Chapter 1 #3
The rhythm deepens. Not faster, yet. Just deeper.
Each thrust longer, pulling out farther before pushing back in, and Evran can feel the edge of Vaike's control starting to fray at last in the uneven catches of his breath.
Vaike has fucked him fast, has fucked him hard, has pinned him down and rutted into him in the dark while Evran begged for it.
But this, this slow, relentless, full-length stroke with his whole chest pressed to Evran's back and his hand curled at Evran's throat, this is the one that breaks him every time.
His hips roll harder. The hand at Evran's throat slides down, across his collarbone, down the length of his chest and his belly, and wraps around him where he is hard again, achingly hard again, gone traitor a second time, and strokes, tight and measured, in counterpoint to the thrust of his hips.
Evran comes apart.
He comes on a choked-off cry, hips jerking between Vaike's cock and Vaike's hand, and he feels Vaike shudder all along the length of his back at the first spasm of it, feels Vaike's rhythm stutter and break, feels the arm across his chest tighten until it is almost painful, feels the hand at his cock squeeze him through it while the other hand braces low and bruising on his hip.
Vaike fucks him through it in short, sharp, uneven thrusts and then buries himself deep and goes still, and Evran feels the thick pulse of him coming, feels the heat of it spilling inside him, and Vaike's mouth is open and panting against the crook of his shoulder and he is saying something Evran cannot quite make out, a name, maybe, Evran's name, over and over, quiet and ruined against his skin.
For a long time, neither of them moves.
Vaike's breath slows against the nape of his neck.
His arm stays wrapped around Evran's chest. His other hand drifts from Evran's softening cock up to his belly and settles there, wide and splayed, where the faint stickiness of Evran's own spend is cooling against his skin.
He does not seem inclined to care. He presses his forehead to the back of Evran's shoulder and breathes.
Evran closes his eyes. Just a little longer, then. Just until Vaike's breath evens out, until the grip of his arm loosens from desperate to drowsy, until the feel of being held like this has soaked into his bones deep enough that he can carry it through the day.
Vaike pulls out eventually, careful of him, slow enough that Evran still winces at the small empty ache of it. Then he is kissing Evran's shoulder again, a wordless apology, and reaching behind him for the cloth on the washstand.
Evran lets himself be cleaned. He does not move.
He does not think he could move, strictly speaking.
He watches through half-lidded eyes as Vaike attends to him with steady hands, careful pressure, not a word spoken.
When Vaike is done he drops the cloth back in the basin and gathers Evran back against his chest and holds him, simply, the way he has held him on a thousand mornings like this.
"You have made me," Evran manages eventually, "very late."
"You didn't put up much of a fight."
"You used all of my weaknesses against me."
Vaike laughs, low and rumbling, and it vibrates through Evran's back, and Evran thinks, not for the first time, but somehow newly, this morning, with Vaike's come still warm inside him and Vaike's arm still heavy across his chest, that he did not know, before this.
That he did not know a body could feel like this.
That he did not know he could be held this way, fucked this way, known this way, and come out on the other side of it more himself instead of less.
He thinks of his father's house, briefly. He thinks of the cold rooms and the colder judgment. He thinks of Lord Galen, whom he will not think about, whom he refuses to think about, and yet whose ghost still sometimes lives in the hinge of his own jaw.
None of that is here. None of that has ever been here.
Here there is only Vaike, warm and tangled around him in a bed that belongs to them both, murmuring something half-asleep into his hair.
He is late.
He is extraordinarily late, in fact, and Eira does not even need to say anything when he finally climbs the garden terrace, breathless, with his hair still damp from the basin and his tunic hastily laced and bite marks he cannot quite scrub off his throat, because the look she gives him is a book unto itself.
"Sunny patches," she says, sweetly.
"Eira."
"All morning, I think. I'll take the east side. You can have the south."
"Eira, have mercy."
"Oh," she says, widening her eyes with false innocence, "was there somewhere you were supposed to be, Evran? At a certain hour?"
He sighs, and kneels beside her in the dirt, and accepts his punishment.
The sun is warm on the back of his neck.
The soil is cool beneath his hands. Down the slope, small green shoots are coming up along the lower terrace in neat rows, and farther down, past the outer walls, the clearing below the stronghold is a soft pale green where the mountain grass is starting to wake up for the season.
He can hear a hawk somewhere, high and far.
Eira hums under her breath, pleased with herself. Evran remembers when she was more timid, more quick to keep to herself, and thinks about how far they've come that she can be playful with him like this. He feels a strange, quiet astonishment at his own life.
Six months.
Six months ago he arrived at these gates on the back of a horse that belonged to his father, wearing clothes that were owned by his father, sent by a father who had delegated him as property to be given away to curry favor.
He had expected to die here or to suffer if death was not swift enough.
He had expected cruelty, at the very least; had braced for it, had rehearsed the endurance of it on the long ride north.
He had not expected Bran and Leona's kindness and understanding of his situation.
He had not expected Eira's friendship and her humming and her slow quiet patience with his clumsy hands.
He had not expected Kellin's bark of laughter the first time Evran managed to parry a strike instead of wearing it.
He had not expected Aether to weasel her way into his life and push him unceremoniously towards the greatest man he's ever known.
He had not, even in his wildest dreams, expected to find love and be loved in return.
"You're smiling at a turnip," Eira says, without looking up.
"It is a very fine turnip," he replies pleasantly, and watches the knowing smile cross her lips.
Midday finds him on the training ground with Kellin, stripped to a light tunic and sweating through it within a quarter hour.
Kellin is a patient teacher who wants more out of his students than perhaps even they do, and he's been working with Evran long enough to know what he's capable of.
He's also been working with him long enough to know what he's not, and Kellin never asks more of him than he can give.