[December 24th] The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring
R
Author : weatherfront | Artist : kiwimangoodness
The cold is a bone-chill, shaking him from the inside out. His teeth ache for the chattering, his feet clumsy as tree stumps. But the towering doors of the castle creak closed behind him, stray icicles shatter on the floor, and god-- he's almost there.
Eames drags himself through the barren silence of the main hall, past a fox poised to jump, a deer frozen in flight. The age-old frost turns them silver in the thin winter sun.
For a frigid century their land has known no summer, no warmth. The animals and villagers all spoke of Arthur, who hid the spring away in his citadel of ice, but no one before Eames has ever managed to reach it.
He expects a dark mage, a terrible winter king on his throne. But the spiraling stairs lead him to the top of a tower, and the room opens onto a young man, suspended in the tendrils of ice that hold him in place. Beautiful as a butterfly in a tangle of gossamer.
Transfixed by the precarious balance of it, Eames reaches out and ghosts the pad of his thumb across Arthur's lips, over the layer of frost. A sudden streak of heat shoots through him, the frost melting away beneath his touch, and Eames jerks back in alarm.
"But aren't you Arthur?" he asks. "Didn't you steal the spring?"
He puts his fingers to Arthur's lashes, and the ice caught between them turns to a dampness like dew. Slowly Arthur's eyes open, dark and warm as fresh earth, and Eames finds himself held in them and doesn't know what to think.
Arthur parts his lips, makes a sound like whispering wind, the voice still frozen in his throat. Eames leans into him, a tentative press of his mouth against Arthur's. He runs his knuckles across Arthur's cheeks, trailing water behind him, tracing the pale curve of Arthur's ear.
Eames touches the tip of his tongue to Arthur's, and Arthur sighs into his mouth, coming alive against him to the green taste of wildflowers. The spiderweb of ice drips away to nothing, and Arthur brings his hands to thread through Eames's hair, brittle at first, then insistent as roots reaching for the rain.
"The spring," says Arthur, his laugh like a sob, "I've been looking for it all my life."
God, but the fire between them is what makes the seasons turn. Wrapped in the heat of Arthur's body, Eames hears the bright crack of the lake thawing, the distant scent of leaves and berries. Eames moves in him and the flush spreads like a stain across Arthur's skin, like the grass overtaking the meadows.
Arthur gasps and twines his arms around Eames's neck, vines of ivy curling across the castle walls, tumbling into the stone window. The sun slants in, hot as liquid gold, and the air is sweet with birdsong for the first time in a hundred years.
"It's here," says Eames, and Arthur nods into his shoulder.
