#rote fic

Fitz.

The hearth seemed like a frozen lake compared to the heat of my face. My hand eclipsed Beloved's as I pressed it against my mouth, bestowing one kiss after another to the center of his palm, rather desperately. He was kneeling besides me, the mattress dipping beneath his delicate knees, and his silk-gloved hand was lost amidst my loose curls, but it was still not enough. I wanted, needed him closer. My mind whirled with imaginations, of his graceful body arranged against the sheets, the candlelight dancing in shadow and flame across the soft, beautiful panes of his skin. Of flattening myself against him kissing every bare part of his body until he would be gasping my name, my teeth leaving reddened marks in their wake, a map of the steps I danced across his skin. But still, it would not be enough.

The image made me harden even more in the confines of my undercloth, and I bit down on the tender flesh of Beloved's palm, right at the base of the thumb. He gasped, and a groan like my own was ripped from his throat. I glanced at him through the cover of his fingers. His grip on my hair had become vice-like, and spread fire through my loins. He was shifting on his knees, no doubt seeking the same friction I was, lips half parted and eyes lidded as if I was fine liquor he was drinking in. My mouth fell from him, and closed again at the juncture of his wrist, right at the pulse point.

I can't recall which one of us moved, but my hand was on his bottom, and soon he was straddling me, the cotton and lace of his white nightgown falling upon my lap like a lady's skirts. We groaned as one at our pressed hardness. Perhaps he had moved his palm, or I had tilted my head, but suddenly his thumb was in my mouth.

I had never felt my cheeks flame so hot. Shamelessly, I clenched his wrist, moving my tongue against the length of his thumb and the tender pad of it. A moan squeezed the back of my throat. This was good. This was beginning to be close enough.

With a gasp, I drew away from his thumb, and wasted no time in shoving his fore and middle fingers down my throat. I could not quite describe the completion their fullness brought me, only that it felt right, euphorically so. My hand gripped Beloved's waist down and close to me, and I couldn't help but grind into him. He seemed to enjoy it, for his hips started to move as well, slow and seductive where mine had been erratic.

Beloved pushed his fingers in and out of my willing mouth, and I let him, my mind too clouded with need to pay any heed to my broken whines and moans, or how I must have looked gasping around his fingers with spit slicked lips. His had tethered my hair around his hand, and each pull nearly toppled me off the razor's edge. "Good boy, Fitz. Good boy, my love." His voice, although hushed, was unbearably sweet, and I felt myself melting under its force. I thought I was safe before he asked, "would you like to come like this?"

My lungs burned as they received the first indrawns of breath in what seemed like hours to me. All the warmth from the hearth and the candles around us could not match the conflagration of my face. My mind, fogged with arousal like the shoreline of Buck in an autumn morning, didn't comprehend the question until Beloved seated himself more firmly on me, and a lightning of heat speared through my spine. At last, I beheld him clearly. From behind him, the fire cast an ethereal glow around the flow of his curls. He was smiling gently, expectation yet patience in his eyes, poised as if we were having a conversation over tea rather than making love in our bedroom. His hand, held to his chest, was glistening with my saliva. My mouth recalled their tantalizing pressure inside it, and wanted more.

My shoulders sagged with an exhale. "Yes. Please." It was all I could say.

And Beloved's smile grew, like the delicate breaking of dawn. He leaned to kiss me, his face filling my periphery so sweetly before our lips met. I embraced him closer, my hands working into his shoulders as his tongue prodded where his fingers had been moments ago. I keened with want, and in his mercy, he released me. "Let me give you what you want, then, Beloved," he whispered, and my mouth parted for him.

Beloved.

My hands engulfed Beloved's waist, so slender my thumbs met as I held him, and I wasn't sure how I haven't fainted. Each slow grind of his hips stole the breath from my lungs and inflamed my face, my speech reduced to incoherent groans and murmurs. Every few heartbeats, I lost the struggle against my will and my eyelids fell shut, plunging me into darkness when all I wanted was to behold the radiance above me.

He had waited for me in my bedroom with a peculiar air about him; I had ascended to my chambers after a soak in the steams to find him lingering by the far wall, wearing a nightgown that I registered as near translucent at first sight. Bathed in the candlelight, the water-like fabric had rippled and shifted as he stepped to my side, each movement revealing the outline of his bare form underneath. In an instant, my throat had run dry and my heartbeat soared. I had never been the recipient of such open and unabashed seduction.

He seemed intent on using me for his liking, which was fine by me; not at all did I mind his hand bracing against my chest, or the fall and rise of his hips as he slowly, and so achingly and deliciously withdrew from me just to take me further inside. I had been permitted to hold him and match his pace with my own, and each moan that reverberated from his chest and the fluttering of those golden eyelashes was enough.

Another time we met, and the arrow of pleasure that ran up my spine was so fierce my head fell against the pillow. "Gods, Beloved," I somehow had the air to gasp.

Beloved answered with a moan of his own, stifled when mine had been shameless. He was losing his composure, and the sight was as sweet as a dollop of honey. To see his carefully planned seduction crumble under our shared pleasure was a force my heart couldn't bear. The way his neck bared as he tilted his head, the way he caught his lower lip and the indents the bite left in its wake, the waves of his hair draped over one shoulder, each strand perfect as if it was meticulously arranged by hand. He was magnificent.

I lifted my hand; I ventured up the valley of his torso, the ladder of his ribs, and the slope of his shoulder to finally cup his face. His eyes opened when my hand met his cheek, flushed crimson like well made wine. His gaze was glossy as he loomed over me, and held an edge of desperation, or want. Whatever he needed from me, I would give to him, openly and willingly. No limits, he had once said, and I had promised. No limits between us at all.

As if he heard my thoughts, Beloved turned his face to press a kiss to the center of my palm, one and then another, and another. And just as quickly, he turned away from me with a soundless cry as I filled him just right. He was clutching my waist so harshly I had no doubt I'd have marks when we were done, and I'd bear them with joy. He could mark all of me if he wished to; my thumb grazed the corner of his lips as he sank into me again, then it disappeared into his mouth.

All air left us as one. The sensation was a depth of pleasure and I was but a mere pebble plunged into its vast intensity, drowned and lost in the matter of a heartbeat. Oh, he was warm, and lasciviously wet. His tongue stroked the underside of my thumb, then pooled at the tip of it. His face was entirely reddened but his eyes stark as he looked at me, as if daring me to object to this pure marvel he was bestowing upon me. I could not. Satisfied, he spat out my thumb. An arousing glisten coated his rosy lips and he gave me a sunrise of a little smile before he swallowed my next two fingers down.

If I were to die from heart failure at the moment, which was not out of the question, I would have died a most happy man. With hollowed cheeks, Beloved took me to the base of the last knuckle, and to my very fingertips again. He did not choke nor shed a tear, only deeply keened as he licked the length of my fingers, the tender skin at their joining, even nibbled the soft underside. My arousal was like little dots of explosive powder simmering in my lower stomach, setting off and clouding all else in my mind. The rhyme of my hips had become erratic and sporadic. I was not going to last much longer, but I was not going to let Beloved remain wanting.

He pulled off me for a gulp of air, and I supported his chin as he did so, a fragile string of saliva stretching from his mouth to my soaked fingers. His shoulders trembled and his chest visibly expanded as he inhaled, and his eyes had a shimmer as he gazed down at me, tendrils of his hair now plastered to his temples with sweat. He was on the edge, too.

When Fitz was still and silent, his lips pressed tight with quiet disapproval, he sighed and put the smile away. He drew himself up and was Golden again, saying with a flick of his hand, “Go, Badgerlock. Do not make me say it again. You’re dismissed from your duties for the night, but I expect my breakfast tray in the morning as usual.”

Fitz had stared at him for a long time, and Golden’s heart had sped a beat beneath his fine silk shirt. His face colored briefly with shame — how it hurt him, still, to order the beloved man about! “Very well,” Tom Badgerlock had said woodenly. And with a short bow, he’d gone.

From there, it was easy enough to take Winsome up to Golden’s rooms. The pretty man had long, dark hair that he kept oiled and pulled back with a velvet ribbon, and his attentions to Lord Golden had not gone amiss in their weeks of gambling and riding parties. His flirtations were a soft sort — not the showy or clumsy overtures that other lords and ladies attempted. It was Winsome’s gentle nature, a share of apricot brandy, and a desperation for distraction that had finally convinced Golden. 

You are drunk, you are very drunk, he thought as he closeted himself with Winsome in his resplendent bedchamber. He could still taste the apricots in his mouth as the man knelt to unlace Golden’s boots and then tugged gently on his trousers.

His undershirt, as ever, had been the last thing he removed. A few times he had slept with another, and each time, his tattoo was a spectacle. It was the same for Winsome. The man had gasped, eyes flickering over Golden’s back in shock at the colors, the twining serpents, the detail that was so perfectly needled into his skin. “It’s beautiful,” he breathed. 

His voice was tight when he responded. “Thank you.”

“What does it mean?”

He forced himself to sound coy as he tossed his hair, letting the strands of honey fall down his back to obscure the tattoo. “What does anything mean?” he asked. He slid onto the bed, and onto his back. Hidden. That was the only way he could enjoy it. With a smile, he offered, “Come, dear.”

Once, in a different life, FitzChivalry had begged him to remove his shirt in the quiet dark of a bedchamber. “Let me see your chest,” he’d said. They had been so young, but Fitz’s voice was already growing deep. Oh, he had blushed, and been grateful for the dim, changing light of the bastard’s hearth fire. He’d considered it. Bruises ran up his chest, arms, and back; he knew his ribs hung broken within him. It was the greatest pain the Fool had suffered in a long time, and Fitz… Fitz would be able to fix him. How many times had Fitz been shoved to the floor and beaten? How many herbs did he grind, poultices did he make, for the very same wounds the Fool suffered? 

He remembered how his fingers had ghosted the hem of his shirt — an ugly, checkered thing — before he remembered the tattoo. His insides went cold. Almost sharply, he'd replied, “I’ve seen it, and I assure you, it’s fine.”

But it had been that damned tattoo. There would be too many questions from too precious a source — Fitz never let anything go. He would ask and ask until he rooted out the truth of the tattoo, the school, everything. Would that be so bad? the Fool had wondered as he watched Fitz’s face in the firelight, the deep, tired lines set around the eyes of a boy too young. To tell him the truth, the whole truth, for once?

But he was a coward. To face Fitz’s scrutiny — no, worse, his pity — was unthinkable. To stand before him, to bare himself… Had he been that vulnerable with anyone in all his long life?

You are that vulnerable with Winsome. The thought was viper-like. He winced and shut his eyes against it. With him, and all the others.

“Are you alright?” Winsome asked above him.

He opened his eyes. There was worry in the other man’s face. “I am,” he said smoothly.

“You look pained.”

“No, no. Please. I would make quite the fuss if you were hurting me.”

How can you do it? a voice within him asked. These nights were rare, it was true, but he had never shared his body this carelessly before he returned to Buckkeep. He drank so much when he was Lord Golden — it was easy to give his body away for a night or two. Still. Drunk or not, he could not shake the feeling that he was betraying Fitz. His Beloved. He recalled that old tradition. His mother and fathers had called each other by their own names when they were happiest with one another; well did he remember their voices gone soft and low with love. And don’t you call FitzChivalry by your name? But you give your body elsewhere? 

It was the breaking of a marriage vow — it was that shattering, that difficult to swallow. For a moment, with Winsome panting over him, he felt the truest shame he had ever felt. This is why you sent him to town, he reminded himself. So you would not have to feel this. Not with him near.

Winsome’s hand came gently to Golden’s face, tilting it up so that their eyes met. The man’s dark hair fell in his eyes, and his mouth hung open so Golden could see his straight white teeth and the pink of his tongue. He had brown eyes. Large, soft brown eyes. 

Never had he imagined his lovers as Fitz when they were in bed. That was a line he would not cross. A secondary betrayal to his dearest friend, who would so loathe such a fantasy. Still, he closed his eyes against the vision of Winsome’s face. Against Winsome’s deep brown gaze. Let him think I close my eyes in rapture, he thought bitterly.