Chapter Text
“Do you ever dream about kissing?” Fitzroy asked him.
“No,” he said easily, dreamily, as easily as he had when he and Basil had whispered over their questions. Cliopher had never dreamed of love as Basil had; never woken with those thoughts in his mind, his body.
Except, he remembered, that wasn’t entirely true. “There was one time,” he added thoughtfully. “After the Moon Lady – when I thought of –”
“Her?” Fitzroy interjected, his voice trembling. He had closed his eyes.
“– you.”
A pause, a momentary stillness. The quiet lapping of the water against hull and outrigger. The brilliant stars of Sky Ocean above. Fitzroy's breathing arrested for a moment, for some reason.
Then, softly and quickly and full of a hushed reverence all in a keeping with this velvet night: "You thought of me?"
That had been so long ago now, and so many things had happened since, and yet Cliopher found he was fallen back into the Lesuia night. Warmer than this, the air closer in that lovely bedchamber than it was here on the open ocean.
The memory was sharper for having been set out of his mind so rapidly at the time – oh, it had been displaced by a hundred thousand distractions as they returned to Gorjo City. The unexpected fount of mischief in his incognito Sun-on-Earth. His family's confusion, meeting his lord. The intimacy and the unexpected heart-filling benison of their walk together along the breakwater, where his Radiancy named him Lord Chancellor.
Before all that there had been –
"You went swimming," he managed hoarsely. "I saw – it was all silver and black, down by the shore, and gold where the lights from the house came through the shutters. You were –" he swallowed. "Discomposed."
Fitzroy's fond sigh seemed to sway with the vaha. Long fingers crept into Cliopher's. "I was aching for – relief."
Cliopher shut his eyes, but the bright spangles of those glorious stars still glittered in the darkness behind his lids. "I wanted to offer it."
Fitzroy's other hand stroked the hair back from Cliopher's face, fingertips delicate along the sides of his face, and then cupped his cheek, gently tilting his head. When he opened his eyes again Fitzroy's face was nearby and fully in his line of vision, half shadow and half gleaming with reflected starlight. Fitzroy's eyes were all kindled warmly golden like a young fire.
"You are so beautiful." The words slid out without premeditation, drawn from the secret part of him that had stood there, trembling, on the sands at Navikiani – and then, in the privacy of his room, imagined –
"Kip," was all Fitzroy said, but he said it so richly. Cliopher's family nickname, so familiar, sounding slow and reverent and caressing all at once, as though it were a delicacy Fitzroy melted on his tongue. As though –
"Yes?" The word came out strange because there seemed to be no air left in his lungs to propel it.
Fitzroy leaned closer. Cliopher felt a shiver pass through him, like a breeze scudding cats-paws from the sea. Perhaps it was some effect of Sky Ocean on a mortal body. It wasn't bad. It wasn't anything, except for here, and alive, and stirring, and strange.
This was not Navikiani. Fitzroy was not out there, swimming, dark shoulders plunging through the darker waves, dark head shining under the insubstantial touch of the moon's light. The only touch he had been permitted, then. But now – Fitzroy was here, beside Cliopher, their fingers twined together, that dear face so close, and full of –
Oh.
He swallowed again. And again, because his throat seemed to have constricted shut.
Fitzroy stilled above him, all at once. "Kip," he repeated, and then. "Just – once?"
The question helped. It gave Cliopher's pinwheeling thoughts a direction to follow. "I – am not usually moved to –" the words would hardly form, in this shock of realisation. In this place where they suddenly had new, substantial weight. "– anticipate kissing."
Another silence, filled with the small sounds of the vaha. The creak of the sail. The shush of water under the hull. Fitzroy, lifted up on his elbow, his expression hidden in the shadow cast by all those fine new twists of hair.
The quiet lasted long enough for Cliopher's scattered mind to recover itself, to look down across the silvery flow and roil of so many ideas and thoughts and impulses. To choose one from the whirling school of them, and spear it. "Do you want to kiss me now?"
He felt his face heat at the clumsiness of the question. Here was Fitzroy Angursell, poet and bard, limned in the uncanny light of the stars of Sky Ocean itself, lying at his side in easy companionship, propped up to lean over Cliopher, looking – mmmmpphf
Fitzroy rolled up against him not just with his lips but with his whole body, rustling against Cliopher’s grass skirt in a swirl of fire-bright sparks. His weight was slight but warm and welcome. His lips were salt with the divine waters, soft as – there were no comparisons, there was only Fitzroy, real and close and pressed against him, their legs tangled together, Fitzroy's arms either side of his head, Fitzroy's hands sunk into Cliopher's hair, Fitzroy's mouth –
If this was poetry, it was poetry of motion, and physicality, and – Cliopher had not dreamt of this, he had not anticipated it, but he was breathing and tasting and – it was heady, rolling with the motion of the boat, letting his lips part, wrapping his arms round his friend, his Fitzroy, as he could never seize and hold and welcome his Radiancy.
There were no titles here. There was no pressure. Two friends, adrift in the sky together, sharing delight.
In the mortal lands perhaps his sticky torso would have felt uncomfortable as Fitzroy pulled back a little, but here his skin only tingled as their bodies drew apart. "Yes," Fitzroy said, quick and eager. "Yes, I want to kiss you, Kip, Kip, you really –? You dreamed of me?"
Cliopher's hands were, somehow, splayed across Fitzroy's lower back, fingers brushing up against the hem of his grass skirt, feeling the boniness of those narrow hips. Fitzroy's starry eyes were above him now, more soft and human and shining than any celestial body. The warmth of Fitzroy's limbs lay all along his own, as comfortable and right as though they had always been there.
The strange shiver was back, was flooding into him like the ocean into a waiting pool in the rocks, filling him with endless energy. Or perhaps it was the wind – not the gentle breeze of this flowing night but the sharp driving blast that filled his sails and tore his small vaha into the blue, sheet taut under his hand, muscles bunched and braced, heart singing.
He smiled helplessly. "Shall I tell you about it?"
Fitzroy's sigh had a tiny moan in it. His legs quivered. "Yes, please."
"Mmm." Cliopher considered where to start. "You played for the festival and the Moon came down. She knew you."
He had not, for a long time, allowed himself to remember the Moon Lady. How she had stepped out of the fire and stood before his Radiancy, white as a shell, smooth as new milk. How she had taken hold of his – his Fitzroy, when nobody else could. Her hands, shimmering and pale against his lord's dark skin.
"She wanted to steal you away," he added, his hands tightening on Fitzroy's waist. He remembered that lurch of fear, that terrible tension. "You said no."
Fitzroy sank down under Cliopher's hands, pulled back into a tighter embrace. Cliopher moved too, so that they were tucked in together side by side, Fitzroy's head nestling into his shoulder. "I said no," Fitzroy agreed. "She couldn't give me what I wanted."
"You wanted –"
"The common and ordinary goods." Fitzroy clung to him. "To be mortal, and free, and free to ask –" his lips were hot against Cliopher's ear. "To ask my superlative secretary if he ever dreamed of kissing – me."
That implied – but it couldn't mean – Cliopher was winded again, flattened against the smooth deck of the vaha, his lungs aching for a breath, his heart aching for space under the tightness of his ribs. "You – to ask me?"
The light seemed to be growing, though it was scarcely dawn. Fitzroy's smile crooked at the corner. His face blurred in Cliopher's vision as he leaned in, and Cliopher felt the light press of lips against the tip of his nose. "You. From the day you walked into my study."
It made no sense at all. Fitzroy had hardly known him then. Cliopher felt his head shake, minutely, not so much in denial as in disbelief. He had never, not once, imagined that Fitzroy found him attractive.
It had never even arisen as a question in his mind: it had never occurred to him to wonder. Cliopher had never dreamed of kissing him (except under the black gaze of the Moon!); but that was because he had never dreamed of kissing anyone, really.
Fitzroy's lips pressed to his again, soft and sure, cutting off any words of surprise. Not parting or seeking a deeper kiss; only completing their embrace with another reminder of his presence, of his closeness. Everything was a blur of golden sea mist spilling out into the shadows. Fitzroy murmured, almost into Cliopher's mouth, "You looked me in the eyes. You –" The hitch of his breath was shared by his full body. "You saw me. You made me real."
There was only one possible response to that. "You were always real," Kip mumbled back, more fiercely than he intended. "You were –" He gave up on words and tightened his hold, clinging as closely as he could, trying to show Fitzroy their shared solidity. "She had no right to take advantage of you," he added, because this might be a small part of all the hurt his lord had suffered but he was still angry about it. "To taunt you like that, in front of everyone."
Fitzroy made a small, wounded noise that slipped somehow into Cliopher's aching heart and lodged there, hooking them together. The long slow swell had subsided almost to nothing; he could still feel that they were floating, and that they were moving, but they seemed to be doing so in a perfect bubble of peace.
He lay, and let himself be rocked, and held Fitzroy. Felt the dampness against his shoulder, as Fitzroy – felt the dampness on his own cheeks, that didn't come from the sea mist.
There was more and more mist all around them, stirring with their passage. The growing light sifted through it, sparkling from tiny droplets, glittering in the air. It was a gentle glow pulsing out, he realised, from where they were lying – Fitzroy's magic wrapped all around them, all around his vaha, gleaming in the night.
Time was never pressing in Sky Ocean. He waited entirely at ease, entirely tender and astonished, holding Fitzroy, letting there be space for rage or grief or sorrow. Or perhaps all three, tucked in together.
It was a long while later that he felt moved to add, "I didn't understand your agitation at first. I don't – under any circumstances, I don't notice these things." He paused as Fitzroy shifted again so that they could see one another. It was harder to continue under that beloved gaze. "I – Conju explains, sometimes, when people have been flirting. Or sometimes a friend is more direct, and then I know – that evening I knew, I think, but I didn't realise until you were swimming. And then."
The silence lapped in again like the waves as he hunted for the words. Fitzroy's tear-stained face was so near, and their legs and skirts still lying together, and they were held in the illusion of still air behind the sail as the boat slid on through the perfect night.
"And then?"
It was easier somehow once he had been prompted. "I went to my room. I tried to sleep, but I kept thinking of – it was as though she was looking at me, mocking. I remembered her hands on you, and the way you held yourself, and – I thought of you, thought that I was in sympathy with you, because I was also –"
He broke off again, astonished at himself. At – It had to be the words, the story, the resonance of one ocean night with another –
"Kip," Fitzroy asked in that dark velvet voice, "are you aroused now?"
The answer formed in his mind, blindingly brilliant. Too bright to look at directly. He didn't – he wasn't – he often was aroused by the time he realised it, after a long slow evening relaxing in the company of someone he admired. Growing more tactile with a friend, as he and Fitzroy had been –
His body had answered for him, given how tightly they were wound together. But he had been telling a story and it wasn't finished yet. He could come back to this question.
"I don't often take myself in hand," he explained, and to his relief he felt Fitzroy relax very slightly back into listening. "I – that evening I was too –" He shut his eyes again, remembering.
The fragrance of the flowers of Navikiani drifting in through the open window. The pale fabric billowing as the breeze stirred it. The mage lights doused, the moon drifting remote and silver above the sea. The way he had shivered and shut the window, and the shutters too. Feeling his way across the room and folding his robe neatly over the chair. Sitting down heavily on the bed, legs apart.
He wanted to shift his legs apart now. He did shift them, on instinct, until the gasp and answering movement from Fitzroy told him that he had – that he was –
He was aroused, and his arousal was pressed up through the leaves of his skirt, into the warmth of Fitzroy's thigh. He felt a sudden impulse to reach down – or to keep hitching, to rub himself against Fitzroy – but they had not discussed this, and it would be – Fitzroy didn't seem to mind holding him there, and he didn't want to lose this easy companionship.
"I thought about you," he managed. "I thought, she had no right. I thought of you swimming, plunging into the waters. I -" He had to swallow, though his mouth was dry. "I thought of being beside you, of asking, 'My lord, what do you need?', and of you turning to me, and –"
He had hardly been able to form the rest in words. It had been so impossible.
It was impossible still, among so many other impossible things. Learning that his beloved Radiancy was Fitzroy Angursell. The landslide and its aftermath. Meeting the Ancestors. The long, lonely voyage to the house of the Sun.
He had never known what to do with achievement, apart from set it aside and seek the next thing. He wanted –
He had Fitzroy in his arms. Or he was in Fitzroy's arms. It was, the dry bureaucratic voice of his inner self commented, a distinction without a difference. They were floating together in this glistening aura of mist and whispers, and it seemed perhaps that the whole ocean was making space and waiting for what they had to say.
In the bedroom in Navikiani he had slipped from words to images: his lord's eyes, lingering warmly on him. His own hands sliding into those places that – "I imagined touching you, as she had touched you," he whispered. His fingers curled into the smoothness of Fitzroy's back; no longer under the daily care of the greatest aestheticians of the Nine Worlds, warm with the inner fire of the man, a little rough with dried salt, skin a little too tight over a body still a little too thin for Cliopher's liking. "I thought – I wouldn't stop. I would keep hold of you, of your fire."
His hands were moving and he didn't want to stop them, and he didn't want to think. They skimmed down Fitzroy's narrow flanks, found the top border of his sarong, dipped under the drape of the fabric, ran sure fingers along the smooth skin over the bones of Fitzroy's hips.
Fitzroy gasped and – and writhed, under Cliopher's touch, as he had not done for her. "You wouldn't have stopped," he agreed. "Please – if you want – that is, if it was only once – I wouldn't want to –"
"I kept going," he confirmed. Or promised. The past and the present had confused themselves, somehow, but it was always easier not to think about time.
It was easier not to think at all. Fitzroy was shaking in his arms and, all at once, the most important thing he could do for his friend was to be there, to not stop, to keep going.
He needed Fitzroy to know that, to trust that Cliopher would hold him and never let him go.
"Always going above and beyond," Fitzroy mumbled, his face buried in Cliopher's shoulder. "So – thorough – Kip, Kip –" He broke off into a tiny sound of surprise as Cliopher finished his methodical unwinding of the sarong at his waist and brought his hands up to take hold of his shoulders, rolling him flat onto his back and landing firmly on top of him.
The side of Fitzroy's neck tasted of salt too, where Cliopher kissed his way up it open-mouthed, feeling the way Fitzroy arched beneath him and turned to bring their lips together. "Tell me what you need," he said huskily, almost into Fitzroy's mouth.
"I - don't - know." Fitzroy's breathing was ragged. "You. Kip, you're magnificent, you're -" he groaned as Cliopher kissed him again, cut off the babble, and then groaned more painfully as Cliopher pulled himself up and back to sit on his haunches, straddling Fitzroy's waist, so that he could unfasten the mirimiri of Ani and, under that, his own grass skirt.
He kept his movements steady as he leaned across to the open hull to wrap the gossamer fineness of the mirimiri carefully around the firepot that carried the flame of the Sun. He tucked both back inside the basket, and draped his skirt across the top.
Fitzroy lay watching him, eyes blazing, chest heaving. The mist was dewing on the vaha now, and on their skin, gleaming in the golden light. Cliopher felt himself caught, snared by the beauty of the moment, entirely transfixed. This was so far beyond – he would never have expected – he had not known that Fitzroy wanted this, not from him.
He did so love to give Fitzroy what he wanted.
What Fitzroy wanted was to be touched. Cliopher sank back down across his thighs and laid his hands on Fitzroy's chest, lightly at first, feeling damp skin and the nubs of Fitzroy's nipples and the deep hammering of Fitzroy's heart. His fingers looked short and blunt as he spread them apart, sliding through the droplets, pressing just hard enough to be unequivocal, to be there.
Fitzroy was staring at his arm, at his hand. Fitzroy's head was tilted down at an angle that might have been comical under any other circumstances. His arms were by his side, his fingers spread too as though he was trying to take a firmer grip on the vaha, as though he were scrabbling to cling on. As though he were afraid that he would fall away from Cliopher's hands.
That was no good. Cliopher was not often moved to seek out sex, but a thousand years had proven long enough for many encounters with those few friends who sought it with him. If he was going to make love to his lord, to his Fitzroy, to his – best friend, and tend the fire of his body, and not stop until – well, all he could offer, all he had ever been able to offer, was the best of him. He was not here merely to do better than the Moon Lady, as any mortal who put their mind to it could. He could do better than that.
"I'm not going anywhere," he said calmly. Almost conversationally, now that his resolution was burning within him. "Fitzroy, beloved, you can relax."
Cliopher's hands rose and fell as Fitzroy drew in and released a great shuddering breath. He bent to kiss the tears from Fitzroy's lashes. More salt, cold as the stream that ran through the cavern of his heart.
"You – and – your setdowns, Kip. Please –"
A tiny thrill of delight lit like the ruffle of brighter sparks over the top of a fire. Cliopher chose not to examine it; he was flying, and he could use any updraft. He turned into the impulse instead to kiss away Fitzroy's words again, sharing the salt on his lips, tasting the slick warmth of Fitzroy's mouth, of his tongue.
Fitzroy kissed back with frantic energy, licking up and into Cliopher's mouth. He stopped his scrabbling at the vaha and took hold of Cliopher instead, his fingers digging urgently into Cliopher's thighs.
Another lesson Cliopher had learned well in a millennium was patience in search of his goals. He held to his steady pace; to long, slow open-mouthed kisses punctuated with unhurried deep breaths; to a firm physical hold across Fitzroy's body; to a gentle rocking of his hips, in line with the movement of the waves.
He could feel how Fitzroy was responding: in the tension going out of his neck and head, in the loosening of his limbs, and in the softening of his little grunts into longer, deeper, hums of appreciation. These changed delicately in depth and tone when Cliopher's thumbs began to move too, drawing slow circles over Fitzroy's nipples. The skin was even softer there, across the areola, and the nipples themselves were buds furling tightly beneath his fingers.
Their mouths broke further apart as Cliopher touched their foreheads together to say, "That's better, isn't it? Breathe with me."
Fitzroy was listening. Everything was listening: the vaha, the waves, the wind. An inhale, the boat lifting slightly. A beat on top of the low swell. An exhale as they slid easily down the shallow back of the water to be cradled and caught in the shallow trough.
Cliopher waited and breathed and waited until the rhythm sank back below the threshold of his thoughts and became part of him, part of Fitzroy, part of the ocean, part of the night. Fitzroy's fingers were still on his thighs, warm between the shivering coolness where the mist settled. Fitzroy's eyes were a blur of warmth in his close vision.
Deep truths were stirring below the surface somewhere, called out by the quiet and the closeness. Cliopher let them rise out of the heart of him. "You always listened to me," he said. "From the very first day. Nobody else ever listened to me like you did."
"Nobody ever spoke to me like you did." Fitzroy's eyes crinkled as he smiled; even this close, and this blurred, Cliopher recognised it. "From the very first day."
Cliopher kissed him again for that, lightly at the corner of his mouth, and then lifted up so that he could see that smile. It was new: not the serene blessing of the Sun-on-Earth, nor the constrained glee of Cliopher's friend Tor, nor the wide wild grin of the outlawed poet, but something as soft as the mist and as heartening as the Sun's flame cradled in their small firepot.
Something else was hot too, between them. Cliopher sat up further, sliding back so that he could see more of Fitzroy, from his scattered twists of hair, to the flat relaxation of his shoulders, to the smooth planes of his torso, to –
He had seen his lord naked several times and thought little of it. They had swum together in the ocean, sat companionably together on a sandbank, entirely unselfconscious. This was different. The evening had, in that mysterious way they sometimes did, become a celebration of the body. He could, tonight, notice and admire.
There was a wildness in Fitzroy's beauty that no artistry in the Palace could have given him. Not just the free and floating brilliance of his magic, or the way it glinted from the moisture on his arms, on his shoulders – Cliopher was confident that Conju could have created that effect – but the roughness of his scattered hair and the looseness of his limbs and the total trust it implied.
It was there most of all in the way he moved very slightly in protest as Cliopher sat up, and then stopped himself, flopping back against the deck. "I know that look. What great matter do you have to speak to me about tonight, Kip?"
"Hmm." He had not been contemplating words, or not thinking of it. And yet the words were there. "You. I might..." His voice was thick, almost choked. He swallowed and tried again, "I'm no poet. I could write a report for you. On you. " His finger was tracing in the droplets on Fitzroy's chest, shaping letters that would never be read. "Seeing you again, on the island. The way you shine."
Fitzroy made an odd guttural sound and moved under his hand, blurring the shape of the letter. Cliopher abandoned the attempt to write – he did not know what – and let his fingers slide down to bump over Fitzroy's navel. Further down, where the skin was hotter under his hand, where it was prickly and raw with stubby new-grown hair.
The next time Fitzroy twitched his cock smeared a different dampness up the inside of Cliopher's forearm. Cliopher turned his hand to cup around the base of the shaft. His Radiancy's mouth opened in a near-silent gasp, his chest shuddering as he sucked in the still air.
The vaha rocked, up and down. Cliopher breathed with it, waiting, until Fitzroy's moan had shivered into silence and Fitzroy's pleading eyes met his.
"I won't stop. Breathe."
Fitzroy shut his eyes and splayed his hands out across the soggy mess of his discarded sarong. Cliopher waited some more, the warmth throbbing between his fingers.
All around them the golden light sifted slowly through the mist. It gleamed on hull and outrigger, lit up the sail like a great flame, and gilded the waves. Above them the stars leaned in as though to watch; this was Sky Ocean, so perhaps they were. As long as Fitzroy needed him, Cliopher would pay them no heed.
The time would be better spent considering the task before him. He was familiar with male bodies but not as a lover. He had never seen another man both naked and aroused; even his Radiancy after meeting the Moon had been clothed and then hidden in the night.
His fingers curled comfortably around Fitzroy's cock, as though the heat of it had been made to fit in the palm of his hand. He studied it, curious. Long and narrow and graceful, in keeping with every other part of his – friend. The skin was smooth and firm, stretched tightly across the full length of it, folded over the tip in a small dark hood that glistened with the sticky precome it had smeared up his arm.
Fitzroy's eyes, when he glanced up at them, were great liquid pools of black and amber. His breathing had slowed back into the rhythm of the water, although his hands were still tense at his sides.
A little tension of anticipation was perhaps permissible, Cliopher allowed to himself, and then smiled at the thought. Fitzroy returned the smile, wide and open-mouthed and exhilarated, striking an answering thrill from Cliopher. Yes.
He let himself sit there and feel it: his own body was quivering like a string on Fitzroy's harp, singing out one long slow note. He was – he checked, with his free hand – quite remarkably hard himself, wanting to press between his fingers, wanting to – yes.
It was a gift to be able to give this gift. He shuffled forwards up Fitzroy's thighs with no clear purpose but to bring the heat of them together; he felt Fitzroy's hips move as though seeking the same goal.
The rush of warmth shivered through him again and this time his sigh was voiced, the singing rightness made audible in a high quavering moan. Fitzroy moaned too and moved beneath him again, so that as he shifted his hands he felt his cock – Fitzroy's cock – sliding along one another.
His original thought had been to offer his hands to Fitzroy, cradling, stroking and then squeezing and rubbing him until he found release. But – they were both of them here, and could he – ? Could they – ?
His fingers moved across wet skin as though they were teaching him what to do. He was shaking, twitching as the coarseness of his hand brushed across sensitised skin, moving his thighs to let his cock slide gloriously back and forth where his hands held it close to Fitzroy's.
The water added friction; the precome was better for a slick glide. He collected it and smeared it down along the straining lengths. Bolts of exquisite sensation rippled through him, new tremors on the string of the harp, new notes – he was gasping them out, and so was Fitzroy.
His mind was one whirling dance of waves and glitter and – and – Fitzroy, writhing beneath him, making all those soft hungry sounds. Somehow he had managed to clasp round both of their shafts. Fitzroy was clutching at the boat again, and then at Cliopher's thighs. The scrape of his nails made a sudden sharp contrast to the melting, flowing flame between them.
It helped to have that distraction, delicious as it was. Cliopher had no intention of putting his own pleasure first; he had promised not to stop, yes, but he was also here to help Fitzroy. He focused on that: on the damp, squirming, disordered man beneath his arse, beneath his hands.
On the rich slickness of the precome, sliding under his hand, and the way Fitzroy's head flopped helplessly back, open-mouthed, as Cliopher palmed it across them both. On the way that Fitzroy's moans broke and rose and broke again as he curled his fingers firmly at the top of a stroke and rubbed them back over Fitzroy's cockhead.
He had thought that Fitzroy was fully hard and urgent; he had thought himself fully aroused. Now he was finding that both of them were swelling further beneath his fingers – straining, aching – the fire growing as he fed it. He was vibrating with this urgency, his whole body burning up in offering.
His fingers found an angle that made Fitzroy jerk furiously in response. He seized it at once and sped up; this was no time for gentle exploration. Fitzroy's hands clawed at his legs, Fitzroy's head shook back and forth, Fitzroy's cock was swollen under his fingers and – yes – there – Fitzroy cried out even louder as he came.
More heat spurted between them, so that Cliopher's hands were no longer just slick but slippery. He slowed his motions, watching in awe as Fitzroy trembled with the aftershocks of that eruption. Fitzroy's eyes were screwed shut, his hands were fluttering at his sides, and his mouth was hanging slack and open.
Cliopher felt his triumph crest within him. He had never seen anybody so discomposed, he thought, nor so lovely. He had done this. He had – he wanted – his hands had slowed, but not quite stopped. He wasn't sure – he forced them to rest, though he was still aching for –
Fitzroy's eyes opened, and they were expectant, almost questioning.
Cliopher had promised not to stop. He had been thinking, until Fitzroy came. But this was for both of them. He could – but Fitzroy was softening under his fingers, and he didn't want to make his friend uncomfortable –
Without hesitation, Fitzroy reached between them. His hands wrapped around Cliopher's. "My turn."
The initiative passed between them in perfect understanding, as it had so many times in policy discussions and council meetings, in negotiations and ceremonies. Cliopher felt his weight sink slightly, his body turn and open, his heart lift as it always had.
Fitzroy's fingers intertwined with his, catching them and pulling them in tighter against the sticky length of their cocks. The tight firm pressure slipped steadily along from base to tip, drawing the heat with it, flooding across all Cliopher's senses. He came loose, swept away from his focus and his work, drawn out of awareness of himself and freed to sink into sensation.
He had always trusted his lord – his Fitzroy – he had always found it exhilarating to be taken and seen and heard and challenged and known. He tipped his head back and let his mouth fall open, heard the deep animal noise that rose from the pit of his being.
"Yes, Kip, thank you – thank you – I've been longing to do this for centuries." Fitzroy's voice was raspy with – "That's it, let me – let yourself go – let me touch you – let me give you – oh, Kip, I want – that was amazing, you are amazing -"
The flurry of half-phrases poured over him, praise and desire and rejoicing mingled together. Open or closed his eyes saw only golden light, his body felt only the fire and the swift firm strokes of Fitzroy's hands tugging and pulling and tending him.
"I'm – going to –"
"Come for me, Kip."
He did. Wildly, carelessly, into Fitzroy's hands. The crashing crescendo shaking through him as it seldom had.
He sagged forward, nearly sobbing with the strangeness of it. The waters around them were placid still, the swell rolling long and sweet and low, but Cliopher was trembling as though scudding out of a storm.
Fitzroy opened his arms and tugged Cliopher into them. Cliopher buried his face in Fitzroy's shoulder. He was shivering, aware all at once that the sea mist and sweat together were cooling on his skin.
"Thank you," he mumbled, because he was all warm and comfortable and sated and he needed Fitzroy to know how good he felt.
Fitzroy chuckled damply, his arms tightening across Cliopher’s back. The quiet lapped out around them again, though the quality of it was different. Calmer. All the light was sinking down through the mist, fading into a faint background glow.
The vaha was humming. Cliopher's chest vibrating with song, some ancient wordless song he could not remember hearing before. Deep, echoing so much lower down the high ethereal song of the distant stars, the glowworms in the flowery cave, the lights when he thought he had drowned.
And yet... he had not drowned. And he was here with Fitzroy, his fanoa, crossing Sky Ocean together on their way home, waiting for the white birds of the dawn to come surging across the sky towards them.