Alden, Ilad
In ways, it is not what I expected. Real life fails to fall into the line of imagination. There are certainties I lack, certainties that make it harder for him, too. As like as we are -- he still deserves better than a steady diet of fear and shame from his lover. At night, in the quiet, none of it seems to matter, and it approaches a sense of ... ease. Something that defies words, for all my writer's pen. Something that I have never known. Beyond secrets, and shadows, and ugliness, beyond all the conflict and confusion that grips me.
Peace, almost.
Strange.
I suspect I know his fear. It was a knowledge I avoided. The clues were there and I simply closed my eyes. But I do not know how to lay it to rest. I do not know what more I can do or say or give than I have already done.
No, that is a lie. I do know. I just don't know if I can.
Whatever close-wound wariness might still limit him out in the open air -- or the open hallways -- of Old Home, despite his permission to let Alden loose their secret -- in the quiet privacy of Alden's actual room, Ilad is as an elemental freed of constraint. His heat is not limited to the burn in his golden skin, but spread beyond, to the fire in his blood that fuels a fierce and possessive passion, and to the need that drives his kisses. His shirt ended up ... somewhere, between the front room and the bedroom, but it is not likely that he will care to figure out where anytime soon.
Now, in the aftermath of such a wild conflagration, there comes instead a comfortably warm glow, as of dormant embers left to shimmer golden-orange by night in the circle of the fire, long after the blaze has died down. Less poetically, Ilad stretches long and lean and lazy in the sheets, sweat drying all along his strong body alternately smooth and scarred, and watches Alden with lowered lashes over the warm gleam in his dark eyes.
In the privacy of his well-furnished bedroom, Alden has his own little seen side, an ease and openness that has more air to breath in the post-consumption than the pre-. Despite energy burned out, he lays still awake against the warmth of Ilad's skin, his fingers propping him on his side with a twine through mussed blond hair. His free hand traces the familiar curves of Ilad's jaw, a smile tugging gently on the corner of his lips. It's here that he mentions, "Rutledge visited me last night. Finally broke his self-imposed exile."
"Ah?" To make of this sound a fuller query, Ilad tips his head against the pillow, already rumpled dark hair tousling in its shift. "I have not spoken to him more than in passing in a few..." He trails off, losing track of details through the pleasant haze of languor in which he currently reclines. He draws fingertips in an idle stroke over Alden's further shoulder, encircling him in the loose curve of his arm.
"Really? It seems you sent him." Alden's lips hold a hint of distant humor, lingering there as if forgotten and at odds with the slow, thoughtful study he makes of Ilad's features. Silence drags out, giving him a moment to interject before he adds, "With your talk of chesed."
"Did I?" Ilad seems surprised, dark eyes widening beneath the shift of his eyebrows. His mouth twitches, too; all these easy shifts of expression, here in his naked idleness, spent as easily as pennies. "I did not expect him to apply that advice of mine so broadly," he explains to Alden, and his mouth quirks a little wryer, hue to his features gone all the more dry. "He is not even Jewish." He shifts, leaning to press the light brush of a kiss to Alden's forehead, ghost-light warmth against his skin. "He carries his sense of guilt very heavily, though, does he not. I suppose we do not have a monopoly."
The curve of a leg slides over Ilad, hooking against his as Alden curves closer with a shift of his weight careless against him. In this he seems pleased, at least, greedy but not desperate for contact as he returns his own press of lips to Ilad's jaw. "In some things, yes, but I will leave the guilt to those that bear it better," he offers against sunkissed skin. "There wouldn't be enough for me, anyways."
Ilad exhales a low humming breath, the barest hint of a buried chuckle in it, though there is not much humor in his words. "Men like us would drown if we wallowed, beloved." He lifts his hand from Alden's shoulder to curl into his hair instead, twining through it in a long stroke as his lashes fall low over his eyes, revealing only a thin dark gleam of brightness that shows them open. "So. What did he learn from me, hm?"
"You would know better than I would, I think. He did not stay long," Alden answers, question held in his words. His body stirs against Ilad's again, fingers sliding down muscled arms as he pulls back just enough to too see him as he answers.
Ilad frowns faintly, the turn of his expression suggestive of at least a minor baffle. He shakes his head slightly against the pillow and blinks open his eyes, quirking an eyebrow up at Alden.
It is likely unkind to laugh, but within the confines of sheets with stress long gone, Alden does. It is a soft breath of laughter at first, growing briefly before fading. Instead of asking anything further, he merely kisses him idly.
"What?" Ilad demands, in a low murmur against Alden's mouth. He kisses back, and then asks again. "What's funny?"
Alden draws out his inevitable answer by pressing another kiss against the corner of Ilad's lips, then again against his cheek. Another against his jaw is just a brush of warms and lips. He answers smoothly, "Your expression, love. Seeing you baffled in my bed." His mouth finds Ilad's pulse with a longer kiss. "It was very lovable."
"I might be offended at this attack on my personal dignity," Ilad says with a low chuckle buried again in the depths of his throat, richening his accented voice, sliding his hand in a claimant curve around the back of Alden's neck as he shifts into him, leg sliding over his in a long slide of skin, "but you are a little distracting." He cups Alden's face, thumb drawing in a curving sweep beneath his chin and up to shadow his lower lip, and smiles.
Captured, Alden stills except for the drag of fingers over naked flesh, a slow caress over ribs before coming to rest on a lean hip. "Well, it wouldn't do to have you be offended," he replies, renewed desire dampening his voice to something lower. "What did he learn from you, Ilad?"
"Chesed," Ilad answers in a low murmur, his voice soft and rough. He presses a kiss to the corner of Alden's mouth, and then dips his head to nose at his cheek and jaw, a soft rush of breath sighing over his skin. "He finds me generous, Alden. He wanted me to explain how I do it. Where I find my infinite patience." He draws a long breath through his nose, drawing in the scent of Alden's hair as he closes his eyes. "I told him that it comes of knowing that I have done worse than anyone, and that I am better than no one. Perhaps he may learn from that. I do not know. I think it is a hard lesson, when you have done fewer ugly things."
"He finds you generous?" Alden questions against Ilad's ear, the edge of his words holding a subtle, sliding dryness.
"So he says." Despite Ilad's general mellow ease, something about the shift of tone in Alden's query prickles against some outer surface of his intuition. He blinks at him.
Alden shakes his head in a gesture, just a slight one that pairs with a reserve, both to expression and to his tongue. He stays silent, instead turning to find Ilad's mouth with an earnestness.
Ilad hums a low noise into the kiss, but he pulls back after an instant of gathering heat spent on the verge of a distraction too complete to pull back from. He says, "Alden?"
"Yes, love?" he questions in turn, the blunted edge of fingernails digging into the lean flesh of Ilad's hip instead as he restrains himself from demanding more than that closeness.
Ilad arches his eyebrows as he meets his gaze. He says, "You sound dubious."
"I find you generous, Ilad," Alden assures in a murmur, a slow smirk lifting his lips as his slivered silver gaze meets Ilad's. "You are more generous than anyone else I've known." He pauses, the flickering expression subtle as he wars with himself before adding, admitting, "I only doubt him."
Ilad shifts further, dropping his arm to prop his elbow against the bed and push himself up as he turns a more thorough look on Alden's features. Frown a faint furrow to his brows, he says, "Why so? He has few enough friends as it is."
"Don't. Not now." It isn't a plea, the words firm as they slip from Alden's lips as he twists from the press of bodies with an efficiency to his movements.
Ilad goes very still in the press of their bodies together, watching Alden with a quiet intent in his dark eyes. He glances away after a moment, and then draws his knuckles in a slow glide down Alden's chest, bumping across one of his nipples as he shifts in place. He says, "Ah."
Alden's hand slides to cover Ilad's, his fingers squeezing lightly against the bones there before he moves to draw it away. "I need a drink, love." He murmurs the quiet excuse before he moves to roll from the sheets.
Ilad watches him in measured quiet as he moves. Then, as Alden rolls off, Ilad stays where he is for a moment, and then shifts, drawing his legs inward as he sits up.
The glance that finds its way to Ilad at his movements is questioning, almost regretful. Alden adds lightly, "I'll be right back." He slips from the room without finding clothes, little noise made as he gathers his drink.
Ilad sits quiet on the bed, a frown written into his brow as he folds his arms in a loose cross over his legs. It is an unusually vulnerable pose, for a man ordinarily so guarded in his body language. He waits for Alden without saying anything, head tipped at a slight angle and eyes fallen.
When Alden returns, it is with a glass of scotch in the easy drape of his fingers, already flavoring his lips from sips taken. He pauses in the doorway, taking Ilad in slowly with reflexive appreciation though worry shows briefly in the drag of his gaze over him. "I forgot to ask if you would like anything," he says slowly.
"No, thank you," Ilad says, with the turn of a few fingers away from the loose cross of his arms. He lifts his gaze to Alden with a thoughtful slant to his expression. He doesn't quite ask a question.
It takes Alden time to respond to the unasked, time he takes to cross the room and return the glass to a bedside table with only a swallow from it taken in front of Ilad. Time to move in front of the other man and curl his fingers into dark hair. Softly, he admits, "I couldn't stand to lose you. Maybe at one time, but not now."
Ilad reaches for Alden's other hand with his own to twine their fingers together in a close clasp. He is slow as he unfolds himself, arm falling from his knees and then legs loosening from their inward fold. "You won't," he says, quiet and firm and sure.
As if to seal this with a kiss, Alden leans for it, mouth hungry as it slants against Ilad's to claim one. He shifts to press into the bed, kneeling with one leg first against the mattress for a long moment before he draws himself against the warmth of the other man more fully.
There is only so much stirring need be done before a glowing ember is stoked to life. Ilad pulls Alden into him with an answering hunger, and what follows after to wear them both out again may have a quieter energy than the earlier bonfire blaze, but only just.
Cuddles.
Peace, almost.
Strange.
I suspect I know his fear. It was a knowledge I avoided. The clues were there and I simply closed my eyes. But I do not know how to lay it to rest. I do not know what more I can do or say or give than I have already done.
No, that is a lie. I do know. I just don't know if I can.
Whatever close-wound wariness might still limit him out in the open air -- or the open hallways -- of Old Home, despite his permission to let Alden loose their secret -- in the quiet privacy of Alden's actual room, Ilad is as an elemental freed of constraint. His heat is not limited to the burn in his golden skin, but spread beyond, to the fire in his blood that fuels a fierce and possessive passion, and to the need that drives his kisses. His shirt ended up ... somewhere, between the front room and the bedroom, but it is not likely that he will care to figure out where anytime soon.
Now, in the aftermath of such a wild conflagration, there comes instead a comfortably warm glow, as of dormant embers left to shimmer golden-orange by night in the circle of the fire, long after the blaze has died down. Less poetically, Ilad stretches long and lean and lazy in the sheets, sweat drying all along his strong body alternately smooth and scarred, and watches Alden with lowered lashes over the warm gleam in his dark eyes.
In the privacy of his well-furnished bedroom, Alden has his own little seen side, an ease and openness that has more air to breath in the post-consumption than the pre-. Despite energy burned out, he lays still awake against the warmth of Ilad's skin, his fingers propping him on his side with a twine through mussed blond hair. His free hand traces the familiar curves of Ilad's jaw, a smile tugging gently on the corner of his lips. It's here that he mentions, "Rutledge visited me last night. Finally broke his self-imposed exile."
"Ah?" To make of this sound a fuller query, Ilad tips his head against the pillow, already rumpled dark hair tousling in its shift. "I have not spoken to him more than in passing in a few..." He trails off, losing track of details through the pleasant haze of languor in which he currently reclines. He draws fingertips in an idle stroke over Alden's further shoulder, encircling him in the loose curve of his arm.
"Really? It seems you sent him." Alden's lips hold a hint of distant humor, lingering there as if forgotten and at odds with the slow, thoughtful study he makes of Ilad's features. Silence drags out, giving him a moment to interject before he adds, "With your talk of chesed."
"Did I?" Ilad seems surprised, dark eyes widening beneath the shift of his eyebrows. His mouth twitches, too; all these easy shifts of expression, here in his naked idleness, spent as easily as pennies. "I did not expect him to apply that advice of mine so broadly," he explains to Alden, and his mouth quirks a little wryer, hue to his features gone all the more dry. "He is not even Jewish." He shifts, leaning to press the light brush of a kiss to Alden's forehead, ghost-light warmth against his skin. "He carries his sense of guilt very heavily, though, does he not. I suppose we do not have a monopoly."
The curve of a leg slides over Ilad, hooking against his as Alden curves closer with a shift of his weight careless against him. In this he seems pleased, at least, greedy but not desperate for contact as he returns his own press of lips to Ilad's jaw. "In some things, yes, but I will leave the guilt to those that bear it better," he offers against sunkissed skin. "There wouldn't be enough for me, anyways."
Ilad exhales a low humming breath, the barest hint of a buried chuckle in it, though there is not much humor in his words. "Men like us would drown if we wallowed, beloved." He lifts his hand from Alden's shoulder to curl into his hair instead, twining through it in a long stroke as his lashes fall low over his eyes, revealing only a thin dark gleam of brightness that shows them open. "So. What did he learn from me, hm?"
"You would know better than I would, I think. He did not stay long," Alden answers, question held in his words. His body stirs against Ilad's again, fingers sliding down muscled arms as he pulls back just enough to too see him as he answers.
Ilad frowns faintly, the turn of his expression suggestive of at least a minor baffle. He shakes his head slightly against the pillow and blinks open his eyes, quirking an eyebrow up at Alden.
It is likely unkind to laugh, but within the confines of sheets with stress long gone, Alden does. It is a soft breath of laughter at first, growing briefly before fading. Instead of asking anything further, he merely kisses him idly.
"What?" Ilad demands, in a low murmur against Alden's mouth. He kisses back, and then asks again. "What's funny?"
Alden draws out his inevitable answer by pressing another kiss against the corner of Ilad's lips, then again against his cheek. Another against his jaw is just a brush of warms and lips. He answers smoothly, "Your expression, love. Seeing you baffled in my bed." His mouth finds Ilad's pulse with a longer kiss. "It was very lovable."
"I might be offended at this attack on my personal dignity," Ilad says with a low chuckle buried again in the depths of his throat, richening his accented voice, sliding his hand in a claimant curve around the back of Alden's neck as he shifts into him, leg sliding over his in a long slide of skin, "but you are a little distracting." He cups Alden's face, thumb drawing in a curving sweep beneath his chin and up to shadow his lower lip, and smiles.
Captured, Alden stills except for the drag of fingers over naked flesh, a slow caress over ribs before coming to rest on a lean hip. "Well, it wouldn't do to have you be offended," he replies, renewed desire dampening his voice to something lower. "What did he learn from you, Ilad?"
"Chesed," Ilad answers in a low murmur, his voice soft and rough. He presses a kiss to the corner of Alden's mouth, and then dips his head to nose at his cheek and jaw, a soft rush of breath sighing over his skin. "He finds me generous, Alden. He wanted me to explain how I do it. Where I find my infinite patience." He draws a long breath through his nose, drawing in the scent of Alden's hair as he closes his eyes. "I told him that it comes of knowing that I have done worse than anyone, and that I am better than no one. Perhaps he may learn from that. I do not know. I think it is a hard lesson, when you have done fewer ugly things."
"He finds you generous?" Alden questions against Ilad's ear, the edge of his words holding a subtle, sliding dryness.
"So he says." Despite Ilad's general mellow ease, something about the shift of tone in Alden's query prickles against some outer surface of his intuition. He blinks at him.
Alden shakes his head in a gesture, just a slight one that pairs with a reserve, both to expression and to his tongue. He stays silent, instead turning to find Ilad's mouth with an earnestness.
Ilad hums a low noise into the kiss, but he pulls back after an instant of gathering heat spent on the verge of a distraction too complete to pull back from. He says, "Alden?"
"Yes, love?" he questions in turn, the blunted edge of fingernails digging into the lean flesh of Ilad's hip instead as he restrains himself from demanding more than that closeness.
Ilad arches his eyebrows as he meets his gaze. He says, "You sound dubious."
"I find you generous, Ilad," Alden assures in a murmur, a slow smirk lifting his lips as his slivered silver gaze meets Ilad's. "You are more generous than anyone else I've known." He pauses, the flickering expression subtle as he wars with himself before adding, admitting, "I only doubt him."
Ilad shifts further, dropping his arm to prop his elbow against the bed and push himself up as he turns a more thorough look on Alden's features. Frown a faint furrow to his brows, he says, "Why so? He has few enough friends as it is."
"Don't. Not now." It isn't a plea, the words firm as they slip from Alden's lips as he twists from the press of bodies with an efficiency to his movements.
Ilad goes very still in the press of their bodies together, watching Alden with a quiet intent in his dark eyes. He glances away after a moment, and then draws his knuckles in a slow glide down Alden's chest, bumping across one of his nipples as he shifts in place. He says, "Ah."
Alden's hand slides to cover Ilad's, his fingers squeezing lightly against the bones there before he moves to draw it away. "I need a drink, love." He murmurs the quiet excuse before he moves to roll from the sheets.
Ilad watches him in measured quiet as he moves. Then, as Alden rolls off, Ilad stays where he is for a moment, and then shifts, drawing his legs inward as he sits up.
The glance that finds its way to Ilad at his movements is questioning, almost regretful. Alden adds lightly, "I'll be right back." He slips from the room without finding clothes, little noise made as he gathers his drink.
Ilad sits quiet on the bed, a frown written into his brow as he folds his arms in a loose cross over his legs. It is an unusually vulnerable pose, for a man ordinarily so guarded in his body language. He waits for Alden without saying anything, head tipped at a slight angle and eyes fallen.
When Alden returns, it is with a glass of scotch in the easy drape of his fingers, already flavoring his lips from sips taken. He pauses in the doorway, taking Ilad in slowly with reflexive appreciation though worry shows briefly in the drag of his gaze over him. "I forgot to ask if you would like anything," he says slowly.
"No, thank you," Ilad says, with the turn of a few fingers away from the loose cross of his arms. He lifts his gaze to Alden with a thoughtful slant to his expression. He doesn't quite ask a question.
It takes Alden time to respond to the unasked, time he takes to cross the room and return the glass to a bedside table with only a swallow from it taken in front of Ilad. Time to move in front of the other man and curl his fingers into dark hair. Softly, he admits, "I couldn't stand to lose you. Maybe at one time, but not now."
Ilad reaches for Alden's other hand with his own to twine their fingers together in a close clasp. He is slow as he unfolds himself, arm falling from his knees and then legs loosening from their inward fold. "You won't," he says, quiet and firm and sure.
As if to seal this with a kiss, Alden leans for it, mouth hungry as it slants against Ilad's to claim one. He shifts to press into the bed, kneeling with one leg first against the mattress for a long moment before he draws himself against the warmth of the other man more fully.
There is only so much stirring need be done before a glowing ember is stoked to life. Ilad pulls Alden into him with an answering hunger, and what follows after to wear them both out again may have a quieter energy than the earlier bonfire blaze, but only just.
Cuddles.