Yet More Crossposting
Because I am faily on a regular basis, I legit forgot to post to my own journal the thing I had been agonising over for ages. Namely, part 4 of my Swordspoint "First Night" series, the Highcombe drabble. Yet more Crossposting! Yay!
Richard receives no warning. An enormous carriage thunders up to his front door in the middle of the afternoon on a cold, bright day. He snatches up the sword he just finished polishing, but a key turns in the lock before he can cross the room and Alec’s voice comes, “Richard.”
They collide without being conscious of having moved; the only things Richard is truly aware of are Alec’s breathless chanting, “Oh God, god, god, god,” and the red heat of his neck through Richard’s eyelids. His pushes his hands under a stiff velvet jacket, a waistcoat with scratching embroidery and a shirt edged by thick lace. Under it all is more heat. He feels the jutting ribs, and grips them hard enough to bruise.
Alec clutches his hair, pulling him up to assault his mouth. When he draws back to gasp for breath, Richard can see his edges, his hair in the flat sunlight and a maroon coat, and it feels like something opens. He is merely obeying an order that comes from them both, and not fifteen minutes later they lie sweating against each other on his narrow bed, catching their breath. Slowly, they soften their clutches, and inch into a position strange because of its familiarity: their legs entwined, Richard’s hand in Alec’s hair, Alec’s on his arm.
After a while they allow the slightest of movements: fingertips running over the knots of a spine; a palm flattened against a shoulder; a nose pressed under a collarbone. But they do not kiss, and they do not speak, because it feels dangerous to force four months’ worth into the time they have, and dangerous, too, to consider how long that might be. It grows dark, and colder. They manage to slip under the covers without looking at each other, and there they curl together properly, as close as possible and perfectly still for hours. Richard feels Alec’s eyelashes brush his forehead when he eventually closes his eyes, and he can always tell when his lover is really asleep.
Richard doesn’t wake up once in the night, which is unusual for him, now. But in the morning, after the time it takes him to remember sleepily that Alec is here, and then, terribly, to realise that Alec has already gone again, he throws himself in to practising so hard that by midday he has fallen back into bed to doze fitfully, the scent of his sweat covering Alec’s, at least until he is surprised again.