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 Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 10:27 am
While Jet doubted that Roselite would go against his orders to watch Bloodstone and Jasper clean for eight hours, he didn’t trust that Bloodstone or Jasper wouldn’t give Roselite a hard time. Arles had nothing better to do, so he was sent to observe them from the shadows every so often.
He clarified with Arles (to Arles’ chagrin) that he should not be laughing creepily while doing so, and definitely not reciting children's books to them either.
The routine was to power down several blocks away from where they lived, although when random July thunderstorms decided to pop up, it was very inconvenient to trudge through the pouring rain to get home. As if he wanted the extra attempt at insult to injury by making him look like a drowned animal.
He’d taken his shoes and shirt off by the time he entered the front door, grateful for the overhang protecting the entrance from the elements (for the most part), and dropped the soaked clothes on the entry mat with a splat.
Despite wringing out as much water as he could, he was still soaked through. Which meant his pants were coming off next so he didn’t have to track extra water through the house.
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 11:01 am
Lovely kept the porch and foyer lights on. Most of the rest of the house was dark, except for the kitchen, where he was cleaning up after making a late night snack of m&m cookies. He’d considered tater tots, but figured he should expand his horizons a bit beyond potato-based snacks. Besides, he didn’t know how late Ilian was going to be. Cookies passed more time. He’d just taken the last batch out of the oven five minutes before Ilian came through the door.
But the chore made him feel a bit too domestic, which could be gross depending on the circumstance. At the moment, he didn’t feel gross enough to be awkward about it, so he went out to see what all the slopping around was about.
The view wasn’t bad. A shame it took him so long to notice. He’d missed out on a lot of quality ogling while it was taking shape.
“You’re hot when you’re angry,” Lovely said around a half-eaten cookie, casually leaning against the nearest door frame.
Ilian hadn’t said as much, but Lovely could tell by the tension around his eyes and the frustrated way he let his clothing splat on the ground that Ilian was pissed off about something. The rain didn’t seem to warrant that level of irritation.
Which meant someone must have done something stupid in the Dark Kingdom.
“Who did what?” Lovely asked. He didn’t approach yet, eyeing Ilian’s bare chest while he decided whether or not it’d be worth getting his pajamas wet. “Someone pull out another starseed in the Rift or something? I refuse to help retrieve the body.”
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 4:32 pm
He wasn’t frustrated at Lovely, just the situation. But now that he was home where he could finally try to relax, he let out an exasperated breath and reached up so he could run his fingers through his hair and push the wet locks off his forehead and out of his eyes.
“Dorian is a Lieutenant named Jasper.”
Ilian figured there was no point in making Lovely play guessing games. He was still annoyed by the whole thing.
“I guess Bloodstone is his friend -- a doctor at our hospital. Must have promised him he could punch me if he joined or something. Sorry, but I punched your brother after he tried hitting me,” he admitted.
He tugged off his pants to bunch up on the ground, but left on his dark underwear. Only so he could stand with his hands on his hips and scowl a little in Lovely’s direction. Since apparently he liked looking so much.
“Next time he tries that, I’ll probably leave him in the Rift.” Maybe.
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 4:42 pm
Lovely stopped mid-chew and almost choked on a rather large piece of cookie.
“What...”
He coughed on what almost classified as certain death, if the piece in his mouth had been any bigger. The half chewed cookie scraped down his throat uncomfortably. Lovely swallowed, then coughed again, dislodging another piece so it could continue its way down.
For a moment, he thought he must not have heard correctly. Dorian couldn’t possibly be a Lieutenant. No one in their right mind would corrupt him. He had nothing to offer the Negaverse, except perhaps money. He had no combat skills, no relevant career, and minimal social presence. As far as Lovely knew, Dorian spent most of his days sleeping on the couch or slumped in front of his computer, writing whatever trash came to mind. He was useless as anything more than another warm body.
But the doctor friend — Lovely remembered him. Irritable looking guy with a b***h face. He never really spoke to Lovely, but certainly had no problem hanging around to drink his way through Dorian’s well supplied stock of alcohol.
That was Bloodstone?
When Lovely thought he’d cleared his throat enough to speak, he said, “What? When?”
Then he broke off into another coughing fit. Apparently, a few crumbs still lingered.
Lovely couldn’t even continue to enjoy the view. He was too confused. And angry. And… something. He didn’t speak to his family often. The last time he saw his brothers had gone so poorly he swore he’d never see them again, but that didn’t mean he wanted either of them in the Negaverse.
“He tried to—”
Lovely sputtered. It seemed there were other ways to short circuit his brain that had nothing to do with Ilian standing around looking so hot.
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 4:46 pm
Ilian frowned in concern when Lovely started choking, so while he was trying to figure out how to breathe and talk again, Ilian made his way over to him -- and past him (although not without lightly sliding his hand across Lovely’s stomach and hip) so he could get a glass to fill with water from the kitchen.
He could have just wrung his hair out into the glass, since he was still dripping everywhere…
“Your brother burst into my office and launched himself over my desk -- that big a** desk you picked out -- and grabbed my collar and tried hitting me,” Ilian said with more detail now that he got the initial information out of the way.
“I don’t know when. I’m assuming it was right before he found my office. He wasn’t even in the database yet. Started yelling at me about how I forced you to join and how everything I have is a result of the money you have.”
He was still worried about Lovely, so after he’d handed him the glass, he gently rubbed and patted at his back.
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 4:53 pm
Lovely followed, letting out another cough every so often. He tried to listen, tried to get it all to make sense in his brain, but the idea of Dorian in the Negaverse was so stupid...
Claude he would have been able to believe, no problem. Claude gave off the air of someone who’d finance the sort of s**t the Negaverse got up to. Lovely could easily imagine Claude in uniform, stuck behind a desk in some stuffy office in whatever passed for headquarters in Europe, typing up reports and dishing out orders and buying up hospitals for their use. He’d long suspected Claude got up to some shady s**t with his money. What better s**t than a magical war?
Dorian, on the other hand, was… well… Dorian. Lazy. Kind of a d**k. He tried to be a good brother but just ended up being an a*****e about everything. The way he used to look at Ilian, like Ilian was the scum of the Earth, still made Lovely’s blood boil.
“Sorry,” Lovely mumbled when he took the offered glass of water. He drank some to soothe his throat, tossing his half eaten cookie onto the counter.
To some extent Dorian was… well, he wasn’t right, but he wasn’t entirely wrong either. Everything Lovely and Ilian both had these days came back to Lovely’s trust fund.
That didn’t give Dorian the right to throw it in Ilian’s face like the idea of it was offensive. Lovely and Ilian were… together. Married. After the first few years of it, Lovely grew tired of living in a dumpy apartment with basic food and zero amenities. Why not use the money his family couldn’t take away?
“Sorry, he’s an a*****e,” Lovely said. He set the water aside, glaring at some indeterminate point on the counter. “He shouldn’t’ve—… He’s always been such a d**k to you. It’s bullshit. What the ******** was Bloodstone thinking…”
Lovely trailed off, too angry and unsettled to be able to vocalize a complete thought. When he could get over the shock and the aggravation enough to do more than stew in silence, he glanced up to meet Ilian’s eye.
“You never did anything to deserve the s**t he’s given you,” Lovely insisted. “Punch him as many times as you want. He’s had it coming for years.”
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 5:08 pm
Ilian just shook his head when Lovely apologized. There was nothing for him to apologize for. Sure, Ilian was still pissed at what Dorian thought he could get away with, but Dorian had nothing to do with Lovely.
He’d had his chance. He could have been more understanding. He could have been supportive, but instead he was just an a*****e.
“He claims I’m to blame for everything, but he never once tried keeping me within arms reach so he could make sure we stayed out of trouble,” Ilian shrugged as he reached out to place his hands along Lovely’s hips as he backed him up against the counter. Just to rest! Oh, and once Lovely’s back was to the counter it was easier for Ilian to reach over and grab the hand towel so he could mop up his face a little.
“If I were him, I would have invited me to stay with you guys. It’s not like you didn’t have a guest room. Maybe he could have tried to get to know me. But he probably took one look at me and assumed I was a horrible person. He wouldn’t be the first. Oh, but I’m pretty sure he was still expecting a sixteen year old when he tried hitting me.”
That was pretty funny. Ilian was no longer the scrawny teenager he once was.
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 5:16 pm
Lovely let the counter take some of his ******** Dorian,” he said, but it lacked the passion he might have normally put into it.
An awful swell of guilt lodged itself into his chest. Dorian could have done those things, could have given Ilian a chance instead of watching him with judgmental eyes, but Lovely could have, too. In the beginning, he hadn’t been much different. In certain ways, he’d been outright cruel. He’d called Ilian names, gave him backhanded compliments, implied on many occasions that he wasn’t good enough, that the only reason he would even hang around Ilian was because he had no other choice.
Because Ilian’s brother died, and Lovely was there, and they both found their way into the Negaverse that night, when neither of them had much of a clue what the hell they were even signing up for. Lovely blamed Ilian, just like Dorian did. The only difference was he stuck around. He made Ilian something like a pet project, because he didn’t want to face the Negaverse and all it required of him alone.
Lovely took the hand towel and dabbed a few stray drops of rain water off Ilian’s face. Then he ran it over Ilian’s hair, soaking water from his sodden curls. Lovely watched him carefully, studied his face to see if he could find anything beneath the anger — disappointment or sadness, maybe. Lovely wouldn’t blame him. Most of the last eight years had been s**t for both of them, but more so for Ilian, who lost everything and gained so little.
Inevitably, the hand towel found itself discarded. Lovely drew Ilian close and kissed him — his mouth, his stubbled jaw, his cheek, the very edge of the scar Ganymede gave him, the freckle by his eye it nearly cut through. He put his mouth to Ilian’s ear and said, so quiet it was barely more than a whisper, “I love you.”
Lovely pulled back while the words hung between them, just enough to look Ilian in the eye again. He kept a hand on Ilian’s cheek, thumb running over the facial hair Ilian could never seem to decide whether to grow out or shave off.
“I’d do it all again,” Lovely said. “Everything, if it meant I could have you.” A small, almost timid smile twitched onto a face that wasn’t used to smiling. “Maybe with the benefit of hindsight I could’ve done better.”
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 5:27 pm
The tension in Ilian’s shoulders eased a bit when Lovely took the towel to dry his face and hair, and he sighed contentedly through his nose at the kiss. He closed his eyes and held still for the rest, opening his eyes again only when Lovely drew back after whispering those three words to him.
“He asked me if I felt guilty for getting you caught up with everything. That you only joined because of me, or because you’d been cornered with no other choice,” he shared. He didn’t want to see the smile fade from Lovely’s face, but he felt it was only right for him to tell him.
And since he didn’t share his answer with Dorian, he wanted to share it with Lovely.
“I don’t feel guilty. Especially not now. Not when I have you. I can keep you safe if you’re with me. There’s no telling what could have happened to you over the years if you hadn’t been pulled into the Negaverse. Do I wish the situation in which we joined had been different? Of course…”
If he had it his way, his brother wouldn’t have died. But then maybe he wouldn’t have grown as close to Lovely as he had.
“Maybe that makes me selfish, or everything that your brother thinks of me is true. I don’t know. I was poor and alone and you’d been kind to me. Maybe that wasn’t your intention, but you still let me borrow your suits when you didn’t have to. That was enough. It was more than I was used to.”
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 5:31 pm
Years ago, if he’d heard Ilian say those things, Lovely might have been furious.
The Negaverse lost its appeal after a while. As a Lieutenant, he could enjoy his time there, he could look forward to the power that would inevitably come to him, if he proved himself worthy. But the danger was unavoidable. The more they were faced with it, the more Lovely thought nothing the Negaverse offered him could ever be worth his life. The Negaverse required too much and gave too little back.
He still dreamt of Sorin lying dead in the street, brown curls soaked in blood. Sometimes it was Ilian there instead, staring up with lifeless eyes, his face torn apart from a stupid Princess’s ridiculous glass shoe, like some ******** up version of Cinderella.
And yet, through all of it, he couldn’t blame Ilian for the lack of guilt, couldn’t think him selfish.
The tips of Lovely’s fingers trailed over the scar that nearly took Ilian’s eye — would have, if Ganymede had better aim.
“You’ll always have me,” Lovely said.
He ignored the uncomfortable feeling in his chest. Fear, or uncertainty, like he’d been cornered, like the world had grown too small, or the walls were closing in, or time was running out. He used to let it muffle him, used to let it stifle his honesty, when all those strange, creeping emotions left him feeling vulnerable and unstable, when he didn’t know how to put them into words.
Sometimes, he still didn’t know. Words were too much, and yet not enough.
“Be selfish,” Lovely told him. He put his mouth to Ilian’s again, so they could share a lingering kiss. “There’s nothing I want more than you. I’d do anything…”
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 5:40 pm
“I know,” he said in response, leaning into Lovely’s touch, his thumbs brushing against Lovely’s hips as he pressed him against the counter. Nothing too harsh, but enough that he knew Lovely could feel it. Could feel the almost desperation. The neediness. The desire.
Ilian kissed him back when Lovely leaned forward. He knew he should probably dry off properly. He should probably get into dry clothes. Maybe make sure Lovely was comfortable and not pinned against the counter where cookies were in danger of being knocked off.
“I know I’ll always have you, and that you’d do anything…”
It was probably lucky that Ilian wasn’t unreasonable. Someone who wanted to use Lovely’s loyalty against him could have asked for anything. But Ilian knew there were lines he couldn’t cross, and he trusted that Lovely knew those lines as well.
“You’ll always have me. Anything you want, it’s yours, Love.”
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 5:45 pm
“Just you,” Lovely said against Ilian’s mouth.
What more could he want? The years had taught him that he didn’t need much, and that wanting more than what was necessary tended to end with disappointment. Even power lost its appeal after a while; he only wanted more of it to help Ilian, to protect him, because Ilian was everything.
He put a hand in Ilian’s damp hair — holding him steady, keeping him close. Lovely put all the words he often couldn’t let himself say into their next kiss, deep and binding, like a promise from soul to soul. I love you. I love when you call me Love. I don’t ever want to lose you. Don’t leave. Stay with me, forever.
The counter was an almost uncomfortable press against his back, but Lovely didn’t care. This close to Ilian, his pajamas grew damp in spots, as scattered drops of rain water continued to drip along Ilian’s warm skin.
Lovely didn’t care about that either.
He wouldn’t be wearing clothes for much longer anyway.Guine gay fin emotion_rainbow emotion_bigheart
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