#queensorinna

Bel had found it difficult to fight that logic.  He had been sequestered away in his office with Cosette and her collection of harried, frantic ducklings--research assistants, sleep-deprived despairing and manic--for two days now, going on three.  Their quarterly deadline loomed, and in a mere two days more their collective findings would be put before an unknown, supposedly impartial examiner, as always.

They were fine.  He knew they were fine--he'd presented less before and he'd probably present less again at some point.  That knowledge and self-assurance did little to ease his worries, however.

Anxiety like a tangle of leaden chains had settled in the pit of his belly.  It always did, soaked up from others and perpetuated throughout every twisted fiber of his active, imaginative mind.

Lynicus didn't care.  Or rather, he did care, but he didn't hold the erstwhile priest's trepidation against him--it was rare anyone actually did, who in their right mind would chide or offer harsh words to someone worried over their work?

The hair peeking out of the taller man's open collar tickled Bel's nose.  He felt like a young miscreant, huffing glue for the first time and experiencing elation that bordered upon obscenity--except instead of glue, he breathed in the subtle, likely expensive scent of the big blonde's aftershave, growing giddy off that easy, appreciable contact.

The warrior kept an open schedule, as far as Bel knew.  He, like Bel, was wealthy enough to do whatever he liked; the black-haired beauty of a priest did not have to work, and had not ever truly needed the income generated by his labors of love within the Reliquary--he toiled beneath such stressful deadlines because he genuinely enjoyed the work, considering it more of a passion than a job for all that overseeing frantic ducklings was often more of a trial than he'd signed up for.  That Lynicus chose to come see him so often, both at his work and in his home, afforded the priest with a new, frightening, exciting feeling:

He felt loved.  

He was an easy man to lust after.  Glowing, radiant olive skin and sleek, silky black hair, piercing dark eyes, a wardrobe over which demigods might weep--Bel was beautiful, graceful, at a glance everything a man or even a woman might want.  Lynicus had seen the ugliness in him, however; the cocky, handsome blonde had seen him laid low by his own maladaptive disassociation, had seen him forgo food and true sleep for days in fits of unexplained depersonalization.

He had seen Bel's weakness, Bel's foolishness, and he had not cast the priest aside as imperfect.  If anything he had gripped the elder sin'dorei tighter--there were many days invested solely in assuring Bel's well-being, in making certain the priest did not worsen his well-hidden anxiousness.

He was like a cat, in many respects--cats were loathe to show pain, stoic and strong even in the face of agony.  Lynicus understood--they were both proud, both having appearances to keep up, facades to maintain.  His empathy and consideration had come as a surprise to Bel, who had admittedly only approached the golden god of a man for his evening's entertainment--he had not expected to find more than powerful arms and a vapid smile.

He had found so much more.  They lay together in a tangled sprawl in a simple rope hammock strung between two trees in someone's long-abandoned back yard.  Though the warrior's aftershave was what caused his mouth to water--quite literally, he was an almost cripplingly sensual man--the scents of tall, green grass and fresh, unsullied sunlight worked wonders soothing his raw, abraded nerves.

Lynicus toyed with the priest's loose black braid.  On days where there was actual work to be done, Bel had a tendency to forsake his heavy, flowing robes in favor of thin, black woolen slacks, neatly pressed dress shirts, and perhaps a light knit cardigan--it was cold in his office, always.  The safety of his artifacts demanded it.  Seeing the priest in anything but ornate robes had come as a shock to the warrior; it bordered on blasphemous, Bel in anything but lush silks and gossamer.

He had laughed when the priest had shyly explained his reasoning--Bel could still recall the sound, surprised and clean and free of the petty harshness he'd for some reason expected.  It was such a shallow thing, his obsession with fine robes, expensive fabrics and hundreds of hours spent on careful dye, gold leaf, and embroidery, his infatuation with encrusted jewels and fathomless beadwork.

Lynicus understood.  Lynicus even appreciated the effort Bel went to, to appear beautiful, a shining exemplification of sin'dorei loveliness and wealth.  Not once had he questioned it--not once had he dared imply that the priest's interests were in any way "womanly", as Bel's own father had done so very often, since so very long ago.

The priest pressed his face against the big blonde's chest, wallowing for lack of a better term.  He had been plucked from his office, treated to lunch, and now the afternoon sun soaked into him from above rustling, red-leafed maples, balmy against his chilled, exhausted form.

The tips of his toes, clad in black dress socks with the faintest blue argyle crawling up his slender ankles, brushed across the arch of the warrior's foot.  Their shoes sat together almost beneath them, a pile of sleeping, pointy-toed puppies--the two men shared a penchant for pointy-toed shoes.  It was a shame Bel possessed smaller, slimmer feet--he was shorter and more lithe overall comparatively--else they might honestly have shared, mixing and matching from one another's closets.

"So." Bel perked at the soft, deep rumble of the blonde man's voice. "You still haven't told me--what all are you presenting?" To his surprise, Lynicus had expressed a bit more than mere polite interest in his work; the warrior had even accompanied him on a few digs, sleeping in tents and exploring forgotten tombs, watching in delight as the priest and his underlings recovered lost treasures from deep beneath the earth.

He clung tighter momentarily as he stretched his long legs, ankles cracking ominously. "I have a feeling whichever examiner we get will be most impressed with the potential wealth--which is good, after the items are either fenced, sold to independent collectors, or rented out for exhibitions, the funding returns to us."

It was hard to be anything but a lazy puddle, cradled as he was by both the warrior's strong arms and the hammock's easy embrace.  He was measured, collected in his speech, choosing his words of explanation carefully--he preferred to be as articulate as possible, not for his own graceful image but because he honestly believe the people with whom he spoke deserved only his best words, his clearest thoughts. "There are a few other items, however.  A set of weapons that might be cursed, some boxes we haven't been able to open yet... An item I personally think is an ashtray except I've never seen so many protective wards on such an innocuous item in all my life."

The warrior's suppressed guffaw made him tingle from the pit of his belly all the way up through his throat. "Maybe it is an ashtray, but one the old owner got as a gift for Father's Day?  I'd want to protect something like that."

"If you were a dragon, you would burn adventurers to a crisp over your hypothetical whelps' macaroni art.  I don't think the examiner is going to be impressed with that..." He trailed off.  The notion of Lynicus as an over-protective father pleased him, for all that he was leery of having children himself.  His own father had been a terror, and the idea that he might inadvertently perpetuate that terror was sickening; he lacked faith in himself, faith that he might well and truly break the cycle of abuse and neglect inherent in his line. "There's talk that my division might be sent back up to Northrend," he said, diverting the subject to less frightening matters.

"Good luck keeping your balls warm."

The priest tensed, chuckling and trying--not very hard--to maintain a dignified expression. "If it's not in the middle of some frozen hellscape, do you think you might accompany me?"

Lynicus grinned. "Do you want me to accompany you, Lord Mallory?" His formality was gentle teasing, a taunt without malice.

"Well, someone has to keep my balls warm, and I would rather it be you than Cosette." The warrior laughed outright.  The woman of which they spoke was the very definition of a man-eater--brilliant, calculating, sultry in her appeal, she pursued her interests doggedly, with a fervor that Bel often found shocking.  Both men respected her, and the candor with which she treated them; it was a courtesy to Bel that she had thus far made no move upon Lynicus--he was far more her favored type than Bel.

"I suppose I might, then.  The warmth and safety of your lovely person is of... great personal interest to me." There were several statements hidden within his seemingly innocent words.  Both men had suffered, both men were afraid--putting a name to the love they shared was a source of great trepidation for them both.

They had agreed it was alright if it went unnamed.  Both of them yearned to hear it, to say it, and yet neither could bear it--both the admitting and the accepting of love left them open, vulnerable to heartbreak, and that was something of which neither man was yet capable.

The tip of Bel's nose tickled the hair peeking from the big blonde's collar as he nudged meekly for the man's attention. "Do you think we should head back soon?  They might have made progress with the crates..."

"Not yet, surely?" Lynicus was clever, coy almost in his protest. "It'd be a shame to let such a pleasant day go to waste, holed up in that icebox of an office."