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Patience, as the old saying goes, is a virtue. It is the trait of saint and hunter alike, the perpetuator of life and death in its many forms. If a predator could not outwait its prey, it would starve. If a kind soul could not breathe deep and forgive the damndest sins, they would surely forfeit the source of a gentle disposition altogether.
Olruggio was a perfect example of both. He prowled his hunting grounds一the taverns of Kalhn and its Outsider neighbors一in search of clientele with expert eyes and inviting smiles, riding the waves of his reputation as a lure to bait money into the pockets of him and his atelier. He carried himself with a deceptive ease in these spaces, coaxing willing prey into the trap of his genius.
Truly, though, that made it sound terribly malicious. Such a description did not account for the saintly, do-good nature residing beneath his tough hide, driving the witch of light to drown in mundanity and stress alike for the sake of others. He offered gentle smiles and humble thanks to all those he helped, keeping his exhaustion close to his chest and his gratitude extended out for the world to see. Only when he returned to his Watchful Eye’s spire would he allow the grate of the outside world to show, hidden away for him to fix like one of his contraptions where nobody could see.
Qifrey saw.
He saw everything, when it came to Olruggio. Saw the exhaustion eating its way down into his bones, the frays at the end of his sanity after sleepless nights working with calloused fingers for the good of the people. Always striving to be his best一kind, patient, ingenious, perfect一for everyone but himself.
Qifrey, in turn, was not a patient man. He didn’t consider himself to be, at least; to Olruggio, patience came as naturally as the flowing water Qifrey so despised, rippling from his fingertips and lips and inventions in droves. Qifrey, in turn, capitalized on his own inability to be patient. He gritted his teeth and pulled a strung-up smile to his lips for every unwelcome question, every ungrateful request, every nagging message from the Great Hall. Perhaps his patience for his apprentices was raw and true, but that was where it stopped: deep within the walls of his own atelier. Being patient to those who’d reached maturity took white-knuckling effort.
It tortured him.
Therefore, it kept him alive.
Perhaps that was part of what made Olruggio so perfect as his Watchful Eye. Qifrey contained no such patience for the man himself; more specifically, Qifrey held a particular, impatient disdain for Olruggio’s own, virtuous patience.
Qifrey had long lost count of the times he’d scolded Olruggio for putting others above himself. A well-placed jab here, a backhanded comment there; hell, at times, Qifrey felt inclined to simply tie the man down and force him to rest. It was far worse when Olruggio’s patience was directed at Qifrey himself.
How many times had Qifrey turned away Olruggio’s concern? How many times had he lied to keep the promise they’d made? How many times had Qifrey had to look Olruggio in the eyes and deny his bleeding heart, to pretend like he didn’t want his Watchful Eye more than he wanted air, just to stay safe?
It kept him alive. Far more importantly, it kept his promise to his radiant star. Qifrey had to keep telling himself that. It was the only way he could endure the ordeal of being fussed over, of being discovered and forgotten in cycles, of being loved by a man he’d taken everything from. The only way he could stand to dig his fingernails into his palm and pretend Olruggio’s self-sacrificing obsession was a one-sided ordeal.
But what happened when that constant, crawling feeling of roots and gnarls in Qifrey’s skin no longer forced him to be patient?
…
Qifrey awoke with a start. He launched up from the cot he laid in, straining viciously against the bandages stiffening his limbs like they were shackles.
The last he remembered, Olruggio had learned everything.
Again.
Like clockwork, he’d discovered the truth of Qifrey’s condition, of the promise they’d shared, of the reality behind the blotches in his memory. But unlike the previous trials against Qifrey’s patience in which he had to erase a piece of the man he loved most with his own hands, he…
What had he done? He couldn’t remember. All he knew was his right socket didn’t feel empty. No earthen growth brushed the skin within the scarred chasm, no branches licked and curled at the underside of his skin. Rather, he felt the capability to blink with both sides of his face. To perceive depth. To see.
What happened?
What happened?
He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. He was sure he would later, or someone would fill him in after they realized he was awake. Distantly, he wondered how much time had passed between Olruggio’s realization and this moment. It’d surely be impossible to erase it now.
A horrid, curdled, guilty relief settled into his chest. It didn’t matter what happened. The secret was out.
…No roots grew. Nothing stirred beneath his bones. His eyes一plural一focused down on shaky hands.
He was free.
…
Olruggio could barely keep still. He’d been forced to retreat to the atelier after a full week of staying glued to Qifrey’s side in the hospital bed. The girls had saved him, crafted a solution together as they always did to defeat the brimmed cap who’d scarred their master, and reversed Qifrey’s condition in the time it took for Olruggio to stop sobbing. They truly were brilliant witches.
He didn’t care for the earth-shattering changes happening in the Great Hall, though, nor did he give a rat’s ass about what would come next for the world of witches. His prodigies could handle that part, as the faces of the future should. No, all he cared about was一
“Olruggio.”
Qifrey.
The witch of light whipped his head to the atelier’s entrance, tired eyes一rubbed red from sleep and tears一widening at the sight. There stood his beloved Qifrey, disheveled and panting, half-dressed in billowy pants and the loose scraps of bandages he’d torn off, hunched in the doorway. Light scars in the shapes of roots lined his pale skin like lightning patterns beneath his dressings: evidence of his struggle and victory against the silverwood seed they’d ripped from his body, thrashing and grasping for purchase on its way out. There was something in his eyes一something terribly desperate一Olruggio had never seen before.
Olruggio was at his side in an instant, prepared to catch Qifrey’s stumbling form as gracious greetings and questions of concern tumbled from his lips. But Qifrey didn’t stumble. In fact, the way he gripped his large hands into Olruggio’s cloaked shoulders and smashed their lips together was the surest movement Qifrey had ever performed in his life.
“Wait一Qif一mmph!” Olruggio tried to interrupt, but every time he leaned his reddening face back to steal a breath, Qifrey chased his lips with a snarl bordering on feral.
The path to Olruggio’s room was similarly passionate and messy. Qifrey practically dragged his radiant star across the atelier, walking blindly backwards across the catwalk so as to not waste a single second without his lips glued to Olruggio’s like a second skin. Only when they were stumbling up the stairs to Olruggio’s bed, Qifrey repeatedly getting stuck on the stone steps in his stubbornness to keep them connected, were they forced to break apart for a mere moment.
“Qifrey,” Olruggio tried again, now thoroughly flushed and spit-slicked. “What are you一what happened?” he stammered, calloused hands sliding up to cradle Qifrey’s damp cheeks. Was he crying? “Are you okay? Did they even clear you to leave? What一”
“So fucking selfless,” Qifrey hissed like it was an insult. He bumped their foreheads together, labored breaths mingling by force like he couldn’t stand to be any farther apart. “The man who’s denied you, manipulated you, lied to you for nearly two decades shows up to force his tongue down your throat, and you have the gall to worry for anyone but yourself?”
Olruggio visibly softened. “I know why you had t’do it, Qif,” he soothed, but Qifrey was already marching up the stairs with him in tow by the wrist. Trying anyways, “I’m not mad at you. Technically, it was my fault一”
He didn’t get to finish the sentiment. Qifrey had a hand gripped over his face in a second, pinned back against the pillows beneath his straddling hips. “Yes,” he seethed, “it is your fault. In exchange for my secret being at the cost of your memories, I endured a decade of being just out of reach of the only person I have ever felt the desire to root into. You made the ordeal nothing short of agonizing by being the kindest, nosiest, most supportive Watchful Eye a witch could ask for.”
Qifrey’s hand slid from Olruggio’s mouth down to the expanse of his neck, flexing his fingers around it without quite squeezing. But Olruggio was far more focused on the feeling of hot droplets falling down onto his face from beneath Qifrey’s snowy hair. His lashes fluttered away the blur of disorientation and fixed upward.
He’d never seen such an expression on Qifrey’s face before.
The man above him looked ruined. His ivory brows knitted in an upward worry line, nose wrinkled and lip pulled back in a gritted snarl, cheeks dusted a furious pink. Those beautiful, pale eyes一both of them now一shone with a watery layer of emotion, slipping out in traitorous drops and staining the face of the man in their path.
“You’re kind, Olly,” Qifrey rasped. “You have goodness etched into your very bones like ancient spells. But me? I am not a patient man.” He leaned down close, lips drifting mere inches above Olruggio’s. “I am a foul, selfish bastard who wants your light all to myself. I have the gall to want you this much even now, after years of putting you through heartache and rejection you didn’t understand.”
Qifrey’s face drifted right and dropped into Olruggio’s shoulder. He let out a shuddering breath, far closer to a sob than either of them would’ve liked, and whispered a scalding puff against his cloak, “Please, Olly. Tell this rotten fool to stop before I can’t anymore.”
Olruggio’s calloused palms slid up the bare, scarred skin of Qifrey’s back, making him shudder and gasp into the fabric below. Whispering against the shell of his ear, “I may actually keel over if y’stop now, Qif. I don’t care how much y’think you don’t deserve love. I want t’give you everything. An’ if I recall, not once have you ever said you don’t want me back, even when you couldn’t. Yer kinder than y’think.”
Qifrey let out a noise between a sob and a moan, collapsing his weight against Olruggio’s much broader chest. “Only to you,” he gasped, voice trembling nearly as much as the rest of him. “Only to you.”
The next few minutes were a mess of desperate kisses and scattered fabric. Qifrey was about ready to rip every layer off by force before Olruggio halted him in a tizzy, reminding him of the cost and significance alike of their uniforms. Laid bare before each other, they each took a brief moment of respite to admire the other. It wasn’t the first time they’d been nude一or close to it, at least一in each others’ presence, but this was entirely different.
The planes of Qifrey’s body were as slender and well-sculpted as the rest of him. He was sleek like an ice sculpture, all smooth edges and subtlety. Even the callouses of his writing fingers were their own kind of gracefully elegant. The lines of his root scars bulged gently under the larger man’s wandering fingerpads, tracing a map of life and death over the expanse of Qifrey’s otherwise-unmarked skin. He resembled the well-trained flow of a winding river glittering beneath pale moonlight. Olruggio would never dare to compare Qifrey to water out loud, though.
Olruggio, in turn, was sturdy like a roaring hearth. Where Qifrey had grown tall, he’d grown broad: sculpted shoulders, barreled chest, a certain stoutness to him befitting the wide frame of his chosen cloak. He’d fluffed out just a little in recent years with the influence of his food-loving apprentices, though it made the musculature of a traveling craftsman beneath no less defined. He was a fair bit hairier than Qifrey, too; thick, dark waves dusted his limbs and torso in rivulet strands.
“...You’ve always been so beautiful,” Qifrey breathed. He ghosted his long, slender fingers over Olruggio’s skin, savoring the way the fitter man shivered under his reverent touch.
The light witch choked out a gruff laugh between heavy breaths. “Aye, I could say the same t’you,” he countered. “S’a far more fitting word for you than m一gh!” The rest of his sentence died in his throat when Qifrey’s wandering digits, which had been gently massaging the plush of one of those defined pecs, retreated back just enough to pull two fingers together and pinch.
“You’re beautiful,” Qifrey repeated, firmer this time. Something in his eyes told Olruggio he’d be better off not arguing.
Olruggio just huffed. His hands slid to the thinner man’s thighs, then up his waist, silently appraising what he’d finally get to indulge in.
Qifrey wasn’t satisfied with the silence, apparently, because his fingers twisted again. Harder this time. The noise in the light witch’s throat was something between a groan and a yelp of protest, back twitching up off the mattress into the touch despite himself.
“Say it,” Qifrey instructed.
“...What?” returned Olruggio, blinking. “I don’t一fuck, stop doin’ that一!”
“Say you’re beautiful.”
Olruggio didn’t get the chance to protest before Qifrey’s other hand traveled up to hover over the neglected twin peak. Warning.
“Aye, aye, relax,” the broader man huffed, giving Qifrey’s hips a good squeeze in return. “I wouldn’t say there’s much beauty t’me, but if it pleases you, then… I suppose I could call m’self a looker.”
“Not good enough,” Qifrey scolded, voice alarmingly icy for such an intimate situation. He pinched both buds now, leaning down with a gaze far too intense to bode well, inhaling the breathy gasp out of Olruggio’s lips. “I’ve watched you for years, Olly. I waited for so long to see you like this. I dreamed of this, of you. And you’re going to recognize how beautiful you are, or I am going to make you.”
“...Could say th’same t’you,” Olruggio managed to breathe, flicking his eyes open to catch the terrifying intensity of Qifrey’s devoted stare. “You think I haven’t done th’same? If you can say it, too一if you can admit you deserve this一then I’ll say it.”
A standstill. The pair of stubborn witches lingered, sucking in sharp pulls of each other’s scent, holding matching gazes of determination. It was almost nostalgic, the way competition settled over them.
“…Alright then,” came Qifrey’s quiet conclusion. Something almost conniving slipped into his words as he spoke his next declaration, and Olruggio suddenly knew his fate was sealed:
“I will show you why I deserve you.”
Qifrey’s lithe form shifted back just enough to line his straddling legs up with the outside of Olruggio’s thighs, rutting forward in minuscule bursts until their tips barely bumped in greeting. It was such a minimal ghost of contact, and yet both men shuddered out synchronous groans, Qifrey’s long fingers gripping into Olruggio’s chest while the callouses of the light witch’s broader fingers steadied his lover by the waist.
Qifrey took to enhancing the contact in a hurry. His slender hand wrapped around Olruggio’s length first. It was thick and weighty in his grip, twitching rhythmically in frantic pulses, the thick vein running down the side slamming against the inside of Qifrey’s palm. The snow-haired witch dragged shallow tugs upward in just the way Olruggio loved, milking him for enough pre to lather down until he was coated in a thin sheen.
Olruggio wanted to ask how Qifrey knew so easily what to do, how he moved like he’d practiced this a thousand times despite never taking a lover. The words died in his throat in cycles as each tug choked a rasp out of him. Qifrey, ever the observer, answered anyways.
“We… Hah. We never got much further than this before I…” Olruggio’s hand came up to swipe under Qifrey’s watering eyes before he could finish, far more tenderly than Qifrey deserved.
“You can hold me proper now, Qif,” Olruggio soothed. “Y’don’t hafta rush anymore.”
Qifrey’s hand trembled. He slumped and nodded against Olruggio’s shoulder, breath stuttering against the skin of his collarbone. His thumb slid back to hook his own length一a little longer and slenderer than Olruggio’s, flushed a pretty pink all the way from tip to base like it hurt一and squeezed them together just so, collecting both in one hand. He let out a strangled sound like the contact had burned him.
Then, he started to move.
Each tug of his skilled hand was met with a shallow buck of his own hips in the opposite motion, dually stimulating Olruggio with contrasting friction in either direction. His movements were perfectly synched despite the slight tremor in them, steady and practiced like symmetrical keystones keeping each other in balance.
“F-Fuck, Qifrey,” Olruggio grunted against his ear. His broad hands slid up his scarred back up to his slender neck, one hand returning back down and up again in soothing rubs while the other gripped tight into Qifrey’s trembling shoulder. “Y’know me so well. Yer doin’ so一hah一!” His praises were cut short by a particularly rough squeeze and a needy groan into the junction of his neck.
“I fear I’ll make an early mess if you continue, Olly,” Qifrey laughed, the sound raspy and shaken. Rather than joining in the laughter, Olruggio snaked the hand on Qifrey’s shoulder up into his snowy locks and dragged his head back, kissing and licking up the column of his throat.
“Do it, then,” he goaded. “As many times as y’like. Don’t you dare go easy on me.”
Qifrey came with a full-body shudder. His breath caught in his throat in rapid sputters, lurching back enough to escape Olruggio’s grip only to slam their lips together in a messy clash of teeth and spit.
Qifrey growled into his open mouth, “Cum.”
The light witch found himself undone a mere moment later.
Qifrey’s hand flew fast enough to blur as he worked them both through it, coating Olruggio’s hairy abdomen in pump after pump of release mixing together atop his skin. They stayed pressed together long after the release, panting into each other’s mouths, slowly drifting down from their shared high in sync. Qifrey kept his hips up just enough to not be touched by the wet, sticky mess, but they were glued together in just about every other spot.
“...I’ll get a rag,” Olruggio promised. He cupped the back of Qifrey’s neck and planted a few more kisses on his cheek, shifting toward the edge of the bed. But Qifrey didn’t move an inch. Thick, dark brows knitted together in confusion, stormy blue eyes meeting pale ones in a silent question. Softly, “Qifrey?”
“You didn’t say it,” Qifrey observed. There was something dangerous glinting in his gaze as he sized the increasingly-nervous Olruggio up like his next meal. “We’re not finished here, Olly. Not until you say it.”
Olruggio had the gall to roll his eyes. “Aye, this again?” he chided lightly. “Alright, alright. I’m the belle o’ the ball. That do it for ya?”
Qifrey wasn’t laughing. He reached for the bedside drawer一not for a rag, but for an ink pen and a circular sheet of paper. Olruggio paled in an instant. Perhaps a small, guilty part of him was afraid he’d be forced to forget this again, that this was all a wonderful dream he’d have no choice but to wake up from. But when Qifrey finished scribbling something in record time, the finished spell wasn’t pressed to Olruggio’s forehead.
No, it was pressed to the headboard, right in time with Qifrey snatching up his radiant star’s wrists and pinning them to the affected zone. He was bound in place by silken ropes made from the splintered ply weaving itself together, holding him with his arms above his head and nowhere to run.
“I take it y’didn’t find that funny,” Olruggio gruffed out, betrayed by the edge of alarm and relief alike in his voice. His initial fear had dissipated, but a new nervousness bubbled up in its place in the face of the unknown. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t have anywhere to hide, as Qifrey kept writing spells on fresh slips.
“Not quite,” Qifrey returned lightly, focused on the task at hand. He placed a couple papers to the side with the need for only a connected ring, then finished one over the mess on Olruggio’s abdomen and watched as their shared filth collected itself into a neat ball hovering just below the paper.
“...Huh,” was all Olruggio could say for a moment. Was this a spell Qifrey used for cleanup over the years? It was obvious the feeling of cum on his hands would be far too unpleasant for him, after all. The thought of Qifrey crafting a few personal spells just for the sake of pleasuring himself had Olruggio twitching to life again, and as much as he wanted to shift and hide the embarrassment of such a small thing riling him up, he was still pinned with his hands on the headboard and Qifrey on his lap. Exposed.
“...I developed a handful of spells,” Qifrey explained, once again answering the questions Olruggio didn’t have the guts to ask. “They were helpful in the rare occasion of me needing a little relief, but they weren’t for me. I wrote all of these in hopes of being able to do this to you一with you一one day.” For as plainly as the pale-eyed witch spoke, Olruggio could see a light flush dusting his cheeks and shoulders, too prominent and sudden to be explained by lingering exertion alone. “I worked on many of these for several nights. Perhaps I was too wishful of a thinker, but I find myself immensely grateful to that spark of hope in this moment.”
“Qifrey…” Olruggio breathed, expression softening. He hadn’t expected to be moved and endeared by such an odd thing as Qifrey pre-developing pervert magic just for him. Dripping with affection, “S’nice t’hear you so honest for once. I wonder how many other dirty secrets I could get ya t’spill.”
“I would tell you anything,” Qifrey returned with enough deadpan sincerity to stun the teasing right out of Olruggio, “now that I can.”
The weight of those words hung in the air as Qifrey placed the sigil of the hovering, swirling ball of filth between Olruggio’s legs. He finished scribbling a second spell, and Olruggio found himself bracing for something, but nothing happened一not to him, anyways.
The ball changed shape with the application of the second spell being tied to it through a connecting line over each paper. It flooded with a rush of extra water and shaped into something tendril-like, the now-cloudy-watered appendage squirming upward toward Qifrey. His ivory tresses bounced a little when he started to sit himself down on it, pretty features pulling into a grimace at the wetness.
“Wh一Qifrey一!” Olruggio immediately began to protest, struggling against his restraints despite the way he was suddenly growing very hard again at the sight. Qifrey let out a shaky breath, sinking down onto the tendril mass in slow bounces. “I can take it instead if it’s too m一”
“You are my Watchful Eye, are you not?” Qifrey interrupted through gritted teeth.
Olruggio blinked, startled by the question, and nodded once.
“Then watch.”
By the time Qifrey was finished splitting himself open on the writhing liquid, Olruggio was rock solid again. He stared agape at the gorgeous sight of Qifrey working himself open just for him, gasping and grimacing and panting with the effort, his own re-hardening cock bouncing with the shallow movements. It was clear he was somewhat out of practice, but it was also very clear this wasn’t the first time he’d done this. The idea of Qifrey swallowing down the wet, sticky discomfort and debauching himself in isolation, whispering Olruggio’s name into his palm so he wouldn’t attract attention, all in the hopes of one day being able to do the real thing? Fuck, he almost came again untouched.
“M’gonna break these fuckin’ ropes if you don’t let me touch you,” Olruggio gasped, surprised at how desperate his own voice sounded. Qifrey only smiled down at him through his grimacing.
“You’re welcome to try,” he invited all too amicably for a veiled threat. “I drew them specifically with you in mind.”
Luckily for Olruggio, Qifrey was about ready anyhow. He slid off of the makeshift appendage with a hefty gasp and a shiver, making sure to shoot a murderous glare down at the very concept of the liquid before grabbing the pen he’d placed to the side and finishing yet another spell, moving it down between them. Olruggio could barely see what was going on down there一both from the angle and the frustrated tears in his eyes一but he could tell the appendage had been refreshed, as well as thinned out some. It didn’t dissipate, though, which he thought was strange, up until it teased against his ass.
“WHAT一!?” he choked, but Qifrey leaned down to catch the protest in another, messy kiss.
“You trust me, don’t you?” he whined against Olruggio’s lips, pouting at him in just the way he knew would break him. Then, softer, “You know I’d never hurt you. Let me make you feel good, Olly. I told you I’d show you why I deserve you, so let me. Please.”
Through several, ragged breaths, struggling to think with the teasing intrusion distracting him, Olruggio finally gave a jerky nod.
“Thank you,” Qifrey breathed, and he sounded too sincere, too thrilled, for Olruggio to be irked.
The odd little tendril, no thicker than one of Qifrey’s slender fingers, slid into his comparatively-untouched walls with little resistance. Made to fit him. It mostly just felt a little uncomfortable at first, more pleasurable from the way Qifrey was staring at him in earnest than anything else, until it slithered up against a particularly tender spot and pressed in. Olruggio lurched so hard he nearly bucked Qifrey up into the fucking ceiling.
The nearly-launched party couldn’t help but laugh in delight, watching as his victimlover shook and flushed like he’d been struck by lightning. He could hardly form a word, eyes going glassy, pupils blown out to saucers as he looked up at Qifrey in pathetic confusion.
“Too much?” Qifrey hummed gently, kissing at Olruggio’s temple. “I know I’m probably getting too excited.”
“No,” Olruggio answered a little too quickly. Swallowing and trying again in a whisper, “No. I’m okay, I just… I don’t wanna cum ‘fore I get to feel y’squeezin’ me.” His embarrassed, downcast eyes fled from Qifrey’s gaze at just the right time to see the way those words made Qifrey twitch.
Qifrey’s smile faded along with the rest of his sanity.
In one, fluid motion, he lined himself up over Olruggio’s aching cock and sat down until his ass slapped! against skin. He collapsed in an instant, eyes rolling back and body lurching forward until he was just barely catching himself, hissing and panting inches from Olruggio’s mouth. “You feel amazing,” he gasped. A fresh wave of tears bubbled up at the feeling of finally being actually, properly connected to his lover in the way he’d only ever dared to dream of during his loneliest nights. “So fuckin’ good.”
Olruggio, for his part, looked like he was about to faint. His glassy gaze fought to take in Qifrey’s expression, any noises of pleasure he tried to make crackling in the back of his seizing throat. That targeted tendril tap-tap-tapped against that tender spot inside with a little less force this time, like it was responding and adapting to his previous reaction. Any time he managed to regain enough of his wits to take a breath, he’d end up spending it on a hoarse groan of pleasure, needy cock squeezed too perfectly by the ruined man above him.
Fuck. Qifrey wasn’t even moving yet.
It took the snowy-haired witch a moment to collect himself. Qifrey had prepared himself many times for this before while developing his spells, but he’d never dared to derive much pleasure from it. The aim of his practice glyphs was precisely designed to prep, not to please, with the sole exception being the development of the tendril’s ability to find the right spots to press into. So, when that first drop down had Olruggio spearing ramrod-straight into the most sensitive parts of himself, Qifrey had to take a moment to walk back down the stairway to heaven and remind himself of his place on earth.
He placed shaky hands on Olruggio’s shoulders, hauling himself up just enough to gain some room to maneuver. Slowly, he slid up, lashes fluttering and eyes rolling at the slow sensation against his inner walls. He lifted himself until his arms shook, nearly giving out and falling right back down.
But, like he always was, Olruggio was there to catch him.
He wasn’t even sure how he broke out of the rope spell. Perhaps Qifrey had been bluffing about the strength of it? Perhaps Olruggio’s knuckles had brushed the ink and tampered with the glyph’s structural integrity? Whatever it was, Olruggio moved on autopilot the moment he saw his lover faltering. The hands on Qifrey’s hips caught his weight enough to slow his second descent, easing him down in such a way that had both men gasping. Slowly, with the support of his lover’s sturdy hold, Qifrey managed to set a reasonable pace with his own strength.
Oh, it was too much for poor Olruggio. The feeling of Qifrey’s heat fluttering around his cock; the the rapid prodding of the strange little appendage the water witch had designed just for him; the sight of Qifrey, always at an arm’s length and carefully neutral, falling apart in bliss and emotion alike, tears streaming down his cheeks with wanton need now that he no longer had to pretend一it was surely going to kill the poor man.
Qifrey slumped over again. Rather than from a lack of strength this time, though, it was a deliberate curl of his torso, bringing his lips to Olruggio’s chest. He sucked one of those pert buds into his mouth before the man could so much as process the movement, savoring the way it made him pulse and stiffen inside of him.
“You’re beautiful,” Qifrey mumbled around his chest. His tongue laved in slow circles, glassy gaze peeking up through thick lashes to ravish Olruggio’s flustered expression with an intensity akin to a worshipper. Pleading, “Tell me you know that, Olly. You’re so beautiful.”
“I…” Olruggio started. Honestly, with the triple stimulation, he wasn’t sure he could properly understand Qifrey’s words anymore through the lusty haze laying over his brain like a thick slurry. He could only babble in response. That earned him a sharp, punishing nip at his bud, unfastening his lips around a broken moan.
Two, slender fingers slid into the light witch’s mouth, pressing down on his tongue as if to work the syllables out of him. “Say it,” Qifrey begged. “Please.”
Mumbling around those skilled digits, Olruggio tried, “M… M’beaut一hic!” The word sputtered out in an instant for a reason he couldn’t quite understand. It became clear to him, though, when his body coiled up and shook like an earthquake, jettisoning thick ropes of heat as deep into Qifrey as he could fit. Nothing but hoarse, garbled noises choked out of his throat, head falling back into the pillows, arms and legs flying up in sync to lock around Qifrey and squeeze.
Qifrey, greedy as he was, didn’t even blink as he watched his lover come undone with what was left of his sight. He ground his hips down just so to drag out the sensations, committing every micro-expression to memory. His fingers一still playing with Olruggio’s slack tongue一pinched at the muscle just enough to catch Olruggio’s attention through the haze.
“Finish it,” he rasped. “Finish the thought.”
Olruggio could barely look up at him. He didn’t know why Qifrey was so fixated on this idea, nor did he have the brainpower left to deduce the reason. All he knew was Qifrey was only harshening the pace of his bounces rather than slowing, and the poor man felt as if he might faint.
“W-Wai’, Qif, shlow down,” he choked around his fingers, but Qifrey didn’t listen. “I jush’ came一”
“Say it.”
With a strangled whine, his frantic gasps falling on deaf ears, Olruggio finally threw his head back and wailed, “I-I’m beautiful一FUCK!”
Qifrey bit down hard on Olruggio’s chest as something not quite like cum flooded him, triggering his own release like a chain reaction. He clawed his way up his lover’s body and connected their mouths again with a throaty sound.
“I love you,” Qifrey sobbed, shuddering while they both rode out the vicious explosions rendering their bodies spastic. “I love you. I love一hah一I-I love you, I love you, I love you s’much, Olly.”
Olruggio tried to garble the words back out in response. It was all he could do to stay conscious, though, an explosion of stars spattering behind his eyelids, almost as beautiful as the sky of the night he and Qifrey began their adventure in the outside world together.
The pace slowed. Each of them sputtered and sobbed and ground into each other until tingles of bliss turned to discomfort, forcing Qifrey to finally collapse onto Olruggio’s chest in a sweaty mess of gangly limbs and flushed skin. He drew a shaky foot up just enough to kick at the sigils still tormenting Olruggio, grimacing when the disruption caused the mess of liquid to deform and splash down around their conjoined hips.
“...Me, too,” Olruggio finally managed to grunt. When Qifrey just barely peeked up at him, curious through his exhaustion, Olruggio clarified, “I love you, too. Always have.”
For the first time in his life, as the pair laid entangled in each other一no obligation present to cut the afterglow short or force a sense of distance or steal a precious memory for the sake of safety一Qifrey couldn’t bring himself to care about the wetness.