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Ⅵ
You’ve been by his side for as long as you can remember. Really, to get exacting about it, you’ve known him since before you could know him – before your mind could form those memories and keep them.
When you were little you would sometimes put your heads together and try to communicate without talking. Pushing your thoughts at each other, trying to force them through the frontal bone and the skin of your foreheads, conversing wordlessly. You’d debrief afterwards, and see how successful your literal tête-à-tête was. You couldn’t say they were futile, not entirely – it was so easy to read his thoughts now when he wanted you to, and vice versa. A nod, a glance, the twitch of an eyebrow or a wrist: whole stories could be communicated between the two of you in a matter of moments.
Your parents would say it was because you were half-siblings, growing up together, that closeness, that allowed you to communicate like that. That you becoming cavalier primary only heightened it. The latter was true, certainly, but only because the former wasn’t quite: that closeness existed because your bones held his memory long before your mind could, and you felt that it would always be that way.
The Warden likes to remind you when he’s feeling a bit smug about something that you have the difference of just over a month between you, and he’s been by your side since birth.
Literally, he’ll remind you (you don’t need to be reminded, and he knows this). You know the story because Archivist Zeta will tell it on occasion, when she’s feeling sentimental. She waited outside the delivery room to congratulate your fathers, held a month-old Pal up to the newborn nursery window and raised his tiny hand out to your swaddled form. And such as you continued.
Ⅵ
The Sixth regards puberty with such a particular clinical dryness that for a time you can kind of just ignore the changes. To a point. Sometimes the Warden would give you a look you couldn’t understand, a new thing, like the mental language you two had shared for years suddenly went through a rapid diverging evolution – the meaning flitted at the edges of your mind but it was just different enough that deciphering it proved difficult. It made your face flush and, more frustrating, you couldn’t pinpoint why. And then the moment would pass, he would drop his gaze and say something else and suddenly you could understand again. You wonder if he has these moments with you – watching you think about him in a new, foreign tongue.
When you’re together with your families, you or the Warden will say or do something that causes a glance between your parents. You ignore those, as well as the looks Archivist Zeta gives you, and your fathers. The way the tone of their conversations about you both has changed somewhat. Like there’s something they want to know but don’t want to talk about.
Ⅵ
Despite all of that, the first time it happens, it takes you by surprise. Which is (however redundant it sounds) surprising, given how few things tended to do that.
His hands are rougher than you expect. Callouses from… from what, you think? Thumbing through books? Taking notes? Handling bones? Don’t think about it, it doesn’t really matter. More important, what actually matters, are his lips, kissing their way down your neck. The way his jaw feels, soft, just the slightest amount of stubble under your hand. That’s certainly new.
No, no no no – this wasn’t right. Was it? Could it be? Something’s off. When did they get in this bed? Whose bed was it? You feel uncomfortably warm, aware of every inch of your skin against his, and as soon as he looks up at you, eyes bright behind his glasses, it clicks. You have to savor the moment, already feeling that it’ll be over too soon as he says your name, his breath low and hot against your sternum. You swear you can feel it pass through your skin, whisper across your bones.
“Cam. ”
You bolt upright in bed, sweating. Fuck.
Ⅵ
Nothing’s actually happened. It couldn’t happen, it never would. Your mind floats the word “sick” around and you dismiss it quickly. He’s Palamedes. You can’t help but to love him. Your unconscious was just getting its wires crossed.
“Warden.” You greet him that morning as if it’s all the same. It is. Has to be. You try to transpose the look on your face into something unreadable to him, because if he can do it from time to time, so can you. But you feel your stomach flip without permission as he nods back at you, eyes exactly the same as they were in your dream (of course, you know them by heart. Each striation of color, the two freckles to the right of his left pupil.). You can (and should) ignore this. Technically, a voice whispers in the back of your head, one that doesn’t sound like you but sounds familiar all the same, you’ve been ignoring this for a long time. Easy then. Easy to forget it ever happened (because it didn’t. Not really.).
It’s not the last dream, but you are diligent in your distractions. You somehow, impossibly, get a better eye for the details. You correct him when his figures are wrong (rarely, but they are), you train. Train hard. You practice your cuts and jabs, and holding your stance, knees bent just slightly, your core solid and taut. Hitting things helps, keeps you tired enough that when you tumble into bed at the end of the day your hands are too exhausted to wander anywhere they shouldn’t.
After that, when the Warden looks at you the way he holds your gaze makes your fingers twitch. You have to pinch the inside of your thigh when you’re sitting at a table together.
Schooling this takes time, but you have plenty. And otherwise, things remain very much the same. Occasionally you get a lingering look, and you will give him one in return. He presses his thigh against yours when you’re sitting in a shuck together, heads close like when you were kids, looking over notes and pages of flimsy that are always trying to escape the neat stacks you put them in. It feels nice, but it always has. Your body feels at home near his.
Ⅵ
It isn’t until most modules are over one semester, nearly two years after that first dream – and far less time since the last dream, and even less time since the dream wasn’t a dream at all, but rather something you conjured up while awake, and ought to have been sleeping, but no point dwelling on that, you think – that the Warden presents a bottle of alcohol, liquor, judging by the sharp, medicinal smell that wafts across your nostrils.
“Celebratory.” he says, eyes bright. You raise an eyebrow, skeptical. You know what he’s celebrating, and you don’t think there’s much reason to celebrate. You’re willing to bet he’ll agree, whenever Dulcinea sends her next letter. You digress, and opt to avoid the subject entirely.
“Zeta know you pilfered her stash?”
“Please,” he scoffs, “this is from my father’s. He doesn’t like–” he examines the bottle, which is old and still has dust from where the Warden hadn’t put his hands. He waves his free hand, stops squinting at the bottle, “wound disinfectant, if I’m being generous.”
They’re in a corner of a study lounge that only got used by fellow upper students on occasion, and was abandoned in every sense of the word with the break in modules all but begun.
“You don’t think we’ll like it, do you?”
“Of course not!” He laughs, your favorite sound. “But I wanted to try it. You see how our mom and your dads get. And of course–”
“We have to try it together.”
“Zeta always says that drinking alone is a sign of mental decline.”
“She can’t possibly believe that. How many academics are alone most of the time? Herself included?”
“We’re lucky we’re almost never alone, aren’t we?” He says it with affection, like it’s the response to another conversation he’s having in his head.
You acquiesce, and absolutely don’t think about the times you’re apart, when you imagine being together in ways you refuse to name out loud.
He takes a pull from the bottle and grimaces, but doesn’t spit it out or cough, which you think is a feat for him.
You raise your eyebrows, silently questioning the decision.
“It’s fine, really–” his voice sounds hoarse and strangled, and it makes you smile.
“I’m sure. Hand it over, Master Warden.”
Now he coughs. “My pleasure, Cam.”
He passes it to you, smiling with teeth as you sniff the bottle’s contents again, eyes closing and eyebrows shooting up reflexively.
You look at him and smile before taking a swig, bigger than you intended, and your eyes water at the burning in your throat. It’s interesting, you think, people so often compare that burn to fire, but it’s so much more – antiseptic, cleaner, than you imagine a fire would be. Perhaps more similar to cautery. The herbal taste is strange, and you process all of this for a beat before looking back up to the Warden.
“I think I like this.”
“Then I’ll take another drink until I like it, too.” He reaches his hand out for the bottle, and you stand up from your chair to pass it to him, joining him on the lumpy sofa.
Ⅵ
“I don’t think I’m ever going like this.” He has yet to take a drink without making a noise, curling his lip and baring his teeth. You’re both drunk. You laugh at him, and he joins you, and then there’s a beat of silence that inevitably follows a long few hours of drinking and talking and gossiping – though neither of you would ever admit to the latter. He’s leaning on your shoulder, spine pressed up against your side. If you wanted, you could count his vertebrae, name them. Your nearest hand is occupied though, resting in his hair, fingers moving listlessly through the strands, along his scalp. You didn’t even think anything of it, when he leaned back and you lifted your hand there. It felt so natural, the two of you slotted together on that uncomfortable couch.
He smells nice. He always does, a little like blood and ink and bone dust, but the scent underneath that is just as inviting. Clean, but not so sterile as the alcohol.
You press your hand to his head, trying to pull his thoughts into you through your palm. He senses the question and contorts his body, twisting so that he’s facing you, eyes large behind his glasses, his head leaning against the back of the sofa now. He looks unguarded, and it makes something slow and syrupy move its way up your spine.
You’re nineteen, and looking at Palamedes, you’re suddenly struck with the feeling that you’re both so much older than you remember.
He shifts himself up, your eyes still level with each other, and without moving his head from the couch, cups your face in his hands. Neither of you say anything, but you sit there in electric silence for a few moments.
He drops his hand to yours, and you can feel him silently count your knuckles on each finger, traveling down to feel each fragile metacarpal through the back of your hand.
“Sometimes,” he starts, his eyes soft and his hands warm, “I imagine that we’re the only two people in the whole Nine Houses.”
You think about the dreams and not-dreams that you’ve let exist in the most secret parts of your mind for the past few years. You move your hand from his, and he lets you. You pick up the bottle, its contents nearing the halfway mark, and take a sip before passing it to him. You wish you were bolder.
“I think about it all the time.”
Ⅵ
It’s barely a year later when the missive from the Emperor Undying arrives. And then it’s a strange journey all the way down, from the preparation to the summons itself, to the question of Lyctorhood. Neither of them like how little information is available to them in the Sixth, how little the scholars and historians and archivists of the house seem to know about this process. The Warden had put it well one day, frustrated hands tearing through his hair:
“How do you study for a test when you can’t possibly know the contents?”
“I’m sure you’ve done that before, Warden.”
“Not the point. This is different.”
And it was, he wasn’t wrong in that regard.
Ⅵ
The time goes by quicker than it has any right to, and the shuttle to the First House isn’t long enough to let any anxiety fester. The Warden is confident if nervous, you can tell, even though he won’t say it. You’re both quiet on the way there, and upon disembarking. What is there to say? The planet is strange, and so is Canaan House itself. Teacher leaves you with more questions than answers, and you’d prefer not to linger on them at the moment.
There’s a lot to focus on, and so it’s stupid – absurd really, you think, that when you realize you’ll be sharing chambers with the Warden, that’s all that you can think about. At least distractions come quickly, in the form of the Third House necromancers (you treat this title with some skepticism at best, your eyes lingering for a moment too long on the taller one), regal and strange.
“Siblings really aren’t the ideal teammates, are they, Sixth?” the gaunt one, Ianthe, comments in the corridor the first evening. Her sister is behind her, visibly pouting.
“Half.” You say without thinking, while Palamedes simultaneously says, “I’d disagree.”
You look at each other, and Ianthe curls her lip at the two of you, crossing her arms in front of her.
The Warden turns back to her and shrugs, “Perhaps it’s different… When only one of you is a necromancer.” You hear the disbelief in his delivery, but Ianthe doesn’t seem catch it.
“Hm. Perhaps. Maybe if my sister was a muscled, half-competent cavalier we’d be closer or – more like the two of you.” The way she says it carries a particular weight that you’re very actively ignoring. She appraises you both with a cocked eyebrow. Your face heats up, and you’re feeling strangely exposed.
The Warden excuses you both and Ianthe barks out a laugh at the sudden departure.
“And here I thought leaving the Sixth meant we’d stop hearing comments like that.” he mutters under his breath. You feel his hand brush against yours, and it stays there, a whisper of easily denied contact.
You keep your eyes down and away from him as you walk back to your rooms, quiet the whole way.
Ⅵ
“This is getting out of hand.” He says, hands scanning over the wound on your forearm from earlier in the day.
“It’s fine,” you say, though you wince, and isn’t that just a perfect metaphor for this whole damn thing. “We should go back out there.”
“I know.”
“But?”
“You know.”
“I know.” You both sit in silence for a moment, mind-and-body exhausted in a way you hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever.
You look up at the same time and meet each others’ eyes, and oh, there’s all those years of secret, silent conversations bubbling up once again. You say it at the same time.
“I brought wine.”
You both start laughing, and you can’t stop. It’s all the emotions from the past few days (hell, weeks, really), spilling over into this absurd moment. The wound on your arm aches, and there are tears in your eyes, but you keep laughing. You both end up on the floor, heads together but your feet splayed in opposite directions.
You look at him as you stop to catch your breath. His eyes linger a little too long, and you know he wants to say something. You wait.
“I don’t like that we’ve been pulled into this, Cam, and that none of the Houses want to work together. It’s dooming us. I’m sorry you’re stuck here, but I wouldn’t want to be stuck here with anyone else.”
“I’m not sorry, Palamedes. This is where I’m supposed to be – where I want to be – here, right now, with you.” Something clicks into place, then.
You both sit up, moving like one being split into two, and he leans close into your space. He moves like a man possessed and you follow his lead, mirror images of each other, leaning back as he places his hands on either side of you. You lay back and stare up at him. You reach a hand up and tuck a strand of hair behind his ear.
His face is flushed and his eyes are locked on yours, and you don’t know that there’s any turning back from whatever this has suddenly become.
“I’ve been avoiding this for the better part of a decade, Cam, I don’t know that I can continue to.” He takes a deep breath, steadying himself, “I don’t know that I want to.”
You don’t even bother to suppress the shiver that runs up your spine, the way the flesh on your arms chills and your hands twitch. Now or never, you think, and why keep secrets any longer? What good did it do them, what good did it do anyone here?
“Palamedes, I’ve thought about you nearly every night for the last five years.”
He looks at you, not disbelieving, not quite, but it's an emotion you can’t place. He looks conflicted. “You never said–”
“What could I say? ‘Oh Warden, Oh brother–’”
“Half-,” he interrupts.
“You know that hardly matters at this point. If it ever did. It barely mattered to our parents.”
“I shouldn’t have interrupted.”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“Tell me what you’ve thought about–” he stops, swallows, presses on, “what you’ve thought about, every night for the last five years.”
You squirm under his gaze, and suddenly his attention is the last thing you want. But he won’t let this go, you already know that.
And maybe that’s not such a bad thing, that voice in your head says, Maybe it would feel good to tell him. Feel good to show him.
You place your thumb on his lower lip, drag it down along his jaw and feel the blood rushing under the skin of his neck. His eyes dart around; your eyes, lips, the way your hair is fanned out against the floor, and back to your eyes again.
Your hand trails down his arm, lifting his hand to your ribs. “I’ve thought about your hands, here, on my skin.”
His fingers are warm, even with your undershirt between the two of you. He pushes the fabric up on his own accord and his hand roams your torso, the hard lines of your midsection and pressing down to feel the edges of your ribcage under muscle.
“I’ve thought about your mouth,” you say, barely above a whisper – it doesn’t matter, it’s impossibly quiet, the air charged and taut between the two of you and the only other sound is your shared breaths – his scrutinizing eyes are committing every inch of you to memory. You lift your chin, exposing your neck, and he takes the invitation of vulnerability without having to be told. His mouth fits itself against your carotid, and you gasp at the feeling of his teeth on your skin.
At that he no longer needs to be told where you want him, and you’re done telling him what you’ve thought about all those years – you’d much rather experience this, now, new and unpredictable because it’s not just you anymore, it’s Palamedes and his mind and his curiosity and his ability to discern so quickly what makes you want more, and your dreams and not-dreams could only replicate this skill so far.
It doesn’t surprise you in the least that he exceeds the expectations of your fantasies.
When he looks up at you again, his mouth is red, and you have to kiss him. You have to–
“I need to–” He doesn’t wait for you to finish the thought, he doesn’t have to. He dips his head again and when his mouth meets yours you think about that night last year in the study lounge, the burning of the liquor in your throat. No, you think, this is what fire feels like.
You lunge up against him and his hands scramble to wrap around you at either end of your spine, like he’s desperate to hold your bones in place. Your hands scratch at his back, futilely shoving his shirt out of your way before moving up to his hair, pulling at it as he does the same to you.
Your hands move to the front to tear at the buttons on his shirt, a more productive endeavor to your goal, and he quickly realizes your aim and assists you. He’s gasping as you run your hands along his chest and back up his neck, taking in every detail that you can. It’s exhilarating, all this time spent imagining, wondering, to feel his skin against your skin now, like this.
You can feel him against your thigh and you rock up into him, desperate for more but not wanting to break the contact of your mouths, his tongue feels too good against yours.
“Cam,” he shudders into your mouth, biting down on your lip so hard it nearly draws blood. You can feel warm wetness blooming below your waist, and you whimper into him, rutting your hips up against him again, needy for more contact. It would be embarrassing if it were with anyone else – with anyone else you’d feel strange and self-conscious but here and now, with Palamedes, it’s none of those things. You’re open on an operating table, anatomy and heart laid bare.
He thrusts against you in time with your own movements and you can feel him shaking and God , it’s so good, so much better than anything your imagination had ever conjured up. He’s the one to break the kiss first, but his mouth stays on your skin, traveling down your chest, tongue circling around your nipple and you push a hand into his hair reflexively, arching into his mouth, feeling yourself getting wetter. He groans and reaches a hand up into your hair, pulling it with a tight fist and you laugh-moan as you feel his lips curl into a smile against the small trail of hair that leads him down your stomach to where you desperately want him to touch.
“Please, Pal, I’m–”
“Yes, Cam, I want you – God, how much I’ve wanted you.” He groans and pushes his head against your lower abdomen, pressing into your pubic bone, and all you can do is whisper please under your breath, urging him further.
He moves his hand out of your hair and down your body, leaving behind a heat trail that feels like a brand.
His fingers get to the buttons of your trousers and you squirm, smiling. He pauses and looks up at you, when there’s a sudden–
KNOCK KNOCKKNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
“Sixth?? Cam? Sex Pal??”
You groan silently and Palamedes shoots up from the floor with a tremendous speed you’ve never witnessed from him, and you spring up just as quickly after the panic of reality sets in a split second later.
You both look like you’ve just been… well, doing exactly what you’ve been doing. You pull your shirt back down and you stare at Pal’s askew glasses, his shirt with ripped buttons on the floor.
The Warden answers, breathing irregularity only just barely noticeable to you.
“Ninth?” Like it could be anyone else.
“Let me in! I have to talk to you!”
You scrub a hand over your face and shift your thighs against each other. How wet you are feels more pronounced, stranger without Pal’s body to rut up against deliriously. You glance at him and the way he’s pressing against the front of his trousers tells you that he’s experiencing something all too similar, albeit with different anatomy. You stifle a laugh, you can’t help it.
The two of you exchange a look. He nods at you, cracking a smile, and you nod back.
He closes the distance between you, presses his forehead hard against yours.
“I’d like to continue this afterward, if you’re feeling amenable.”
“I was going to say the same thing, Warden.”
He puts his lips to yours one more time, lingering for a moment before sighing.
“Come in, Nav!”
Ⅵ
There’s a sudden fever pitch of panic that floods the two of you after he calls out to the Ninth’s cavalier primary. You give him a look and see the fear you feel mirrored back to you in his eyes. The shared smiles and secret knowing is replaced with significantly more complicated thoughts. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Right.
You aren’t supposed to be out of breath from being mouth-to-mouth with your half-sibling. You don’t even have the excuse of alcohol, or some other mind-altering substance that might bring about questionable decisions. Bottles of previously mentioned wine remain untouched. This was just the two of you, deciding to eschew all sense of societal decency. You didn’t want to debate the morality or logistics of this with yourself now, and you don’t have time.
The Ninth House cavalier seems nice and all, if a bit off, but she couldn’t know. Neither of you could afford having this get back to – well, anyone, really. For as long as you were here, this ought to be a secret. No use in rumors getting back to the Sixth, who for all their feigned disinterest in living things very much relied on gossip as a form of entertainment. And weren’t there already enough whispers about the two of you back home?
The Warden is a flurry of skin and hair and grey, frantically looking around for a shirt that isn’t there. If your head wasn’t buzzing you’d probably laugh at him, but instead you shove your own undershirt back into place, tucked into your trousers, and throw his cloak at him. The look he gives you is wilting, and you throw a gesture back at him, exasperated. He throws it over his shoulders, moving the excess across his arm and shoulder to cover his bare chest.
This all happens in a matter of moments, and then the Ninth opens your door. She’s out of breath, the strange ceremonial paint smeared onto her face barely even resembles a skull at the moment, but even her desperation is stopped short when she crosses the threshold. Palamedes had mentioned to you in your first week at Canaan House that he felt people were underestimating her. Perhaps he was right.
“Am I interrupting something?”
You eyes can’t leave the spot on the floor where the two of you had just come undone against each other. Emperor fucking Undying, you think.
Ⅵ
God. At least she’s distracted easily enough. Her necromancer had been missing once again, and you have to wonder what it's like to be so disconnected from one another like that. What a foreign concept, what a strange thing. Could a necromancer and their cavalier truly exist that way? The disregard the Reverend Daughter had shown for her cavalier during some of the trials had alarmed you, and it had actually angered the Warden; once he had stormed back to your rooms, flustered and muttering under his breath about duty and care. He had spun on his heels after the doors closed behind you, getting in close and crowding your space in a way that made your throat close up.
“I would never–” he had turned again, walking away from you, pinching the bridge of his nose. Reeling it back in, as best he could.
“You could–” you started, knowing how you felt about it.
“But I wouldn’t! That’s just it!”
“If you needed to–” the trials were complicated and asked a lot of each pair, you had thought to yourself. Never was a useless word here.
“I wouldn’t.” He had said it with such finality. You had said something else, moved towards him instinctively, but the rest of the conversation blurs out, and you’re thrust back into the present moment.
The Warden is in a low, seemingly heated conversation with the Ninth necromancer. She’s small and dour and her face is set in a perpetual scowl that creases her own face paint. You imagine that beneath her robes her hands are clenched into angry little fists. You’re next to Gideon, who stands a few inches taller than you, absentmindedly chewing on her cuticles. You watch as the Reverend Daughter produces a piece of flimsy and the Warden turns, beckons you over.
“She underestimates you.” You murmur to the girl next to you.
“At least I know where I stand with her.” You blanch at the unexpected reply, and silently walk yourself over to your Warden’s hunched form.
Ⅵ
It’s far later into the night than you’d like that you and the Warden finally shut the door behind you, alone in your quarters again at last. Except the buzzing in your head is back (had it really ever left?) and you’re not really sure if you should be feeling the excited anticipation that’s building in the pit of your stomach. Your mind flashes back to just a few hours prior, his mouth hot and greedy on your skin. You try to knock your senses loose from wherever they’ve decided to hide–
What the fuck were you thinking?
Palamedes has already shed his topmost layers, his cloak and overshirt tossed to the floor and you move your eyes over his gaunt form. Wrist bones, veins crawling up his forearms. You want to flay him open and taste each of his ribs.
“Warden,” you start, trying to steel yourself to resist this temptation of all temptations. You had done it for so many years, one slip up couldn’t possibly crumble the defenses you had built yourself through all that time. One slip up? That stupid voice chimes in, What do you call all those nights alone with your hand? Your face flushes without your permission. Forgivable moments of weakness. This, on the other hand–
Before you can finish the thought he crosses the room back to you, still standing at the door. His eyes are slate, pupils wide and maybe you’re imagining it but you swear you can smell the desire pouring off of him and it makes you lightheaded. Moments of weakness, you think again, and you could laugh yourself right out of Canaan House. What a contradiction that the man in front of you could make you feel so strong and sure, and be your greatest point of weakness. They were not individual moments but simply the product of the effect of this person, spread out over time. The other half of your soul resides within him and what choice do you have other than to reach for it, constantly, always?
Your argument, then, is just as weak. You start again. “Pal, maybe we shouldn’t–” your voice sounds fragile, but he attends to you like you’re leading a seminar.
“What is there stopping us now, Cam?” he asks in earnest, his face so close to yours. “I can’t keep going on like we were. I can’t go back to before tonight.” He leans into you, every synapse in your body firing off, screaming at you for more. He inhales a deep, shuddering breath against your hair. “Unless you really, truly, want me to. I yield to you, I always will.” He swallows, pulls himself out of that intimate space but doesn’t move further than two hands away from you. “But I don’t want to, not now. Not after all this time.”
You regard his throat, the way his chest rises and falls and then catch his eyes, watching you study him. You move your hand up his side and along his shoulder blades, up into his hair. It remains there and catches, and you watch his eyes flicker closed. You stay still for a moment, lingering on the angles of his body with his head tipped up in bliss. You drop your hand and his eyes open, and you can see the fear there. It’s different from what you saw earlier, different from what you had felt when Nav knocked on the door. It wasn’t panic – this was a deeper, more thought-out fear. One you had yourself contemplated before. What happens if the person who has seen all of you no longer wants to look? But you couldn’t. You could never tire of looking at Palamedes.
“I don’t want you to, either.” The whisper barely escapes your lips before he’s surging forward, crowding you against the large wooden door. Oh, right.
Maybe this isn’t weakness, you think as his hands wrap around your shoulders, pulling you into him while his body simultaneously pushes you back. You bite at his lower lip and a low moan travels from your mouth to his and echoes back to you in his baritone and oh, you could drown yourself in the sounds you make together. You’re nearly certain you’ve never felt stronger.
He doesn’t wait for your word this time, instead hiking your shirt up of his own accord, mouth still bruising yours. He pushes a calloused, lithe hand up, circling around your nipple and tweaking it gently between his thumb and forefinger. Your pleased humming turns into a small gasp and you turn your attention to his torso in return. You trail your hand across his chest and can feel him smile against your open mouth as your hand dances down his ribcage and onto the ridges of his hip bones. You duck two fingers under the waistband of his trousers and feel him immediately harden against your thigh in response.
He lifts his mouth from yours for the first time to lick a stripe from your collarbones to the soft, sensitive spot behind your ear before traveling back down, nipping and sucking on your throat and along your jaw as he goes. You dip your hand further down as he bends just out of your reach, making you groan in want.
“Pal, god, let me–” you shudder against him, straddling one of his thighs and rocking against it, angled in a way that sends electricity straight to your cunt.
He stops attending to your neck for a moment, watches you rut against him with hair falling into his face and you feel like an animal but he looks at you like you’re something holy.
“Cam,” he breathes, one hand gripping the side of your waist and the other wrapped around the back of your neck, guiding you as you continue to rock onto him, and it feels so good but God you need more, you’re aching and you can feel your wetness soaking through your underwear already, and suddenly the fact that either of you have any clothes on is possibly the stupidest thing in the whole system.
“Pal, Pal, please–” you would pause your canting hips but his hands continue to move your body against his thigh, and it feels too good to stop; your hands scrabble to pull his shirt off and yours as well, you’re unbuttoning his pants as he leans in, mouth torn between a groan and a smile to kiss you more, his tongue dipping into your mouth and swiping across your lip.
“I want you,” you sigh, your hands exploring the space between his waistband and the place his hips converge, the wiry feeling of the trail of hair that leads you there, encouraging another hum to escape his lips.
“I’ve never wanted anything more than I want you, Cam – and I, God–” he has to take a breath and steady himself, takes his hand off the back of your neck and places it on the other side of your waist, pushing you up against the door before kissing you, “I love how you taste. I want to taste you more,” he whispers against your mouth before dropping to his knees.
You groan, frustrated at the loss of contact, desperately wanting to feel his hardness grow under your hand, but when you look back down your breath is stolen from your lungs.
His lips are red and swollen, his eyes bright looking up at you from behind his glasses that have fallen down the bridge of his nose, and his hair is disheveled, mussed and sticking out in places and plastered to his forehead in others. He’s beautiful.
He’s undoing the fastening on your trousers, kissing the bit of skin above your waistband and biting down where your iliac bones are hidden under layers of skin and muscle. He shucks your pants down, fighting against the muscles in your thighs that want to keep them in place. You watch, almost demure as he gently but eagerly pulls them down over your calf muscles, tugs them away from your ankles, over your feet that you lift up for him, kissing each body part as he goes. He comes back up, kissing the crook of your knee as he does. He’s savoring every inch of you, the same way you’re holding onto this image of him, and hope it never leaves your memory. You want it imprinted there, always.
He stares at the outline of your lips through your underwear, presses his face against where your clit makes the front bulge just slightly. He inhales like it’s incense in a temple, pushes his cheek against your low belly before he places a kiss against the fabric there, and travels down as you spread your legs instinctually, watching him from above as he worships you. His hand wraps around your leg and moves up, travels in between your thighs to where you know the wet spot in your underwear continues to become more noticeable, and when he moans from the feeling of that under his fingers you feel the vibration of it against your cunt and you shudder out a breathless whimpering. You move your hips against him, trying desperately to gain more of the sensation you’re craving, but your body can’t tell if that means to grind down on his hand or thrust up against where his open mouth is creating a warm spot against the fabric.
“Pal,” you half-groan, half-laugh, already feeling overwhelmed by him. “Please, Pal, don’t make me beg you.“
You feel him smile against the hood of your clit, the fabric there creating such a wonderful, frustrating sensation. “I have to admit,” he grins up at you, “I am curious what that would sound like. I don’t imagine you’ve begged for anything in your whole life, Cam.”
You tangle a hand in his messy hair, pull him away from your pelvis and tilt his head up to you. He looks delirious and it sends another surge of pleasure to your clit.
“Please,” you say softly, and you watch his expression grow serious, “Please, Master Warden. Brother,” you whisper, no longer bothering with half- anything, “I need to feel your mouth on me. Get these fucking underwear off me, please. Consider this me, begging.”
The way he moves in response would be almost funny if it didn’t make you feel practically dizzy with arousal. He lunges forward, gripping your sides hard enough to leave bruises, placing half a dozen sharp kisses across your abdomen before grabbing your underwear with enough force to nearly rip the thin, worn fabric. The care that came with taking off your trousers is gone, and these he shoves down haphazardly, not even bothering to take them off all the way before he dips back down to your cunt, inhaling again.
He pushes against your hips, as if to keep you in place, and you feel your ass pressing against the door.
He pauses to look up at you, and you can feel him watching your chest heave with each breath.
“You’ll tell me if you don’t like it? If I need to do something different?” All you can do is nod, and without another word he puts his mouth on you.
“Oh, fucking God, oh – okay –” Something different, you let out a huff-laugh at how remarkable his mouth feels on you. Doubtful you’d need him to do anything differently. You feel your breath coming in short puffs as his tongue dips between your lips before continuing up. He uses one hand pressed against your low belly, pressure that feels heady and exquisite, to lift the small hood covering your swollen clit before placing his mouth over you and flicking his tongue against it in a way that makes your whole body twitch involuntarily. One of your hands fumbles for his hair, for something to push him closer into you because that’s all you can fathom needing, and the other claws at the thick wooden beams that make up the door behind you. The feeling of his tongue is replaced by firm sucking and it makes you buck your hips up into his mouth because you couldn’t stand to lose the feeling of this now, your whole body trembling underneath his focus.
You feel like you’re going to melt into the floor as he squeezes the spot inside of your thigh, near your ass, with his free hand. Without thinking you lift your leg up and he senses what you need, shifting himself so that his shoulder is there for it to rest on. The new leverage this provides is too good not to use, and you cant your hips forward in time with the feeling of the pressure of his tongue on your clit.
He doesn’t let up as you continue bucking into him, fucking his mouth eagerly. The eye contact you make with him when you look down nearly sends you over the edge, his eyes bright and his mouth pressed over your cunt. You can feel your own wetness on your thighs and you look further down, see the wet spot forming in the center of his trousers and the outline of his cock as he rocks his own hips in time with yours and it makes you shiver thinking about what you could do with him.
He breathes out between your thrusts, “Fuck, Cam, I’m so–”
“You can’t,” you huff out, only half-joking, “Not before I do, don’t you dare.” You smile down at him and he pauses just to show you the sly grin plastered on his face, his chin shiny and wet with your cum.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.” And when he puts his mouth on you again you cry out, overwhelmed at the feeling of his wet tongue circling your clit. He picks up the pace, sucking with just enough force to have you keening and curling your hips up to him again and again.
“Fuck, fuck Pal – Warden, I’m–” you’re blabbering and you can’t even try to care, it feels too good, your whole body feels like it’s floating, wired up to a thousand tiny currents of electricity sending pulses in time with his mouth.
And then it comes crashing down onto you, wave after wave and if you had any control you’d be worried about pulling out Palamedes’ hair but your too caught up in the feeling of this orgasm crashing over you, and he doesn’t seem to mind your fist in his hair at all as he continues to move his mouth on you through one orgasm and into another, until you watch him buck and groan against the taut fabric of his pants.
“Cam, now, I’m – fuck, God, Cam–” he pushes his face into the tuft of hair at the top of your sex, his breathing rough and ragged. You’re riding out the waves of your own orgasm as you watch him shudder through his without having even been touched, and something about that makes another rush of arousal surge through you. You need him again, you need him again now.
You lift your leg off his shoulder and sink down to the floor next to him, your wetness still dripping down your legs and his face, a sheen of sweat covering both of you. You lean forward, into him so that he lays back onto the ground, and kiss him, long and deep and breathless.
You push your forehead against his and he pushes back, smiling. You give him a look and he nods.
“You know?”
“Oh, I think I know.” He says, “But you can say it, you can tell me. If you want.”
“I do.”
“And?”
“Better buck up, Warden. We’re nowhere near done yet.”
He laughs. “That’s what I thought.”
You both feel invincible. You can taste it in the air.