Original: "Taste like Tea." Slash.
Summary: Brumm has a perfect record in matchmaking. Until Lord Jagga comes along and rejects not one, but six, of his matches.
Warning: one or two brief nsfw references.
It didn't matter that Brumm was beyond all sense in lust with his latest client, the Lord Jagga of Braasum. It didn't matter that so often his body was good at convincing him other than what he plainly knew, that somehow Jagga was equally so with him. That Jagga came far too often and dressed far too put up for the occasion, that he turned his city accent far too rough, that he smelled far too good, that he looked far too much and far too hard. That whereupon he had first described his ideal mate, Brumm could have counted the entire list off in himself.
That all Brumm’s body might have said, and every moment it had a hunger to do so. But even were it right, it didn't matter.
It didn't matter because right then, Brumm was too angry for any other thought. And Jagga was the root of it. "You're ruining my reputation. Do you realize that?"
"Because I haven’t fallen for the women you've set me up with?" Jagga just smiled, ever full of jokes and patronizing, as though he took nothing and no one serious. As though he were a god among men, even, with all the answers and no care to share. "One client should hardly dent a lifetime's respect of perfect matchmaking success."
"No, it is precisely because you have not fallen for the half dozen women I've set you up with. Six! That's six matches ruined, Jagga! People like to judge from the present, not the past. And you are a lord in the public eye." He watched Jagga take a lazy sip of tea, then another, with nothing to say for himself.
"People have begun to think I have no talent for this anymore. They want to cancel their consultations. They want to take their business elsewhere. They want to gossip. If I do not match you soon, I'll be done for good. What was wrong with those women? What truly was wrong with them? Tell me so that I might avoid the same mistakes this next time!"
"Maybe you have lost your touch."
Brumm felt like kicking his chair back, turning over his desk into Jagga's lap. No one had ever said such a thing to him, not even his gran, who was most strict about the whole business. Not even she should think to jinx him. "Excuse me?"
"I said, maybe you have lost your touch. Do you want me to say it a third time? Have you trouble swallowing it?" Jagga smiled again, this time into his tea, taking another toying sip.
The back of Brumm's neck caught fire. He ripped his fingers against his slacks, to keep from any foolishness. But his tongue could not be harnessed. "I'll pretend that you didn't say that, you spoiled, arrogant brat. I should have turned you away. It is only luck that you are too high born for me to. No, no, I should have passed you on to my mother. She's so aged, she would not think twice to slap some sense into you."
"Then, you ought to pass me now. Maybe she would better realize my tastes. You seem to overlook them, quite honestly."
"I have not overlooked a thing! I have found all manner of woman to suit your tastes! Six perfect women for you! Granted, yes, they did not have all of your requirements, I admit to that, but who could? I have tried my best."
Jagga took another sip of tea, drained the cup, made Brumm flinch watching the selfish bob of his throat. He laid the cup back on the saucer next to Brumm's, then stood, absent hand petting the scabbard of his swordpiece.
"This is not your best. I told you what I wanted. You have not provided. See to it your mother is free next I come to town."
Brumm waited until he'd heard Jagga's procession set off, before he let out a spiteful groan and picked up the empty cup. "Fool."
It was absurd, he knew, but he couldn't help himself stubbornly pushing the cup rim to his mouth to taste Jagga lingering there, swiping his finger along the bottom for the last drop. Arrogance and insult be damned.
That was the end of that.
*
It was not long before Brumm heard his mother say she'd found the perfect match for Jagga: the daughter of a wealthy farmer, who was not overly sweet or sharp and had the patience and hardworking bones of living on a farm with all her twenty and some family. Brumm wished her the best of luck and hoped for the worst, though he said not the latter aloud.
Far into the night the two were to be formally introduced, he was dozing in front of his fire when he was jolted awake by knocking on the door. For a moment he only mistook it for the violent downpour hitting the walls, but then it came again, and again in the same place, purposeful and hearty.
He was slow to answer, slowed even more by the face of Jagga, cut to peaks and shadows by a hood and drenched, wanting to be let in.
Brumm gave him a sorry bow and stepped aside.
Jagga came in, but instead of putting a few paces between them, he only just hung next to Brumm, like he might fall on him at any moment. His soaked clothes and hair brought in the cold with him, and Brumm almost wanted to turn him to the fire, but he couldn't think to move.
Jagga looked somehow incredibly offended. Brumm could not put a point on why. This was the night to meet his perfect destiny, and yet here he stood instead.
There were no awkward greetings. Just, "Your mother must not know you at all."
"What?" Brumm asked, confused. He reached around him to shut the door, catching how Jagga smelled overpoweringly of the rain and dirt, his familiar cologne washed off. "What has that to do with anything?"
He heard Jagga take a deep breath, though it seemed to rattle in his chest, undoing his voice. "I-- I told her everything...everything I wanted, just as I told you." He slid his hood off, sending water drops racing down his cheeks and to the tips of his hair. "I thought she might see it better than you. From the outside."
"Are you fevered, Jagga? Rather, more likely have you gone mad? You're speaking babble."
"Get the list. Get it, you still have it?"
Brumm nodded and went to his stacks of record books, where his hands were clumsy flipping through the newest until he was on Jagga's page, torn out then laid back. At some point, he could hardly remember whether it was the first night or last night, he had written a small me aside every one of them, for his own masochism.
"Read it out to me."
"You know the list already, Jagga."
"Fine, then." Jagga stumbled over to Brumm's desk and snatched the page from him so fast that it ripped between them, Jagga stealing back the whole of it and Brumm only left a corner. “I shall read it out.”
"No, no, Jagga, give it--"
"Me?" Jagga looked up at him. "You wrote ‘me’ next to all of them."
"It's not as it seems, Jagga, it's. Me is a new lady in town, you see. M and e are her initials. Mava eh, eh, Ekara. M, e, see? She-- oh. ...To hell with it." He scoffed, turning his eyes to the desk. "Now is your chance to make a quick escape."
Jagga just waved him off and took a seat, snapping up Brumm's quill pen and dabbing it to his tongue. "What else...?" He ran the feather back and forth along his jaw, ignorant of Brute staring at him in bewilderment.
"What are you doing?" Brumm swept his coattails up and took a seat too, pulling out his own scrap of paper and runt stub of charcoal. "Are you adding more to the list? How, there are already so many things. How can you think of any more? You have included everything from foot size to fighting spirit. There is no more."
"Must enjoy kissing," Jagga said as he wrote, the finesse of his lines so offensively perfect under Brumm's scrawl. He looked up at Brumm, just stared at him for a moment, lips pursed.
Brumm felt the nerves prickle on his neck. They had not gone over that aspect, no. "What?"
"...Do you like to be kissed, Brumm?"
On the rare occasion that he had been or had instigated it, yes, very much. On the occasion now that he had Jagga before him, wet as a fish and licking at the water drops that kept sliding into the corners of his mouth, Brumm could think of nothing else but that teacup and how he should have the real thing instead. "--Yes."
Me, Jagga added beside it. "What about caresses?"
"What about what? What is the meaning of this?"
Jagga wrote Must like all manner of caress, and then swallowed Brumm with his eyes again. "Holding hands? Hugging? Having your hair combed? Someone--nosing against your neck for kisses? The...steal of fingers under your clothes in public?"
The charcoal went to pieces in Brumm's palm.
He could see them all as easily as Jagga said them, and right up against his skin, so that his clothes were suddenly chaffing and unbearable, his own fingers edging under the hem of his shirt to imitate. It felt like there were bugs buzzing at him, for the way his tiny hairs were standing on end all over. "They are, they are all fine. Fine. What are you doing?"
Jagga dutifully wrote the me. "And bedding?"
"Bedding?" he barked.
"Do you enjoy bedding men?"
Rather than speak, Brumm focused in on the swell of ink beading the tip of the quill, heat in his cheeks. He couldn't force the words or the courage. "I--" Was he still asleep? "I have not yet done so to know."
"Do you think you could enjoy it with the right one?" Jagga asked after a pause, wiping the quill tip against his cuff and pressing it back to his tongue to draw the ink gently.
Brumm ducked his head down to fend off the sense of being dropped, the tug of his cock in ghost fingers. "What are you doing?" he said again, out of voice, near a moan of pain or some other torture altogether.
"Yes?" Jagga prodded, and for the moment he had that laugh back, that godly patronizing.
Brumm heard the me, practically felt the scratch of it into his back. He yanked at his collar for release.
And then Jagga was writing something more. Something that he did not read or ask aloud, something secret.
Brumm lifted his head in time for Jagga to pass the paper over to him, push it right up under his nose. “I am coming onto you, fool. That’s what I'm doing.”
At the very bottom, written larger than all the other points, were the words
Must be Brumm Ikoba
He barely had the quill from Jagga's hand to write the me, before Jagga stood and was rounding the desk for him.
[also on personal lj, with IP logging off/anon commenting on. and a small nsfw bit]
Warning: one or two brief nsfw references.
It didn't matter that Brumm was beyond all sense in lust with his latest client, the Lord Jagga of Braasum. It didn't matter that so often his body was good at convincing him other than what he plainly knew, that somehow Jagga was equally so with him. That Jagga came far too often and dressed far too put up for the occasion, that he turned his city accent far too rough, that he smelled far too good, that he looked far too much and far too hard. That whereupon he had first described his ideal mate, Brumm could have counted the entire list off in himself.
That all Brumm’s body might have said, and every moment it had a hunger to do so. But even were it right, it didn't matter.
It didn't matter because right then, Brumm was too angry for any other thought. And Jagga was the root of it. "You're ruining my reputation. Do you realize that?"
"Because I haven’t fallen for the women you've set me up with?" Jagga just smiled, ever full of jokes and patronizing, as though he took nothing and no one serious. As though he were a god among men, even, with all the answers and no care to share. "One client should hardly dent a lifetime's respect of perfect matchmaking success."
"No, it is precisely because you have not fallen for the half dozen women I've set you up with. Six! That's six matches ruined, Jagga! People like to judge from the present, not the past. And you are a lord in the public eye." He watched Jagga take a lazy sip of tea, then another, with nothing to say for himself.
"People have begun to think I have no talent for this anymore. They want to cancel their consultations. They want to take their business elsewhere. They want to gossip. If I do not match you soon, I'll be done for good. What was wrong with those women? What truly was wrong with them? Tell me so that I might avoid the same mistakes this next time!"
"Maybe you have lost your touch."
Brumm felt like kicking his chair back, turning over his desk into Jagga's lap. No one had ever said such a thing to him, not even his gran, who was most strict about the whole business. Not even she should think to jinx him. "Excuse me?"
"I said, maybe you have lost your touch. Do you want me to say it a third time? Have you trouble swallowing it?" Jagga smiled again, this time into his tea, taking another toying sip.
The back of Brumm's neck caught fire. He ripped his fingers against his slacks, to keep from any foolishness. But his tongue could not be harnessed. "I'll pretend that you didn't say that, you spoiled, arrogant brat. I should have turned you away. It is only luck that you are too high born for me to. No, no, I should have passed you on to my mother. She's so aged, she would not think twice to slap some sense into you."
"Then, you ought to pass me now. Maybe she would better realize my tastes. You seem to overlook them, quite honestly."
"I have not overlooked a thing! I have found all manner of woman to suit your tastes! Six perfect women for you! Granted, yes, they did not have all of your requirements, I admit to that, but who could? I have tried my best."
Jagga took another sip of tea, drained the cup, made Brumm flinch watching the selfish bob of his throat. He laid the cup back on the saucer next to Brumm's, then stood, absent hand petting the scabbard of his swordpiece.
"This is not your best. I told you what I wanted. You have not provided. See to it your mother is free next I come to town."
Brumm waited until he'd heard Jagga's procession set off, before he let out a spiteful groan and picked up the empty cup. "Fool."
It was absurd, he knew, but he couldn't help himself stubbornly pushing the cup rim to his mouth to taste Jagga lingering there, swiping his finger along the bottom for the last drop. Arrogance and insult be damned.
That was the end of that.
*
It was not long before Brumm heard his mother say she'd found the perfect match for Jagga: the daughter of a wealthy farmer, who was not overly sweet or sharp and had the patience and hardworking bones of living on a farm with all her twenty and some family. Brumm wished her the best of luck and hoped for the worst, though he said not the latter aloud.
Far into the night the two were to be formally introduced, he was dozing in front of his fire when he was jolted awake by knocking on the door. For a moment he only mistook it for the violent downpour hitting the walls, but then it came again, and again in the same place, purposeful and hearty.
He was slow to answer, slowed even more by the face of Jagga, cut to peaks and shadows by a hood and drenched, wanting to be let in.
Brumm gave him a sorry bow and stepped aside.
Jagga came in, but instead of putting a few paces between them, he only just hung next to Brumm, like he might fall on him at any moment. His soaked clothes and hair brought in the cold with him, and Brumm almost wanted to turn him to the fire, but he couldn't think to move.
Jagga looked somehow incredibly offended. Brumm could not put a point on why. This was the night to meet his perfect destiny, and yet here he stood instead.
There were no awkward greetings. Just, "Your mother must not know you at all."
"What?" Brumm asked, confused. He reached around him to shut the door, catching how Jagga smelled overpoweringly of the rain and dirt, his familiar cologne washed off. "What has that to do with anything?"
He heard Jagga take a deep breath, though it seemed to rattle in his chest, undoing his voice. "I-- I told her everything...everything I wanted, just as I told you." He slid his hood off, sending water drops racing down his cheeks and to the tips of his hair. "I thought she might see it better than you. From the outside."
"Are you fevered, Jagga? Rather, more likely have you gone mad? You're speaking babble."
"Get the list. Get it, you still have it?"
Brumm nodded and went to his stacks of record books, where his hands were clumsy flipping through the newest until he was on Jagga's page, torn out then laid back. At some point, he could hardly remember whether it was the first night or last night, he had written a small me aside every one of them, for his own masochism.
"Read it out to me."
"You know the list already, Jagga."
"Fine, then." Jagga stumbled over to Brumm's desk and snatched the page from him so fast that it ripped between them, Jagga stealing back the whole of it and Brumm only left a corner. “I shall read it out.”
"No, no, Jagga, give it--"
"Me?" Jagga looked up at him. "You wrote ‘me’ next to all of them."
"It's not as it seems, Jagga, it's. Me is a new lady in town, you see. M and e are her initials. Mava eh, eh, Ekara. M, e, see? She-- oh. ...To hell with it." He scoffed, turning his eyes to the desk. "Now is your chance to make a quick escape."
Jagga just waved him off and took a seat, snapping up Brumm's quill pen and dabbing it to his tongue. "What else...?" He ran the feather back and forth along his jaw, ignorant of Brute staring at him in bewilderment.
"What are you doing?" Brumm swept his coattails up and took a seat too, pulling out his own scrap of paper and runt stub of charcoal. "Are you adding more to the list? How, there are already so many things. How can you think of any more? You have included everything from foot size to fighting spirit. There is no more."
"Must enjoy kissing," Jagga said as he wrote, the finesse of his lines so offensively perfect under Brumm's scrawl. He looked up at Brumm, just stared at him for a moment, lips pursed.
Brumm felt the nerves prickle on his neck. They had not gone over that aspect, no. "What?"
"...Do you like to be kissed, Brumm?"
On the rare occasion that he had been or had instigated it, yes, very much. On the occasion now that he had Jagga before him, wet as a fish and licking at the water drops that kept sliding into the corners of his mouth, Brumm could think of nothing else but that teacup and how he should have the real thing instead. "--Yes."
Me, Jagga added beside it. "What about caresses?"
"What about what? What is the meaning of this?"
Jagga wrote Must like all manner of caress, and then swallowed Brumm with his eyes again. "Holding hands? Hugging? Having your hair combed? Someone--nosing against your neck for kisses? The...steal of fingers under your clothes in public?"
The charcoal went to pieces in Brumm's palm.
He could see them all as easily as Jagga said them, and right up against his skin, so that his clothes were suddenly chaffing and unbearable, his own fingers edging under the hem of his shirt to imitate. It felt like there were bugs buzzing at him, for the way his tiny hairs were standing on end all over. "They are, they are all fine. Fine. What are you doing?"
Jagga dutifully wrote the me. "And bedding?"
"Bedding?" he barked.
"Do you enjoy bedding men?"
Rather than speak, Brumm focused in on the swell of ink beading the tip of the quill, heat in his cheeks. He couldn't force the words or the courage. "I--" Was he still asleep? "I have not yet done so to know."
"Do you think you could enjoy it with the right one?" Jagga asked after a pause, wiping the quill tip against his cuff and pressing it back to his tongue to draw the ink gently.
Brumm ducked his head down to fend off the sense of being dropped, the tug of his cock in ghost fingers. "What are you doing?" he said again, out of voice, near a moan of pain or some other torture altogether.
"Yes?" Jagga prodded, and for the moment he had that laugh back, that godly patronizing.
Brumm heard the me, practically felt the scratch of it into his back. He yanked at his collar for release.
And then Jagga was writing something more. Something that he did not read or ask aloud, something secret.
Brumm lifted his head in time for Jagga to pass the paper over to him, push it right up under his nose. “I am coming onto you, fool. That’s what I'm doing.”
At the very bottom, written larger than all the other points, were the words
Must be Brumm Ikoba
He barely had the quill from Jagga's hand to write the me, before Jagga stood and was rounding the desk for him.
[also on personal lj, with IP logging off/anon commenting on. and a small nsfw bit]