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“Do you actually know what you’re doing?” Will asked, trying to angle the lamp to throw light on more than just the curve of Lymond’s backside above him. It was a bit difficult, seeing as he was attempting to both hold the ladder steady and keep the lamp from tipping too far and sputtering out.
“Of course,” Lymond said, with that tone he always used to suggest that Will had asked an utterly inane question. “Hand me the lamp now.” He reached down one hand, fist opening and closing impatiently.
Will held the lamp up as high as he could. The ladder wobbled precariously as Lymond hooked a knee around a rung and tilted backward to grab at it, and Will’s heel skidded on the packed dirt floor as he struggled to right it. Lymond didn’t seem bothered by the near fall, but Will’s heart was pounding loudly. There was no ledge to rest the top of the ladder against, so the whole thing was relying on Will to stay upright, and his arms were already feeling the strain.
Lymond straightened back up, the hook of the lamp held between his teeth, knees locked around the top rung of the ladder, and reached back up towards the busted latch of the door that was currently trapping them in the Midculter cellar. He muttered something that Will couldn’t make out.
“Is it jammed?” Will asked.
Lymond switched to holding the lamp in one hand and banged a fist against the door a few times. “Hey! Someone open this damn door!”
“I thought you said you could fix it,” Will said. The ladder wobbled again and he scrambled to steady it. At the top, Lymond braced a hand against the door.
“Steady on there, Marigold.”
“If you can’t fix it would you get down already? We can use the ladder to bang on the door. You’re not exactly lightweight, you know?”
Lymond twisted around to look down at him. “Are you calling me fat?”
“You’re very proportional,” Will told him, feeling annoyed at having this conversation while his arms felt about ready to fall off from trying to hold the ladder up for what felt like an hour as Lymond insisted he knew how to fix the latch at get them out. “Just get down already.”
“Only proportional?” Lymond questioned, before gripping the handle of the lamp between his teeth again. He gripped the top rung of the of the ladder between his knees, then somehow managed to neatly flip himself around to the other side.
The ladder wobbled again as Will boggled at him. “Are you trying to fall and crack your skull open?” he demanded.
Lymond scaled the rungs on the opposite side of the ladder quickly, more of a controlled fall than a climb, until his feet were on solid ground again and his lips were stretched into a grin at Will, lit rather macabrely from beneath by the lamp.
Will let go of the ladder, and it smacked into Lymond’s forehead with a thump before he could catch it.
Lymond didn’t say anything, just shoved it towards the floor with a crash as it banged into several crates. “That was awfully clumsy of you, Will.”
“Oops,” Will said.
Lymond seemed to shake it off -- literally, rolling his shoulders as he turned away and made his way towards the back of the cellar.
“Where are you going?” Will asked, hurrying after him. Lymond still had ahold of the only lamp, and the light it cast didn’t do much to combat the pitch dark of the underground cellar.
“We might as well get what we came here for,” Lymond said, holding the lamp up so that it cast a golden glow over the wine barrels stored against the wall. He handed the lamp back to Will, then started pulling one out of its spot until he could tip it over and roll it along the floor.
“What are we going to do with it if we’re stuck down here?”
“Drink it, of course.”
Will raised an eyebrow. The barrel wasn’t exactly small.
“Find some cups or something,” Lymond instructed. “There’s all sorts of junk down here, there’s sure to be something to drink with.”
There was indeed a set of tarnished silver covered by a cloth sitting on top of an old desk with a broken leg that Lymond kicked while muttering about Richard never throwing anything out. Soon enough they were toasting to being trapped in the Midculter cellar for the foreseeable future.
“How long do you think it will take someone to find us?” Will asked, after they’d each downed two cups. Will had flopped over onto his back after finishing off his second cup, but Lymond had poured another.
Lymond took a long sip of his wine. “Richard may just use this cellar for storing broken furniture, but, rest assured, my mother will send someone to fetch wine sooner or later. And if she doesn’t Mariotta will. We’ll not starve down here.” He looked around, though the edges of the cellar were cast in heavy shadow so Will wasn’t sure what he was looking for. “We might die of boredom, though,” Lymond added.
“Oh, I’ve something,” Will said, sitting back up and patting his pockets. Lymond watched him, head tilted like a bird, until Will let out a triumphant “Ha!” and held up a deck of cards.
“Two man cards,” Lymond said. “With no money.”
“It’s better than nothing to do,” Will argued.
Lymond topped off his wine and didn’t say a word.
Will, who happened to enjoy a good game of cards, felt the need to defend the hobby. “I saved your life once with a game of cards.”
Lymond didn’t even lower his cup from his face as he raised an eyebrow.
“Bet every stitch of clothing I had,” Will added, leaning forward and refilling his cup. “It took hours of intense strategy to finally beat him.”
“You should have just offered to suck his cock,” Lymond said. “Probably would have been faster.”
Will choked on his drink, coughing and wiping frantically at the wine that dripped down his chin. When he looked back up, Lymond was smirking at him, sipping demurely at his own drink.
Will was trying to think of a response -- his thoughts were scattered between no and what and I’ve never with an encroaching fantasy about what said act might actually be like that he was trying to suppress -- when he was saved by Lymond saying, “Alright then, we can bet clothing.”
Wait, what?
“Wait, what?” Will asked.
Lymond held out a hand, palm up. “Give them here.”
“My clothes?”
Lymond’s eyes rolled heavenward. “The cards.”
Will passed the cards over. Lymond shuffled, cards arching in a smooth bridge between his hands, then started to deal.
A few hands later Will was down to just his hose and undershirt, while Lymond was missing only his boots and belt. “You’re cheating,” Will accused, pointing at Lymond with his cup. A bit of wine sloshed out onto the floor.
“I’m not,” Lymond insisted. “So tell me the truth, how did you get the evidence to free me? Because you’re awful at this.”
“I am not awful at cards,” Will argued. “I am excellent at cards.”
He lost the next hand as well, and spent a few minutes debating if it was more dignified to wear only hose or only a shirt. He decided to go with the shirt, given that it was long and mostly covered his arse.
Lymond lost his own tunic next, and Will was feeling victorious over it right up until he laid down his next hand and saw that he’d lost again. Lymond was grinning at him, one corner of his mouth curved up.
“I only have my shirt left,” Will said.
“Not anymore,” Lymond said. “Off with it.”
Will groaned, but pulled the shirt over his head. He tossed it at Lymond’s head, and managed to catch him across the face with the billow of white fabric. Lymond yanked it away, grinning.
“Well now I have nothing to bet with,” Will said, gesturing to his own naked body. He reached for his cup again -- he’d lost count of how many this was, but the barrel they’d been drinking from was significantly lighter than when they’d started.
“Don’t sell yourself short, Marigold.” Lymond looked him up and down pointedly.
Will stopped, cup still resting against his lips. He lowered it.
“I’m sure you can think of something to offer,” Lymond continued.
Will could only think of one thing. He’d been thinking of it ever since Lymond had mentioned it earlier, like a particularly persistent refrain in his mind. But he couldn’t just offer to suck his friend’s cock.
It wouldn’t really be offering if it was a bet, though, would it?
Lymond had that smirk on his face again, like he had the ability to peer into Will’s head and everything he found inside was particularly hilarious.
Will downed the rest of the wine in his cup, blinked against the slightly out of balance tilt that his drunkenness was giving the room, and said, “I’ll bet a cock sucking then.”
He’d expected Lymond to keep grinning at him, or some sort of lecherous smirk, but instead he was met with a look that was far too contemplative for how much they’d both had to drink. “Do you even know how?” Lymond asked.
“What?” Will sputtered. “Of course I know how! You…” He gestured a bit, mouth open, and then said, “How hard can it be?
“If you’re asking that then you’ve clearly never done it before,” Lymond said.
“Would you deal the damn cards?”
Lymond fanned the deck between his fingers. “It’s just that you’re going to lose, and I’d like to know what I’m getting out of this.”
“You’re getting your trice damned cock sucked out of it, what more do you want?” Will demanded. It occurred to him too late that he’d admitted he was going to lose the hand.
There was the lecherous smirk. “We’ll see,” Lymond said, before dealing the cards.
To his own shock, Will won the hand. Lymond took his hose off, explaining his reasoning that it would be much more efficient to take them off now for when Will inevitably lost the next hand.
But then Will won the next hand as well. “Shirt off, Crawford,” he crowed, raising his cup in triumph. Lymond threw the shirt at him, and it took Will a minute to fight his way free of the fabric as he laughed. When he looked up, Lymond was standing across from him, smooth skin and lean muscle highlighted as gold as his hair by the lamplight. Will’s throat felt far dryer than it had any right to, for how much liquid he’d consumed in the recent past.
The visual was disrupted when Lymond dropped to the floor abruptly, cross-legged, and leaned forward to gather up the cards again.
“Wait, wait,” Will said, leaning forward and stilling his hands. “Are you betting a cock sucking too?”
Lymond looked up at him. “I was going to shuffle the cards, first.”
Will sat back, feeling his cheeks flush. “I meant--”
“You want me to wager that if I lose I’ll suck your cock?”
Will forced himself to swallow. Really, his throat was very dry. It must be the wine. “Yes?”
“Are you sure that’s what you want me to wager?” Lymond was shuffling the cards now, that neat bridge and quiet shush of the cards slipping against each other.
“Yes?”
“If you’re certain,” Lymond said, passing Will his cards.
Will forced himself to study his hand. It was passably decent, but not stellar. He looked over at Lymond, but Lymond was studying his own cards intently, his bottom lip pulled just slightly between his teeth in concentration.
Will won again.
“I guess you just need the proper incentive to be good at cards,” Lymond said.
“Um…” Will said. He couldn’t think of anything else, really, because Lymond was currently crawling towards him across the scattered cards, one hand coming to rest on Will’s knee.
Will nearly jumped out of his skin.
“You’re not that skittish, are you?” Lymond asked.
“No,” Will said. “I just…”
Lymond was very close to him now, sharp cheekbones standing out even more in the harsh shadows the lamp was casting and eyes looking much darker than usual. “Relax,” he said, hand squeezing on Will’s knee.
“I’m relaxed.”
Lymond huffed a small laugh. With his free hand he reached for the cup Will was gripping with white knuckles and pried it from his grip. He drank the rest of the contents before setting it aside, then pushed on Will’s shoulder. “Lay back.”
Will fell to the floor with a thump, just barely stopping himself from cracking his skull against the ground. Lymond made that small laughing noise again, then tugged on Will’s legs until he was lying mostly spread-eagled, while Lymond knelt between his knees.
Will was already hard.
He found himself hoping that Lymond wouldn’t say anything about it, but then again the look Lymond gave him meant that he really didn’t have to say anything. That smirk said it all.
“Is flushing all the way down your chest a common ginger trait?” Lymond asked. “Or is that unique to you?”
“Are you stalling?” Will demanded.
“Oh, alright then.”
Lymond’s hand was on his cock then, circling the base with a firm grip, and stroking up with a grasp that twisted just a bit at the top, thumb swiping over the slit. He did that twice more before leaning down, warm breath ghosting over Will’s stomach before his lips made contact, a fluttery, but wet, kiss along the shaft.
Will dug his toes into the packed dirt floor.
Lymond kissed his way messily up Will’s cock, around the hand that was still stroking, before closing his lips around the head and giving a hard suck.
Will made a keening sound somewhere in the back of his throat, and his hands reached for Lymond, fingers tangling in smooth hair. That combination of blissful sensations lasted for far too few seconds before Lymond was pulling away to gasp in a breath, Will’s cock just barely brushing his lips.
“No, no, come back,” Will said, fingers tightening against Lymond’s scalp as he pushed Lymond’s head back down.
Lymond made a small, surprised sound before being muffled by Will’s cock again, but didn’t pull away. Instead he hollowed his cheeks, sucking hard and dipping his head lower, lips coming down to meet the fist still wrapped around the base of Will’s cock.
Will realized after a minute or so how hard his fingers were tangled in Lymond’s curled locks and attempted to loosen them and pull his hand away with a murmured apology. But then Lymond’s hand landed on his wrist, keeping it in place. When he looked down, questioningly, he found Lymond gazing back at him, lashes heavy and lips still wrapped around the head of his cock. Will tightened his grip again, and Lymond’s eyes fluttered shut and he bobbed his head back down.
Will had had his cock sucked before, including once by an arguably very talented woman in a Parisian brothel, but none had gone about it with quite the… enthusiasm that Lymond was putting into the act. He was alternating between sucking on the head, laving sloppy, open mouthed kisses down the shaft, and taking Will so deep that he saw stars, with no clear pattern to his attentions. Just as Will would think he was getting close, Lymond would tighten his fingers around the base of his cock and switch from maddeningly hard pressure to barely there licks. Will wanted to tell him to keep going. He wanted to tell him to stop teasing and get on with it. He never wanted it to end. He was being driven mad. That was the only explanation. Having failed to drive him insane by dint of all the mad schemes he’d come up with over the years, Lymond was now resorting to sex to accomplish his goal. And it was working. Will felt as though all reason had abandoned him. The only thing that existed was the cool ground under his back, Lymond’s soft hair under his fingers, his cock in Lymond’s sinfully hot mouth.
When he finally felt his orgasm nearing, he barely managed to gasp out a warning. Lymond made some sort of humming noise in his throat in acknowledgment and that was all it took to send Will over the edge. Lymond swallowed around him, before pulling back with a cough.
Will stared at him, dazed, watching as Lymond sat back on his heels and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He looked nearly as wrecked as Will felt, hair in disarray and fair skin flushed across his cheeks and down his chest, still short of breath.
His cock was hard as well. He’d gotten hard just from sucking Will off. Will felt another spike of arousal deep in his gut, and leaned up on an elbow, reaching out a hand toward Lymond, fingers wrapping around his arm. “Come here,” Will said. As the initial high of his orgasm wore off, it was leaving him feeling much more confident than usual, especially in the face of how obviously affected Lymond was by the entire thing.
“What?” Lymond asked.
“You’re hard.”
Lymond frowned.
“Come here,” Will said again, tugging on his arm hard enough that Lymond landed sprawled on top of Will.
“What are you doing?” Lymond asked, shifting up onto his hands and knees, brows drawn into a frown as he looked down at Will.
Will reached down and closed one hand around Lymond’s cock. After a few dry strokes he raised his hand back up to spit into it before going back to it.
“Ah…” Lymond shifted, one knee landing along Will’s hips while his head dipped lower, hair brushing against his chest. “I didn’t, mmm, win a round.”
“Forget the cards,” Will told him.
“Should really have to earn it though…” Lymond’s breath gusted out against Will’s chest.
Will raised the hand that wasn’t stroking Lymond’s cock to his back, stroking from hip to neck with his fingertips before tangling his fingers in Lymond’s hair again, forcing his head up until their eyes met. Then he surged forward, lips landing against Lymond’s, muffling his gasp. And as Will licked his way between Lymond’s lips, Lymond groaned and came, come pooling on Will’s stomach.
He collapsed on top of Will after that, then rolled to the side with an oomph and wound up sprawled half on top Will, shoulder blades digging into Will’s arm and one ankle hooked over his knee. They lay like that, both staring up at the dark ceiling for several long minutes. Then Will finally said, “My arm’s going numb.”
Lymond tilted his head a bit, but didn’t get off Will’s arm.
It was perhaps another quarter of hour later -- Will could no longer feel his arm but he had also nearly drifted off to sleep -- when there was a sudden bang from the broken cellar door that jarred him awake.
Lymond was sitting up in an instant, and Will followed more slowly.
Lymond had already managed to get his hose back on and was throwing Will’s tunic at him. “Get dressed, come on.” Will turned the tunic around to try and find the top, and nearly had it on before realizing he’d forgotten his shirt.
From behind the door there was a muffled voice, and another bang.
Lymond was hopping as he tugged on his boots and went to stand under the door. “Hey! We’re down here! Open the door!”
The door was pried open just as Will got his hose pulled up, and it was Richard’s voice that called down, “What are you doing in the cellar?”
“Having an orgy,” Lymond said. “What else does one do when locked in a small space with no entertainment?”
There was a long pause. “Sybilla’s up here as well.”
“Hello Mother,” Lymond called. “Did you want wine? We drank that new French barrel.”
“The entire thing?” Will could hear Lymond’s mother asking. He tugged his boots on and tried to gather up the cards they’d left scattered all across the floor. He was probably going to be missing a few.
“Yes. We were trapped here for ages.”
“It’s only been three hours since we saw you at lunch,” Richard said.
“I know.”
Later, after Will had been invited to stay for dinner and had sufficiently sobered up enough to sit a horse, he found himself looking down at Lymond from the saddle. Normally, he’d simply say goodbye and be off, but he couldn’t help but feel like he ought to say something more this time.
“One drunken romp on a dirt floor hasn’t made you sentimental, has it?” Lymond asked, before Will could come up with anything.
”Of course not,” Will said. It was the only thing he could say.