Work Text:
Lunais ought to have seen it coming, really, what with the evening progressing as rapidly as the flames consume the logs stacked in the hearth before him. With time, the Coerthan cold permeates even the most stalwart man's bones, making a roaring fire a most welcome companion.
Perhaps—and, considering the circumstances, Lunais is loath to permit the thought—more welcome than the presence of the knight who occupies the chair beside his own.
It isn't as though Lunais bears the man who so very graciously took it upon himself to aid the few that remain of the Scions any ill will, but there is something about the way Haurchefant carries himself, about his energy and kindness, both of which seem to know no bounds. And something about the way he regards Lunais when he thinks to have caught him unawares. The latter in particular has served to instill a certain wariness.
Their conversation has been entirely inconsequential thus far, but eventually the topic of discussion seems to contort itself from the monotonously mundane into something more laden, something that pries and prods and ever so gently whittles away at Lunais’ defenses.
When an opening presents itself between words that then quickly evolve from amicable assertions to flat-out flattery, Haurchefant's hand begins to wander.
Lunais knows what this means, where this leads, and even though how Haurchefant is a lot, and Lunais hasn't harbored any particular interest in the man for that very reason, it is difficult to deny the goosebumps his touch now leaves in its wake as he traces a line from his shoulder down an arm. Fingertips diverge at his elbow to find the knee it rests on, only to eventually brush past it and to boldly settle mid-thigh.
The question, despite never being voiced, hangs heavily in the air between them and, blatantly propositioned as Lunais finds himself, he finally grants the knight the answer he's undoubtedly been waiting to hear: Just this once.
Haurchefant is many things. Notable ones among those being handsome, taller than him, if not by much, and broad, muscular, giving the impression as though he could easily restrain him with one hand while—well, perhaps he'll yet find out if that theory holds.
Only that Haurchefant has other ideas; such as leaning in for a kiss right then and there, by the fire.
He steals another one, and another one in a dimly lit alcove just out of sight on the way to his chambers, all the while keeping Lunais’ hand firmly enclosed in his, as if he might dissipate if he lets go. And maybe he would, if that did not cause him to miss out on getting laid.
Candles are lit once they arrive, curtains (in signature Fortemps red, a rather beautiful color) drawn against the frigid snow outside, fire in the room's smaller hearth already crackling away. Lunais lingers bedside, thinking the gestures overkill for what they're about to do, but there's something so methodical, almost ritualistic to the way Haurchefant moves about the room that he hasn't the heart to interrupt him.
When he rejoins him there, his painfully open expression holds several dozen words waiting to spill. Yet, before any of them make it past his lips, Lunais stretches to meet him, to claim them and seal them shut with his own. He needs neither a speech nor a declaration of any kind, only another's firm touch and, preferably, a stiff cock to stretch him open.
The promise of the latter is already quite evident as the kiss deepens, half-hard and pressing insistently into his abdomen when Haurchefant pulls him closer. Lunais’ blood surges, not faring much better than him, and he’s soon forced to break the contact with a gasp. Reaching between them, he feels him up through his breeches. His voice is low, seductive in what little air remains between them, and he speaks in no uncertain terms.
“I've not been blind to the way you look at me…” Gods, he can feel him twitch. “Devour me, then. And don't hold back.”
Dragonhead's commander needn't be told twice. There's a rush of air from Lunais’ lungs and of blood to his nethers as he suddenly loses all contact with the stone floor, hoisted up into the knight's strong arms.
The increased difference in height it affords Haurchefant sees him burying his face in the crook of Lunais’ neck. The way he takes in his scent before grazing his skin with the deft tip of his tongue makes Lunais’ head spin, and he rests both arms on Haurchefant's shoulders for support. Tilting his head, he grants him more space to work with—and work with it he does.
His clever tongue follow open-mouthed kisses, soon littering every ilm of skin they can find. Lunais slides a hand into his hair in an effort to lock him in place there.
“Don't hold back,” he repeats, fingers flexing amidst pale blue strands, “I want to look into a mirror tomorrow and see what you've done to me.”
That actually makes him break away with a groan. Dark, earnest eyes search Lunais’ own before he asks, “You are certain?”
Lunais is about to voice his confirmation, but Haurchefant isn't done. “I want you to be comfortable.”
The seconds that pass hang heavy between them as Lunais grapples with that combination of words he doesn't remember ever having heard directed at him before.
He doesn't need him to ask, only needs him to get on with it, because the anticipation burns hotly in his veins, and he won't have it dashed to pieces by—
No matter. He is comfortable.
“Were it not so, do you truly believe I would ask this of you?” Lunais remembers to soften the impact of his—ultimately rhetorical—question with a lopsided grin. He cannot be quite sure it reaches his eyes, so he adds a little flourish, tracing Haurchefant's lower lip with his thumb. “Have a little faith, yes?”
And so, he offers himself up again, brushing aside unruly black hair to fully expose the warm expanse of his throat, and Haurchefant's sharp intake of breath is all he needs and wants to hear.
This time, he descends upon Lunais much like a starved beast would upon its prey and, as he sucks mark after mark into his skin, the knowledge that he'll bear the evidence for the days to come licks up his spine in a flaming flash of pleasure.
Lunais’ breathing has turned erratic by the time their position prevents Haurchefant from making his way further down. He aches, both from having been laid claim to so thoroughly and because his hard cock strains against the confines of his breeches.
How the knight is still holding him up like this is something of a mystery to him, but it's about time that changes, anyway. It appears they are of one mind, too, for Lunais soon finds himself tipped backwards and deposited atop the duvet draped neatly over the bed behind—now beneath—him.
When he looks up, he catches sight of Haurchefant ridding himself of the loose linen tunic he's been wearing, revealing a torso sculpted by years of swordsmanship. Lunais scrambles to follow suit, but before he can properly lift the hem of his shirt, Haurchefant is on him again to assist… or impede, whichever angle one would rather look at it from.
Lunais squirms, gasping as the shirt is pulled up and off him ilm by ilm, a trail of wet kisses in the fabric's wake. The process is by no means efficient, but were he forced to rate it for effectiveness, the extra attention Haurchefant pays to his nipples the moment they are revealed would be a sure cause for bias.
Unable to contain himself, Lunais arches off the mattress and into the knight's mouth, prompting a low chuckle.
“Like that?”
The flat of a tongue follows, smoothing over the quickly hardening nub before Lunais can feel the intoxicating graze of teeth against his flesh and a breathy ‘yes’ shivers out of him, fingers twisting into the sheets.
Haurchefant sucks and pulls and bites, most careful not to overdo it yet miraculously finding that sweet, sweet edge just shy of too painful, and Lunais can feel his aching length leaking into the tightness of his undergarments.
When he finally pulls off, the rush of cool air is a balm to Lunais’ oversensitive nipple. The knight leaves room for neither praise nor protest, though, simply glances up at him like a coeurl that got the cream and moves on to give the other side the same treatment.
This may well have been the point where Lunais would have begun to question his choices, had the feeling of that mouth on his chest been anything less than divine. He's asked for it, yes. But with Haurchefant it's either all or nothing—he should have guessed he'd be in it for the long haul.
Apparently, at some point, Lunais’ writhing must take a turn for the pitiful, for he's finally granted a moment's reprieve. A calloused hand smoothes down his chest, coming to rest on his abdomen, and the look Haurchefant regards him with is nothing short of… fond.
Lunais fights the urge to curl in on himself, away from his gaze. The very notion that blue could be warm is contradictory, and yet…
He keeps his tone carefully light. “Hah… I must admit, I didn't take you for a tease.”
A smile brightens Haurchefant's features like a sunray parting fog. “Oh, I am but a man intent on showing you the care and attention you deserve.”
That declaration causes Lunais’ heart to miss a beat or two and, for an awful couple of seconds that seem in no rush at all to pass, he feels himself running hot and cold at once.
He doesn't need him to wax poetic. Neither does he need him to behold him like that, or to make this little tryst of theirs into anything it isn't, and most importantly he needs to get his cock out of these damned breeches and Haurchefant's balls-deep up his arse the way he's intended for this to go all along.
Lunais pushes it all down, back behind the façade, and flashes him a flirty grin. “I can think of somewhere particular for you to direct your attention to.”
He places his hand over Haurchefant's and gently but assertively nudges it lower to come to rest over his bulge, and Haurchefant actually sighs at the feel of him twitching under the warmth of his touch.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Before Lunais can respond, Haurchefant is already making quick work of the fastenings of his pants and all he can do is lift his hips to allow him to pull them down. They’re discarded to the side in a graceless heap—not that he minds, when Haurchefant settles between his legs, nosing at him through the thin fabric of his underclothes as he peers up at him with darkened blue eyes.
“May I?”
Again, asking permission as though he’ll break if he puts his mouth on him. It’s rather the question itself that makes Lunais feel like he might, but Haurchefant's intentions are nothing but good. So damnably good, in fact, that he can’t help but feel like a stain beneath him, like something rough-hewn and loathsome and crude when he pits his dark and unseemly desires against the radiant blaze that is him.
And still he needs him, the pressure of his cheek against aching, clothed flesh just shy of maddening, and he nods his assent for courtesy’s sake, half-wishing for him to swallow him whole.
Oblivious to the turmoil within him, Haurchefant finally peels away the last layer of cloth separating them and, with a low hum, runs the tip of his tongue up the length of him.
Lunais’ breath stutters, but thankfully this time he doesn’t tease for long; instead seeks his eyes as he slides him between his lips ilm by ilm. Lunais is unable to look away, until he feels himself hitting the back of the knight’s throat and the way he begins to work him, tongue pressed against him and hollowing his cheeks, causes his gaze to lose focus.
It's impossible to deny his skill, and Lunais can’t help but wonder what a man of Haurchefant’s station gets up to in order to hone such an ability. Then again, one ought to never look too closely at the things those set upon a pedestal do in the dark. He knows as much from his own feeble (and largely failed) attempts to keep his reputation—or whatever tatters remain of it—in check. And still…
What is he doing, taking advantage of this man who’s taken him in without question, without hesitation, so that he might momentarily quiet his unrelenting hunger?
What is he doing, allowing him to slip warm hands into the cracks and crevices of his fortifications, that he might have a go at prying them asunder with that unfaltering determination of his?
What is he doing, leading him on like this, so pliant and open and disgustingly vulnerable as he swallows down the need between his legs as though it were his sworn duty, turning his gasps to moans and pleas?
Lunais has learned well to drown the guilt in pleasure, and it is no different here, where blue hair frames brows furrowed in captivation and pale cheeks dusted red. In the end, it matters not who occupies the space between his legs, who drapes himself over him to own him for the night; all that matters is the building blaze within him, the sweet promise of release, and the weightless high that follows. The guilt will return to keep him company soon enough. It always does.
It takes embarrassingly little time for Lunais to lose himself in the wet heat of Haurchefant's mouth, for his hips to struggle to avoid bucking up into it, for him to gasp out a warning, and he can almost feel him grin before he pulls off his cock.
“Don’t hold back.”
It’s not with malice that he parrots him, only that damned warmth and conviction and a tinge of pride, and Lunais wishes it were the ground swallowing him up rather than the handsome man before him. But then his lips and tongue continue their work and force Lunais to give in, fingers digging into the sheets as he lets himself thrust up into his mouth.
There’s a hand that seeks his, that unfurls his grip on soft fabric to replace it with callused skin instead and, had Lunais not been so far gone, he might have pulled back as if struck by levin. Like this, though, he becomes an anchor to tether him, something real and tangible to hold him in the here and now when he finally crests, shuddering and with a drawn-out moan on his lips.
He comes to again to the sensation of Haurchefant rubbing circles into the palm of his hand, and just so catches him licking his lips, which curl into a wicked smile the moment he meets his eyes. Lunais’ spent cock throbs uselessly as the knowledge that he’s swallowed it all filters through the post-orgasmic haze.
“I take it you’re quite enjoying yourself?”
Lunais merely groans weakly in return, lifting an arm to rest it across his eyes. The way he’s said it makes it sound like a prelude for things yet to come and Gods, he hopes it is.
“...Quit the gloating, ’mjust warming up.”
Haurchefant chuckles lightly and the sound does something to Lunais’ insides that he’s not quite able to place, nor does he think he wants to. Thankfully, the knight doesn't allow the silence to settle, lest he start wracking his brain over it.
“Mmh, if that's the way of it, surely you won't mind if I keep going.” He shifts and presses his lips to the inside of Lunais’ thigh, the muscle flexing in anticipation.
The pause leaves Lunais ample time to decline, to request a break, or withdraw entirely—it's yet another undue show of consideration, when the heat of his breath already sends desire coursing through his veins again. His body may yet be working to catch up but he couldn't deny that he craves more, craves him, if he tried.
He takes a moment to pull himself from the quiet bliss of the afterglow, to prop himself up on an elbow in an effort to get a better view of the man sprawled between his thighs as if he's never belonged anywhere else.
As far as Lunais is aware, there is no polite or roundabout way to convey to a man that he would like it very much if he fucked him senseless. It is a good thing then, that Haurchefant strikes him as someone who values direct feedback.
“I don't… I want you. Inside me.”
That elicits a low, hungry noise from him, followed by teeth grazing the soft flesh of Lunais’ thigh, and he shivers in response, still sensitive from his recent orgasm. Before he can change direction, Lunais’ fingers slide into Haurchefant's hair to push him closer, and he easily takes the hint.
It should concern him that he reads him so well already, but Lunais' head lolls back either way as Haurchefant licks and sucks and bites his way up his inner thigh, the initial sting of it quickly giving way to pleasure.
Here, too, will his skin be littered with marks come the morrow, a slowly fading souvenir of their tryst, and he wouldn't have it any other way. He already knows he'll get himself off pushing down on the bruises, on the echo of teeth digging into him.
By the time Haurchefant turns his attention towards his other, yet unblemished thigh, Lunais’ cock has recovered enough to take an interest again. However, what follows is not teeth, is not harsh at all, is but a feather-light press of lips, a soft puff of air. Looking down, Lunais finds him glancing up at him, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth the moment their eyes meet.
“You're a sight to behold, Lunais.”
The noise that threatens to spill out of him stutters and dies halfway, and he can’t quite tell if it’s shame that blooms the treacherous heat beneath his skin or something else. Before he can even begin to think too much about it, his flesh is assaulted anew with teeth and the pain erases all thought from Lunais’ mind.
What feels like both a bell and a mere few minutes later, Haurchefant decides he’s done enough; Lunais’ thighs thoroughly bruised and tender, and his length standing at half-mast once more. He almost expects to be flipped over, for the knight to speed things along and finally give him the rough pounding he craves, but instead he finds a knee planted firmly at either side of him, the orange firelight blocked out by his imposing figure hovering above him.
“Fury, permit me to speak bluntly. I’ve wanted you since I first laid eyes on you.”
That much Lunais has been able to tell. He would have had to be both blind and deaf to miss the tells. It is, however, one thing to feel a man's hungry gaze upon him, and another entirely to hear him voice his desires in such close quarters, with a weight as though weeks and weeks of an inexplicable longing have wound up and culminated to this singular point in history.
It isn't as though his presence is not wanted, quite the contrary, but Lunais has neither much love nor patience for talk.
“So have me.” Lunais traces the tips of his fingers up the man's arm, over his shoulder, and along the nape of his neck, into his hair. “I'm right here.”
A calculated tug is all he needs to set Haurchefant in motion again—yet it doesn't quite produce the expected result. Lunais finds himself encompassed in blue as he leans in, and he only realizes he's been holding his breath when a nose brushes his, and lips are pressed to his own again.
Where he might have expected fervor at this point in their little game, Lunais is instead met with a tenderness so profound it expels the air from his lungs. Haurchefant's eyes are shut, his brow knit as he kisses him gently. Lunais knows this only because his own eyes remain open wide, until he finds the wherewithal to move his lips in turn. It is him, then, who deepens the contact, who winds fingers into blue strands to crash himself against his shores like a tidal wave, and whose hips twitch upwards in desperate search of friction, of something, anything other than this, this gesture he isn't made for.
It is this friction that swiftly turns their kiss into a heated battle of teeth and tongues, moans and sighs swallowed by hungry mouths, and gods, the way the knight's trapped cock grinds against his is intoxicating. What worms its way under Lunais' skin, however, is not the frantic heat of it all but the noises Haurchefant pants against his lips between kisses.
There is a realness—something so painfully genuine that Lunais himself could never hope to match it—to everything he does, starting from the way he guides the knights under his command, to how he so readily opens his hearth and home to a political refugee accused of nothing less than regicide, and to how he wears his desires, the entirety of his precious, golden heart on his sleeve, making love to one hardly deserving of such kindness.
All he needs, all he asks for, is the physical aspect of it all, to be allowed to forget for a bell or two, to be treated not as a man but an object of pleasure, to be of use to another in every which way he would have him. And when the coarse fabric of Haurchefant's straining breeches nigh starts to chafe, Lunais makes it a point to let his fingers dance along the man's side, down to the fastenings, and to finally free him from his confines. He brings their lengths together in a deft hand, causing Haurchefant to break their kiss with a groan.
The look Lunais levels him with is one of feigned innocence. "Don't you think that's quite enough for the appetizer?" He lets his hips buck into the tightness of his fist, against the hard line of Haurchefant's cock, and appreciates the way his expression shifts and his eyes unfocus. "Take me, commander. Or would you have me beg for your cock?"
Finally, finally things seem to shift into place—and yet, just as Lunais is about to maneuver Haurchefant off of him to reposition himself in a way that is less open, less vulnerable, his wrist is caught by a calloused hand.
"I would... have you like this. On your back. See your fa-"
”No.” Lunais withdraws his hand, proceeds to push the knight from where he hovers above him, disregarding the surprise that parts his lips with a renewed twinge of guilt, a hint of unease. "You will not."
To allow him this, to look him in the eyes as he drives his cock into him, to let him see with his own two eyes just how easily he is undone... He has already let him in too far, lodged under his skin like a splinter. To want is naught but a curse.
"Then show me how."
It doesn't sound like an accusation. Lunais has experienced all kinds of reactions from men not getting their way where it concerns his bodily autonomy. He would have liked to forget the ones who had perceived his boundaries a threat to their authority. Haurchefant, for a mercy, simply eases off of him, briefly moves to stand to discard the rest of his clothing, and awaits his guidance with the patience of a saint.
Lunais remembers to breathe.
Meeting his gaze would be too much, so he merely does as requested and presents himself on elbows and knees. Haurchefant moans. The mattress dips behind him as he takes his place at his rear, and Lunais can't help but flex into the touch when an appreciative hand smooths down the alluring arch of his spine, to the curve of his bare ass.
The one drawback there is to this position, is that it leaves him blind to the knight's movements behind him. And so, Lunais is not at all prepared for the sudden, cool trickle of liquid that registers beneath his tailbone, slowly warming as it slides down his exposed cleft. It prompts a sharp intake of breath, an instinctive twitch of the thighs as if wanting to jerk away from the sensation, but Haurchefant soothes, shushes, with fingers gliding across skin to catch the spillage and direct it to where he aches for it.
"Apologies, I did not mean to startle you... 'tis oil."
Always with the damned chivalry. "...I know, just-" Lunais only shudders, arches, the tight ring of muscle the pad of Haurchefant's thumb presses against wanting so badly to give way, to swallow and take. "Just keep going," he urges, voice tight.
And he does. Finally, and with excruciating caution, does a digit breach him. Lunais keens, shifting back to meet him, to pull him in further; his body knows this, does not resist—it demands.
A warm hand smooths over skin again, grasps at flesh to expose him further, moulds him to its will. There is something Haurchefant says, but over the rushing of blood in his ears Lunais makes out only the appreciative tone of his voice, not the words, and then a second finger joins the first.
"Nnhyes-"
Instinctively, his body relaxes into the sheets, the fabric bunched up in his fist. It feels so, so good, but it just barely scratches the surface of that itch, that yawning, hungry void within him. He's treated as though he's made of glass, something that might shatter if Haurchefant looks at it from the wrong angle, and he clenches around the two fingers in an attempt to speed his efforts along.
He can take it. He wants it. Gods, no, he needs it. More. Harder. Now!
The knight behind him hums, almost as if amused by his growing impatience, by how his hips begin to move on their own, rocking to meet the slow back and forth of his fingers halfway.
“You are used to this.”
It's not the fact that he's made that observation, it is the way in which he delivers it that makes Lunais pause in his chase for pleasure.
“...What?”
The grin in Haurchefant's voice is hard to miss; he sounds almost too self-satisfied. “To taking it. Look at you opening up so easily… doing so well for me.”
Oh.
If only he knew how familiar. Apparently his reputation doesn’t quite precede him far enough to reach the unforgiving climes of Coerthas.
Lunais huffs a breathy laugh, devoid of any real humor and dripping with the boiling hot urgency of a man desperate for a good, hard fuck.
Despite how his praise stokes the flames, Lunais isn't going to beg.
“Told you I won't break… now–”
–please.
Haurchefant seems satisfied with his response, and promptly rewards him by crooking both digits lodged within him against his prostate with terrifying precision. He proceeds to push them into and drag them over that sensitive bundle of nerves until Lunais is all but melted into the sheets. It’s always been the fastest way to rid him of any coherence.
Eventually, the knight’s own need seems to overpower his desire to toy with him under the guise of prep work. He pulls free, and Lunais whimpers at the sudden emptiness, the suspense of knowing what will follow keeping him taut as a bowstring. There’s the sound of the stopper on the oil flask as it pops for the second time, the dip of the mattress as he shifts behind him, adjusting and making ready to give him what he needs.
It briefly occurs to Lunais that he hasn’t even seen him yet, but there’s something about the idea of gauging what he’s dealing with purely by sensation alone, something that sends a shiver down his spine as the slick head of his cock slides against his aching hole.
“Take me,” Lunais utters and doesn’t beg, before Haurchefant gets any ideas and asks about his well-being again.
And so he does, ilm by excruciatingly slow ilm. Lunais grasps at the sheets, groans at how his length stretches him open, how he slots into him so perfectly, as though he belongs there. Haurchefant pauses with a shuddering breath of his own when he bottoms out, and Lunais arches his back further, pressing hungrily back against him to urge him to move.
The drag of his cock along his insides is slow at first, allowing him to adjust, but soon enough the knight's decorum seems to finally fray at the edges. Lunais’ eyes flutter shut as he loses himself in the sensation, in how the snap of hips against his backside soon comes faster, rougher, just the way he's wanted it all along.
Like this, he's reduced to his very essence. He no longer needs to pretend to be anything he never asked to become. No Scion of the Seventh Dawn, not some unlikely savior of the realm, not a fugitive on the run for a crime he didn’t commit, hiding out in cold, unforgiving Coerthas, with all but two of his companions lost and very possibly dead.
Like this, he can simply be, forget, exist solely to writhe in mind-numbing pleasure at the mercy of another.
But even as a heavy hand comes to bear down between Lunais’ shoulder blades, pressing him into the mattress face-first, even as Haurchefant silently commands him to stay put as he drives his cock into him, there is nothing oppressive about it, nothing forceful. There is only him, everywhere, a light in the dark as he leans on him, adjusts his angle and slams directly into his prostate to once again make him see stars.
That, paired with the undeniable care he's shown him, with how he keeps showing it even when the wet sounds of their coupling echo off the stone walls, seems to unravel something within him. Lunais bleeds it in the way his voice falters and cracks on his moans, in how the rocking of his hips to meet Haurchefant's thrusts grows uncoordinated, in how he’s forced to shut his eyes tighter as tears suddenly seep unbidden through his lashes.
The feeling rearing its monstrous head in his chest cavity—where it clings to his heart like tree sap and squeezes the air from his lungs—is one he has no name for, one he hasn’t the wherewithal to even gauge the scope of, preoccupied as he is with staving off the swell of another orgasm.
Eventually, Haurchefant’s hand vacates its spot on his upper back, slides further up across sweat-slick skin, brushes aside the hair sticking to it at his nape, and finally latches onto a shoulder. The knight’s grip serves as leverage, and Lunais wails as his cock suddenly seems to reach even deeper. He’s ready for the tide of pleasure to take and drown him; he’s so achingly hard, he needs it so badly, needs to–
“...come, oh gods pleasepleaseyes, f-fill me up, ffffhah, inside–!”
Haurchefant’s hips stutter. He stalls with a groan, grinding into him with deliberate precision. “Fury, you’ll be the end of me…”
Lunais teeters dangerously close to the precipice, can only hope that he’ll take him at his word, and the noise he makes very nearly sounds like a sob as he readjusts his hold on him and picks up the pace once again. Every thrust comes accentuated with praise.
“You feel so good… taking me so well, you're—hah—breathtaking, if only you could see yourself–!”
He is naught but a raw nerve, suspended somewhere between what is, what isn’t, and what could be. Never before has he, in the midst of getting swived within an ilm of his life, felt so held, so cradled, as though he matters more than anything else in the room and perhaps the entire star.
It isn't only the rhythmic force of Haurchefant's cock pounding into him, and not just the words he speaks—it's this, the raw, unfettered culmination of all the care he's shown him over the course of the past bell, that finally tips Lunais over the edge for the second time that night.
He registers vaguely how Haurchefant stills, sheathed inside him to the hilt, and floods him with his spend with a gasp of his name, milked to the last by the rhythmic clench of his insides. Half a minute or perhaps a bell passes until he allows himself to collapse on top of Lunais, nose buried at the nape of his neck as he catches his breath, as though he hasn't yet taken in enough of him.
Lunais thinks to feel him press his lips to his skin, a gesture so tender it chases a shiver down his spine. The haze hasn't quite lifted yet, and warm and pliant and light as he is, he has half a mind to lean into the touch, to bask in the afterglow for just a moment longer.
But then the spell is broken, and Haurchefant pulls away and his softening length free of his body.
“My, ‘twould seem I've made a mess of you… I do apologize.”
The smile in his voice is unmistakable, and Lunais feels the absence of him keenly, until the longing twists into a cold pang of remorse. He's already made himself vulnerable enough, to let him linger like that after the fact would…
He moves to straighten up, acknowledging Haurchefant's lighthearted apology with a noncommittal hum. The extent of the mess becomes apparent when he finds the white of the sheets beneath him stained translucent with his come. Kneeling upright, the knight’s spend inside of him—now subject to gravity—isn't inclined to stay in place either.
“Here.” Haurchefant lounges on his side, holding out a handkerchief. Lunais accepts it, doing his utmost to avoid meeting his eyes, but the glimpse he does catch of the man's expression, of the way he seems to glow with warmth and kindness and everything that Lunais isn't, is enough to make his heart clench.
It very much doesn't help, then, that Haurchefant pats the bed beside himself and invites Lunais to join him. That line he cannot cross, for he won't be able to come back from what lies beyond it, not with how his pulse spikes at the idea of such closeness without the premise of sex. It isn't right, not in light of what this encounter was supposed to be: a distraction, a means to an end, a mere give-and-take, a connection that was never meant to last.
And yet, Lunais’ thighs and knees ache, as does his chest with a yearning that threatens to choke him, and the only thing promising to keep him breathing is him.
There is no turning back once he settles against the pillows despite himself, tensed up from head to toe. Steeping in a potent cocktail of fear and uncertainty, the hand Haurchefant lays upon his thigh nearly makes him flinch.
“Thank you, Lunais. For indulging me.” The thumb to the side of his knee draws nonsensical lines along his skin, and there's that godsdamned, handsome smile again. “You're incredible, truly.”
What he truly is is someone Haurchefant would do well to stay away from, lest he, too, be tarnished. He deserves better, he ought to–
Haurchefant leans in, and Lunais freezes like a fawn, golden eyes wide as knuckles brush gingerly along a cheekbone. He curses himself as he lets the knight capture his lips once more in a kiss that is chaste, almost sweet. It makes the breath catch in his throat, and his eyes sting.
“Please, rest. Stay as long as you like. Do you care for refreshments? A hot drink and a bite to eat, perhaps?”
Lunais hasn't the chance to protest before the knight slips out of bed and—clad in a deep red robe that clashes terribly with his tousled hair—disappears through the door. Clearly, he's fallen victim to a ploy construed in an attempt to keep his company for longer. But Haurchefant’s departure has, unbeknownst to the man himself, swiftly done away with any desire Lunais might have had to stay put with him.
He vacates the bed, and a sudden wave of terror licks up his spine.
A grave mistake, to let him in like that. How reckless he's been to sleep with a man who’s so obviously been pining for his attention. To have his in return, as undivided as it was, has only made the rift between them ever more apparent. Lunais can’t stay, can't possibly allow him to see deeper into the cracks. There is naught he has to offer him, and the disgrace of slipping away unseen is much preferable to the hurt he might feel if Haurchefant were to see him for the sham, the miserable husk of a man he truly is beneath the colorful tapestry.
Scattered clothes are hastily gathered up from where they were lost in the heat of the moment, and Lunais’ hands tremble as he pulls them on. The ache in his ribcage persists when he, too, shuts the door behind himself and flits down the hallway, back towards the guest quarters quietly as a shadow.
And thus, Lunais doesn't know that Haurchefant soon returns with a tray filled with cookies, hot chocolate, and tea—which he has come to know him to prefer over the former.
He doesn't know that this is a mere one of the little details the knight has observed and diligently made note of about him, a quality that comes quite as naturally to him as breathing.
And he doesn't know either that, when Haurchefant finds that the undeniable smell of sex and the soiled, rumpled sheets are the only evidence that remains of Lunais ever having set foot in his quarters, he smoothes a hand down the fabrics he's rested against with an almost wistful touch. They are still warm; a quiet imprint of his presence, cherished to the last.