Myrobalan Shivana (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faithlikeaseed) wrote2017-07-29 06:54 pm
faithlikeaseed) wrote2017-07-29 06:54 pm
[IC/OOC] Fade Rift Inbox & Contact
(( Need to get a hold of Myr? Drop him a line. Notes, in-person visits, sending crystals, spooky Fade dream shenanigans, you name it. Just specify the type of contact in the first comment of the thread and away we go.
Need to get a hold of the player? Plagueheart#0051 @ Discord or a DW PM is the easiest! ))
Need to get a hold of the player? Plagueheart#0051 @ Discord or a DW PM is the easiest! ))
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From someone else there might be a faint note of accusation behind the words; from Myr, they're simply a rueful statement of the facts. A mumbled diagnostic spell reveals the tub-edge has left him with no more than a spectacular swelling bruise, thank the Maker; if he'd cracked his skull there'd be no easily mending it. He starts in on the healing spell straightway, laboriously cajoling the Fade into putting his blood back where it belonged.
Weary, dazed, and distracted as Myr is, Simon's footsteps don't register. It doesn't occur to him to give warning or ask his friend to stop a moment, please, until he can get the blindfold back on--
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It is not that Simon hasn't given the matter any thought before. On the contrary, he would like to believe he's prepared for this moment. He's imagined it before, held the image in his mind, tried to extrapolate from the scars that border the blindfold and envision the worst-case scenario possible--but it's difficult, when he can't bring himself to think hollowness or emptiness would be so terrible he couldn't be all right with it, nor ragged scar tissue covering the sockets over, nor anything in between. He tells himself that if Myr ever wants to show him the wounds, he'll respond without judgment or hesitation or fear.
But this, as he learns too late, is a vow premised on the notion that he'll have time to steel himself first. In all his imaginings, the one common factor has always been the idea that Myr will be taking the blindfold off deliberately, that he'll know what's coming. None of it has involved the prospect of walking around the corner of a screen, all concern and solicitousness, and catching the flash of a yawning, red-edged void in the face he's so admired before.
He halts, turns his head away as if slapped, averts his eyes. It doesn't erase the glimpse he's caught--but it had, after all, been only a glimpse.
He doesn't know how it hadn't occurred to him that Myr wouldn't wear the blindfold in the bath.
"As long as you can heal it up," he says, his voice ever so slightly strained.
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It’s not a long process for all his own difficulties with healing magic make a struggle of it. With the last of the damaged tissue well on the mend, Myr looses his hold on the Fade and sits sloshily upright. “That should do—“
His voice trails off into silence as he realizes—much too late—from whence and how close Simon’s voice came. Jabbering instinct wells suddenly up, urging he hide or flee or cover himself, hands drawn of their own accord not down to his lap but up toward his face. How much did you see? he wants to ask—to demand, anguished and scandalized, displacing the bulk of fault onto Simon.
But he doesn’t: That’s unfair. Much as his gut roils and heart sinks (at least it would be a convenient solution for their wonderful, awful mutual attraction; at least if only one of them were still desperately interested in the physical aspect of the relationship, it would be easier to hold out—how great and terrible Your ways, o Maker!), Myr leashes his tongue, sets his hands to searching out where he thinks he left the damned blindfold draped over the edge of the tub in easy reach.
And doesn’t find it, not for tracing the whole perimeter of the tub with his hands. Of course; because there weren’t any more ways to make this worse— He breathes out slowly and clambers from the bath, peripherally aware he could be doing this in full sight of Simon and acting as casual and confident as he can. The rough-spun towel at least is exactly where he left it tossed over the screen.
“Did you happen to see,” the words are level but a note of strain still leaks through his feigned calm, “where my blindfold got to?”
(Piled folded on the rest of his now-damp clothing; a choice divergent from his usual habit, just this once.)
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The pause drags on a second too long. Say something, Simon, you useless fool--
"No, I haven't--I didn't see much of anything; I wasn't looking really--" It's a boldfaced lie in every sense of the word, and this is not the kind of situation in which Simon can be a convincing liar. He's only making it all the worse. Or is he? He's never been very expert at reading anyone else's tone; Myr's wry and easy cheer before he'd realized where Simon was had made an impression, and his calm now is feigned skillfully enough to smooth over some of Simon's guilty doubt.
It doesn't have to mean anything. It isn't anything. It's nothing at all.
"I'll find it, though," he offers, leaping boldly into that silence before his mind can talk him out of it. "No need to worry. It can't have got far."
If you'd just-- Just what? Use his hands to cover his eyes, to make sure Simon doesn't have to see those gaping holes in the meantime? Shame sloshes through him like dirty lukewarm bathwater. Who is he to think of such a request? If he's such a delicate little infant that he can't bear to look at it, let it be incumbent on him to keep his eyes averted. Let him summon the willpower he'd never have if Myr were still safely blindfolded and still walking about naked as a jaybird.
(He still doesn't have that willpower. He glances upward anyway, lets his eyes travel as far as Myr's chest, and swallows.)
"I've got it," he says, after a moment. "It's a bit damp, though...more than a bit damp, I'm afraid."
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"Thanks. Don't think it would've washed away, but there's no telling." One learns, over the years, how to be brisk and efficient with a towel. He's dry enough to dress in short order, the cloth hung about his shoulders--though he'd considered briefly making an unsightly veil of it. Better for both of them, perhaps, though it would be a confession of shame he couldn't bear to make in front of Simon.
Yet when his friend speaks up--"I've got it,"--Myr holds his hand out with his face politely averted. "Damp I can fix Missing completely's a little harder. Where was it?" 'More than a bit damp' is putting it lightly; it's soaked, and Myr heaves a silent sigh of dismay before rolling it up and wringing it out. The quiet plash of water isn't enough to hide his next words, quiet as they are (out of habit, out of anyone could be listening,): "You're welcome to look, if you want."
At more than just his face, is the undertone; though it feels futile and foolish to imply as much, he can't keep from saying it. (He won't want to. Not after this, and that's as well. What point was there in continuing to offer?)
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(He steels himself again to look up at Myr's face, holding that image in his inner vision and reminding himself that he's thought about it plenty before. His mind, in return, supplies embellishments that aren't there, sketching in a torn and rotted cheek with teeth showing through under the empty socket. He loses his nerve.)
But Myr's voice is the same as it ever was, quiet strain notwithstanding, his movements still conducted with that familiar athletic grace, the lines of his body smooth and clean and beautiful. You're welcome to look, if you want, because he knows how Simon will have been yearning to look, because he knows Simon can.
He knows Myr too well now to think that his starry-eyed conception of his friend as a man of infinite and unshakable confidence is true. There's nobody for whom it ever could be. He knows why that offer is barely audible, even when they're alone in the room.
He looks up, from where he kneels on the ground by Myr's sodden clothing; he drinks Myr in from the floor upward, every inch of fascinatingly smooth skin, every muscle he already knows by feel, everything else he's imagined at great and detailed length when he should never have allowed his mind to touch on it. He swallows, tremulous, and it's no easier now to keep his fingertips to himself than ever it's been before.
"I'm glad for the permission," he says, his voice every bit as conspiratorially soft. "I've got to confess that I didn't quite wait for it."
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There is no mistaking the sweet sincerity in Simon's voice for anything merely polite--"I'm glad for the permission"--and a small foolish smile steals onto Myr's face to hear it. "I should have warned you," he replies, voice warm as the glow that confession kindles in his chest. "Instead of lying around in wait to tempt your eyes past bearing." Of course that's not what he means by warned but it's easier to make a joke of it, to make no reference to that painful idea--you are a thing that people ought to be warned about, not for his magic but for his scars. Yet he'd so much rather to not have surprised Simon, if he had to be so completely naked before his friend. But of everything he'd feared for that eventual revelation--this is the best way it could have worked out, he thinks.
Still, he keeps his face politely averted, as if looking at the warming glyph he's tracing out on the screen. It is small and simple, a matter of seconds before it flicks to gentle life and he can drape the blindfold to hang over it to dry out. (The first real time he's tried such a use since Petrana suggested it might be done; hopefully, it works on a reasonable timescale.) "But it's forgiven," he continues, "though maybe I shouldn't go so easy on you now that you're one up on me; I don't even know your face yet."
He could find out; it wouldn't be so hard to reach out and-- But don't think so hard on what Simon must be doing that his voice should be so near the floor. Don't dwell on that, or this situation will rapidly become embarrassing again for an entirely other reason.
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It would be too easy to reach, to lean, to curve his hand around the back of one strong calf and stroke at the back of Myr's knee, to kiss soft and slowly upward from there, to lean him back against the tub and--
Don't dwell on it. Don't imagine it, for the Maker's love. He swallows, fearful in the sudden silence that his breath has audibly hitched, and gets to his feet again. He can't decide if Myr's words constitute a reprieve or not.
"No, you don't," he says, but his sheepishness at that is at least slightly more of the teasing variety than the deadly earnest his own shame had been a moment ago. "But perhaps that's a blessing in disguise. I can't tell if it'd be better or worse if you had me down in your imagination as more handsome than I really am."
It would be worse, he thinks. He can't articulate why, and no more does he want to try to, but it would be far worse to disappoint Myr even in the hypothetical.
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It's an awful irony that the two of them together are better at it than either of them ever was alone. (Isn't that what love is for?)
Fear of another sort lodges briefly in his throat when that silence stretches out; from nearly the day they've met he's edged on the wrong side of propriety with Simon--and this time it might have been a little too far for both their sakes. This time, surely, he's said something that requires a reconsideration and return to proper decorum--
Or not. He breathes out in a laugh, half-relieved. "Maker as my witness, I tried to get an accurate description. How'm I to do that when the best expert on the subject won't talk?" The words are teasing but gently so.
"But maybe it is a blessing I've nothing to distract me from your voice. It would be a shame to miss a word."
Even if his own fantasies have played the role of that distraction often enough, but let it stand-- He ought not be entertaining them anyway.
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Perhaps they are both better at this when their willpower is combined, it's true--but nevertheless, that still isn't saying a great deal. He ventures closer, just a step, just a little, as Myr keeps his not-gaze fixed on the screen and the glyph.
"I don't know as I am the best expert on the subject. How're you supposed to be objective about your own face? You don't want to sell yourself short, of course, but if you don't, and someone else disagrees, then you've got yourself a reputation for lying and immodesty." He folds his arms, thinking on this at some length.
"Dog Lady says I'm a seven. Which I thought was a bit unfair; I thought maybe I'd merit a seven and a half at least, but humility is a virtue before the Maker, so I'll...take her word for it."
I need a proper shy icon.
Though Maker knows it’s suitable turnabout for him conducting this whole conversation in the nude. Something he’ll have cause to regret (but oh, never really, never for this) if Simon goes on like that at any length, that voice like warm dark velvet against his skin, like a welcome touch at the base of his spine. It catches in his awareness, drags him to rapt and prayerful attention, suggests the sort of worship best conducted on one’s knees—
He takes the towel from off his shoulders, knotting it at his hips and not quite managing to make the whole thing look casual and unhurried. It won’t do much for his modesty if this goes any further. They should stop.
They should stop, but he isn’t ready to stop yet. “No one else has any more reason to be objective,” he replies with a grin. “We’re always seeing in other people what we find most or least attractive about them anyhow, and telling ourselves why we’re right or not to do it. Barring someone in the Inquisition knowing precisely what I like, I’d rather someone inclined kindly toward your good looks.”
Or Melys. There’s always Melys, and Simon’s remark on her assessment gets a laugh out of Myr, because: How exactly like the Fereldan—never let anyone get too comfortable. “Knowing her, that may as well be a seven and a half.”
He pauses then, reaches out to check how dry his blindfold’s gotten. Not quite enough. More softly, he goes on: “Though if you’re not opposed, I’d like to—to find out for myself.” Hands held up in illustration of just how he’d do that—and still he keeps his face turned away.
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"I don't know precisely what you like," he points out, the warmth of it still shot through with a hint of shyness. Nobody's ever all that reserved about complimenting his body, Myr included, but he's always had less reason for confidence about the face, and for all he truly knows, everything about it could be exactly the opposite of what Myr prefers, even if it is a decent enough face by general standards.
He swallows, as Myr raises his hands; watches them as if studying them, almost wary of what they might do. Perhaps he's spoken too soon about having no need to worry about his own reaction to any of this. He didn't anticipate being close enough for touch, let alone inviting it, but Maker help him, he wants--
"I'm never opposed," he says softly. "I couldn't be."
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Though it goes so far beyond mere liking, they both know; that's what has his heart in his throat at I couldn’t be. Permission unconditional and clear as daylight—and still there’s a frightened wounded part of Myr that wants to demand further reassurance, even seeing what you’ve seen, you’d let me— Though isn’t the answer obvious, living and breathing and warm within arm’s reach? Even seeing Myr at his most exposed, Simon hasn’t turned aside, recoiled, given up. Trust him in this, the same way he’d trusted his friend (his beloved) with his life, his sleep, his dreams. But oh, how much harder to entrust his scars!
Yet once he’s made that decision it’s irrevocable; there is nothing shy or hesitant in how he takes that last step to meet Simon and reaches out—even if he keeps his head bowed, his hair not quite long enough to hide everything. His questing fingers find Simon's chest and trail upward, touch delicate and curious about the other man's collarbones and the column of his throat. (Bare skin and the heat of an unclothed body next to his suggest what Myr wouldn't let himself consider; he flushes faintly at the realization but doesn't pull away as he should.) If his hands linger a little longer than they ought on their way to Simon's face, it might be put down to inexperience as much as fondness.
For he hasn't often had cause to read an unknown face this way, isn't so easy yet about asking now that his world's made up of people he's never seen instead of those he has. He's learning how to read Simon in the act of reading him, something of tender caution in how he traces the contours of eyes and nose, in the stroke of a thumb over a cheekbone. It takes him a painstaking minute to map all the landmarks he's searching for to his satisfaction--here, Simon's high clear brow, fretted with the memory of worries Myr would wipe away if he could; here, Simon's jaw, firm and faintly rough in that fascinating way shem men often are.
Here, Simon's lips, where Myr's fingers rest a long sweet moment before he draws his hands down to cradle his friend's face in his palms.
It would not be so hard to lean up and kiss him.
"She's undersold you by a point," Myr murmurs, lifting his head enough to make plain his lopsided teasing smile. "I'll have to complain next I speak to her."
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--somehow, the fear seems childish now, equally as trivial as being afraid to cross a bridge lest it buckle in the middle, or walk past an oddly-shaped tree at night. The urge to recoil from the sight feels like something physical enough to be finite, and he's burned through enough of it now to render it small and surmountable. No, Myr's hair doesn't quite cover the red and torn edges of his wounds--neither does the blindfold, and the closer Myr draws to him now, the further away that false and exaggerated image seems, the clearer it is that those empty hollows are still set into a face that appeals to everything Simon has ever found beautiful in his life.
His peace with the scars feels delicate, not quite set in stone, bolstered by a kind of confidence whose boundaries he will have to patrol and maintain--but for now, the truce holds, and when Myr reaches out for him, the trembling in his exhalation is nothing but desire. He closes his eyes and lets himself be learned.
Already, he's too warm in the chill of the room, his skin flushing pink everywhere Myr's steady fingers trace, and though he tries to keep still for the sake of this solemn experiment, he can't help but swallow hard again as Myr's hands caress his throat and cradle his jaw. There is no calling this chaste. The literal definition of the word pales to irrelevance in comparison to the thoughts that touch evokes, the yearning to take and hold and kiss and keep in ways they know are impossible. Myr's fingers rest on his lips, and he kisses them in that mutually-understood way, the deepest gesture of affection they've ever allowed themselves. His breath is warm against them as he laughs, caught off-guard.
"Do it," he urges, his smile audible. "Tell me what she says."
Not that it matters now. She could call him the ugliest cur in the Inquisition (if a Fereldan would ever use such an insult) and he wouldn't care a whit now that Myr's opinion is so unarguably clear. He leans, forehead resting against his friend's (beloved indeed, as clearly as he dares think it) and reaches those few inches across their shared body heat to touch in turn, one hand curving around Myr's muscular side, just above the towel and around to rest on his back. Closer. They need this; they need to be closer.
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He knows himself well enough to know it wouldn't be.
His hands still steal out to rest lightly on Simon's hips, possessive all the same.
"I will." The words are scarcely above a murmur and answer far more than whether he'll bring word back of Melys. Give him leave--let the world be other than it is--and he would, whatever Simon asks of him, for as long as he might ask. The touch of Simon's head against his own prompts a shift, a half-conscious twitch as if he could meet his friend's gaze. Is he looking? a part of him wonders, with awe and stinging fear alike.
Give him a reason not to, something else prompts, and it seems so eminently sensible idea that Myr can do no less. It's only a little further he has to lean in and up, a little further to turn his head and press his lips against Simon's. For all they've been so careful, so slow in coming to it, there's nothing hesitant about the kiss now that Myr's committed.
(Not so hard at all.)
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But even so, the kiss is broken just for a moment by the stuttering little inhalation it provokes--perhaps it is ironic after all that a thing so soft and sweet can shatter six months of denial in a heartbeat, but they've held firm together against it for so long that to give in makes his heart race and adrenaline surge with fear and relief and joy and hope and trepidation at once.
It isn't hard, though, for all that. It's the easiest thing in the world, his body running joyfully ahead of any doubts his mind might cling to, his arms tightening around Myr's waist (mine, mine to protect, mine to adore) and lips parting to cling to Myr's as if no part of Simon could drink in enough of him right now.
The closeness is still what he craves beyond measure. He presses Myr's body flush against his, chest to chest, skin to skin, hands mapping the contours of his back with nothing short of reverence.
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Romantic at heart he might be, Myr's seasoned enough to not put stock in first kisses; not to think it doesn't get better than this, because oh, it does, with time and space and sweet experience. Maker, give them that time to learn each other, to polish this wonderful rough-cut thing between them to something mirror-bright and shining, and it will get better than this (blood singing in his ears the release of six months' tension; mine, mine at last, mine to have and to hold)--
But this is a damned good start.
Hunger is a spice; Myr has starved years for this, and here is his beloved laid out for him (laid open to him) like a feast for his remaining senses. Drawn willing into that embrace, he molds himself to Simon, runs fingers up his sides and the elegant ladder of his ribs--winds an arm around him and clings close, needing the warmth and solid breadth of him more than anything right now. His other hand creeps up to bury fingers in Simon's dark hair and pull him further into a kiss turned just shy of devouring.
A kiss Myr has brief sense enough to break, catching his breath in a needy gasp, before pressing lips again to the corner of Simon's mouth, the curve of his jaw, down his neck to his collarbone to linger a long sweet moment.
"I've wanted this since we met," he confesses against the hollow of Simon's throat. (Confesses to himself, too--this, why he sought Simon out to be his guide to the Inquisition, why he lingered near him every moment he could spare, embroiled him in mad schemes and midnight discussions. A long mutual courtship Myr never should have started--
And worth every minute of it.)
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And he's put no less stock in it anyway, yearning with every nerve of his body to be able to share a bed with a lover instead of a broom closet--but failing that, to have them actually naked, fully bared to him instead of half-armored and hastily reclothable, every inch of wanting skin open to be touched and savored and memorized. This, more than anything, is what his irrepressible fantasies about Myr have entailed; this is what he's day-and-night dreamed about, down to the very way Myr wraps those lean and blade-hardened arms around him and devours him with hands like he can't take in enough, the way he anchors his fingers in Simon's hair as if to make sure, really sure, that he's not moving away an inch. Andraste's ashes, but he's ached to have Myr hold him like this.
His head tips back, breath caught as Myr's lips trail fire down his throat, please yes more take it it's yours, and his heart lurches so at that confession that he's positive Myr could have felt it.
"Maker, so have I," he breathes, without a second's pause or thought. Since the forest, perhaps; since Myr so eagerly and handily explained that spell technique as if trusting implicitly that Simon could understand it, but what comes to mind, always, every time, is that sparring match. He's dwelt on that since the night it happened. "Since that time you kicked my arse and then kissed my hand when you were done. I've never been able to get that out of my head--"
He cradles the back of Myr's head, kisses him again, swift and deep. His other hand slips down to loosen the towel.
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That Simon's a templar--that he's every inch the perfect fit against Myr that he'd imagined, payoff from six months of learning more than which side Simon favored in a feint--makes it the sweeter; here is the ideal he's longed for all his life, a champion of the Just made wonderfully flesh and wonderfully his. His lips taste of ozone; he lifts his head to smile up at Simon, warm all over with delight at the reminder. (He hasn't yet told him how much it meant to be taken seriously, seen as a worthwhile challenger and not a deluded cripple. He hasn't yet--but he should, offering back that treasured gift of esteem that had made all the difference to a lonely mage so lately ripped from his home. There's no way he could have done this without knowing someone in the Inquisition thought as highly of him as Simon did, that night.)
"Seem to remember I was the one as ended up on his back--" The words and the laugh beneath them dissolve into a quiet moan (too soft to be overheard through the walls, through a door) against Simon's mouth. Already he's trailing fingers down the back of Simon's neck, along his spine, moved by that same instinct that's caught his beloved: More--they need more than this, need to be closer than skin on skin, need to be knit into one sweat-sticky creature until they collapse together in mutual satisfaction. They need to get this towel off of him--
Something slips and catches in his head.
"I c-can't, I can't, not with those awful holes in your face--"
He flinches as surely as if he'd been doused with ice water, a little guttering noise in the back of his throat like the keen of a wounded animal. I can't, in his own voice, not so long ago, when the old panic at the thought of rejection came clawing back out of his chest. For all reason and lust scream, He wants you! He knows you!, the fear is briefly louder and Myr stands there frozen a long moment, still pressed against Simon.
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"Myr? What's happened? I didn't mean to--I ought to have asked, shouldn't I, I'm sorry, I just thought--"
You're welcome to look is not you're welcome to touch, after all, not in so bold or forward a capacity, but he had thought Myr was angling them both in that direction. Surely it's got to be something Simon's done, some mistake he's unwittingly made, for things to go from warm laughing kisses to frozen horror in so brief a split second.
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There are few things he’s heard sweeter than the way Simon says his name then, worry clear enough to cut right through the fog of anxious terror. It wasn’t that—oh, Maker, thank You that it wasn’t that. Simon still wants him every bit as much as he wants Simon—
But that awful unintended interruption of desire’s sweet upward spiral left room for sobering reality to creep in. Whatever their mutual lapse of self-control had led them to (wonderful and necessary as it felt), nothing about the outside world has changed. Nothing has changed about the factions that would frame them as natural enemies—or charge and guardian, never peers, to be kept apart by law and ethical custom.
“Shh. You thought right.” He dares enough still to lean up and kiss the curve of Simon’s jaw—but it’s gentle, conciliatory. It can’t be more than that. “If it were up to me alone I’d have you right here however you wanted.
“But—“ we can’t, he doesn’t say, knowing by grim instinct that might be the death of this. Whether or not they should, he can’t bear the idea of giving up. “If we’re found out—they’ll blame you for it. They’ll think you abused or seduced me, or you ought to be drummed out of the Order—and I won’t bear them treating you so ill. I won’t.”
The words are intense for all they’re quiet; the thought of Simon traduced that way for something done out of love and mutual loyalty makes him furious to think of it. (And it’s an explanation that neatly elides the initial reason for his terror—but if there’s no way on Thedas for them to be together the way they belong, the way they both need, what’s the point of tearing open that old wound?) The thought chokes him; he swallows against his own grief and helpless anger, continues in a voice low and fervent, "We ought to put this to the Maker. It's His will we found each other."
And what they do with that next might be best left up to Him, though Myr cannot put it to voice. What if He decrees a life of straitened chastity for them, loving friendship permitted but touch impossible? Or what if they're supposed to be found out—if it's for the ultimate good of the Maker's works, any personal shame, any peril should be acceptable. There's no higher glory than martyrdom.
Myr makes a small unhappy noise for the last thought, rests his head against Simon’s chest in a mute request for comfort—for guidance.
What do they do?