out, out brief candle!

This blog has been moved to walkingshcdow. 

It was hard to tell if it was a breathless oath or a fervent prayer his husband gasped as he pushed himself up and down again, up and down, up and down. His fingers tightened in Rudyard's, hands clasped as if to hold onto him through lifetimes and the shifting of worlds and not the simple oneness that they sought, the closeness that even magic seemed to put just beyond their reach so often. Rudyard was an organized man- scheduled, listed, planned into the future and the past of every bit of their lives, and for his part Victor tried to be measured to match him. To think instead of just feel, to take his time, to know every inch and breath of a thing as much as they could. One might even say they succeeded, most of the time, despite budding magic in their children and potions bubbling from the basement. One might also say they failed- all storm clouds and fractured souls- but even as the thunder rolled in above their bed, they reached for each other- and for a moment, it wasn't a fracture looking back at Rudayrd, squeezing his hands and praising his beauty. It was him, crashing down to claim his lips- the poet, the painter, the madman, the soldier, the actor- all of them and more- the husband. All adoring eyes grasping palms and grinding hips. All prayers and oaths and mine, rolling into him like crashing waves. 

Mine. 

Mine in the crest. Mine in the fall. Mine as the tides pushed and pulled and the storm outside began to groan. 

Mine, mine, mine.

Honestly, Rudyard Funn would never quite be used to marriage. He had always thought, watching his parents, that it was a union meant for procreation and power and even when he and Antigone used to play Happy Families, he could never have imagined what Victor's skin on his skin would feel like, what moving together and moaning together would sound like. Even as storm clouds gathered with Rudyard's rhythmic, fierce rocking, he couldn't help but think that the real secret of magic wasn't in spellcraft or conjuration, but in that sweet "O" of Victor's mouth.

Victor's.

He recognized him and would recognize him in every lifetime. He always found him, whatever they were, wherever they were, and he would recognize him as intuitively as he summoned a summer shower. But this one was his husband, the one of this lifetime, looking at him with those eyes that rendered Rudyard speechless. He mewled into the kiss as a growl of thunder gathered in his throat, fiercer and hungrier than those outside as he canted his hips against VIctor with the kind of non-rhythm he detested, the kind of non-rhythm that meant he was too close to hold on much longer and his hand in Victor's tightened to keep himself grounded.

The real magic was that this man love him, married him, and wanted him always. The real magic was that Rudyard wanted him, too. He didn't understand it but that was the thing about magic: whoever did understand it in the end? Who in the world understood love? And asking questions never yielded satisfactory answers. Better instead to try to be like Victor and feel his way through the night.

There was one thing Rudyard felt most keenly above all: he loved Victor still and would love him, rain or shine.

Finnegan always anticipated outliving Victor, even in their early days and in the later ones when he was sure this was the man he wanted to marry. This was the lot of an elf: to outlive all you loved except the green, damp earth. One day, Finnegan supposed he would eventually return to the earth - and return and return again and in those returned lifetimes, love again. He would remember fragmented portraits of Victor, here a smile, there a laugh, sometimes a sharp word, and often an adoring gaze. He would be warm and familiar and distant, nothing the new elf Finnegan would one day be could mourn, only be glad he’d once had him. Such was the lot of every elf who had ever loved a more mortal creature.

Finnegan was no longer an elf.

Now he shunned the daylight and slept behind tightly drawn curtains. At night, he plucked up his lute, one of those cruel things he’d been allowed to keep as Barovia collapsed in on itself, and he played the saddest of love songs - a man forced to live and live and live without his lover, yet never again be alive. Such was the lot of a vampire.

This inn was not too picky about its clientele, thank sweet and blessed Hanali, and so Finnegan stayed longer than usual, resting by day and at night earning his keep and seducing the odd patron to let him feed from their veins. Eventually, he’d have to go. He always did. But tonight his neatly trimmed claws strummed the lute and he sang in the voice of a performer. His greatest performance was, of course, the fact that he did not choke on his words with sobs. Especially as he saw the golden-haired youth in traveling clothes, eyeing him in a way that felt more like sunshine than anything Finnegan’s been allowed in a hundred years. Like sunshine, it might kill him. As badly as he wanted to die, he let himself burn a little more in the young man’s company, tuning his instrument against the bar, hovering in his proximity.

There was something a little more red than gold about his hair, now that they stood close together. His eyes were bluer in a way that would usually make Finnegan suspect fey blood. But there was no flower crown and no twisted mound of flesh to touch with reverent fingertips as Victor skimmed his hands across the planes of Finnegan’s scales. Somehow, Finnegan didn’t want to know those family stories. Somehow, he felt certain he’d written a few of them himself. This was not Victor, but it could be a son or a grandson or an uncommonly handsome stranger. He never expected to grieve the passage of time. Then again, he’d never expected to live out his days in the Shadowfell at the beck of a strange and powerful master. However, he always expected Victor to die before him. He simply always expected to bury him with his own hands, to return him to the earth as elves returned their beloveds’ bodies to the earth, to wait foolishly as others waited properly for their beloveds’ return. It was stupid to look for Victor in a stranger. It was stupid to dream that he might have been allowed to say goodbye.

It was stupid to brood on it when there was a pretty young thing and he could imagine getting lost in his kiss, draining him, holding him, feeling almost satisfied. Why shouldn’t he? He tilted his head, smiling toothily at the young thing - a warning as much as an invitation - before he spoke.

Victor's back arched and he pressed himself up on the balls of his feet slightly, caught in a search for purchase against- he didn't know what. His chest pressed forward into the wall as if it could save him. Give him somewhere to ground himself while his hands were lashed together behind him with his necktie. His body was floating, but he wanted only to push it back down, down, down farther onto the weapon that pushed into him so perfectly that he couldn't help but writhe. Breathing was impossible, there was no oxygen, only Finnegan's hands on his hips and the voice in his ears and his own forehead against the wallpaper. He must have looked horribly red and needy, but he couldn't care. How could anyone care as he was yanked back down again, wall traded for the firmness of Finnegan's body against his back, exactly where he wanted him? How could the world do anything but stop?

"Oh, just look at you." Somewhere under the ragged breathing, Finnegan found himself able to whisper praise to his lover. He bit his own lip as he delved deeper inside him and watched Victor arch and felt perfectly sheathed, perfectly safe inside him. Strange to think he was the one worried about feeling safe, when Victor's hands were bound and he loved and lived at Finnegan's mercy. But God, he was beautiful: taut muscle and smooth skin - skin he wanted to kiss every inch of, but later, later, as he exhaled shakily and began to build a proper rhythm. Thank God Finnegan could see Victor, wrapped like a present and Victor could not see Finnegan's red cheeks, streaked unhandsomely with desire and exertion, his mussed hair sticking up at odd angles, and that soft, fleeting look in his eyes of a love that shocked him too much to speak on it. How much easier it was to grip Victor's hips, leaving crescent moon nail-marks in his flesh and guiding him as Finnegan's own pace quickened, pushing him harder against the wall and letting himself get lost deeper and deeper in Victor's body, less like an explorer and more like a conqueror who believed he had the right to be there and less like a conquerer and more like someone who belonged there buried in Victor in all senses of the word. "You are everything, darling. Perfect. Mine."

Words were harder now as the back-and-forth motion increased and Finnegan's grasp on his vocal cords decreased. He moaned curses and prayers and Victor's name like it could be either and then, when he was sure Victor could cant his own hips without both Finnegan's hands guiding them, he slipped his dexterous left hand down Victor's front, grasping his cock in hand, teasing his tender and aching balls with breezy fingertips and working Victor's length as he continued to take him from behind - the kind of acrobatics these nights pulled from them both. Finnegan bit down on Victor's shoulder, smiling against his skin.

"I- mm, wait, just- aH!" he sucked air in sharply as Rudyard bit his neck, trying to be calm and failing as his hips stuttered upwards into the empty air, searching for somewhere they belonged. He was young and stupid and desperately in love again, blinded by that perfect suction on his bobbing throat and the weight of his boyfriend settled on his chest. How had he ever lived without this? He was desperate for it, even now as it happened, desperate for it to be slow and maddening and for it to be happening already, to grab at Rudyard's hands and put them exactly where he needed them, guiding, pulling them down along his body for the proper build and relief. He wanted to let him learn. He wanted to teach him everything. He wanted to curse every lonely night that had left him desperate and overly eager. He wanted to bless them for giving him the chance to feel it all so new. And he wanted it all now. "fuck, Rudyard, I- how have- how-" 

"How have what?"

He stopped attacking Victor's neck with his teeth and lips and tongue long enough to stare at him, worried, bewildered, madly in love and sure he was doing it all wrong. Victor jerked violently, guiding Rudyard's hands downward, and to be perfectly honest, Rudyard had not foreseen getting this far and felt a little faint at the thought of properly touching Victor's cock. Lightheaded with giddiness and the abject terror of one so thoroughly rejected that he was sure even the person he loved best in all the world would reject him, too. Rudyard sucked in a shaking breath and pulled himself together.

In his sleep, light sleeper that he was, Finnegan moaned, twisting and writhing under Victor's kisses in a way that his waking self might be too self-conscious to do. He lolled his head, offering more of his neck to Victor and wriggling his eager hips as a familiar warmth inched between his hip bones.

"Mmm, fuck," he mumbled, half awake and rolling towards Victor with bleary, lusty eyes. "I'm awake now, darling."

Stiff upon waking already, a surge of hot desire lurched through Finnegan, uneven and desperate as he rolled onto his side in Victor's arms to kiss him and to rub himself against Victor for the barest bit of relief. He gasped a little into the kiss and swore again, softly, violently and when he pulled away, he grinned. One hand skipped down Victor's spine, to the small of his back, pulling him closer so he had no choice but to know how badly his husband wanted him, how easily, how desperately. Whose thudding pulse was that anyhow?

"I'd hate to leave you lonely." The rolls of Finnegan's hips became more deliberate as he woke more fully, pressing his erection to Victor's. "Truth is, I was dreaming about you already... and I'd much rather have the real thing,,,"

[sms] are you available tonight? -vt

[sms] I've got some time, if you wanted to meet to go over those plans.-vt

He put the phone in his pocket and sighed.

Read: I'm lonely tonight.

Read: I'm painfully sober.

Read: I'm looking to make a bad decision, to make me feel warm for just a moment before I get burned.

Read: Do you want to be it?

Read: Do you want to burn me alive?

Or rather, don't read. They didn't have that kind of relationship. They didn't have any kind of relationship. But he'd be lying if he said Finnegan didn't know how to burn him so he stopped feeling the absence of everything. If he didn't know the scent of char when he walked into a room and mistake it for the heat. If he didn't desire to be a work in exquisite ashes, a charcoal drawing born to be kindling in the oven of Finnegan's life. If he wasn't desperate enough to drench himself in gasoline and hand him the matches if it meant someone would touch him for a moment.

The phone buzzed, the private one, and Finnegan's heart twisted with excitement beneath it in his breast pocket. It would be rude to take it out in the middle of another person's presentation, so instead, Finnegan rose from his chair, wood scraping beneath him, perhaps too quickly.

"All the time we have for that, I'm afraid," he announced. "We'll reconvene on Wednesday."

Employees, bewildered and grateful to be allowed to leave before seven on a night Finnegan has sworn up and down would be a late one, shuffled out of the room. Only Frankenstein paused to narrow his eyes at Finnegan's face and, deciding he was either inscrutable or not worthy of his time, the director of medical research filed out into the hall. Alone in the conference room, Finnegan drew a shaky breath to pull out his cell phone. It could be nothing, nothing - Edie wanting to catch up or something like that - but he still slicked back his hair with a hand before unlocking the phone and looking to see Victor's name greeting him. He sucked in his cheeks, trying to hide a smile from an already-dismissed audience.

He could not hide the smile from himself. He left Victor on read for a long, pensive moment, knowing each second must be some kind of agony. He used to leave him in a lurch on purpose. Now, though, it bothered him that he didn't have the right words to say to the man he... Hmm. The man he... Hmm. That he had to keep Victor waiting.

Sex was sex. Fucking was fucking. But Victor Trevor was something else, even when he smelled of lust, tangled in Finnegan's bedsheets and arms and legs. He was... Hmm.

[SMS] I can make myself free.

Read: I already have.

[SMS] I'm at the office now. Just escaped a dreadfully boring meeting. I welcome the distraction. Come by and I'll happily go over anything you want with you.

((Formal hiatus notice, I guess. I intended to come back this weekend, but due to unforeseen events, I am gaining a new course to teach on Tuesday, in addition to English IV and AP Lang. My schedules are getting shuffled. I have a semester to plan in three days. I have a coworker who thinks we should “collaborate” (re: I should do what he tells me to) and refuses to respect me as an educator. My department chair and I are determined to duct tape the department together through June.