(no subject)
Okay, this post is under a cut, partially because the fanfiction it contains is erm.... my first NC-17 fic, and partially because fanfiction for this particular book series is...looked down upon by the author. People of the Fitz/Fool community, welcome! Others on my friends list, I don't actually expect you to read this, as it is of a fandom most of you have never heard of, and its slash to boot. Tis a one-shot, but a long one.
A bit of background; This fic is set in 'The Golden Fool' of the Tawny man series. An alternative ending to chapter twenty three; 'Revelations'. After the Fool learns of the Narcheska's tattoos he feels obliged to cease his quarrel with Fitz in order to show him the tattoos he also bears. The first few paragraphs are taken straight from the book, and I simply pick up from a certain point. My view on what should have happened. Featuring Possessive!Fitz.
I do not own Fitz, the Fool (most unfortunately), or anything belonging to the Tawny Man series. All credit goes to Robin Hobb for that amazing set of novels.
Oh yes, and this fic has not been BETA'd, and as I wrote it in a txt file on a Japanese computer, it isnt spell checked either. I've tried to get rid of most of the mistakes I can find, but feel free to point out any I've missed.
My Beloved, My Fool
I waited. I walked over to the fire, poked it up a bit, and added a log. Then I waited some more. I sat down in a chair, noticed that my fingernails had grown and pared them back with my belt knife. I continued to wait. Finally, I rose and with a sigh of exasperation, went to tap on the door. Perhaps I had misunderstood. ‘Lord Golden, did you wish me to wait here?’
‘Yes. No.’ Then, in a very uncertain voice, ‘Would you come in here please? But first make sure the corridor door is well bolted.’
It was. I rattled it to be sure and then opened the door to his room. The room was dim, the windows shuttered. Several candles illuminated Lord Golden standing with his back to me. He wore a sheet from his bed like a cape. He glanced at me over his shoulder and someone I had never met looked out of those golden eyes. When I was three steps into the room, he said quietly, ‘Stand there please.’
With one hand, he lifted his hair up and out of the way to bare the nape of his neck. The sheet fell away from his naked back, but his free hand continued to clutch it to his chest. I gasped and took an inadvertent step closer. He flinched away but then stood his ground. In a small, shaky voice, he asked,
‘The Narcheska’s tattoos. Were they like these?’
‘May I come closer?’ I managed to say. I didn’t really need to. If his tattoos were not identical to hers, then they were at least extremely similar. He nodded jerkily, and I took another step into the room. He did not look at me but stared off into a dim corner. The room was not cold, but he was shivering. The exotic needling began at the nape of his neck and covered every part of his back before vanishing beneath the waistband of his leggings. The twining serpents and wingspread dragons sprawled in exquisite detail over his smooth golden back. The shining colours had a metallic gleam to them, as if gold and silver had been forced under his skin to illuminate them. Every claw and scale, every shining tooth and flashing eye was perfect. ‘They are very alike,’ I managed to say at last. ‘Save that yours lie flat to your skin. One of hers, the largest serpent, stood swollen from her back, as if inflamed. And it seemed to cause her great pain.'
He drew in a shuddering breath. His teeth were near to chattering as he observed bitterly, ‘Well. Just when I thought there was no way she could increase her cruelty, she finds one. That poor, poor child.’
‘Do yours hurt?’ I asked cautiously.
He shook his head, still without looking at me. Some of his hair fell free of his grasp to brush across his shoulders. ‘No. Not now. But the application of them was extremely painful. And of great duration. They held me still, for hours at a time. They apologized and tried to comfort me as they did it. That only made it worse, that people who otherwise treated me with such love and regard could do that to me. They were meticulously careful to needle them just as she had instructed them. It is a horrible thing to do to a child. Any child.’ He rocked slightly, his shoulders hunched. His voice was distant.
‘They? I asked very softly.
His voice was tight, all melody gone from it. He shuddered out his words. 'I was at a place rather like a school. Teachers and learned folk. I told you about it before. I ran away from it. My parents sent me there, parting from me with both pride and sorrow, because I was a White. It was a long way from our home. They knew they would probably never see me again, but they knew it was the correct thing to do. I had a destiny to fulfil. But my teachers insisted there was already a White Prophet for this time. She had already studied with them, and already set forth to fulfil her destiny in the far north.’ He turned his head suddenly and met my eyes. ‘Do you guess of whom I speak?’
I nodded stiffly. I felt cold. ‘The Pale Woman. Kebal Rawbread’s advisor during the Red Ship War.’
He returned my nod as stiffly. Again he looked away from me, staring into a darkened corner of the room. ‘So, a White I might be, but I could not be the White Prophet. Therefore, I must be an anomaly. A creature born out of my time and place. They were fascinated by me and listened to my every word and recorded every dream I spoke. They treasured me and treated me very well. They listened to me, but they never heeded what I said. And when she heard of me, she commanded that they keep me there. And they did. Later, she commanded that I be marked this way. And so they did.’
‘Why?’
‘I don't know. Save perhaps, that we had both dreamed of sea serpents and dragons. But perhaps it is what you do with an extra White Prophet. Cover him over so he is no longer white.’ His voice tightened until the words were hard as knots. 'It has shamed me to be so marked like this, at her will. It is worse now, to know that the Narcheska is also decorated with the Pale Woman's markings. As if she claimed us as her tool, her creatures...’ His words faded away.
‘But why did they obey her? How can anyone do a thing like that?’
He laughed bitterly. ‘She is the White Prophet, come to set time in a better path. She has a vision. You do not question her will. Questioning her command can have serious repercussions. Ask Kebal Rawbread. You do as the Pale Woman tells you.’ His shivering had become a wild shaking.
‘You’re cold.’ I said, instinctively drawing closer to him.
‘No,’ He whispered. ‘I'm afraid. I'm terrified. Please. Please go out while I get dressed.’ Yet to witness my childhood friend, always meticulously composed and deliberate in every word and gesture, exposed and shaking uncontrollably before me ripped right to my heart. Worse, I saw tears come coursing down his cheeks. I could not bring myself to simply leave him there. It was so wrong, all of it. To even look at the horrors etched into his back made me sick to my core. How had they done it? I imagined him, not gold as he was now but white as he had been as the Fool of my youth, held down, face contorting in pain while he begged and screamed for them to stop. How many hours of steady agony? How long had people he had trusted held him down to force the inks into his flesh? I found a black rage growing within me, that they, that anyone had dared to touch my Fool so.
'Fitz?' His voice brought me back to myself, and I realised the intensity he must have seen on my face. His eyes were curious, almost pleading now.
'Fool.' I replied, and my voice had become husky. Despite myself, I took another step foward. Alarmed, he turned all the way to face me, as if to make the flimsy sheet he clutched a barrier between us.
'What are you doing?!'
I was not sure myself. He was so vulnerable. I knew how much he treasured his privacy, how much it was costing him to stand before me so. And yet somehow it made me wonder about the last comment he'd struck me with during our quarrel. He'd said he'd known the intimacy of a bed partner before. Yet why, when he'd sworn a love to me without bounds, was he so rigidly afraid to show anything of himself to me?
'Have there been others?'
He blinked. 'What?' I took a deep breath, forcing out a question I was not sure I could bear the answer to.
'How many others have known and touched you so intimately that they have seen so much of you that I have never known?' I found my breath was strangled with some heavy emotion I could not name.
'Fitz I -' But the Fool cut himself off and lowered his eyes from me. I sensed his shame, but it still incensed me unreasonably that he would not answer me. Some part of me knew that it was none of my business if and who he had chosen for his intimacies, but it was a very small part getting rapidly squashed by my need to know why the man who loved me so would allow so many others, but not me, to touch him. Who then had been that special to the Fool? Somehow the thought of him sharing someone's bed sickened me, and yet I savagely needed to know.
'You say you have been tortured horribly and touched intimately, yet you stand before the person you have claimed to love and never allowed me to be privvy to either of those secrets. You cannot allow me to even see you. Who has touched you?' I heard the last words come out accusingly and he flinched. I had tried to keep any inflection out of my voice, but the edges of anger had managed nonetheless to creep in.
The Fool took a deep, steadying breath, and let it out very slowly before he answered. He met my eyes and raised his chin a little, 'I have never offered you that which you did not want, Fitz. As for who, why does it matter?' I saw the way his eyes dared me to challenge his words, and I felt shamed by my own hypocrisy. I thought again of how I had watched in misery as Garetha the garden girl had left Lord Golden's chambers with a charm of his around her neck. I was not just miserable because we'd fought about her. I hated the idea that he'd taken my advice and sought solace in her instead of me. I realised I could not bear the thought of someone else touching a creature who was irrevocably mine. He had always been so. A servant to the crown, yes. A man with whole other lives of his own and a great many mysteries I would never know, but all that was true about him had always been mine. It dawned upon me then the truth of his words. 'You know more about me than any other person who breathes.' I realised I very much doubted he'd ever had a bed partner, but even if he had, it was irrelevant now, for that experience meant nothing in comparison to who we were to each other.
He had turned away from me again, eyes glazed with hurt as he looked anywhere but at me. Slowly and cautiously, I took another step towards him, and another. His eyes clenched shut, as if he feared I would strike him. 'It doesn't matter.' I replied at last, standing right behind his turned back. 'You are mine.' I reached a hand out and gently touched the writhing serpent patterns on his back, as if to dispel the ownership the Pale Woman had claimed of him. Instantly he gasped and shuddered as though my fingers were ice, even though it was his skin which was unnaturally cold under my touch. He swayed, and for a moment I thought he would faint. Impulsively I wrapped my arms around his slender body. His breath seemed short and he was trembling. Eyes still closed, he sank back into my embrace, leaning his head onto my shoulder as though exhausted, and it seemed that I could feel every line of every serpent and dragon pressing against me. I burned for him.
'I will kill the ones who did this to you.' I promised him.
The Fool let the arm which was not grasping the sheet fall back and hold onto my leg, as if for support, and in shock it felt like fire igniting my whole body. My mouth went dry. 'Fitz.' he whispered my name, but I knew that this time he was not pleading for me to leave. I don't think I could have even if he'd wanted me to. He turned his head towards me and his dark golden gaze questioned me deeply. He would seek nothing that I did not first offer freely. The question was, what was I willing to offer? I did not think about what I did next. I cupped his face with one hand, the other still firmly wrapped around his chest. The closeness had my heart pounding and my breath caught as I traced his cheek with my thumb, wiping away the trail his tears had left there. Then I kissed him.
My whole world turned upside down and shook to the core the moment my mouth closed over his. It was the most uncharacteristic thing I'd ever done, yet that exquisite fire in every part of my being screamed at the rightness of it. Though the Fool can be marked by his complete lack of scent or aura, the same was not true of his taste. He tasted of his own sweet apricot brandy, and honey and an exotic taste that was all his own. None I had ever kissed had tasted anything like it. It ran my senses wild and I pushed in deeper, wanting more of him. Nothing seemed so important in that moment as having his lips pressed against me, that intoxicating taste as his coaxing tongue ran shivers up my spine. A slender golden hand reached up, fingers entangling in my hair. My heart was thundering with the desire to make him mine. I wrapped both arms around him, effortlessly lifting him and covering the three steps to the bed. He wasted no time in pulling me on top of him and kissing me deeper again, and a shudder of desire escaped from my own body. 'Oh, Fitz' he gasped when we broke the kiss, and when our eyes met there was no need for either of us to ask for reasurrance that this was right.
I shifted down to his waistline, my whole body moving down his desire as I did so. The strangled cry he responded with only increased the urgency with which I undid his leggings. But as I pulled them off he barely gave me time to glance upon his flawless body before he grabbed at the sleeves of my shirt and pulled me back up to his level. He kissed me fiercely for a moment before his hands, despite their trembling, deftly began working my shirt over my head. Even as I helped him to get it off, he started on my leggings. Hastily I stumbled out of them, and the Fool gaped at me. His eyes flickered quickly back up to my face in awe, and was that an edge of fear? No, I thought. He must never fear me. I took a moment to behold his naked body entangled in the sheets, hair framing his face around the pillow and splayed out like a dark sunset. He was beautiful, breathtakingly so. How could anyone dare to harm such a creature?
I leaned down to stroke his face, and breathed into his ear, 'I will not hurt you, Beloved.' I kissed him, slow and lingering, and as I drew back and looked into his eyes he was smiling. I kissed him again, gently at first, then as his tongue came passionately seeking my own I grew hot and responded in kind. He slid his hands caressingly up my arms, and wrapped his own around my back, pulling me almost desperately closer. The long-repressed yearning in him revealed itself with almost astonishing fervour, and contagiously it heightened mine. Abruptly I broke off from him to grasp his shoulder and roll him over.
The shock of his torture bared before me again made my blood run cold for a moment, but I forced myself to bury my fury away for later, and took my time kissing him all over his shoulders. I worked my way step by careful step up to his neck, making sure never to touch his tattoos. As I reached his throat, the groan that escaped his lips had to be the most erotic sound I had ever heard. My eyes rolled back in my head as I fought to control my fervour. He was mine, and I had to claim him. Now.
Positioning myself, I began to push into him, gently as I could manage. His head arched back as he gasped and grabbed at the sheets, but he did not ask me to stop. He was so tight, the pleasure was maddening. It was near impossible to stop myself from simply thrusting my way in. He cried out as he felt me enter him, making the blood roar in my ears. El's balls, how I loved that sound. I was trying to keep an iron grip on my self-control as I slowly buried myself in deeper. But when he began to moan and push his hips up towards me my restraint absolutely shattered. I pulled almost all the way out of him and thrust in again quickly. That brought simultaneous moans from both of us. I did it again, harder this time, and again, building myself up until I found myself slamming into him recklessly while he cried out and writhed underneath me. Oh how he begged me for more. My head seemed to enter a kind of fog. I lost all sense of everything but the incredible tightness of his ass and the music of his ever loudening moans. I growled deep in my throat and pushed harder, trying to reposition myself to go deeper.
Suddenly I managed to thrust in all the way to the hilt and hit a spot that nearly pushed me over the edge. Just as abruptly the Fool cried out and arched back, and before I knew what he was doing his hand had shot out and closed his fingers around my arm. Silvered fingertips found their matching prints on my wrist and Skill burst into my mind. Suddenly I was there with him, mind and body, and he was likewise with me. I felt the all-consuming need emating from him as he neared his climax, and the onslaught of his pleasure combined with mine was too much for me. I recoiled to buck wildly into him, sheer passion rising like a wave in both of us. He was arching, tensing around my manhood and crying out as he matched my thrusts in abandon. I felt us both as we flooded into utter completion, riding on each other's pleasure and losing oursleves entirely into one another. And for a breath we were one, body and soul, as we were always meant to be.
Then the breath was sighed out. The Fool came back into himself, and his bared Skill fingers slackened their grip and fell away from my wrist. The connection was severed, and we were left panting, basking in the utter bliss of what we'd just shared. Exhausted, and still weak from recovery, I collasped on the bed beside my Fool.
As I did, the way he smiled at me was like none I'd ever seen on the face of Lord Golden or the Fool. It was a true smile, completely free of mockery or artifice. Yet if it did not belong to Lord Golden or the Fool, then it must be - 'Oh, Beloved.' He breathed as he gazed up at me. He had stopped trembling. He looked at me without any trace of fear or anxiety or wariness. It was the most unguarded I'd ever seen him, and the sheer beauty of his happiness touched me profoundly. I smiled back down at him, and for a while neither of us said anything else.
'But that is your name.' I whispered at last, my face inches from his. 'If you call me Beloved, what am I to call you? Shall I call you Fitz?' The last part had been intended as a jest, but I could not explain the light that danced behind his eyes as I said it. He looked down at the pillows, almost shyly. 'If you like.' He replied softly, and a secret smile touched upon his lips.
So I wrapped him up in my arms, kissed his forehead and said, 'Goodnight then, Fitz.' He curled up into my shoulder and closed his eyes. But even when his breathing became heavy as he fell into sleep, I could still feel him smiling that secret smile. Ah well. My Fool was always full of secrets and riddles. And he was after all, my Beloved, my Fool.
A bit of background; This fic is set in 'The Golden Fool' of the Tawny man series. An alternative ending to chapter twenty three; 'Revelations'. After the Fool learns of the Narcheska's tattoos he feels obliged to cease his quarrel with Fitz in order to show him the tattoos he also bears. The first few paragraphs are taken straight from the book, and I simply pick up from a certain point. My view on what should have happened. Featuring Possessive!Fitz.
I do not own Fitz, the Fool (most unfortunately), or anything belonging to the Tawny Man series. All credit goes to Robin Hobb for that amazing set of novels.
Oh yes, and this fic has not been BETA'd, and as I wrote it in a txt file on a Japanese computer, it isnt spell checked either. I've tried to get rid of most of the mistakes I can find, but feel free to point out any I've missed.
My Beloved, My Fool
I waited. I walked over to the fire, poked it up a bit, and added a log. Then I waited some more. I sat down in a chair, noticed that my fingernails had grown and pared them back with my belt knife. I continued to wait. Finally, I rose and with a sigh of exasperation, went to tap on the door. Perhaps I had misunderstood. ‘Lord Golden, did you wish me to wait here?’
‘Yes. No.’ Then, in a very uncertain voice, ‘Would you come in here please? But first make sure the corridor door is well bolted.’
It was. I rattled it to be sure and then opened the door to his room. The room was dim, the windows shuttered. Several candles illuminated Lord Golden standing with his back to me. He wore a sheet from his bed like a cape. He glanced at me over his shoulder and someone I had never met looked out of those golden eyes. When I was three steps into the room, he said quietly, ‘Stand there please.’
With one hand, he lifted his hair up and out of the way to bare the nape of his neck. The sheet fell away from his naked back, but his free hand continued to clutch it to his chest. I gasped and took an inadvertent step closer. He flinched away but then stood his ground. In a small, shaky voice, he asked,
‘The Narcheska’s tattoos. Were they like these?’
‘May I come closer?’ I managed to say. I didn’t really need to. If his tattoos were not identical to hers, then they were at least extremely similar. He nodded jerkily, and I took another step into the room. He did not look at me but stared off into a dim corner. The room was not cold, but he was shivering. The exotic needling began at the nape of his neck and covered every part of his back before vanishing beneath the waistband of his leggings. The twining serpents and wingspread dragons sprawled in exquisite detail over his smooth golden back. The shining colours had a metallic gleam to them, as if gold and silver had been forced under his skin to illuminate them. Every claw and scale, every shining tooth and flashing eye was perfect. ‘They are very alike,’ I managed to say at last. ‘Save that yours lie flat to your skin. One of hers, the largest serpent, stood swollen from her back, as if inflamed. And it seemed to cause her great pain.'
He drew in a shuddering breath. His teeth were near to chattering as he observed bitterly, ‘Well. Just when I thought there was no way she could increase her cruelty, she finds one. That poor, poor child.’
‘Do yours hurt?’ I asked cautiously.
He shook his head, still without looking at me. Some of his hair fell free of his grasp to brush across his shoulders. ‘No. Not now. But the application of them was extremely painful. And of great duration. They held me still, for hours at a time. They apologized and tried to comfort me as they did it. That only made it worse, that people who otherwise treated me with such love and regard could do that to me. They were meticulously careful to needle them just as she had instructed them. It is a horrible thing to do to a child. Any child.’ He rocked slightly, his shoulders hunched. His voice was distant.
‘They? I asked very softly.
His voice was tight, all melody gone from it. He shuddered out his words. 'I was at a place rather like a school. Teachers and learned folk. I told you about it before. I ran away from it. My parents sent me there, parting from me with both pride and sorrow, because I was a White. It was a long way from our home. They knew they would probably never see me again, but they knew it was the correct thing to do. I had a destiny to fulfil. But my teachers insisted there was already a White Prophet for this time. She had already studied with them, and already set forth to fulfil her destiny in the far north.’ He turned his head suddenly and met my eyes. ‘Do you guess of whom I speak?’
I nodded stiffly. I felt cold. ‘The Pale Woman. Kebal Rawbread’s advisor during the Red Ship War.’
He returned my nod as stiffly. Again he looked away from me, staring into a darkened corner of the room. ‘So, a White I might be, but I could not be the White Prophet. Therefore, I must be an anomaly. A creature born out of my time and place. They were fascinated by me and listened to my every word and recorded every dream I spoke. They treasured me and treated me very well. They listened to me, but they never heeded what I said. And when she heard of me, she commanded that they keep me there. And they did. Later, she commanded that I be marked this way. And so they did.’
‘Why?’
‘I don't know. Save perhaps, that we had both dreamed of sea serpents and dragons. But perhaps it is what you do with an extra White Prophet. Cover him over so he is no longer white.’ His voice tightened until the words were hard as knots. 'It has shamed me to be so marked like this, at her will. It is worse now, to know that the Narcheska is also decorated with the Pale Woman's markings. As if she claimed us as her tool, her creatures...’ His words faded away.
‘But why did they obey her? How can anyone do a thing like that?’
He laughed bitterly. ‘She is the White Prophet, come to set time in a better path. She has a vision. You do not question her will. Questioning her command can have serious repercussions. Ask Kebal Rawbread. You do as the Pale Woman tells you.’ His shivering had become a wild shaking.
‘You’re cold.’ I said, instinctively drawing closer to him.
‘No,’ He whispered. ‘I'm afraid. I'm terrified. Please. Please go out while I get dressed.’ Yet to witness my childhood friend, always meticulously composed and deliberate in every word and gesture, exposed and shaking uncontrollably before me ripped right to my heart. Worse, I saw tears come coursing down his cheeks. I could not bring myself to simply leave him there. It was so wrong, all of it. To even look at the horrors etched into his back made me sick to my core. How had they done it? I imagined him, not gold as he was now but white as he had been as the Fool of my youth, held down, face contorting in pain while he begged and screamed for them to stop. How many hours of steady agony? How long had people he had trusted held him down to force the inks into his flesh? I found a black rage growing within me, that they, that anyone had dared to touch my Fool so.
'Fitz?' His voice brought me back to myself, and I realised the intensity he must have seen on my face. His eyes were curious, almost pleading now.
'Fool.' I replied, and my voice had become husky. Despite myself, I took another step foward. Alarmed, he turned all the way to face me, as if to make the flimsy sheet he clutched a barrier between us.
'What are you doing?!'
I was not sure myself. He was so vulnerable. I knew how much he treasured his privacy, how much it was costing him to stand before me so. And yet somehow it made me wonder about the last comment he'd struck me with during our quarrel. He'd said he'd known the intimacy of a bed partner before. Yet why, when he'd sworn a love to me without bounds, was he so rigidly afraid to show anything of himself to me?
'Have there been others?'
He blinked. 'What?' I took a deep breath, forcing out a question I was not sure I could bear the answer to.
'How many others have known and touched you so intimately that they have seen so much of you that I have never known?' I found my breath was strangled with some heavy emotion I could not name.
'Fitz I -' But the Fool cut himself off and lowered his eyes from me. I sensed his shame, but it still incensed me unreasonably that he would not answer me. Some part of me knew that it was none of my business if and who he had chosen for his intimacies, but it was a very small part getting rapidly squashed by my need to know why the man who loved me so would allow so many others, but not me, to touch him. Who then had been that special to the Fool? Somehow the thought of him sharing someone's bed sickened me, and yet I savagely needed to know.
'You say you have been tortured horribly and touched intimately, yet you stand before the person you have claimed to love and never allowed me to be privvy to either of those secrets. You cannot allow me to even see you. Who has touched you?' I heard the last words come out accusingly and he flinched. I had tried to keep any inflection out of my voice, but the edges of anger had managed nonetheless to creep in.
The Fool took a deep, steadying breath, and let it out very slowly before he answered. He met my eyes and raised his chin a little, 'I have never offered you that which you did not want, Fitz. As for who, why does it matter?' I saw the way his eyes dared me to challenge his words, and I felt shamed by my own hypocrisy. I thought again of how I had watched in misery as Garetha the garden girl had left Lord Golden's chambers with a charm of his around her neck. I was not just miserable because we'd fought about her. I hated the idea that he'd taken my advice and sought solace in her instead of me. I realised I could not bear the thought of someone else touching a creature who was irrevocably mine. He had always been so. A servant to the crown, yes. A man with whole other lives of his own and a great many mysteries I would never know, but all that was true about him had always been mine. It dawned upon me then the truth of his words. 'You know more about me than any other person who breathes.' I realised I very much doubted he'd ever had a bed partner, but even if he had, it was irrelevant now, for that experience meant nothing in comparison to who we were to each other.
He had turned away from me again, eyes glazed with hurt as he looked anywhere but at me. Slowly and cautiously, I took another step towards him, and another. His eyes clenched shut, as if he feared I would strike him. 'It doesn't matter.' I replied at last, standing right behind his turned back. 'You are mine.' I reached a hand out and gently touched the writhing serpent patterns on his back, as if to dispel the ownership the Pale Woman had claimed of him. Instantly he gasped and shuddered as though my fingers were ice, even though it was his skin which was unnaturally cold under my touch. He swayed, and for a moment I thought he would faint. Impulsively I wrapped my arms around his slender body. His breath seemed short and he was trembling. Eyes still closed, he sank back into my embrace, leaning his head onto my shoulder as though exhausted, and it seemed that I could feel every line of every serpent and dragon pressing against me. I burned for him.
'I will kill the ones who did this to you.' I promised him.
The Fool let the arm which was not grasping the sheet fall back and hold onto my leg, as if for support, and in shock it felt like fire igniting my whole body. My mouth went dry. 'Fitz.' he whispered my name, but I knew that this time he was not pleading for me to leave. I don't think I could have even if he'd wanted me to. He turned his head towards me and his dark golden gaze questioned me deeply. He would seek nothing that I did not first offer freely. The question was, what was I willing to offer? I did not think about what I did next. I cupped his face with one hand, the other still firmly wrapped around his chest. The closeness had my heart pounding and my breath caught as I traced his cheek with my thumb, wiping away the trail his tears had left there. Then I kissed him.
My whole world turned upside down and shook to the core the moment my mouth closed over his. It was the most uncharacteristic thing I'd ever done, yet that exquisite fire in every part of my being screamed at the rightness of it. Though the Fool can be marked by his complete lack of scent or aura, the same was not true of his taste. He tasted of his own sweet apricot brandy, and honey and an exotic taste that was all his own. None I had ever kissed had tasted anything like it. It ran my senses wild and I pushed in deeper, wanting more of him. Nothing seemed so important in that moment as having his lips pressed against me, that intoxicating taste as his coaxing tongue ran shivers up my spine. A slender golden hand reached up, fingers entangling in my hair. My heart was thundering with the desire to make him mine. I wrapped both arms around him, effortlessly lifting him and covering the three steps to the bed. He wasted no time in pulling me on top of him and kissing me deeper again, and a shudder of desire escaped from my own body. 'Oh, Fitz' he gasped when we broke the kiss, and when our eyes met there was no need for either of us to ask for reasurrance that this was right.
I shifted down to his waistline, my whole body moving down his desire as I did so. The strangled cry he responded with only increased the urgency with which I undid his leggings. But as I pulled them off he barely gave me time to glance upon his flawless body before he grabbed at the sleeves of my shirt and pulled me back up to his level. He kissed me fiercely for a moment before his hands, despite their trembling, deftly began working my shirt over my head. Even as I helped him to get it off, he started on my leggings. Hastily I stumbled out of them, and the Fool gaped at me. His eyes flickered quickly back up to my face in awe, and was that an edge of fear? No, I thought. He must never fear me. I took a moment to behold his naked body entangled in the sheets, hair framing his face around the pillow and splayed out like a dark sunset. He was beautiful, breathtakingly so. How could anyone dare to harm such a creature?
I leaned down to stroke his face, and breathed into his ear, 'I will not hurt you, Beloved.' I kissed him, slow and lingering, and as I drew back and looked into his eyes he was smiling. I kissed him again, gently at first, then as his tongue came passionately seeking my own I grew hot and responded in kind. He slid his hands caressingly up my arms, and wrapped his own around my back, pulling me almost desperately closer. The long-repressed yearning in him revealed itself with almost astonishing fervour, and contagiously it heightened mine. Abruptly I broke off from him to grasp his shoulder and roll him over.
The shock of his torture bared before me again made my blood run cold for a moment, but I forced myself to bury my fury away for later, and took my time kissing him all over his shoulders. I worked my way step by careful step up to his neck, making sure never to touch his tattoos. As I reached his throat, the groan that escaped his lips had to be the most erotic sound I had ever heard. My eyes rolled back in my head as I fought to control my fervour. He was mine, and I had to claim him. Now.
Positioning myself, I began to push into him, gently as I could manage. His head arched back as he gasped and grabbed at the sheets, but he did not ask me to stop. He was so tight, the pleasure was maddening. It was near impossible to stop myself from simply thrusting my way in. He cried out as he felt me enter him, making the blood roar in my ears. El's balls, how I loved that sound. I was trying to keep an iron grip on my self-control as I slowly buried myself in deeper. But when he began to moan and push his hips up towards me my restraint absolutely shattered. I pulled almost all the way out of him and thrust in again quickly. That brought simultaneous moans from both of us. I did it again, harder this time, and again, building myself up until I found myself slamming into him recklessly while he cried out and writhed underneath me. Oh how he begged me for more. My head seemed to enter a kind of fog. I lost all sense of everything but the incredible tightness of his ass and the music of his ever loudening moans. I growled deep in my throat and pushed harder, trying to reposition myself to go deeper.
Suddenly I managed to thrust in all the way to the hilt and hit a spot that nearly pushed me over the edge. Just as abruptly the Fool cried out and arched back, and before I knew what he was doing his hand had shot out and closed his fingers around my arm. Silvered fingertips found their matching prints on my wrist and Skill burst into my mind. Suddenly I was there with him, mind and body, and he was likewise with me. I felt the all-consuming need emating from him as he neared his climax, and the onslaught of his pleasure combined with mine was too much for me. I recoiled to buck wildly into him, sheer passion rising like a wave in both of us. He was arching, tensing around my manhood and crying out as he matched my thrusts in abandon. I felt us both as we flooded into utter completion, riding on each other's pleasure and losing oursleves entirely into one another. And for a breath we were one, body and soul, as we were always meant to be.
Then the breath was sighed out. The Fool came back into himself, and his bared Skill fingers slackened their grip and fell away from my wrist. The connection was severed, and we were left panting, basking in the utter bliss of what we'd just shared. Exhausted, and still weak from recovery, I collasped on the bed beside my Fool.
As I did, the way he smiled at me was like none I'd ever seen on the face of Lord Golden or the Fool. It was a true smile, completely free of mockery or artifice. Yet if it did not belong to Lord Golden or the Fool, then it must be - 'Oh, Beloved.' He breathed as he gazed up at me. He had stopped trembling. He looked at me without any trace of fear or anxiety or wariness. It was the most unguarded I'd ever seen him, and the sheer beauty of his happiness touched me profoundly. I smiled back down at him, and for a while neither of us said anything else.
'But that is your name.' I whispered at last, my face inches from his. 'If you call me Beloved, what am I to call you? Shall I call you Fitz?' The last part had been intended as a jest, but I could not explain the light that danced behind his eyes as I said it. He looked down at the pillows, almost shyly. 'If you like.' He replied softly, and a secret smile touched upon his lips.
So I wrapped him up in my arms, kissed his forehead and said, 'Goodnight then, Fitz.' He curled up into my shoulder and closed his eyes. But even when his breathing became heavy as he fell into sleep, I could still feel him smiling that secret smile. Ah well. My Fool was always full of secrets and riddles. And he was after all, my Beloved, my Fool.