“What… what are we?” Yorick asked, staring straight ahead. “D-Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed your company immensely... I... I didn’t actually think you’d be back Then here you are and I’m just confused, I guess.”
“You didn’t think I’d be back?”
Yorick looked at him with such sadness in his blue eyes. “Every time you visited me, you had something you wanted. I didn’t mind. I liked kissing you and I liked helping.” He turned back to his roll and excavated a piece slathered in icing with his fingers. “I figured when you finished, that’d be it. I believed thinking otherwise would be lying to myself.”
“I needed excuses to leave,” Nezael insisted, wishing Yorick would look at him again, but he just ate the piece of roll he’d broken off. An excuse to do anything but see the hurt in Nezael’s eyes. “If I didn’t have one, my lord wouldn’t have let me.” He gently turned Yorick’s face so he could catch his gaze again. “All I wanted—all I really wanted all this time—was to be yours.”
Some of the unease began melting from Yorick, but he didn’t answer.
Nezael took Yorick’s other hand, the one with icing coating the fingers, and considered it. “Are you so used to being lonely that me never coming back was your only answer?”
Maybe it was too personal a question, especially because Nezael already knew the answer deep down. It was easier to pretend that was all there was to it. To save Yorick from hurting himself by getting attached to a flighty nymph-like necromancer flitting in and out of his life like the breeze. Nezael did feel guilty all he’d done was come by when he had an excuse; he should have eschewed them altogether and visited simply to sit inside with Yorick on cold mornings. Watch the frost melt and the sun move across the sky. Show him someone cared about him while needing nothing else in return.
Yorick peered at their hands. Nezael didn’t need an answer; he already had it.
Nezael brought Yorick’s hand closer and Yorick stiffened, eyes darting right back to Nezael’s with a question. Carefully, before he lost his nerve, Nezael slowly slid the finger into his mouth. Yorick went somehow stiller, like he hardly even breathed, and Nezael watched his eyes as he slowly drew the finger back out, running his tongue softly along it to catch the icing.
“I want you,” Nezael whispered.
“Oh,” Yorick breathed out the word, but remained impossibly still as though his entire body had forgotten how to function.
Slower than the first, Nezael slid the second finger into his mouth, never once breaking eye contact with Yorick even as it went deeper. There was the jolt of a pulse there, Yorick’s breathing coming out a little more rapid, and Nezael ever so slowly pulled the finger from his mouth, taking care to catch more of the icing.
“Every single part of you: I want,” Nezael said.
“Oh.” The word came out more well-formed, Yorick watching Nezael’s mouth like it was the only part of him that existed. His eyebrows shot up, realization dawning on him, and his breaths came even quicker. His heartbeat fast in his chest.
“I am surprised the kisses did not give it away,” Nezael teased and went for the next finger, the last one with icing still left on it. Not as much, but that wasn’t quite why Nezael was doing it.
“I thought you were being polite,” Yorick said, barely able to stop the chuckle in his throat, and Nezael made a show of rolling his eyes as he began to pull the finger back out. “You know, I’ve a mind to tell you where else you can put your lips exactly like that.”
Nezael’s cheeks burned at the insinuation, even if that had been exactly his intent, and he grinned mischievously at Yorick. “Do you, now? Pray, tell me about it in detail.”
Blush bloomed quickly across Yorick’s cheeks and he laughed loudly. It sounded like he was darting through the forest with Nezael again—wild and free—and Nezael took it as an invitation to be bolder. He swung one leg around Yorick’s lap and firmly placed himself atop it, delighted as he felt a reaction from what awaited him below.
“Would you have me, then?” Nezael cupped Yorick’s face to look up at him. “All that I am and more?”
A devilish smile spread across Yorick’s lips, like he was really considering everything he wanted to do, and a delighted shiver ran down Nezael’s spine. Yorick’s hands firmly found their way to Nezael’s behind and squeezed it, sending another flush of pleasure straight through Nezael and his pulse quickened.
“I’ll have you. All of you,” Yorick whispered.
Nezael meant to bend low and kiss him, but then his gaze caught the flurry of white outside. He gasped against Yorick’s lips instead, and threw himself off the couch as fast as he could. He would have fallen outright if Yorick hadn’t caught him.
“It’s already snowing?” Nezael whispered.
Yorick glanced out the window. It had already coated the grass and more and more fell, looking like curtains from the sky. “It’s not safe to go back now,” Yorick said quickly. “You can stay.”
Nezael’s panic calmed, a little realization setting in, and he hid the smile on his lips with his hand. Maybe this was preferable. Yorick saw the smile anyway, understood the intent of it, but before he could draw Nezael in to go back to what was so rudely interrupted, Nezael went to the door.
“One moment—I want to send a message.”
The bird couldn’t be far when magic kept it afloat. Nezael even felt it, a little twinkle in the snowstorm. He gently opened the door, Yorick watching with more curiosity than anything else, and Nezael drew his hand into the cold. There was a rattle of bones, the slightest hum of a song, and the skeleton bird landed on his finger, no worse for wear. Nezael pulled it close, gently petting its head with his finger to ignite more magic inside its tiny body, and pressed his lips to the cold bones.
“Bellamy, I have adequate shelter. Do not worry for me,” he whispered, magic ghosting across his words like a melody. “I will return when the snow ceases. I promise.” He hated adding the last part, knowing Yorick was listening, but he feared Bellamy worrying too much without it.
The bird shuffled unseen feathers, Nezael’s magic voice coiling into the empty space in its ribcage, and Nezael kissed its head before he let it fly for its home in the tower. Magic would protect it, this he knew, and very shortly, Nezael lost sight of it in the squall.
Snow spilled inside around him until Yorick saw sense and drew Nezael away to close the door. It was all Nezael could do to toss his worries away and it helped when he turned to take in Yorick in his entirety.
His strong shoulders, his soft chest, and the muscles lining his arms and legs. Yorick was looking at Nezael the same; desire and fire lit up in his eyes. One of them had to start. Nezael pulled him in, kissing him deeply, and before he knew it, his back was on the nearest flat surface—the table, he distantly realized but perhaps it never mattered—and he’d wrapped his legs tightly around Yorick, holding him there as closely as he could until the only option Nezael had was to come up for air. And even then, Nezael wasn’t sure if he’d do it if it meant pulling away from Yorick.
~
It grew dark, only the fire in the hearth providing light at all, and even it dulled while Nezael acquainted himself with every inch of Yorick’s body and the way it reacted to him. What made it shiver, what made the soft moans on Yorick’s lip turn to song, and then all the tastes therein. Yorick had done the same with Nezael, learning very quickly what made him tremble, cry out in pleasure, and how eagerly Nezael wanted to take him in entirely. Over and over again until they were both breathless upon the bed, tangled in the sheets. The first touch had sent all sensations spilling forth—desire made apparent and manifested in their roaming hands and mouths—and Nezael wished he’d been bolder long before now. The real Yorick was so much better than all the teasing dreams. The heat of his body was all encompassing, the way the weight of it pushed up against Nezael’s own body so true and right each time, and nothing could replicate it but reality.
He was breathless again when Yorick took himself away from the bed. The man’s skin glistened around the teeth shaped marks Nezael had left for him. The same peppered Nezael’s own body and this time, he wouldn’t have to hastily hide them for fear of his lord seeing them. The dim light illuminated the sheen of Yorick’s body, the golden hues all over, and he bent to retrieve the pants he’d long since discarded. A shame. Nezael rested his head on the pillow, watching as Yorick pulled them on before heading over to throw more wood into the fire.
Nezael didn’t want to move yet, even as the room bloomed in new light. His legs were still trembling too much from all the excitement and moving meant leaving the bed. Maybe if he looked despondent enough at the loss of his sleeping partner, Yorick would come back for yet another round.
Yorick turned and caught Nezael’s gaze with a smile. “Thought you’d fallen asleep.” He returned to the bed and bent to steal a kiss.
“Hungry?” he asked.
Nezael thought about it and rolled over to prop himself up on his elbows. “Is it cheating if I say for you?” he asked and Yorick laughed, shaking his head. “I suppose I am as long as it means afterward you come back to bed. I don’t think you’re finished with me yet.”
It earned Nezael another kiss and Nezael drank it in, this time biting Yorick’s lip when he dared to move away.
As Yorick fussed about in the kitchen, likely searching for something easy to make, Nezael noticed the forlorn cinnamon rolls on the counter.
