren’t you?”

“Tell you about fisting–” Orym bucked– “Someday.”

Quieter. That was progress. “Still good?” he asked, to be sure.

“Don’t fucking stop.”

Dorian put the weight of his hip behind his wrist. He was hard again, rubbing against the slick skin of Orym’s thigh, but he was scared Orym wouldn’t tolerate another interruption, and anyway, he didn’t want to stop. He wanted to see Orym fall apart in his hands. 

He reached out to take Orym in hand, but Orym caught his wrist. “Hair. Please.”

He pulled as instructed and then, feeling inspired, leaned forward to graze his teeth over the meaty part of Orym’s shoulder. His reward: Orym’s harsh exhale, fresh tension in the thighs he was pressed between, the lewd skin-on-skin rasp of Dorian fucking Orym and of Orym touching himself.

It couldn’t be long, now, and Dorian wanted it to go on forever even as he urged Orym closer to the peak. He let go of Orym’s hair and dragged his nails down Orym’s back; Orym had started to quiver and Dorian wanted the extra support he could get from holding Orym’s hips. He grabbed hold, hard enough to bruise, and felt Orym’s pleasure under his tongue as he sucked and bit marks into the flesh of his shoulders. 

The height difference meant that he had to do terrible things to his back to reach all the parts of Orym he wanted to touch, but the contortion meant his ear was close enough to hear Orym chanting “don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop” under his breath, nearly silent and almost totally eclipsed by Dorian’s own breathing. What was a little thing like “spinal integrity” worth compared to this?

It wasn’t long before the motion of Orym’s hips went erratic and he fell apart at last, jerking in two long taut pulses and then going totally limp. Dorian eased himself back and straightened up, bursting with his own desire. He barely had to touch himself, two strokes, and he was following Orym into bliss, spilling all over Orym’s back as Orym lay there, boneless, beautifully wrecked and breathing heavy.

When he could make words again, what came out of his mouth was: “Shit.” It was probably rude to come all over someone without asking first. “I’m sorry.”

“No sorries,” said Orym, slurring a little. He sounded drunk, Dorian realized with burgeoning glee. “So good.”

“We should get you cleaned up.” The towel had gotten wedged under Orym’s chest, and it took a good deal of gentle coaxing to get him to move enough to extract it. Dorian did what he could, but they were both going to need a proper bath before bed.

By the time Dorian was finished with what cleaning was possible with a dry-ish towel, Orym had started to stir. He slid off the desk, moving gingerly. “I think we missed the paperwork.”

“I don’t care about the paperwork.” Dorian did care about the paperwork, a little bit, in that he didn’t really want to copy it out again if they’d ruined something, but that wasn’t important now. “How are you doing?”

“Mmmmmmm.” Orym stretched languorously, full-body, naked. There were nascent marks on his hips in the shape of Dorian’s fingers. “Sore.”

“And that’s still okay?”

“So okay.” He pulled an arm across his chest, stretching with more intent now. “How about you?”

“What about me?”

Orym switched arms. “Did you like it?”

“It was a lot,” said Dorian, disarmed into honesty. And then, because he wanted to do it again, when they recovered, possibly as soon as next week, he added: “I liked it. You’re magnificent.”

“Yeah?”

There was really only one other thing that Dorian wanted. “Can I kiss you?”

Orym sprang, and Dorian staggered as Orym’s full weight crashed into his arms, his mouth hard against Dorian’s. “You’re sticky,” said Dorian, brushing the words against his lips, not really complaining at all.

“Yeah? You gonna do something about that?” 

Then they were kissing again, Dorian stumbling away from the desk because he wanted to get clean just as much as he didn’t want to let Orym go. He was so lost in licking into Orym’s mouth that he walked them both into a door frame on the way to the bath. 

Later, when they were both clean and dry and snuggled into their bed, Dorian remembered. “You were crying.”

“I was,” said Orym, just a little bit wary. “Is that a problem?”

“It scared me.” Dorian rubbed soothing circles into the base of Orym’s neck, digging in his thumb and carefully avoiding the blooming hickeys he’d left a few inches away. “I thought I’d ruined everything.”

“It was perfect.”

“Oh, come on.” Dorian had been there. He couldn’t even begin to count how many mistakes he’d made.

Orym surged up onto his elbow and laid a small finger on Dorian’s lips, silencing him. “It was perfect,” he repeated, slow and deliberate. He would accept no argument. “You fucked me until it all felt real. That’s why I started crying. It was so much and so big and so good, Dorian. It was good.”

“You said it was complicated,” said Dorian, turning it over in his head.

Orym subsided back into his spot nestled into Dorian's side. “No one ever said good was easy.”

Dorian thought of his family, his parents and his brother. Of Predathos. Of the long exhausting meetings where they heard testimony from hopeful and scared and grateful Ruidians. And he thought of Orym, of the loved ones he had lost and the loved ones he had gained, and the tears began to make sense.

“Did your hus–” Dorian cut himself off. He had no business bringing ghosts into this moment, no business at all.

“Did Will fuck me like that?”

Dorian flushed violet. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“No. No, it’s– this is good. This is good, too.” Orym drew in a breath. “I was afraid. After he died, part of me was afraid that I would never feel that good again. And then, after a while, part of me was afraid that I would, and that I would forget him. That I would forget Will.”

“And?” Dorian felt breathless, a thousand inappropriate questions rocketing around in his skull like firecrackers, desperately wanting to measure up, desperately wanting Orym to be safe, and warm, and held.

“And it wasn’t like that at all. I still won’t see Will again in this lifetime, and I won’t feel what I felt with him. That will never get fixed. But I’ll always have the memories of him, of the things we did, and I can be here, with you, and it’s different, and it’s good.” A pause. “And I just– I feel so lucky–” Orym’s voice cracked and oh, fuck, he was crying again– “so lucky, to have had the chance to know both of you.”

Dorian wrapped his arms around him and held on, held and was held in return. He felt lucky, too.