[Wildwood Music] The Games We Play [Seven]

[Victor Lark]

Victor had moved his hands to clutch the mop of hair behind that obliging face, but as soon as he was certain of Seven’s stability on the ledge, they resumed their wandering. A triumphant laugh replied to a muttered surrender, and Victor tugged clumsily on the cotton shirt which clung to a milk-white waist. His hasty mouth nibbled at the examining thumb that deprived him of other tastes, too preoccupied in the lingering shiver of venom to care much for the appraisal, and as his sticky breath wrapped around Seven’s chin and neck, he reveled in the heat of skin beneath his fingers.

But the game was not over; those were the only spoils of victory he would allow himself, as it was no longer his turn to take any more. Suddenly he stepped away from Seven’s rising flame, pulling him from the window, and leaned over to connect them only by the mingling of moist hair over a pair of foreheads. “You are smart,” he granted, unable to produce a wittier compliment, “too smart for this dreary old room!”

In place of recent distresses, this game required only smiles (the kind that might eventually reward Victor with other, more corporeal happinesses). How many could he pry from Seven’s flushed lips? Knees weak beneath his desire, he raised a hand to fumble with the topmost button beneath Seven’s collar and added, “What else are you?” The button crawled out from between its cotton confines, but still allowed Victor barely a sliver of the view beneath.

“Compassionate,” he suggested, as his fingers dipped to the second clasp. He did not care that it took far too long to find a good grasp of it, too busy swimming in a scarlet stare. He did not speak again until it was entirely undone, “Beautiful.”

Plunging to the third, he broke his own rule and laid his head on Seven’s shoulder so that he could steal a kiss from his collarbone. His eyes became heavy as a deep breath floated on his own shoulders. The fabric opened further and the concurrent word was half a laugh, “A clerk.” The next button loosed easier than the rest, even though the words did not: “A— not a wizard, but a shadow-maker.” And with only one left, Victor ran a finger over the length of the creamy torso that lurked beneath. “What else?” He repeated, pulling playfully at the final clasp.

[Seven Xu]

Sparse whitecaps of vexation drifting between undulating waves of passion: that seemed to be the theme of this particular afternoon’s game. It was easy enough to push those grey oceans to surge with shadowed emotion, but there was an undeniable honesty in Victor’s touch. Love, or obsession; the feeling behind those words was synonymous in the incarnadine gaze of a grinning halfblood. The shirt’s last button was loosened and a warm summer current joined an olive digit in its downward caress. “What else am I?” an incredulous echo broke hot over the curve of Victor’s bare neck as Seven’s head dipped to swim in the familiar scent of dark hair. “You flatter me with titles I’m not sure I deserve.”

Seven’s hand had strayed from their short parting, but soon found its place back between the folds of Victor’s shirt. There, it had tugged the linen free from its confines beneath a leather belt and tested the strength of the buttons that fastened it shut; by the time Seven’s fingers had ascended to tease a copper nipple, the lowest in the row of wooden buttons had lost in its struggle for decency. The sound it made as it fell to the floor and rolled between two sets of feet produced an apologetic giggle.

Hips met again under the coaxing pull of an arm that had wrapped itself around Victor’s waist. It was all he could do to not forget the workshop, drag the Lark to the privacy of their squalid little cage, and let him take him, enter him, as he had let him do so many evenings before. He may have allowed it to happen between the walls of the dusty workshop, had Victor brought enough ale for two.

“I’m foolish,” he offered. Fingers unmarred by the clumsiness of alcohol competently worked to unfasten the buttons still attached to Victor’s shirt. A playful grin carved itself upon his ruddy cheeks. Skin grazed naked skin, and free again fingertips lifted Victor’s jaw, locking a mutual stare. “As smart as I am, I’m a fool; and you have made me that way, and I love it. So I’m your fool.” The grin evolved into laughter that was immediately cut off by a brazen kiss. Deliberate burn trickled into Victor’s mouth before he broke the embrace; the same fleshy pink that had delivered venom and perused the inner walls of Victor’s lips lashed out to wipe his own clean.

Blood irises laughed and he reveled in the heat they shared between their thighs. “We make a good pair,” a crooked head tilt followed the sentiment, “a bird and his fool.”

[Victor Lark]

As soon as breath-stealing fangs released their burn and their hold, Victor crumbled again into the nook between Seven’s neck and his shoulder. Another moan reverberated in his throat when it could not move through the tension in his pressing lips, tension that tried in vain to push the venom further and faster. Oh, how it hurt; it hurt the same way his manhood hurt, every sense at once pouring into the one or the other. It locked his eyelids together and stuck cotton in his ears and turned his fingertips numb in comparison. It pulled his lips to the matching pulse beneath the blushing pallor of skin and even though it soaked needles into his tender mouth, kiss after kiss spilled onto the flesh beneath him.

The ecstasy of selfishness overcame him. Only Seven seemed to allow him as much, where others wanted to be pleased and placated, and though even he had resisted for a time, it was not for long. In the throes of it, Victor’s grip on those narrow hips became lower and tighter. However many victories he had already claimed, the game went on. It was his turn.

He paused for only a second from the swell of color that was blooming where he tilled it. “I am not a bird,” he replied dumbly, ignorant to the reference. The sleek soot of his hair teased the side of an unseen face as he refused to straighten his neck. “But if you say you are a fool, you must be. Foolish Seven. My fool.” Each dart of tongue, each muttered smack of lips, said, “Mine. Mine. Mine.” One hand rose to offer a futile tug on the complicated mechanism of Seven’s belt buckle. “Let’s be foolish, Seven. I need you.”

Finally his kisses embarked upward and his arms wound around into another hard embrace. With his bare back to the door, he would not notice the inconspicuous rattle of its knob and subsequent seam of light that punctured the stirred dust in the air; with his face busily attached to another, neither would he care.

[Seven Xu]

Seven found his thighs pressed against the rough wood of the nearest work table as Victor and his tantalizing fingertips worked down his wan hips, threatening to tear off his trousers whether the belt could be undone by those clammy olive hands or not. He could feel the prickling burn of his own venom on the tip of his tongue and on his neck, where Victor had deposited his stained lips countless times. Another suffocating tug around his narrow waist shattered the brittle buckle and freed his leather belt to slide through its loops like a fleeing serpent. Throbbing, aching temptation recanted a thin veil of modesty; thick poisoned ale on his neck sang to the push of his own abdomen mingling on glorious, sweat-sticky and scarred skin.

“Victor,” the noise was barely a whisper masked under a whimpering moan and drawn thin between their tender lips; in the name was a mumble of surrender. How easy it would be, how quickly it could be over; a few more minutes tacked onto an entire day without a single patron wouldn’t hurt, it couldn’t hurt … oh, but how he wanted pain.

Ring-tink.

The jingling warning boomed in Seven’s ears; cold clawed fingers of fear plunged between his ribs and squeezed his already swiftly beating heart, threatening to stop it outright. There was no explaining their simple game: a pair of half-dressed teenaged boys in the midst of carnal passion, their desire and intent as clear as the daylight that shone in on them. A set of hands locked firm on Victor’s shoulders and Seven channeled his strength into pulling the other to the dirty floor with him. The creak of a well-used door and residual clamor of the golden bell drowned out the momentary shuffling and deft thud of a pair of bodies dipping behind the cover of a sturdy work table.

A feminine voice called out, but it was not the melodious voice of Sina that Seven had initially feared. The thrice-marked priestess of Rhaus was not a woman whose ire he wanted to provoke; who knew what she could do, she had a god on her side. A wave of relief washed over his face, however short-lived, before he turned a hard gaze to the human at his side. Rosy irises pleaded for silence as the voice and shuffle of feet continued to peruse the entrance of the dingy workshop. Hello? Hello? Is anyone here? Sina? If it were not obvious (as many things were not, Seven had come to learn), a desperate white finger lifted to cross Victor’s parched lips, insisting on his obedience—if even for a moment. The game had just gotten more complex.

[Victor Lark]

Though he was no longer certain of where he was, Victor knew well enough that the hesitant inquiry at the door was the reason he was suddenly sideways and covered in dust. He beamed a giant, open-mouthed smile that almost laughed aloud— but the arbitrary rules of his game dictated that was Seven’s turn, so he obliged the wordless request. Choking on his voice, he instead settled for a few huffs of almost silent amusement. He could not hope to read the panic in the wide apples of that face which could not pale any further. He returned the gesture with a single unsteady finger. It was a joke and a challenge at the same time, to stay quiet.

Alas, it was not yet a rule to keep his mouth to himself. He grabbed the hand that silenced him, if only to move it out of the way, and arched his neck so that their faces collided. His teeth fastened onto Seven’s bottom lip. He may not have been able to offer that burning libation, but he could at least try to return the pleasure in the suggestion. Holding his breath to avoid the noise it would make, he deposited the hand within his somewhere along the bend of his own waist. Free to wander, Victor’s fingertips found the loosened line of cotton that hung on Seven’s twisted hips. With another breathy chuckle, they scoured beneath the flimsy barrier and quickly sheathed the true prize of his victory. Only then did he release the clutch of his kiss and grant a softer, more affectionate one.

That was followed by a short kiss beneath his jaw, then another on the dip of his collarbone, and another on his pale, pink nipple. As Victor descended, he seemed to have forgotten the shuffle of a woman’s slippers just beyond the perforated wall of wood and cowhide beside their sanctuary. His back bent awkwardly within the confines of it, until ultimately it greeted the fragile, unfinished base of his favorite harp. Da-dum da-dum da-dum, it screamed, and even Victor paused and raised his head from torrid flesh, as if immobility could bring back their silence.

[Seven Xu]

Seven exhaled into the fire of a kiss and rocked into Victor’s clutch, the fear of being caught in the midst of their play releasing its hold on his chest in favor of hot waves of pleasure that coursed down his thighs and escaped through his toes. His abandoned hand had successfully torn back the tantalizing edge of thick linen to offer his human’s turgid manhood to the workshop’s stale air. Black and white fingertips tangled briefly in a crop of coarse hair, but Victor receded and his hand was starved of the opportunity to reciprocate a similar thrill. Then Victor went too far, spine arced too high, and a booming alarm of wood hitting stone froze the groping boys with hungry lips. The call of the falling harp prickled Seven’s spine and drove the hard fingers of fear back into his chest, puncturing his lungs, forcing his eyes and lips from their fervent embrace.

When Seven broke the kiss, burning venom involuntarily trickled from his upper jaw where it had so often deliberately run. It added a bitter taste to the returning fear that twisted his features, and for a moment, while claret irises swam upside down in unfamiliar ocean blues, deafening silence drilled into the ears of the halfblood far louder than the tumbling harp. The woman stared down at them, pink mouth agape. Then, there was a shuffling of feet and her round-featured face turned into a wave of blond curls in her hasty retreat.

Neither human nor halfblood had said a word in the exchange.

The fingers that once drove Seven mad with rippling pleasure had turned to pricking, itching annoyances that would have cost him far more than embarrassment had the woman been cut from a bolder stock. He sat up, wriggling away from Victor’s grasp to eye him once again. Seven’s cheeks had turned a lovely shade of pink but his eyes were solemn pools of crimson. “Go home,” he urged, open palms pushing light across Victor’s bare chest, “I’ll be right behind you, I promise; I don’t want to be interrupted again.” And home is private, where such things are proper, he thought, that I should know. A smile rose from the shame of the ordeal, and Seven leaned forward to close the gap between their mouths and offer a brief farewell kiss. The human had made him a fool, but oh—how he loved to play the part.

[Victor Lark]

Victor did not rise from where he lay, not right away. He only looked up expectantly, ready to forget his mistake and resume their play, presumably as the polite girl politely took her leave. But then cold and steady words bit into his swift-beating heart like daggers of ice, words that did not match the sentiment he thought they shared. Victor was not kind enough to despair; he sat up with a hard glare wrought on angry eyes. He sat awkwardly beneath the table and returned the kiss as it was offered him, lifting a desperate hand to the side of Seven’s face.

But he obeyed. He did not remember whose turn it was, but it did not matter. The game was over. He twisted himself over that execrable harp and stood clumsily, tugging black cotton back over where he ached most. He glanced at the girl, whose hesitantly half-turned face whisked out of sight again, then bent to steal Seven’s shirt from where they had abandoned it on the floor. His bibulous blood protested to the imbalance, forcing Victor to brace himself against the floor before he could straighten again. His eyes flared with embarrassment as his lips tightened against it. After a moment spent to regain his composure, he finally turned to Seven and donned his shirt, smiling.

The smile was too smooth, too sweet. Without bothering to fasten the buttons over his chest, he stepped towards the blonde stranger and gently tipped her chin to face him. To she who did not know better, his tilted head promised forgiveness and solace. But his fool would know that the touch was too soft, too tender to be sincere, a gesture he had practiced many times. Perhaps that fact would make it hurt less when Victor dipped his face to hers and held her in a seconds-long, retaliatory kiss.

She hastily pulled away as soon as she realized how her lips inexplicably burned; with a startled gasp, her thin fingers rose to her mouth and she stepped back. As Victor’s lingering arm dropped again to his side, she turned to the other man and stuttered, “Sir, I— Sina said...”

And Victor only rolled his eyes, moving behind her and towards the door. It slammed behind him and sent the bell above flailing, but not before he offered Seven a blank look that was supposed to be a weary reassurance.

[Templar]

Victor: Stealth: 1 - Rhetorics: 3 - Seduction: 3 Lore: Legal: Victor will have to be careful, for if the lady sees him in the next month or so, she will call knights on him for violating her. Seven: Guitar crafting: 1 - Shielding: 2 - Rhetorics: 3 - Seduction: 3 Lore: Additional notes: