oh give me wesper and 10 please MWAH
10. ...a lazy kiss | post-canon, established relationship, a carriage ride to a ball
Jesper flicked the carriage door open, a phantom of a touch as his power did half the work.
They were getting better at channeling Jesper’s gift, even if that blessing did come in erratic flares and bursts. They were also late enough for the Radmakkers’ Ball, the midsummer sun now already brushing the horizon.
Clambering into the carriage first, Jesper held out a hand to help Wylan in.
“Your Excellency,” Jesper teased.
That was the style that came with Wylan’s title. Along with the Esteemed Wylan Van Eck and the Honorable Councilman Van Eck. If Wylan chose to marry, his partner would earn the style of the Illustrious. As it was, Jesper had no title – no matter how illustrious Wylan found him – and Jesper enjoyed teasing Wylan with his wealth of names.
“Your stupid face,” Wylan teased in return.
He shoved the hat on the carriage seat to the other side, squeezing in beside Jesper and closing the door behind him. It was a large carriage, the envy of Ketterdam, with glass windows shielded by ruby-red curtains and plush velvet seats. When it moved, the springs above its wheels made the trip feel a little smoother.
“You like this face,” Jesper shot back, unbothered.
“Just the lips,” Wylan grinned at the red rouge Jesper had put on.
The burgundy suit Jesper wore matched it, but the white mercher gloves he’d conceded to stood stark against them – and against Wylan’s skin as Jesper reached up to curl it behind Wylan’s neck. He let himself be pulled closer, until he could kiss Jesper again, lazy and lingering and longing.
“Just the lips?” Jesper challenged, voice dipped low. The carriage rattled as it turned a curve, pushing them closer still.
“It is excellent at doing – ” Wylan cut himself off as Jesper’s hand moved down to rest by Wylan’s waist, palm pressed just beneath his diaphragm where he might feel every stutter of his decorum fraying, “at doing things,” he lost his train of thought.
His other hand reached down to take Wylan’s right hand, and he lifted it up to his lips to press a kiss over the back of it, the rouge staining Wylan’s own white gloves. All proper and taunting – propriety turned vice, the world unbuilt slipping into his open palm as Wylan felt himself fraying at his edges, undone but still unfinished.
The ghost of Jesper’s breath lingered even through the fabric, coming to rest over his knuckles: evening mist falling over the crags of sunset.
When Jesper pulled away, the red shape of his lips stayed on Wylan’s glove, a mark meant to scar the silk. Jesper could have easily Fabrikated the color away, but by the crooked glint in his eyes – a thief who’d just found the kruge – Wylan knew that Jesper would let it stay for the night, for the length of the ball.
Wylan felt his cheeks flush warm.
“Jes,” he huffed, but couldn’t stop his smile, heart finite for the length of a name.
“You want me to stop?” Jesper asked.
They had around five more minutes before they arrived at the Radmakker mansion, before they’d have to lose this to the crowds at the ball.
“Don’t you dare,” Wylan dragged Jesper back in by the lapel of his suit.
“If Your Excellency insists,” Jesper pressed a kiss beneath Wylan’s jaw, where flesh became pulse and pulse became want.
His own hands traced the dark shadow of the veins climbing up Jesper’s bare neck – a what if on the verge of becoming a what will. Uncurling, a bloom, an implosion: a promise of what he might do when the night was over, when it would just be the two of them again. When the night would fade into the morning and he could spend the sunrise lost in Jesper’s touch, in Jesper’s dreams. Half asleep, but always more than half his world.
“I’m not insisting,” he stole his own kiss from Jesper. Once a thief, always a thief, no matter how honest. “I’m only making a down payment.”
“Oh?” Jesper thumbed the kohl around the edge of Wylan’s eyes. “Payment for what services?”
Wylan grinned into another lingering kiss. “You’ll see,” he promised.
The night was still young, after all.
