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March regrets this.
Not because of any sane reason, mind you. The inn room’s wooden planked floor is hard under his knees where he hovers awkwardly straight on them, refusing to sit back but pointedly not standing up, either. March nearly finds himself swaying in an attempt to stay balanced beneath the flickering candlelight, eyes set firmly on the old, polished wood beneath him.
Warmth spreads over his ears, and embarrassment prickles heavily down the back of his neck. The work-roughened skin of March’s palms is damp where his fists clench and unclench, hanging tensely on either side of him. Throat tight, he swallows, mouth wet where it should feel parched. Low tide in the heat of summer.
“Well? Do you have anything to say?”
Balor. The merchant’s smooth tenor interrupts thoughts– or purposeful lack thereof– startling March’s eyes upward to where the other stands before him, one hand propped up on his hip, dressed down and less put together than usual; a finely woven, low-cut shirt and cotton pants that read just got out of bed.
Probably because he did. Because it’s 1:00 AM.
“No rejoinders?” Balor scoffs, though it doesn’t reach the tilt of his smile, “If I’d barged into someone’s room at this hour, you can bet I’d have something very important on my mind… or something profitable, anyway.”
A light creak of the well-worn floorboards signals the other took a step forward, forcing March to tilt his head back if he wants to meet Balor’s gaze- which he doesn’t, eyes shooting back to the floor. His cheeks feel hot- no, everything does.
“...Maaarch.”
A sullen huff is the blacksmith’s first response at the light reminder, the second coming when a cool hand touches his chin to tilt his accompanying scowl back, shoulders stiffening at Balor’s expectant expression. He wishes he could look away.
“...What,” March grits, trying not to visibly draw in a sharp breath as the merchant’s thumb moves smoothly up his cheek, pinning him beneath his gaze.
“Need I remind you that you put yourself down there?”
Balor’s voice drops an octave, and though his face remains set in that just-short-of-amused tilt, his brown eyes are dark and look unflinchingly right through his bravado to March’s true feelings of shame; hot and terrifying. That thumb strokes March’s cheek in the direction of his mouth, and Balor’s grip goes taut for just a moment- with it March’s heart hammers in his chest, knowing he’s teetering on a precipice he’s been trying to back away from all day. All week. All month, since they’d first-
“Are you here for a reason,” Voice low and careful, Balor’s thumb sweeps over the corner of March’s opposing frown, running to its center. Testing. “Or are you just here to hurt my feelings?”
It only takes the lightest pressure for March to part his lips, eyelids falling half-closed as the merchant’s thumb runs across the edge of his lower teeth, meeting the wet of his awaiting tongue with a slow rub.
…No. That’s precisely why March regrets this. He regrets this because he is very, very much enjoying it.
Enough that it had nearly driven him crazy at supper, the jovial talk and merriment of his friends and peers turning to a background noise that overstimulated his senses whilst he grappled with the push and pull between him and the merchant who’d sat just across the room. The fearful excitement that had twisted in his gut when a lopsided smile had caught him off guard the seventh- eighth? - time he’d glanced over that night.
And March had thought himself subtle. He’d nearly broken the glass in his hand in thinly-disguised anger. At himself or Balor, he wasn’t sure.
That was neither here nor there, though, because March isn’t angry, now. He’s something else entirely. Balor’s thumb turns hot on his tongue, his opposite hand slipping into the crop of March’s hair from behind. Slim fingers firmly wrap into his hair and March’s world burns red.
“There we go,” Balor murmurs, thumb stroking into March’s mouth. “I knew you had it in you.”
And despite what he knows he should do, March goes pliant at the intrusion, eyelids flittering so narrow they may as well be closed where he’s knelt beneath the roving shapes of candlelit shadows. His jaw goes slack around the digit pressing against his tongue, allowing the other to drop his mouth open and rub at the sharpest of his incisors and the soft inside of his cheek, fighting not to loll his head back beneath Balor’s grip.
All the while, March’s body betrays him. He’d been half-hard the moment he’d slowly dropped to his knees in the darkness of Balor’s room, but now- with Balor touching him, alone like this…, he felt feverish with want.
He needs this.
It’s for that reason that March raises hands nearly trembling in the dark to rest against Balor’s thighs, tilting his face up and into the grip of his hair to gently bite at then suck at the merchant’s thumb up to the second knuckle. Incensed by the audible sound of Balor pulling in a breath, March goes further, laving his tongue over the digit, separating with a wet sound to lick across the raised palm of Balor’s hand, the soft junction between thumb and palm. He can’t think straight. He can’t decide if he should get up and run, or if the idea of being separated from the warmth of Balor’s thighs beneath his tense fingers- the promise in the line of the merchant’s arousal pressing obvious against the light material of his pants- is too much to bear.
That’s before March makes the mistake of looking up. Balor is looking down at him with such intensity– pupils blown wide, lips parted and skin flush–
“S-stop being-” March startles, voice too thin and damp with spit, before correcting himself with a deeper, steeled hiss, “Stop wasting my time.”
Stop being so soft with me. He’s a hypocrite, like he isn’t hard just from getting on his knees. He knows this, but he bristles all the same: it’s March’s first and usually last line of defense, always, when things get to be too much. When things are too sincere. Balor probably knows that too, but does it even matter if he doesn’t say anything? Does it matter as long as March gets to protect his pride? Balor isn’t going to tell anyone, he’s certain– he’s become a welcome face in the village, but he’s still an outsider.
That, and he likes his secrets.
Maybe if he were still just a stranger from the Capital, this would be easier.
Balor releases him, and March almost loses his balance, unaware of how much he’d been leaning on the merchant’s legs. “Go on, then,” He trails, and without averting his eyes ( unreadable, hawk-like ) from March’s, lifts his damp hand to press his palm against his lips. A facsimile of a kiss. The blacksmith’s chest tightens until he feels dizzy. “Do it yourself,” Balor says, smiling something dangerous.
He’s offering you exactly what you came here for. Why hesitate?
Because you shouldn’t be here.
March falters, fingers twitching against Balor’s thighs, eyes flicking between the other’s face above him and the obvious tent beneath the cotton of his pants in front of him. He wants to. He’s already thought about it against his better judgment- too much, in fact, even for an easily flustered, horny young man in a small and over-familiar village- but he hesitates, all the same.
He hesitates for the same reason he only lets himself truly think about it in moments of weakness, half-awake and tangled up in his sheets in the middle of the night, no one but himself to hear his labored breathing grow quick beneath his hand.
There’s a spark of understanding in Balor’s eyes, then, as March hesitates.
“...Ah,” He quips, but it’s half-hearted, an afterthought to the palm he brings to the back of March’s head, grabbing his hair. “Or did you need my help again, after all?”
Before he can protest (should have, wouldn’t have), March’s face is being pushed into the other’s crotch, a sound embarrassingly like a low whine passing someone’s lips, and it’s with mild horror that March distantly recognizes it as his own. It’s too late to rein in his response, though, his cheek up against the rigid shape of Balor’s dick taking up– and away – the entirety of his thoughts.
This is why. To take is different than to be given, and what March needs is to be given. To weigh his drive to be better superseded, overridden, and laid bare- well, bare enough. You can’t be the best at something without someone telling you it’s been earned.
His mind swims like after so many sips of Juniper’s wines as he breathes shallowly through his mouth, rubbing his face against Balor’s hardon through his thin pants with a fervor that could only be thinly veiled desperation, his arousal approaching almost painfully stiff where it lay trapped and neglected in his lap. A dark spot forms on the light material of Balor’s pants where his cockhead leaks, and with trembling hands March finally reaches up to touch Balor, rubbing a calloused, searching palm against and around the shape of him. Spurred on by the low groan above him, he nuzzles his face against the tent of Balor’s pants and inhales his scent, lightheaded with desire and ever-trailing shame.
It drives him to move like a man possessed, hands shaking as they are, pulling at the top of Balor’s pants just enough to free his dick- they both hiss under their breath as it slaps against the merchant’s stomach, ruddy and rigid, though not for long. Before he can overthink it, March sits up on his knees again, bringing his lips to warm flesh as ardently as his heart pounds in his chest. It’s disjointed and unpracticed, the way he now mouths at Balor’s cock, wet and distracted and rushed, but it’s all he can manage.
Given how quickly the other’s fingers scratch across his scalp to grip his hair, hips rutting forward until the other’s rigid length rubs along the seam of March’s mouth, all he can manage appears to be enough.
“For a man of so few words, y-you seem to be dreadfully good with your mouth, March,” Balor suddenly laughs under his breath.
March’s eyes shoot up in alarm. “S-shut up,” he gasps against damp flesh as the other’s words provoke a hard throb of need in his gut, brows screwing together even as his hands ball into fists against Balor’s hips, sure his face has been beet red since the moment this started. “Stop it.”
Don’t look at me. Look at me. Just get this out of my head.
Balor doesn’t look away when their eyes meet. March isn’t prepared for how affected he looks: lips parted and skin flushed high on his cheekbones, eyes half-shut and dark as coal. He wants this too. It’s a foolish thought, as obvious as the hard glans resting against March’s cheek, but seeing it in Balor’s face is too much. Too personal. The thought of looking away crosses his mind, but an insistent pull of his hair keeps him there, the light yank reverberating down his body to coil tightly in his gut.
“Why should I?” Balor gives another slow thrust of his hips against March’s face, this time leaving a line of slick precum across his cheek where he drags against the blacksmith’s flushed mouth. “I think you’re enjoying this, too.”
Much to March’s fiery trepidation, Balor drives the point home with a foot between his bent legs, ankle pushing up against the strain at their center. His eyes nearly roll back into his head at the feeling of being touched, an unbidden and strangled moan of surprise ripping from his lips before he can stop it, hips giving an unsteady jerk forward with a jolt of heat to his confined dick. It seems to affect Balor, too- the rigid, reddened length against his cheek giving a visible twitch up against him. If that wasn’t bad enough, Balor shifts and rubs his ankle against the jut of March’s cock, the pressure and friction draining self-control from his body like the last grains of sand in an hourglass until he has no choice but to give up.
Finally too heavy, March’s head drops, trapping Balor’s dick between his cheek and the merchant’s stomach with hands scrabbling for purchase on the other’s thighs before balling into fists. He can’t help it, it’s too much. He grinds his hips forward against Balor’s ankle with a pained whine, rutting like a dog in heat.
Isn’t he better than this? No, he isn’t. God, this is pathetic.
“Balor…,” March groans with another thrust of his hips, feeling weak and frustrated.
One glance downward gives March an eyeful of what Balor can doubtless see, or at least feel; the hem of his pants pushed up to reveal his ankle- or it would, if March weren’t currently pressed against it- and the tent of his erection, thick in his pants. It feels like the floor is coming up to meet him.
Carding through the mess of March’s dyed hair, Balor grabs a handful of it at the front of his scalp to tilt March’s head back again. He almost doesn’t recognize him, the look so unlike the face he shows around the village- mussed and hot, chest swelling with a deep breath. Pupils blown wide, his gaze barely catching a glint of the candlelight behind them.
What does he see right now, looking at him?
“Get up, March.” Balor starts thickly, tongue darting out to wet his lips.
March rises less steadily from his knees than he fell (but much quicker), one arm coming out to counterbalance his weight, not anticipating Balor’s hand snapping out to grab his wrist and haul him close. March’s breath comes fast, faced with the merchant at his level- not quite equals, not now. In looking anywhere but his eyes, March’s dart quickly from where he’s held in place to where Balor’s other hand touches his waist, running around and up his torso, the sensation suddenly feeling too sincere.
“Fuck off,” March hisses, shoving at Balor’s chest with his free hand, eyes wild.
Balor’s lip curls up at one corner, and the blacksmith can almost pinpoint the exact moment a mask starts to slip back over his expression. “So testy!” He huffs, the offending hand thrown palm up but his other still firmly in place around March’s wrist, “Last I checked, you’re the one who couldn’t make it to the morn without a cock in your mouth, so-.”
Anger ( humiliation ) burns behind March’s eyes and ears, and he’s ripping his hand away to seize the front of Balor’s shirt, “ You -” though it only appears to give Balor more space to cage him in against the wall with both arms, leaning into March’s grip rather than away. Nowhere to go. He’s trapped himself, the fire in his eyes reflected in Balor’s own.
“There’s an easy way you could shut me up, you know.” Balor goads, pressing so close March can feel the heat of his breath, and worse still, see that beyond the taunt of his words- Balor is serious. March’s heart hammers in his chest, breath quick and just short of gasps, torn between panicking and panting. The stub of a candle at Balor’s bedside flickers, and without breaking his gaze, the merchant leans in, their noses brushing, and–
Pulls away. The candle goes out, washing them in darkness.
“...But you’re not ready for that yet, are you?” Balor says to his ear, sucking in a breath through his teeth.
March doesn’t know. For a moment, it had seemed– but, no. Hell no. That’s not why he’s here. He’s here to get Balor out of his head, not further into it.
… But he does not attempt to stop the other from turning him against the wall, then. Balor’s body covers him from behind, and in the relative safety of darkness- something he’s both thankful and petrified of– March’s resolve is free to crumble. There’s a nose behind his ear, hot breath at his nape, and March is making a sound in the back of his throat he’d never make in the light of day, overwhelmed but freed from being perceived (at least visually) in his weakness and better-worse for it. Not free to indulge in it, but… close enough.
Balor and March’s hands move to his belt simultaneously. There’s a fight- one hand over the other, calloused to clever- a scrabbling of fingers ripping open the clasp, a palm roving up and under his shirt and across March’s abs in the dark. Balor’s hips up against him from behind and what must be the pressure of his half-hard cock, and a thin, tight moan March can’t hold back when a palm suddenly cups his groin instead of moving into his open fly.
He can’t even force himself to pretend to object to it, and throws a hand up to the wall in front of him blindly, pushing his mouth into the crook of his elbow and rutting into Balor’s touch with a muffled groan. God. He wants this so badly and he hates himself for it. All of the wine and blue ribbons in the village couldn’t compare in this moment to the bone-deep relief March feels when Balor shoves down his pants and underwear enough to seize his cock, the other’s now spit-slick palm working him from root to tip.
“H-hurry up…”
March’s muffled voice urges thinly, bucking his hips back and gasping as he feels the hot press of Balor’s cock at the seam of his ass where it’s crowded between them, rubbing up against it when an answering groan sounds at his shoulder. He can feel the rustle of the other’s sleeve against his hip, another strained whine leaving his grit teeth at the white-hot realization Balor is jerking off to this. To him.
“Hurry-” March urges again, already chasing a finish that builds tight and searing in the pit of his stomach, hips twitching and thrusting into the merchant’s eager fist.
Finally. He can get this– the distraction that is this bastard out of his system for good, and move on with his life. Never to be spoken of again. The playful, intoxicated jeers had started at good-natured bickering and ended with Balor’s mouth and silver tongue on him on the floor of his room. The dust on the knees of the merchant’s expensive pants and March’s fist against his mouth to stifle his moans. The way Balor and he move against each other now, breath coming hard and fast in the pursuit of a peak March doesn’t want to take- one he wants to be given. And Balor is going to give that to him.
“Balor -” March moans suddenly at the realization, his low voice going from rough to sweet as his cock gives a deep throb, balls tight and ready to spend.
He has to bite his forearm to keep down a particularly loud moan, the slick slap of Balor’s palm around him feeling more tight and sensitive by the second only made more overwhelming by the sounds from Balor’s lips to his ear where they’re crowded against the wall. Balor’s chest to his back, the steady drive of the other’s hips up against him into his hand so reminiscent of fucking he feels like his brain is about to short-circuit. Or he’s going to cum.
Or maybe both. Definitely both. March’s head drops off his elbow to hang between them as they move, a spill of soft sounds growing harsh with the uneven jerk of his hips, that pressure building up and up and up until all March can focus on is the pressure in his cock swept up in Balor’s hand and the sound of the merchant’s breath at his ear like a rough wave at shore. He’s breaking-
“Ask,” Balor pants in March’s ear just as the blacksmith’s movements turn disjointed, voice strained and practically pleading. Something slick and blunt rubs at March’s hole as they move, March’s entire body going lightning tense at both the foreign sensation and the moan punctuating Balor’s demand. The merchant’s free hand runs up his toned body to hold just below his jaw, drawing March up the length of Balor’s body from his support against the wall in one movement, “Ask for it, March-”
“Please-” It bursts from March’s lips like a punch to the cheek, rough and strained- body tensing like the string of a bow. One of the blacksmith’s hands shoots up over his shoulder to scratch a hold onto the back of Balor’s neck, desperate to grab onto something, anything to brace for that pressure at his core coiling to the brink. “P- please -”
It’s finally too much. Held taut against Balor’s heaving chest, March sucks in a ragged gasp and tenses for one fragile, electric moment before jerking at the hips as that heavy feeling unfurls in his balls all at once; the repeated tug and smooth pull of Balor’s palm over the head of his cock turning slick and hot as a forge. He doesn’t need to see the jolts of spend that streak Balor’s fingertips and the wall in front of him because he can feel it, evident in the breathless whimpers that fall from March’s lips, shaking in Balor’s taut arms in the dark with each throb of his peak. Overstimulation floods March both body and mind with the rigid shake of Balor up against his back, face buried open-mouthed to the back of March’s neck with soft whines that signal his peak.
Balor’s breath is hot against March’s skin in the dark after that, raising goosebumps at the tops of his shoulders amid the lingering twitches of his body, shirt pushed up his belly and sticking to the warm muscles of his chest- he’s more relaxed than he’d been in weeks.
Until he isn’t. Balor’s palm slides up his neck to his jaw, resting against his cheek, and for one moment March leans his face into it, open-mouthed; a mirror of the soft press of lips to the back of his neck before his brain catches up with him all at once, body turning to stone.
Shit-
It’s as if the bottom of March’s stomach has dropped out, spilling all of the pleasant heat and mindless comfort and leaving only shame and discomfort in its place. Jerking away from Balor sends March stumbling in the dark, hitting the wall in front of them with an elbow and knee in an attempt to pull his pants up and walk away at the same time- he can’t get away fast enough. Shit. Shit!
“Uh-” Finding the door handle with some frantic scrambling, March pauses before pulling it open, turning to face where he assumes Balor still stands in the dark, mouth opening and closing a few times before settling on a mumbled, “Sorry.”
If he wakes anyone with his stilted, nutted-out gait across the creaking floor of the Sleeping Dragon, one palm held to the side of his jaw like a burn, March doesn’t know- and he certainly doesn’t stick around long enough to find out.
A restless night’s sleep, and- and he should be over it. He will be over it. Over the sound of Balor’s breath in his ear and the press of lips to his skin- all of it.
Balor reclines on his borrowed bed for the night, skin bare and cooling in the night air atop one of the well-loved duvets he had full intentions of sleeping under shortly. The moonlight that now streams through the inn window illuminates the tap of his fingertip against his lips, a one-two-three to the beat of the breathless memories replaying themselves behind his eyes; red hair and solid muscles beneath his fingertips, a usually rough voice stretching to pliant and wanting, honesty in the dark.
… Until slinking off with his tail between his legs.
Hm. Had he laid it on too thick? … Him? Never! Well, maybe. Balor rolls over in bed, taking one edge of the blanket with him, and sighs.
Oh, well. March will figure it out sooner or later, won’t he? After all, Balor has no plans of going anywhere.