13. Houses #2
I wasn’t generally one for being bossed around, nor was I one for anything deep or long-lasting.
My various relationships were light and short, rarely lasting longer than a few weeks or months.
I liked to fuck pretty women and get my cock sucked by pretty men, and I was quite happy to pleasure them in return.
I saw my parents on occasion and my sister more rarely still, and I had a few army friends I visited from time to time.
None of it mattered. None of it even held a candle to the things I’d given Alluin—to the deep and terrible truth that served as the bedrock of my existence: I could no longer live without him. He was to me what Droesh was to him, the anchor for my entire existence.
If he hadn’t been Alluin, it would have been terrifying. But he was Alluin, so good and so kind and so impossibly loyal and honorable that paladins paled in comparison, and I was his.
“I like being kept by you,” I admitted, the words falling like stones between us, my skin too hot and my eyes too wide and the weight of his earrings on my ears impossible to ignore.
“I like being your shield-love, and I like knowing that you think of that as an unbreakable bond.” I chewed on my lip for a moment before adding, like a peace-offering, “I already know you’re greedy and possessive.
I still don’t have a single one of our letters to my name, but I keep sending you more, don’t I?
All of them carrying little pieces of me. ”
His dense dark lashes swept down, some of the fierceness in his eyes easing. “It doesn’t trouble you? Knowing that even if you don’t want me, I won’t be able to easily leave? With Nyland—”
“Forget Nyland,” I said, making a disgusted face as jealousy coiled in my gut. “I’m more fun than him, and I’m prettier than him, and I love you better than he surely ever did. So can we stop comparing me to him already?”
He gave me a chastising look. “With. Nyland,” Alluin said, emphasizing the words, “there was always the expectation of impermanence, even though the length of time we bound ourselves to was a span of many millennia. There isn’t an end to the pact we swore on the Droesh stones. There isn’t an easy way out.”
“Alluin. Get over yourself,” I said in a matter-of-fact voice.
I hooked my arm through his and started towing him towards the exit again.
“There hasn’t been any end to us since you held me while I was broken and dying and told me not to be afraid.
Obviously I’m going to move in with you if you’ll have me.
You’ll surely be a far better housemate than whatever other housing I might be able to acquire.
” I flicked an ear at him as we stepped into the evening air, crossing into the main garrison.
“I’m not taking Nyland’s rooms, though. I won’t have it. I’m not a replacement Nyland.”
“Shall I purchase a new house, then?” Alluin asked in a deceptively level tone.
I shot him a suspicious look sidelong. “I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not.”
He didn’t look at me, but he smirked, a wicked expression that made my stomach flip-flop. “You once suggested that I gut my house of everything related to Nyland and burn it on a pyre, and to then let you help me redecorate. Perhaps I’m merely extending an invitation to the next logical step.”
“As enjoyable as it would be to burn him in effigy, I really don’t want my life decisions to be based around the shadow of your former husband.” I lifted my lip. “Also, I don’t know where I’m going, so if you had a plan for dinner, you should probably enact it.”
“I assumed you’d like to change out of your formal whites before eating,” Alluin said. He inclined his head towards one of the gates. “The house is that way. It’s not a long walk.”
“My things are all currently in two chests in a garrison guest-room,” I pointed out, though I didn’t protest as Alluin steered us out of the walls of the garrison and into the small town surrounding it.
“There are clothes for you at the house,” he said in a mild tone. “Nothing that will match those earrings, unfortunately, since you look incredibly lovely wearing them, but I have a few other sets that I think will suit you.”
I frowned at him. “Why in the wilds do you have clothes that fit me? For that matter, why do you have earrings on standby? You don’t even wear them.”
Alluin shrugged. “They’re not simply clothes that fit you.
They’re clothes for you. The earrings, too.
There are also a few cuffs and rings, and before you start making a fuss about me stalking you well enough to have all your measurements, I’d just like to note that having a wardrobe tailored for you in case I managed to work up the courage to ask you to come stay with me for a month or two doesn’t even come close to you going feral because you thought that someone was going to break my heart. ”
My cheeks and ears went hot. “Don’t say it like that,” I muttered, blushing furiously. “You make me sound ridiculous when you say it like that.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Zhi,” he said gently, stopping and turning me so that I was facing him.
He rested his arms on my chest and cupped my face, running his thumbs along my jaw.
“You understand me in a way no one else does, and I think in a way that no one else has. The fact that you knew that he was gutting me in a way I might never have recovered from, and that your immediate and soul-deep response was to defend me to the death, is the sort of gift of affection that a few clothes or pieces of jewelry can’t even begin to repay. ”
“Oh,” I said, the heat in my face going from embarrassment to yearning want. “I suppose you can say it like that.”
Alluin smiled helplessly at me, his own face rouging. “It’s a bit embarrassing that all I can seem to think of to do for you is to buy you things when you’re saving me and loving Droesh for me, but you like beautiful things and I like seeing you be happy. So can you let me get away with it?”
I heaved a sigh and leaned my cheek into his hand, giving him a smile. “Fine. But I still don’t want to live in Nyland’s rooms.”
He raised one brow. “Then it seems I’ll be buying a new house.”
“Alright,” I said, shaking my head at him. “You could have simply taken his rooms and given me yours, but if that’s how you want to spend your heaps of gold, who am I to complain? Do I get to come along for the house hunt?”
“If you like,” Alluin said, sounding very smug about it as he tucked my arm through his and started walking again. “There’s a house nearby I’ve had my eye on for a while. The current owner recently updated it and might be interested in taking offers. How do you feel about having an aviary?”
“You’re such a rich person,” I said with a laugh. “Whatever you want, Lu. So long as I have a bedroom, an office, and somewhere I can sprawl in melancholia when the mood takes me, I think I’ll be happy.”
“Wine cellar?” he asked brightly.
I laughed again as he turned us through a gate and led me up the walk to his home. “Sure,” I said. “Let’s do it.”