FIC: Chasing
[sidles in] So, um. A few nights ago my minion, invderlava, sneakily slipped a link to luchia13's 15 Annuals onto my Flist. FOUR HOURS LATER I demanded linkage to Good Tin Man Slash.
She sent me here.
So, hi, I guess this is my introduction and debut. I am a comment whore, please pander.
Title: Chasing
Author: tanarill
Pairing: Ambrose/Wyatt
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Graphic porn. And some language. And Cain being pointlessly wangsty, but he's Cain, it's what he does.
Disclaimer: I do not own Tin Man, nor do I make money from it.
Jeb was still alive. That was the important thing. The Witch had wanted immortality any way she could get it, up to and including sentencing the OZ to a long, slow death as first the plants, then the people starved. She could live-no, that wasn't right, she could exist without people-the heavens frozen forever in a moment of perfect twilight while time swung on, but it would not, could never match the feeling of teaching his son to carve. He hadn't been there to see Jeb grow up, but his son had managed it all the same, grown up strong enough to fight an endless, hopeless battle for what he knew to be true. That was real immortality.
But.
He hadn't been there to watch Jeb grow up, like the Queen hadn't seen DG grow up, and there was no going back to the way it was. Oddly enough, he found, it was Azkadellia who understood the best.
"I don't like who I was. But that is who I was," she'd said. "And people aren't going to remember the little princess; they're going to remember the Sorceress. Which they should. That's why Ambrose is so necessary, he makes it possible for people to forget magic."
Ambrose had invented guns, he remembered. Ambrose who could not have been much older than him, but he remembers having trained with bows and arrows while he was a child because guns hadn't been invented, and how the stun-darts that the first guns shot had dropped suspects and wild beasts without hurting them.
"Yes, but once he invents things, they don't go back in the box either," he'd replied.
She'd smiled, then. It had a lot of the Sorceress in it, but the needle-thin threat was not there. "No. They don't."
Glitch, who was Ambrose now, who'd slept for three days and opened his eyes and had been perfectly fine although he'd refused to go back to being an advisor, thanks, had learned too. He hadn't learned quite the same lesson, but spent most of his time somewhere else, stopping back in Central only when he needed a part he couldn't make or work around, and he was gone almost before he'd arrived. They hadn't spent much time together since the restoration anyway, too busy being different people, rebuilding the OZ, but Cain eventually noticed that Gli-Ambrose was avoiding Central City in general and him in specific. He berated himself that it had taken six months.
He asked DG first, figuring that if anyone would know what was wrong she would. But she didn't. All she had to offer was that maybe Central was a little painful for the man. He knew that; it was painful for him too, but he had to stay as long as his people needed him.
He asked Raw next, because Raw could taste souls. Raw gave him a long, long look, so long he wasn't even sure that Raw was going to respond, and then the Viewer said, "Not place for me to say."
He asked Jeb, and Jeb told him to ask Ambrose. Which, of course, he couldn't do because the man was never in the city.
"So? Go to him, then."
As it was the only sensible thing anyone had suggested yet, it was the advice he took, even though his conscience twinged guiltily at the thought of leaving his Tin Men. They could survive without him-had survived for years and years without him. And he was no good to them like this.
***
Finding Ambrose wasn't easy, because he was a single man but he blazed a swathe through the OZ. It was easy to tell where he'd been. Those were the places with the dams and canals and mills full of monstrous machinery and the farms that were really and truly prospering. This was most of the Central Plain, and the parts of the Eastern forests closest to the plain, but after that it became less predictable. Few places along the old road, but entire settlements hidden so deeply that some of them had simply dropped off the map when Azkadellia usurped the throne and were only now learning about her restoration. He seemed to be traveling cross-country, away from the main roads of any roads at all, completely at random, stopping and helping wherever he found people.
He didn't want to be found, that much was obvious from the start. A few times, when Cain had almost caught up, he did some kind of double-back and struck off on an entirely different heading, and it was weeks before he even so much as picked up the trail again. But he could live rough just as easily as Ambrose, and he had patience aplenty. So tracking him down was not easy; it wasn't the most difficult thing he'd ever done.
But it was almost anticlimactic when he did catch up, or rather, Ambrose caught him. He was cooking dinner, which had been a pair of rabbits, and it as dark enough that the little fire cast a bubble of light, and Ambrose simply walked out of the trees. "Cain," he said.
Cain wasn't quite sure what to say. Three months, and he didn't know what to say. So he motioned to the other side of the fire, and said nothing.
Ambrose moved and sat down, silent while Cain served the rabbits up, and while they ate, and then buried the bones. Cain wished he knew what to ask, but the only things he could think of were stupid and inconsequential. It was Ambrose who spoke first.
"Why are you following me?" it was Glitch's voice, but far too serious.
"Why are you running?" he responded.
"Ah." There was a period of relative quiet, the noises of the forest around them and the crackling fire loud. Then, "I couldn't stay in Central."
"Too many memories," nodded Cain. "But that doesn't explain why you visit DG, Raw, Azkadellia." Not me, he didn't say.
"I'm not allowed to visit my friends?" Ambrose twisted his words.
"I'm not your friend?" he twisted them right back.
"I don't know. Are you?"
There was something there, lurking under the words, dangerous. Cain had never been good at running from danger. He asked, "What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Ambrose, "that I don't even know you." He held his hand up against Cain's open mouth. "I remember you, but it's like looking through a kaleidoscope. The memories are all in fragments, and I'm still picking up the pieces."
There was another stretch of quiet. " . . . why are you running?"
Ambrose said nothing, but he banked the fire and unrolled his sleeper.
***
The next morning, Ambrose was gone when Cain woke up, and he suffered a moment of vertigo before he realized his pack and roll were still there and then, a little while later, Ambrose walked back. Shirtless, hair shiny and wet and no longer messy, and clean. "There's a stream over there," he motioned in the direction he'd come.
"If I leave, will you still be here when I come back?" asked Cain.
"You'd keep following me anyway," said Ambrose, which was probably as close to an answer he was going to get.
Ambrose was still there when he got back, anyway, although both of their packs were packed and he was obviously waiting to go.
"Where to?" asked Cain.
Ambrose shrugged.
***
He'd learned, somewhere, how to walk in the forest. Glitch had had the same grace, but watching Ambrose use it was breathtaking, in its way. Around noon, they stopped for lunch. Several times through the day, they simply changed the direction they'd been walking, never enough to double back but enough that Cain wondered who he was following. They pitched camp in late afternoon, and it was just too easy to fall into a routine they'd never had time to learn.
It went that way for a while. Sometime's, they'd find themselves on a hunter's track that led them back to a village. Ambrose would design them something and Cain would build it, and they'd go back to wandering. They didn't talk much, after a while. They found they didn't need to. It was oddly peaceful, and for the first time in a long time it felt like he was doing something for the OZ.
He liked the feeling.
It was so completely different, so bizarrely changed from any other life he'd ever lived-running terrified along the old road didn't count-that he didn't notice the feeling creeping up until one day he turned around and there it was, fully formed and waiting to pounce. He found himself watching Ambrose, sometimes, while he slept or bathed in a stream, or while he was sitting in camp at night fiddling with some new invention. He thought he caught Ambrose looking too, when he had his shirt off and was hauling wood or lumber in whatever village they'd stopped at, or when he was cleaning whatever animal had wandered into their snares. He couldn't be sure because when he looked up to the feeling of eyes on him Ambrose was absorbed in something else.
Things came to a head eventually, of course. They were cooking, or rather Cain was cooking and growling whenever Ambrose came anywhere near the stew because Ambrose could not cook, and so Ambrose was doing something with a little piece of wood an a knife and some string and then he started swearing.
Cain looked at him in alarm, but he said, "No, just nicked myself."
"Let me see," said Cain. Ambrose looked set to protest until Cain added, "Whitbrook," which was a town they'd spend two weeks in while Ambrose fought off a fever he'd gotten from a cut that was infected even though he'd insisted it was fine until he was half dying. Ambrose sighed and got up and came over. He really was right this time, though, it was barely deeper than a paper cut and was already clotting. Cain let go.
"What, you're not going to kiss and make it better?" teased Ambrose, but in a tone that was pure Glitch.
"Not funn-" he began.
But Ambrose put the finger to his lips. "Kiss," he demanded, eyes very bright and very dark together.
Cain did not. He sucked the finger inside his mouth, licking off the very tiny amount of blood still left, swirling his tongue around the finger until Ambrose gently pulled his hand back. Then he realized what he'd just done, and, horrified, began offering apologies.
Or tried to, at any rate. Ambrose stopped him with a glare and said, "Don't you dare." So Cain said nothing, gaping slightly and wondering, over the drum of his heart, how angry Ambrose was.
This lasted until Ambrose leaned in to him, close enough that their noses were nearly touching-Cain was sure Ambrose was about to spit on his face and walk away-and then he was being kissed. By Ambrose. Ambrose was kissing him. Ambrose was kissing him, and he realized that he should probably respond in some way so he did the only thing he could think of, which was to reach around and pull Ambrose closer and open his mouth. For a while, it was just tongue on tongue on teeth on lips on mouth, and they both pulled back, flushing, only with great reluctance.
"The stew is going to burn," remarked Ambrose.
It was just such an inappropriately Glitch thing to say that Cain laughed, which cleared out some of the tension. "How long?"
"A long time. Some of the memories from when I was Glitch . . . well. A long time. You?"
"I don't know," he replied honestly, stirring the stew. Ambrose didn't like that answer, he could tell, watching the way the inventor's entire body deflated. To counteract that, he added, "Stop that. I didn't say I didn't like it."
"You didn't say you did."
"Really? Because I thought kissing back-" began Cain heatedly.
"Why are you following me?" interrupted Ambrose.
Cain shut up, and turned back to the stew.
***
It wasn't awkward. It should have been, but it wasn't, not in the least. Now that it was out in the open, Ambrose didn't hide that he was watching Cain, and let his fingers linger a little too long when they accidentally touched. For some reason this didn't upset Cain. Instead, he found himself comforted by it. But Ambrose made it perfectly clear that he was waiting for Cain to make a decision, in the way he didn't press and the way he led the silent way through the forest. (They were both woodsmen now, through and through, and when occasionally they encountered a hunter on one of the forest runs he was generally startled by the way they melted out of the forest.) Cain wasn't sure what to do.
He liked Ambrose. Maybe too much, and that was the problem. He was honest enough to admit to himself that he was terrified. He wanted to confront it like a Tin Man, but this wasn't something that menacing words could fix. He wanted to run back to Central and assure himself that Jeb was alive and real, that he didn't fuck up every beautiful thing he touched. He wanted too much, so in the end he didn't do anything at all.
Ambrose waited patiently.
***
They kept wandering, heading further south, until it became impossible to run from the changing leaves and the cooler days as winter approached. Then they turned north, striking the Old Road and following it back toward Central. It was being repaired, grass pulled up from between the bricks and broken bricks replaced entirely. The days were short and cold, the nights long and clear. They stayed in inns and hostels when they could, and camped out on the few nights they could not. On the second such night, Ambrose settled down next to him, and to his questioning glance said only, "It's cold."
They were nearly on the Central plain the next time they got caught out without an inn. By now, pitching and breaking camps wasn't something they thought about, just did, and while they did Cain thought. He thought about dear, dead Adora. He thought about DG and Azkadellia and the witch. They ate in silence, and cleaned up in silence and built up the fire enough to ward off the chill and then, without really planning or thinking about it all, Cain said, "I'd like to try again."
Ambrose looked at him. "What?"
Cain swallowed, suddenly hyperaware of just how close they were. "I want to try again. With you."
"Oh," said Ambrose, then tackled him. There was really no other way to describe it, tackled him and attacked, kissing eyelids, cheeks, ears, neck, collarbone-anywhere he could get his mouth, really. Cain moaned under the onslaught, allowed himself to fall back and just feel, like he hadn't since they'd put him in that suit. He trusted. Ambrose continued his assault until Cain was breathless, and then continued some more. He stopped once Cain was rock-hard and every movement Ambrose made caused him to make this noise that was definitely not a whimper.
Cain growled.
"Last chance," said Ambrose above him.
"If you don't start again in the next ten seconds I'm going to ah!" This last was because Ambrose had just shifted, put a thigh between his legs and was doing his damned best to remove both of their clothing at once. They were wearing a lot of layers, which was only sensible but really really getting in the way at just this particular moment. Cain figured that, since Ambrose's genius brain was distracted with the issue of four layers each, he ought to help, and reached up to remove a jacket.
Ambrose dressed a lot like Glitch, or more probably, Glitch had dressed a lot like Ambrose, although the braid on Ambrose's clothing was never fraying and always done up exactly. He didn't wear that kind of clothing anymore, though. It was entirely impractical for walking around in forests, and had been replaced by sturdier leather clothing, much like Cain's own. The leather coat came off easily, Ambrose shrugging out it while Cain tugged, but the vest had too many buttons for his clumsy hands to deal with. Especially since Ambrose had gotten his vest unbuttoned and was now exploring under his shirt.
"Stop . . . that," panted Cain. Ambrose froze, and Cain took the opportunity to undo two of the buttons on his vest. Ambrose apparently understood, because he removed his hands-Cain whined a little-and started unbuttoning as well. Once they'd successfully removed the thing, Ambrose replaced his hands and all was well with the world.
Or, well, not everything. They were both wearing too many pants, which was to say, any at all. Ambrose didn't seem to mind, fingers unerringly seeking sensitive spots, while Cain's breathing went harsh and ragged. After Ambrose seemed to have mapped his skin to his satisfaction, he braced himself, a hand to either side of his head, and leaned down to kiss him again.
It was hot and wild and unrestrained, uncareful, everything the first kiss had wanted to be. Cain wrapped his arms around Ambrose, holding him close, and then cupped his butt, forcing them to grind together. That was right. This was right. Why had he been afraid?
The kiss ended, but Ambrose only pulled back a little, dark eyes frighteningly intense, telling him without words everything he needed to know. When he pulled back further, wriggling as he removed first his own pants and then, so slow as to be teasing, Cain's, Cain let him. They'd been dancing around each other for weeks, living with each other for months, they didn't need words anymore. And then Ambrose was back, mouth hot against his, body burning against his, moving and writhing with him.
It was like a lightning bolt when Ambrose took the two of them in hand together, though. A lighting bolt that fizzled out along his nerves, blue-white and blinding. "Do you mind?" whispered Ambrose in his ear, and it took him a moment to realize that Ambrose had moved his hand, was now circling his sphincter, and maybe he would have minded years ago, before he knew what real emotion is. Now he just shook his head and Ambrose lazily reached over to his discarded overcoat, found the small bottle he was looking for.
Cain stared, incredulous. "And you said I have boy scout syndrome . . . "
"I learned from the best," smirked Ambrose, and then there was no time to think, a slick finger was inside him and, no, it didn't hurt but it shocked all the same, and he was still for the time it took Ambrose to brace and lean down and kiss him. Then he didn't have to be still, all the way through the preparations, especially that moment when Ambrose touched something inside that set of fireworks. He closed his eyes to see them better.
It hurt when Ambrose entered him. There was no way to deny it. But there is hurt and there is hurt, and after a moment this faded to a background ache and Ambrose asked, "Okay?" and he nodded and Ambrose moved. That was all, that was it. He reached up with legs and arms and help Ambrose tight, met him thrust for thrust, his entire world narrowed to the two of them together, and the soft little words Ambrose said, "Mine" and "please" and "Cain."
He felt whole.
Ambrose came first, but he barely paused, didn't stop, touched him and stroked him until he came too, arching nearly silently.
Afterward, Ambrose arranged him like an overlarge plush toy, curled against him, pet his short hair until he fell asleep, safe and warm and loved.
***
When he woke up, which he did first, it took him a moment to remember what had happened; that Ambrose was his, now. He opened his eyes to find that enough snow covered everything to make the world hard and diamond-dazzling. He was very thankful that one of them had had the presence of mind-so it was probably Ambrose-to cover them in oilcloth. He threw it off, hissing a little at the cold. Behind him, he felt more than heard Ambrose wake up.
"Good morning, sweetheart," he greeted.
Ambrose said, "Oh," in a tone different enough that Cain turned to look askance of him.
"It's just, that's the first time you called me sweetheart since-" Since he'd been Ambrose, not Glitch. How had he not known? And how, how, could he have thought that they weren't the same spontaneous, inventive, wonderful, madcap genius?
"I guess I'm going to have to fix that, aren't I, sweetheart?"
>.>
[sidles out]
She sent me here.
So, hi, I guess this is my introduction and debut. I am a comment whore, please pander.
Title: Chasing
Author: tanarill
Pairing: Ambrose/Wyatt
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Graphic porn. And some language. And Cain being pointlessly wangsty, but he's Cain, it's what he does.
Disclaimer: I do not own Tin Man, nor do I make money from it.
Jeb was still alive. That was the important thing. The Witch had wanted immortality any way she could get it, up to and including sentencing the OZ to a long, slow death as first the plants, then the people starved. She could live-no, that wasn't right, she could exist without people-the heavens frozen forever in a moment of perfect twilight while time swung on, but it would not, could never match the feeling of teaching his son to carve. He hadn't been there to see Jeb grow up, but his son had managed it all the same, grown up strong enough to fight an endless, hopeless battle for what he knew to be true. That was real immortality.
But.
He hadn't been there to watch Jeb grow up, like the Queen hadn't seen DG grow up, and there was no going back to the way it was. Oddly enough, he found, it was Azkadellia who understood the best.
"I don't like who I was. But that is who I was," she'd said. "And people aren't going to remember the little princess; they're going to remember the Sorceress. Which they should. That's why Ambrose is so necessary, he makes it possible for people to forget magic."
Ambrose had invented guns, he remembered. Ambrose who could not have been much older than him, but he remembers having trained with bows and arrows while he was a child because guns hadn't been invented, and how the stun-darts that the first guns shot had dropped suspects and wild beasts without hurting them.
"Yes, but once he invents things, they don't go back in the box either," he'd replied.
She'd smiled, then. It had a lot of the Sorceress in it, but the needle-thin threat was not there. "No. They don't."
Glitch, who was Ambrose now, who'd slept for three days and opened his eyes and had been perfectly fine although he'd refused to go back to being an advisor, thanks, had learned too. He hadn't learned quite the same lesson, but spent most of his time somewhere else, stopping back in Central only when he needed a part he couldn't make or work around, and he was gone almost before he'd arrived. They hadn't spent much time together since the restoration anyway, too busy being different people, rebuilding the OZ, but Cain eventually noticed that Gli-Ambrose was avoiding Central City in general and him in specific. He berated himself that it had taken six months.
He asked DG first, figuring that if anyone would know what was wrong she would. But she didn't. All she had to offer was that maybe Central was a little painful for the man. He knew that; it was painful for him too, but he had to stay as long as his people needed him.
He asked Raw next, because Raw could taste souls. Raw gave him a long, long look, so long he wasn't even sure that Raw was going to respond, and then the Viewer said, "Not place for me to say."
He asked Jeb, and Jeb told him to ask Ambrose. Which, of course, he couldn't do because the man was never in the city.
"So? Go to him, then."
As it was the only sensible thing anyone had suggested yet, it was the advice he took, even though his conscience twinged guiltily at the thought of leaving his Tin Men. They could survive without him-had survived for years and years without him. And he was no good to them like this.
***
Finding Ambrose wasn't easy, because he was a single man but he blazed a swathe through the OZ. It was easy to tell where he'd been. Those were the places with the dams and canals and mills full of monstrous machinery and the farms that were really and truly prospering. This was most of the Central Plain, and the parts of the Eastern forests closest to the plain, but after that it became less predictable. Few places along the old road, but entire settlements hidden so deeply that some of them had simply dropped off the map when Azkadellia usurped the throne and were only now learning about her restoration. He seemed to be traveling cross-country, away from the main roads of any roads at all, completely at random, stopping and helping wherever he found people.
He didn't want to be found, that much was obvious from the start. A few times, when Cain had almost caught up, he did some kind of double-back and struck off on an entirely different heading, and it was weeks before he even so much as picked up the trail again. But he could live rough just as easily as Ambrose, and he had patience aplenty. So tracking him down was not easy; it wasn't the most difficult thing he'd ever done.
But it was almost anticlimactic when he did catch up, or rather, Ambrose caught him. He was cooking dinner, which had been a pair of rabbits, and it as dark enough that the little fire cast a bubble of light, and Ambrose simply walked out of the trees. "Cain," he said.
Cain wasn't quite sure what to say. Three months, and he didn't know what to say. So he motioned to the other side of the fire, and said nothing.
Ambrose moved and sat down, silent while Cain served the rabbits up, and while they ate, and then buried the bones. Cain wished he knew what to ask, but the only things he could think of were stupid and inconsequential. It was Ambrose who spoke first.
"Why are you following me?" it was Glitch's voice, but far too serious.
"Why are you running?" he responded.
"Ah." There was a period of relative quiet, the noises of the forest around them and the crackling fire loud. Then, "I couldn't stay in Central."
"Too many memories," nodded Cain. "But that doesn't explain why you visit DG, Raw, Azkadellia." Not me, he didn't say.
"I'm not allowed to visit my friends?" Ambrose twisted his words.
"I'm not your friend?" he twisted them right back.
"I don't know. Are you?"
There was something there, lurking under the words, dangerous. Cain had never been good at running from danger. He asked, "What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Ambrose, "that I don't even know you." He held his hand up against Cain's open mouth. "I remember you, but it's like looking through a kaleidoscope. The memories are all in fragments, and I'm still picking up the pieces."
There was another stretch of quiet. " . . . why are you running?"
Ambrose said nothing, but he banked the fire and unrolled his sleeper.
***
The next morning, Ambrose was gone when Cain woke up, and he suffered a moment of vertigo before he realized his pack and roll were still there and then, a little while later, Ambrose walked back. Shirtless, hair shiny and wet and no longer messy, and clean. "There's a stream over there," he motioned in the direction he'd come.
"If I leave, will you still be here when I come back?" asked Cain.
"You'd keep following me anyway," said Ambrose, which was probably as close to an answer he was going to get.
Ambrose was still there when he got back, anyway, although both of their packs were packed and he was obviously waiting to go.
"Where to?" asked Cain.
Ambrose shrugged.
***
He'd learned, somewhere, how to walk in the forest. Glitch had had the same grace, but watching Ambrose use it was breathtaking, in its way. Around noon, they stopped for lunch. Several times through the day, they simply changed the direction they'd been walking, never enough to double back but enough that Cain wondered who he was following. They pitched camp in late afternoon, and it was just too easy to fall into a routine they'd never had time to learn.
It went that way for a while. Sometime's, they'd find themselves on a hunter's track that led them back to a village. Ambrose would design them something and Cain would build it, and they'd go back to wandering. They didn't talk much, after a while. They found they didn't need to. It was oddly peaceful, and for the first time in a long time it felt like he was doing something for the OZ.
He liked the feeling.
It was so completely different, so bizarrely changed from any other life he'd ever lived-running terrified along the old road didn't count-that he didn't notice the feeling creeping up until one day he turned around and there it was, fully formed and waiting to pounce. He found himself watching Ambrose, sometimes, while he slept or bathed in a stream, or while he was sitting in camp at night fiddling with some new invention. He thought he caught Ambrose looking too, when he had his shirt off and was hauling wood or lumber in whatever village they'd stopped at, or when he was cleaning whatever animal had wandered into their snares. He couldn't be sure because when he looked up to the feeling of eyes on him Ambrose was absorbed in something else.
Things came to a head eventually, of course. They were cooking, or rather Cain was cooking and growling whenever Ambrose came anywhere near the stew because Ambrose could not cook, and so Ambrose was doing something with a little piece of wood an a knife and some string and then he started swearing.
Cain looked at him in alarm, but he said, "No, just nicked myself."
"Let me see," said Cain. Ambrose looked set to protest until Cain added, "Whitbrook," which was a town they'd spend two weeks in while Ambrose fought off a fever he'd gotten from a cut that was infected even though he'd insisted it was fine until he was half dying. Ambrose sighed and got up and came over. He really was right this time, though, it was barely deeper than a paper cut and was already clotting. Cain let go.
"What, you're not going to kiss and make it better?" teased Ambrose, but in a tone that was pure Glitch.
"Not funn-" he began.
But Ambrose put the finger to his lips. "Kiss," he demanded, eyes very bright and very dark together.
Cain did not. He sucked the finger inside his mouth, licking off the very tiny amount of blood still left, swirling his tongue around the finger until Ambrose gently pulled his hand back. Then he realized what he'd just done, and, horrified, began offering apologies.
Or tried to, at any rate. Ambrose stopped him with a glare and said, "Don't you dare." So Cain said nothing, gaping slightly and wondering, over the drum of his heart, how angry Ambrose was.
This lasted until Ambrose leaned in to him, close enough that their noses were nearly touching-Cain was sure Ambrose was about to spit on his face and walk away-and then he was being kissed. By Ambrose. Ambrose was kissing him. Ambrose was kissing him, and he realized that he should probably respond in some way so he did the only thing he could think of, which was to reach around and pull Ambrose closer and open his mouth. For a while, it was just tongue on tongue on teeth on lips on mouth, and they both pulled back, flushing, only with great reluctance.
"The stew is going to burn," remarked Ambrose.
It was just such an inappropriately Glitch thing to say that Cain laughed, which cleared out some of the tension. "How long?"
"A long time. Some of the memories from when I was Glitch . . . well. A long time. You?"
"I don't know," he replied honestly, stirring the stew. Ambrose didn't like that answer, he could tell, watching the way the inventor's entire body deflated. To counteract that, he added, "Stop that. I didn't say I didn't like it."
"You didn't say you did."
"Really? Because I thought kissing back-" began Cain heatedly.
"Why are you following me?" interrupted Ambrose.
Cain shut up, and turned back to the stew.
***
It wasn't awkward. It should have been, but it wasn't, not in the least. Now that it was out in the open, Ambrose didn't hide that he was watching Cain, and let his fingers linger a little too long when they accidentally touched. For some reason this didn't upset Cain. Instead, he found himself comforted by it. But Ambrose made it perfectly clear that he was waiting for Cain to make a decision, in the way he didn't press and the way he led the silent way through the forest. (They were both woodsmen now, through and through, and when occasionally they encountered a hunter on one of the forest runs he was generally startled by the way they melted out of the forest.) Cain wasn't sure what to do.
He liked Ambrose. Maybe too much, and that was the problem. He was honest enough to admit to himself that he was terrified. He wanted to confront it like a Tin Man, but this wasn't something that menacing words could fix. He wanted to run back to Central and assure himself that Jeb was alive and real, that he didn't fuck up every beautiful thing he touched. He wanted too much, so in the end he didn't do anything at all.
Ambrose waited patiently.
***
They kept wandering, heading further south, until it became impossible to run from the changing leaves and the cooler days as winter approached. Then they turned north, striking the Old Road and following it back toward Central. It was being repaired, grass pulled up from between the bricks and broken bricks replaced entirely. The days were short and cold, the nights long and clear. They stayed in inns and hostels when they could, and camped out on the few nights they could not. On the second such night, Ambrose settled down next to him, and to his questioning glance said only, "It's cold."
They were nearly on the Central plain the next time they got caught out without an inn. By now, pitching and breaking camps wasn't something they thought about, just did, and while they did Cain thought. He thought about dear, dead Adora. He thought about DG and Azkadellia and the witch. They ate in silence, and cleaned up in silence and built up the fire enough to ward off the chill and then, without really planning or thinking about it all, Cain said, "I'd like to try again."
Ambrose looked at him. "What?"
Cain swallowed, suddenly hyperaware of just how close they were. "I want to try again. With you."
"Oh," said Ambrose, then tackled him. There was really no other way to describe it, tackled him and attacked, kissing eyelids, cheeks, ears, neck, collarbone-anywhere he could get his mouth, really. Cain moaned under the onslaught, allowed himself to fall back and just feel, like he hadn't since they'd put him in that suit. He trusted. Ambrose continued his assault until Cain was breathless, and then continued some more. He stopped once Cain was rock-hard and every movement Ambrose made caused him to make this noise that was definitely not a whimper.
Cain growled.
"Last chance," said Ambrose above him.
"If you don't start again in the next ten seconds I'm going to ah!" This last was because Ambrose had just shifted, put a thigh between his legs and was doing his damned best to remove both of their clothing at once. They were wearing a lot of layers, which was only sensible but really really getting in the way at just this particular moment. Cain figured that, since Ambrose's genius brain was distracted with the issue of four layers each, he ought to help, and reached up to remove a jacket.
Ambrose dressed a lot like Glitch, or more probably, Glitch had dressed a lot like Ambrose, although the braid on Ambrose's clothing was never fraying and always done up exactly. He didn't wear that kind of clothing anymore, though. It was entirely impractical for walking around in forests, and had been replaced by sturdier leather clothing, much like Cain's own. The leather coat came off easily, Ambrose shrugging out it while Cain tugged, but the vest had too many buttons for his clumsy hands to deal with. Especially since Ambrose had gotten his vest unbuttoned and was now exploring under his shirt.
"Stop . . . that," panted Cain. Ambrose froze, and Cain took the opportunity to undo two of the buttons on his vest. Ambrose apparently understood, because he removed his hands-Cain whined a little-and started unbuttoning as well. Once they'd successfully removed the thing, Ambrose replaced his hands and all was well with the world.
Or, well, not everything. They were both wearing too many pants, which was to say, any at all. Ambrose didn't seem to mind, fingers unerringly seeking sensitive spots, while Cain's breathing went harsh and ragged. After Ambrose seemed to have mapped his skin to his satisfaction, he braced himself, a hand to either side of his head, and leaned down to kiss him again.
It was hot and wild and unrestrained, uncareful, everything the first kiss had wanted to be. Cain wrapped his arms around Ambrose, holding him close, and then cupped his butt, forcing them to grind together. That was right. This was right. Why had he been afraid?
The kiss ended, but Ambrose only pulled back a little, dark eyes frighteningly intense, telling him without words everything he needed to know. When he pulled back further, wriggling as he removed first his own pants and then, so slow as to be teasing, Cain's, Cain let him. They'd been dancing around each other for weeks, living with each other for months, they didn't need words anymore. And then Ambrose was back, mouth hot against his, body burning against his, moving and writhing with him.
It was like a lightning bolt when Ambrose took the two of them in hand together, though. A lighting bolt that fizzled out along his nerves, blue-white and blinding. "Do you mind?" whispered Ambrose in his ear, and it took him a moment to realize that Ambrose had moved his hand, was now circling his sphincter, and maybe he would have minded years ago, before he knew what real emotion is. Now he just shook his head and Ambrose lazily reached over to his discarded overcoat, found the small bottle he was looking for.
Cain stared, incredulous. "And you said I have boy scout syndrome . . . "
"I learned from the best," smirked Ambrose, and then there was no time to think, a slick finger was inside him and, no, it didn't hurt but it shocked all the same, and he was still for the time it took Ambrose to brace and lean down and kiss him. Then he didn't have to be still, all the way through the preparations, especially that moment when Ambrose touched something inside that set of fireworks. He closed his eyes to see them better.
It hurt when Ambrose entered him. There was no way to deny it. But there is hurt and there is hurt, and after a moment this faded to a background ache and Ambrose asked, "Okay?" and he nodded and Ambrose moved. That was all, that was it. He reached up with legs and arms and help Ambrose tight, met him thrust for thrust, his entire world narrowed to the two of them together, and the soft little words Ambrose said, "Mine" and "please" and "Cain."
He felt whole.
Ambrose came first, but he barely paused, didn't stop, touched him and stroked him until he came too, arching nearly silently.
Afterward, Ambrose arranged him like an overlarge plush toy, curled against him, pet his short hair until he fell asleep, safe and warm and loved.
***
When he woke up, which he did first, it took him a moment to remember what had happened; that Ambrose was his, now. He opened his eyes to find that enough snow covered everything to make the world hard and diamond-dazzling. He was very thankful that one of them had had the presence of mind-so it was probably Ambrose-to cover them in oilcloth. He threw it off, hissing a little at the cold. Behind him, he felt more than heard Ambrose wake up.
"Good morning, sweetheart," he greeted.
Ambrose said, "Oh," in a tone different enough that Cain turned to look askance of him.
"It's just, that's the first time you called me sweetheart since-" Since he'd been Ambrose, not Glitch. How had he not known? And how, how, could he have thought that they weren't the same spontaneous, inventive, wonderful, madcap genius?
"I guess I'm going to have to fix that, aren't I, sweetheart?"
>.>
[sidles out]