Undefeated Lion
Vanu went up the stairs to Lill’s room with Lill clinging to him, arms around Vanu’s shoulders, face buried in Vanu’s neck. Vanu nudged the door open with his hip and kicked it closed after him.
The first time they had come up here, on their wedding day, Vanu had been giddy, fired up, ready to explore this boy who had said yes to him, married him, and kissed him with such obvious purpose when they were finally alone together.
He’d been selfish. This time, he didn’t expect anything for himself.
He just wanted to give Lill something, whatever Lill was ready to have.
He tried to lay Lill down on the bed. “Gotta let go of me so I can take off your boots.”
“Oh.”
Lill released him obediently and uncoiled himself on the bed. Vanu tugged off Lill’s boots one at a time, kicked off his own, and shifted up further onto the bed so that Lill’s legs were draped across his lap.
“What’s in your mind?” Vanu signed.
Lill squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them. “Nothing. I’m trying to think about nothing.”
“Think about me,” Vanu suggested.
Lill smiled a small, thoughtful smile. “Yeah. That helps.”
Vanu had mostly meant it as a joke, but he didn’t say that now.
He stroked Lill’s thigh, thinking how to proceed.
He liked looking down on his boy wife like this—he liked how their positions made it clear who was in charge.
But maybe it would be easier for Lill if they were both lying down.
He stretched out beside Lill. Their legs twined together.
Vanu ran his hand over Lill’s waist and hip, around to cup his little ass.
Lill kissed him, tense and deliberate, the same way he had kissed Vanu that first time on their wedding day.
Like he had rehearsed it in his mind before making his move.
He probably had.
“You’re lovely,” Vanu whispered. “Know that? Beautiful face, beautiful everything. I’m so lucky.”
Lill laughed as if that was ridiculous. Vanu undid the knot of Lill’s sash and unwound it from around his waist. He tugged Lill’s shirt free from his trousers and slipped his hand in under the fabric to touch Lill’s flat stomach.
Lill’s skin felt impossibly soft under Vanu’s calloused fingers.
He remembered those dreams where his touch bruised Lill, and he could understand why Lill had said he was trying to think about nothing.
He looked into Lill’s eyes. It was hard to say exactly what was different, but he had a feeling of looking in an open gate that had always been barred before.
“I like that,” Lill whispered.
Vanu smiled. He moved his hand under Lill’s shirt, caressing, watching Lill’s reaction.
He kissed Lill, deeper this time, tongue lingering in Lill’s mouth.
He stroked slowly lower, down to the front of Lill’s trousers, and his hand was on Lill’s cock, half-hard under the layer of fabric.
Lill made a noise against Vanu’s mouth. Vanu drew back to look at his face again.
“Like that?”
“Yes,” said Lill steadily. Like he was taking an oath or something.
What had they done to him that it took so much courage for him to admit he liked being touched? Earth’s heart.
Vanu stroked him through the thin wool of his trousers. Lill gripped Vanu’s shoulders and kept his eyes open. He didn’t look quite like he was trying to endure torture, but it was closer than Vanu would have liked.
But gradually, as Vanu went on gently rubbing, Lill began to melt.
That was the only word for it. First his fingers clutching Vanu’s shoulders relaxed.
Then he rolled onto his back, one knee falling to the side, spreading his thighs wider.
His hips moved a little, pushing up into Vanu’s hand.
Vanu pressed his fingertips lower. Lill gave a tiny moan.
That seemed to surprise him more than it surprised Vanu. For a moment he looked shocked, almost alarmed. He squeezed his lips together and thrust against Vanu’s hand again. His cock was rigid.
Abruptly, Lill grabbed Vanu’s wrist. Vanu snatched his hand away, but Lill hung on, grabbing with both hands.
“No—remember on our wedding day, before I whacked you in the head?”
“Yeah.”
“What were you going to do, before I did that?”
Vanu raised his eyebrows. “What was I gonna do? Take your trousers off and put my mouth on your cock, I think.”
Lill swallowed. “Would you do that now?”
That was surprisingly frank. “You want me to?”
“Yeah.”
“If you’re asking … ”
Vanu sat up, grinning, and yanked open the ties of Lill’s trousers. He slid the fabric down and off, tossed the trousers in an extravagant arc off the bed and across the room. Lill giggled, a little bubbling noise of delight.
And there he was, in nothing but his shirt pushed up onto his chest. He was wearing one of the necklaces Vanu had given him for the wedding, and his braids were strewn on the pillow around his head.
He’d drawn his legs up, ankles crossed, but he didn’t resist when Vanu eased his knees apart.
His legs were gorgeous, slender and white.
His rosy cock was as pretty as the rest of him.
Vanu settled himself between Lill’s legs, propped on his elbows.
He slid a hand under Lill’s thigh, and he felt the faint ridges of old scars.
Not battle scars, like Vanu carried all over him, but scars from a whip.
He wanted to kiss them, but he also didn’t want Lill to know that he’d noticed them.
He hooked Lill’s leg over his shoulder and bent his head and did what Lill had asked him to do.
Lill felt unmoored from the world. Like the dust of his old life had settled and he was floating up into the blue mountain air. But he wasn’t alone; Vanu was with him. Vanu’s hand had felt wonderful, but Vanu’s mouth …
Lill had given up trying to stay silent. He was moaning aloud. His whole member was inside Vanu’s mouth. He hadn’t known one could do such a thing, that “put my mouth on your cock” meant all of this: not just licking but sucking, swallowing, enveloping him in this perfect, velvety warmth.
He tried to stay still, but his body wanted to thrust up into Vanu’s mouth the way he had bucked against Vanu’s hand.
Vanu seemed to have anticipated this, because he was holding Lill firmly, one arm wrapped around his thigh, the other hand spread on his belly, which was its own extra layer of bliss.
He withdrew, swirling his tongue around the tip of Lill’s cock, and Lill threw his head back on the pillow with an absurd noise that he couldn’t believe he had made.
He looked down past the folds of his shirt at Vanu, who was looking up at him with laughter in his blue eyes.
“Want me to carry on?” Vanu whispered.
Lill could feel Vanu’s breath on his wet skin. He put his own hand on Vanu’s on his stomach, lacing their fingers together.
“Forever.”
Vanu nuzzled into the junction of Lill’s thigh and groin. His stubble prickled, but the hair of his head was silky soft as it brushed against Lill’s leg. He used his teeth, gently nipping at a sensitive place—a ridiculous thing that surely should have felt bad, but didn’t.
Lill bit his lip to keep from saying, “Stop!” He knew if he did, Vanu would. He squeezed Vanu’s fingers, hoping that would encourage him.
It must have, because Vanu unwound his arm from around Lill’s leg and used his free hand to engulf Lill’s balls. His thumb probed into a place that Lill didn’t know the name for. Now his tongue was there too, and his tame-beast teeth.
Distantly, like a bell tolling far away, Lill heard in his mind the words of the old incantation: I am a tool of the Great King and subdue my desires …
It sounded like nonsense, like a language he had forgotten how to speak, a clanging dissonance that he had once thought was music.
And yet he could remember how it had felt for the words to have power.
They were still there, lurking in his mind …
Vanu drowned out all of that by flattening his tongue against the base of Lill’s member and licking up to the tip, then swallowing the whole length again and sucking, hard.
Lill gasped, back arching, muscles clenching, fighting instinctively against the explosion of sensation that came over him. He’d thought he had lost control already, but there was so much more to relinquish, he hadn’t realized—he couldn’t let himself—he couldn’t—
“No,” he panted, “no no no no—”
Vanu, undefeated Lion of the Summer Pass, did something with his hand—Lill was too far gone to even tell what it was—wrung out the last drops of Lill’s resistance, and Lill climaxed.
It went through him like an arrow, like a lightning bolt, and then—he hadn’t expected this, but he hadn’t known what to expect—it lingered, gloriously, like a sunset, like ripples expanding on a still lake, little shivers of bliss chasing through his body.
Vanu knelt up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You said ‘no,’” he signed. “But I didn’t think you were talking to me … ”
Lill rolled his head limply side to side on the pillow. He had very much been talking to himself. Vanu nodded.
“Are you the best in your generation at that?” Lill asked, finding his voice.
Vanu grinned. “Might be.”
“I believe it. Aren’t I lucky?”
And then suddenly, as if he’d lost every form of self-control at once, Lill found his eyes welling with tears.
He gulped and slapped his hands to his face, as if he could push them back, but they kept coming; he was crying like a child, sobbing and shaking, and he didn’t know why. What would Vanu think?
He could feel Vanu move above him, and Vanu’s lips brushed the back of his hand.
Startled, Lill peeked through his fingers.
Vanu drew Lill’s hand down and kissed his wet cheek.
He flopped down to lie on his back on the bed beside Lill.
He pulled Lill’s shirt down over his hips and patted Lill’s thigh.
He was acting as if nothing Lill was doing was very odd. That only made Lill cry harder.
Finally the tears stopped coming. Lill mopped at his face with his sleeve.
“You did good, little snake,” Vanu said in his rough voice.
Lill wondered when he’d begun to find the sound of Vanu’s voice comforting. Like something you listened for to orient yourself in the dark, when you were lost.
He snorted. “Didn’t do anything.”
Vanu rubbed his cheek against Lill’s shoulder and shifted over so they were touching all down one side.
Lill hooked his leg around Vanu’s. He felt very comfortable.
Even the tears, when he’d realized Vanu wasn’t fazed by them, hadn’t been so bad.
They just seemed like part of it, something his body had needed to do after giving up so much else.
“Do you … want me to do something for you?” Lill asked tentatively.
Vanu seemed to think about it for a moment. “Another time, yeah. Right now I got what I wanted.”
Lill thought vaguely that he should feel some loss of honour at obviously being thought incapable of reciprocating—but he didn’t feel that.
He felt as if honour might be another of the things that he had floated free from.
He also felt very tired and not at all sure he was quite finished crying, and he was very grateful that Vanu didn’t want him to do anything other than lie there.
He realized there was no sticky mess on himself or the bedclothes, and it occurred to him why that was.
“Hey, Vanu? I heard that the husband’s seed has to flow into the wife’s body to consummate the marriage—do you think it counts if it’s the other way around? Because I’m your wife, but … ”
“You got seed, and I swallowed it? Yeah, I think it counts.”
“I guess I did do well, then.”
“Yeah. Made me your husband.”
“Only took me two weeks.”
“Pssh. No time at all.”
Lill felt something warm and expanding in his chest, and he wasn’t sure if it was the feeling of needing to cry again or something else.
“Downstairs,” he began, “earlier, you said you’re happy.”
“Yeah.”
“I am too.”
Lill could feel Vanu’s gaze on him. He turned his head so they were looking into each other’s eyes. Vanu smiled. Lill felt as if he were seeing it for the first time.
He was, in a way. He was looking at Vanu for the first time with the certainty, clear as the mountain sunlight, that there was no one in the world he was less likely to kill than this man.
That had probably been true for some time now.
He just hadn’t been able to see it. His world hadn’t been arranged like that; he’d had a mission, and that had been the only thing that mattered, because that was the only thing he would allow to matter.
He hadn’t even been telling himself a very convincing story about why it mattered.
He didn’t have a mission anymore, but he still had a husband. He might have married Vanu for a reason that was frankly nonsense, but the marriage was real. It was like he’d woken from a dream, and the waking world was better—so much better—than what he’d dreamt.
“What’s in your mind now?” Vanu signed lazily.
“You,” Lill signed back. “I’m thinking about you.”