Desperate Whispers

She didn’t spook like an equivar, her red eyes focused on every minute detail, zooming in with incredibly sensitive sight to pick out the safest and surest path as she glided along the lakeshore surf. Great hisses of breath puffed out the open sides of her beak-like muzzle, what one might have considered an ungainly design, constantly parted to display a threatening array of sharp teeth, but the soughing wind along her gums helped to cool her down despite her efforts. She was otherwise sleek and narrow, but large enough to comfortably carry him and the man she belonged to.

Dragomir still couldn’t think of her as his. That was just some dream fabricated by his lover to keep him distracted and away from the books he’d brought along with him for studying purposes. Only a week into the summer holidays and he knew that studying would be doubly difficult this year, not that he was particularly upset about it. A laugh bubbled out of his chest and he let it rise up out of his mouth as he shook his hair out and forced some resistance on Irenya, seating himself higher and tightening his hold back on her reins. The response was almost instant, and just as fluid as her running gallop had been, she slowed to a canter and wheeled around when her rider demanded she turn.

She shook her axe-like snout, snorting out of her mouth before she shook her head again and looked up and back, then cocked her head back and fluted out a cry followed by a snorted hiss. Dragomir rubbed at her neck and crest, then looked up when he felt her muscles tense and her head come up in alertness. The rapid thundering of clawed feet on sand sounded not too far off, and from where the beach rose slightly in the distance Dragomir spotted a rider hot on their trail, a more artful master of the beast than he was, but he had not done too badly himself.

Dragomir’s heart fluttered in his chest at the sight of his lover. With his usually carefully styled hair flying, a playful wave of it falling over his brow with each forward movement, it shone in the sunlight and invited the eyes to linger. Dressed far more suitably and impeccably in riding attire versus Dragomir’s own careless poet’s blouse and perfunctory riding trousers and boots, Dagny was the picture of grace in motion. Dragomir watched him ride closer, then flash a rakish grin, before he rode on.

An encouragement to follow? Or perhaps race? Dragomir didn’t tarry too long and clicked his tongue the way Dagny had taught him and felt the beast beneath him surge forward, following after its clutch-mate. He rode in Dagny’s shadow for a handful of beats, then came abreast the other man and crowed an uninhibited outcry of exhilaration. Dragomir tossed his hair back and laughed, then leaned closer to Irenya’s neck and felt her spring forward like a beam of multi-coloured light, outpacing Dagny’s mount for a handful of breaths, but his lead was short-lived.

Not as fatigued, Dagny’s mount sailed past, muzzle puffing, tail whipping, kicking up sand and water and devouring distance with a powerful clawing stride. Irenya slowed, her sides heaving and her outrage at being left behind fluting out of her muzzle in a growled cackle. Dragomir slowed her to a less grueling pace and followed Dagny’s tracks at an easier trot while Irenya splashed water up with her tail, moistening her legs and sides to cool down faster. Not too far ahead Dagny’s mount did the same, turning around at his rider’s behest then dipped his muzzle in the water when he was given enough rein.

The proximity of its clutch-mate drew a watery warble from Dagny’s mount and Dragomir managed to maneuver Irenya close enough that his leg brushed against Dagny’s. The blond’s face was flushed from excitement, a grin stretched virtually from ear to ear, his hair which was bushy from the ride fell around his face and shoulders in messy waves. That had been beyond exciting, it had been spectacular, amazing, something Dragomir certainly would never forget as long as he lived.

“You were right, she’s lightning fast if you just let her flat out run,” he commented in breathless delight.

“Dragosh, darling, I’m surprised how you still haven’t grasped the notion that I’m always right,” Dagny countered with a grin of his own.

Dragomir’s eyes sparkled and he leaned closer to the other man, closing the distance between them with the help of the lapel of Dagny’s riding jacket. The young medic-in-training grabbed at the stretch of fabric with one hand, keeping his trask’s reins wrapped around the other loosely, then drew the other man close for a heated kiss, still riding on the waves of his adrenaline rush. He traced his lover’s teeth with his tongue, and flicked the latter against its counterpart within Dagny’s mouth, before Irenya’s dancing in place forced their lips back apart.

“Shall we get back?” Dragomir inquired in a more subdued tone, stroking his hand along the side of Irenya’s neck to calm her excitement.

The look Dagny flashed him made interesting things happen south of Dragomir’s navel, and for a moment he was lost in the deep green of the man’s gaze until everything else faded into the background. He knew that he was so devastatingly charming, of course he knew, nevertheless Dragomir struggled to get back up the slippery slope he had inevitably skidded down, finding it impossible now to keep from desiring him even more than he already did. Not just desiring him either. The glow? The flush of heat in his chest whenever Dagny called or showed up unexpectedly? Those weren’t mere precursors of attraction, they were a wholly different category of emotion.

Suddenly the blush in Dragomir’s cheeks darkened and he dropped his gaze, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth to nibble on one corner of it. He felt the rustle of his shirt over his naked skin underneath with acute awareness. It happened only in this man’s company, when his eyes said so many heated words that never left his lips. Dragomir’s ears twitched at the honeyed chuckle his actions drew forth from the older mordesh, as if Dagny hadn’t already compromised his control enough, he had to tease him with that delicious laugh of his.

“Let’s take our time, enjoy the day,” Dagny suggested with a wicked upslant to one of his eyebrows, clearly he was going to play obtuse on purpose.

“I’ve enjoyed the outdoors enough,” Dragomir announced, looking back up at the other man while wetting his lips meaningfully with an unabashed wandering gaze. “Besides, I don’t want to get too riding sore, not on a trask anyway.”

Marriages of convenience and power were rarely ever happy ones, nor had Ryll expected his own to be miraculously contrary to that fact, but they often forged bonds of strength and prosperity that were far too alluring and rewarding to ignore. Ryll and Anedris’s wedding had been extravagant, displaying the wealth both families were blessed with, the facade so perfect, but the cracks he had been expecting were finally beginning to show.

No one made a fool of him and walked away unscathed, no one, not even his ‘dearest’ wife. He didn’t care a fig about whether or not he had been cuckolded, so long as Anedris would have kept her matters private, in good taste, as he was doing. But in Ryll’s eyes she had been bold, blatant, flagrantly displaying her filthy linens for all to see. It was disgusting, and every time he gazed at the dark-haired boy he was meant to believe was his own son, he felt a touch of revulsion.

“What’s circling around in your head, Ryll?” Hale’s voice husked against his ear.

The attractive mage began nibbling on his lover’s earlobe, succeeding in softening the acrimonious look on Ryll’s handsome features. Hale had a way that could shed light on the darkest of days, when Ryll felt rage boiling in his stomach and bile rising in his throat, all it would take was the right tone of voice from his fiery beauty and then the subject of his ire would suddenly seem insignificant. Ryll allowed himself to be mollified by his sweet lover’s expert ministrations for a few extra moments of intimate bliss.

“Ah, the boys,” Hale remarked when he leaned his chin over his lover’s shoulder and looked out the window, spotting the children at play.

“M’yes, the boys,” Ryll echoed, the hard edge in his voice difficult to mask.

“I heard the little one has aptitude. What was his name again? Maladar?”

Ryll’s lips pressed together in a pale line. Whenever the subject of the little dark spawn’s training came up Anedris would collect him to her breast and reject any notion of cultivating his latent talents. His wife was an exhaustingly irksome woman when she wanted to be. She stood in the way of his plans for the child, plans that would have made his presence palatable in the very least. She spoiled him, coddled him, and gave him almost everything he wanted and more. She turned him into a useless lump of doughy affection. At least his eldest son was a trainee with the Blood Knights, and a damn good one at that. He had discipline and backbone where it counted.

“I’d be surprised if he could call up even a small spark under his mother’s smothering,” Ryll commented harshly of his youngest progeny. Despite his fury, the tone of his voice was stony and cold when he spoke.

“I could take a look if you want,” Hale offered, his fingers splaying over the silk dressing gown Ryll wore.

The suggestion had some merit. Hale may not have had a seat on the nobleman’s council, but he was talented, crafty and had his own unique resources. The Weblight family may not have been noble, but it was not without its own share of respect. Of course it helped that their appearance was as fair as their reputation. More than that, the Weblights were blessed with a strong affinity to the arcane arts, the sharp wit and intelligence with which to wield magic, and an almost uncanny talent for seduction. Didn’t he find himself ensnared by the beauty at his back, after all?

Ryll’s lips lifted with amusement and the darkness of his displeasure waned somewhat in the wake of his smile. Perhaps Hale’s suggestion should not be dismissed out of hand without due consideration, but the problem was his wife. She had little reason to lessen her stifling hold on their youngest, and even less reason to entrust him to her husband’s lover. Unless Ryll stepped in personally, something which he had hitherto not done in any sort of forceful measure.

The bloodwrath patriarch’s eyes narrowed shrewdly, his intense gaze lancing past the glass of the window panes to pierce the back of the black-haired boy’s head. As if picking up on the heat of his father’s glare, the five-year-old boy jerked to a halt and looked back towards the white house behind them at the head of the garden. Ryll continued to watch as the child turned back to answer his older brother’s call, feeling nothing for the whelp save for a deep-seeded sense of contempt.

“I think you ought to,” Ryll replied after a pregnant silence. “If but to stick a thorn in Anedris’s side, your suggestion appeals.”

Garth was surprised to see him, not quite shocked, but the look he gave Kalor afterward had been vague and closed off. Kalor had reached out on a tentative whim. He had been the one keeping himself warily distant, but perhaps a change was needed, a change he had to seek for himself to try and rebuild all the burned bridges. What he found instead was a reality that had rocked him to the core and left him grasping at anything he could to keep from descending into senselessness once more.

Kalor grit his teeth and hunched over, cupping his face in his hands. No words needed to be exchanged, the druid knew why Garth had smelled like Veridigis. Subtle, easily missed by anyone else if they had been in the worgen’s company, but the druid had etched that scent in his mind until it became an indelible memory he could no longer erase from his senses. He had been graced with it a few times of late, but it caused him more pain than joy, and yet he still couldn’t refuse when he was promised its sweetness.

Not that it happened too often, but when the opportunity to be intimate with Veridigis presented itself Kalor sought the warm sunlight it promised, the very same light his withered heart desperately craved, but time and time again he was spurned in the closing moments of an all too brief interlude of pleasure. He tried to fill his lungs with that memory, to cling desperately and promise himself that it was his penance for what he had foolishly allowed to happen, but it hurt no less than the first time.

Gradually, one stolen tryst at a time, the pure physicality of the act wore away at Kalor’s aches and made them bleed fresh. Veridigis closed himself off to anything more than a casual fuck, until the druid slunk off with his tail tucked between his legs, dejected and miserable. It had not occurred to Kalor that Veridigis had the freedom and will to choose others for his needs, not until the fact swiveled inelegantly in front of his face and made him kneel defeated before its profound meaning.

He was at once rendered unimportant. A big fat nothing in the greater scheme of the young warrior’s concerns. And all of Kalor’s aches, all of his desires, all the things he held onto like precious glimmering gems were merely his alone. Veridigis had no more need of him than he had need of a broken sword. So… This was what it felt like to be cast aside. Yes, I see… Kalor thought, removing his hands from his face to stare at the fire with a crestfallen lack of focus. He didn’t even notice the tears when they fell off his lashes and wet his cheeks.

Veridigis’s face swam up in the druid’s memories, eliciting a wan twitch of a smile. A whispered conversation when they were still so very much in love with each other, in bed, sunlight filtering in through the curtains of an inn room warming the chocolate waves of the sin’dorei’s hair on the pillow. Kalor touched his fingers to his lips, still staring into the fire. Kisses. Sweet, hungry, wonderful kisses. Lost, because he was an idiot. IDIOT.

Who was kissing him now? Who held his heart? Who was blessed with his warmth and sparkling sunlight? Who whispered intimately in his ear? Who made him blush? It was so much worse this time, though… Knowing he was right there. Right there. Within reach, and yet so far away at the same time.

Kalor could do little more than torture himself. He didn’t sleep. He had not eaten since lunchtime the day before. He was unable to think of anything else but the lover he wanted so desperately to have back, sitting at his campfire well into the small hours until the flames burned down to ash and left him shivering in the cold. Numb on the outside and on the verge of catching his death of cold, the druid slowly rose to his feet, stumbling slightly with fatigue. He should get back, the others would be expecting him, they had a job today, didn’t they?

The last thing he wanted was to be in the group’s company that day, but he had made a personal pledge above the one he had made to Garth upon rejoining his party; no matter how much it hurt, he would be there. No matter how far he was driven into a corner by his emotions, he wasn’t going to break. The two wishes warred against one another viciously within the druid’s conscience, neither one gaining ground over the other for a while.

Looking up at the brightening sky, Kalor squinted against the light of dawn, then closed his aching eyes. Finally, one side of the argument won over the other. He couldn’t stay away. What if Veridigis needed healing and he wasn’t there? It was a convenient excuse, but the reality was that Kalor missed him enough that he he wanted to see him again, no matter how much it stung to be rejected repeatedly. Hunching his shoulders against the cold and wedging his hands under his armpits, the druid tried to stamp warmth back into his frozen feet, then gave up trying and concentrated instead on shapeshifting.

When NIgel stole another look at Troy, the other boy was smiling at him in that way that made girls say nasty things at Nigel, for hogging the good-looking Troy all to himself. They were friends, though? At least, that’s what Troy insisted they were every time they had lunch together, or hung out together, or did homework together. Well, when Nigel did homework, Troy on the other hand always sat and watched him with a little smile on his face, but when Nigel asked him “what?” the reply would always be a “nothing”. Kinda weird, but… Not awful?

“Nothing to be sorry fer, it’s just… You need to relax, I keep telling you that right?”

It was true. Troy always told him to relax, to stop worrying, but Nigel couldn’t change the nervous energies he experienced from time to time. His mom and dad called it a phase that he should start growing out of, like the long hair, but so far there was only an increase in rituals and not the opposite. Simple things at first, that got bigger and bigger and more elaborate the closer he was to his demons, but when Troy stepped in, threw his arm across Nigel’s shoulders and jokingly told him weird stories about the cadets, Nigel forgot his rituals, forgot his demons, and forgot to reshuffle his papers dozens of times.

Troy was amazing like that. Troy with the devil-may-care attitude, Troy who made any bad situation just go away. Nigel didn’t think it was strange people wanted to get to know his best friend, but at the same time Troy’s aloof attitude towards everyone else welcomed very little communication. Nigel was shocked himself when Troy—out of the blue—asked to borrow a pen one day, even though Nigel had never seen him write any notes down in class ever. Everyone was shook by that, which was when the nasty comments started up about him, but it was also the first moment of contact between them, and Nigel couldn’t believe the boy he had a crush on spoke to him so casually. With a smile! 

Thick as thieves since then, even though Nigel never, ever, EVER, brought up how Troy made him really feel. Maybe… One day… He looked through his fringe at the warm hazel eyes that looked back at him and made something inside of him turn to jelly. Troy was such a looker… And when he smiled he had dimples! And he was already bigger than most other boys in their grade, going through an early growth spurt, plus all the physical training he did, hoping to get into the FCON cadets.

No, no, nononono. It was impossible. How could he ever tell Troy that he liked him? That was stupid. He was being dumb. Troy would laugh at him, call him something unpleasant, then end their friendship right there. If that happened, Nigel didn’t know who would chase away the demons. They were everywhere these days. Except, except around Troy, there was enough light shining that the demons couldn’t live around him for very long.

Nigel stood meekly by his desk while Troy packed away his things like he was his mom, which usually meant he wanted them to be someplace else ASAP. Would Troy freak out? Would he push him away? He wasn’t that kind of person, right? Nigel pinched at his other arm, the little sharp pains snapping his dissenting thoughts into the background.

“Hey, stop that,” Troy chastised, putting his hand over the other boy’s to stop him from hurting himself. “Lunch on me today, ‘kay? The barbecue stands are out in the Grease Slums, we can pick something up on the way back.”

“Mom says that sorta stuff’s poison for your body,” Nigel protested weakly.

Troy took Nigel’s sweaty hand in his own, linking their fingers together so Nigel had no escape, not that the quieter mousy boy complained. He was ridiculously happy, and equally grateful for the fact his parents hadn’t forced him to cut his hair yet, because it did a passable job at hiding his blush, except for the crimson tips of his ears that stuck out of the soft black mop. That was another thing Troy never commented on, the fact that his hands were always cold and clammy, but despite that Troy never failed to grab him by the hand and tug him in a direction he fancied.

“Your mom’s also an anti-vaxxer,” Troy pointed out meaningfully.

Troy didn’t like his parents. That much was clear whenever Nigel said anything about them Troy would snort or say “that’s dumb”, but then again, the feeling was mutual. Nigel’s mother warned him about getting too close to “that Barton boy”. She didn’t like him, which meant Nigel liked Troy even more. An insignificantly infinitesimal rebellion, but it made him happy, even if he was the only one who knew about it.