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- Today 2:11 PM
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- 24
- Age
- 33
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- She/Her
Dunce. Blockhead. Nincompoop. Given more time, Xander would have come up with far more creatively scathing slurs for that moronic miscreant who had been a needling thorn in his side since the day they first met in Rhoedenwal's most outlying border keep. From his shadowed vantage point, seated at a dining table across the great hall, Xander watched as a wall panel he had once thought only ornamental creaked open with a languid swing. Then, through the yawning black void, walked that man—that stupid, stupid man—with nary a glance left or right.
Of all the Rhoedenwal soldiers stationed in this foreign land, or of the Cumdelum insurgents fighting for its freedom, it had to be him. No one else had the amount of audacity—the sheer balls—to gallivant through a usurped castle alone, poorly disguised in Rhoedenwal livery, with a longsword—a Cumdelum crown sword—tucked under one arm, its polished obsidian pommel poking out of its violet swaddling cloth.
Even in the deepening indigo gloom of twilight filtering in through the high windows, Xander could pull no other name from the ether.
Alix.
It could be no one else. It was no one else—not with the way his cock-sure smirk dimpled an angular cheek in such a devastating way.
He spun, light on his feet, and shouldered the secret passage closed. A puff of air made the wispy cape of grey cobwebs clinging to his lanky body flap. Tall, but slender in most ways, the patrolmen must have thought Alix a squire still growing into the physique characteristic of the people born of the southern mountains, or Xander suspected he would have walked with much less confidence.
If they had inspected Alix closer, it would have been simple to tell he hailed from the northern plains. The man's youthful appearance belied an age that was equal to Xander's thirty-five years—so different from Xander's more road-weary countenance, with streaks of grey peppering his hair.
"Stout… Thick… Robust…" The memory of Alix's mischievous face hovering above him—blotting out a crystalline blue sky with the wavy curtain of his hair—made Xander's nose prickle.
Good God, I am just as idiotic, Xander internally berated himself, scrubbing at his face—horrified when his hand came away far more moist than it should be when spotting the traitor.
Back then, the insufferable midday heat had escalated a petty squabble until push came to shove and the pair went tumbling, rolling down an embankment in a tangle to land in a shallow creek with a marginal splash.
Breath stolen from his lungs in an instant—not by the glacial cold, but by Alix's jovial laughter. He had sounded so much like a songbird then: melodious in tune, honeyed in tone. It had struck Xander dumb, even as it cut off abruptly.
Concealed amongst the towering cattails, arms tangled at his sides in the duckweed, Xander had felt near helpless as he watched Alix's green gaze snap to the creamy expanse of his own skin exposed during the landing—then smolder with a deviantly unguarded light. Alix's gaze a physical caress over the dip and undulating swell of his belly.
Seeing the emotion on the face of the one person he desired above all else—the one person he could never have. Duty. Honor. Chivalry. All got in the way when Xander had spared the effort to daydream about his enemy. They were to be guard and prisoner, knight and prince—nothing more, nothing less.
Reality of his role broke Xander more than the tentative scrape of blunt fingernails carding through the trail of coarse dark hair that followed along the thickening track upwards toward his chest, threatening to cross a line both of them knew they should not cross.
Alix was ever the tease, plastering a smarmy grin on his stupidly handsome face to give Xander's pectoral a good scratch as though he were rewarding a good dog. But that dangerous husk lingered in annunciation of the word—"Hairy…"—like a promise never to be fulfilled, viscerally disappointing in the worst way.
The loud thump of the main doors ripped Xander from the melancholic past. To his shame, his hands were trembling as a racing panic he had only ever felt on the battlefield raised his hackles, making him stand, making him walk, then slowly jog across the cavern of space, weaving through the rows of eating benches in pursuit of Alix's shrinking back—something his ironclad loyalties should not allow.
The second Xander was through the side door, he ran as if the Devil himself was nipping at his heels—composure and subtlety both forgotten—as he thundered down the stone passage, bolting for the splotch of wheat-yellow at its far end.
A singular thought pounded in time with his heartbeat: He will get himself killed.
Alix's hair, if nothing else, was a shining beacon. If not for the hefty trailing braid, Xander would have lost him at a twist or two back amongst the growing shadows—a blessing he would begrudgingly take even as he slung the most vile curses he could remember at Cumdelum's heretical pantheon of gods for blessing the scurrying rat with such long legs.
Alix pivoted into a stairway, leaping down the stone steps two at a time. Xander, fraught with annoyance, had to take each stair one by one in order to keep his footing in the frantic descent or risk the injury that would come from falling in such a narrow space.
When Xander hit the landing, he launched himself forward, secured a white-knuckled grip on Alix's ill-fitting tabard with a cry of, "Like hells you will get away!" spinning him about-face with a grunt of effort, and—kissed him. Fast and furious—slotting a chunky thigh between the other man's legs, affixing a bracketing forearm to Alix's torso, boxing him in, pinning Alix's agile body to hard oak so he could not slip through his fingers again.
Never again.
And of all the wildest fantasies that had rioted in the dead of night, Xander had never envisioned their first kiss to be like this: a door supporting Alix's back instead of a feather mattress; a claustrophobic tunnel of damp stone instead of an opulent vaulted chamber. The roaring hearth and its gently flickering light—central to so many guilty imagined indulgences that laid his lover bare like a pagan sacrifice before its inviting orange glow—was nothing more than a dying torch slipped into a circular housing on the wall.
The curves of Alix's body, which had made Xander swallow hard during their time in the exercise yard, were gone. Protruding bone greeted Xander's inquisitive touch as he smoothed a hand over Alix's fluttering chest. The harsh panting, the silky skin—Xander could enjoy neither. Alix had been deprived of so much—and lost even more. Xander was at a loss for where to begin. Or more accurately, where he had left off.
Hello, was right out...
Sorry, seemed to lack the necessary weight as the pad of Xander's thumb stroked the ridgeline of a gaunt cheek.
Finally, Xander said, "Seven years. For seven years I have wanted to do that and—"
"That was all you could manage with me at your mercy?" Alix asked, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. "You need more practice if you want to make me swoon, Sir Xander."
"Well, I... you know my... I could if..." The more Xander floundered, the more excitement carved its way into Alix's gaping expression. As if no time had passed between them at all. The bastard looked irritatingly reminiscent of a cat stuffed full of a meal—until recognition sparked and the warm mirth dimmed some.
"The last time we met haunted me too." The confession was jarring in its soft-spoken way; the malice Xander had expected was absent, replaced by a slight wistful tension. "I came across your prone form in the maelstrom at Averion Crossing—unconscious, knocked off Sterling, I assumed; the stallion was nowhere to be seen. Like that, your head was an easy prize, an advantage too good to pass up. But one I could not bring myself to take. Not with the memories you brought back buzzing in my head. I hadn't been expecting those—nor the feelings I thought had faded with the distance."
"Alix, the pity you felt—"
A raised hand silenced Xander. In the pregnant pause that followed, Alix dropped his eyes, scuffing his toe into the ground in an almost bashful way.
"Not pity," Alix finally said. "I wanted to stab you—oh, don't give me that wounded look, both back then and now. But not with the sword in my hand. Never with that. What I felt for you before has grown in absence, festering into a love that I—"
"Say that again..."
Searing heat flashed to life, licking up his neck, turning Xander's cheeks scarlet and his ears beet red. His fingers tangled in Alix's braid, lifting his head, linking their eyes. "Again."
"I want to stab you?"
The appraising arch of Alix's thick brow made Xander beam toothily. "No. The other thing."
"That I love you?"
"You love me," Xander repeated in breathy elation.
In the fragility of the moment, his own deepest, darkest secret slipped out like a gospel hymn. "I love you too"
Of all the Rhoedenwal soldiers stationed in this foreign land, or of the Cumdelum insurgents fighting for its freedom, it had to be him. No one else had the amount of audacity—the sheer balls—to gallivant through a usurped castle alone, poorly disguised in Rhoedenwal livery, with a longsword—a Cumdelum crown sword—tucked under one arm, its polished obsidian pommel poking out of its violet swaddling cloth.
Even in the deepening indigo gloom of twilight filtering in through the high windows, Xander could pull no other name from the ether.
Alix.
It could be no one else. It was no one else—not with the way his cock-sure smirk dimpled an angular cheek in such a devastating way.
He spun, light on his feet, and shouldered the secret passage closed. A puff of air made the wispy cape of grey cobwebs clinging to his lanky body flap. Tall, but slender in most ways, the patrolmen must have thought Alix a squire still growing into the physique characteristic of the people born of the southern mountains, or Xander suspected he would have walked with much less confidence.
If they had inspected Alix closer, it would have been simple to tell he hailed from the northern plains. The man's youthful appearance belied an age that was equal to Xander's thirty-five years—so different from Xander's more road-weary countenance, with streaks of grey peppering his hair.
"Stout… Thick… Robust…" The memory of Alix's mischievous face hovering above him—blotting out a crystalline blue sky with the wavy curtain of his hair—made Xander's nose prickle.
Good God, I am just as idiotic, Xander internally berated himself, scrubbing at his face—horrified when his hand came away far more moist than it should be when spotting the traitor.
Back then, the insufferable midday heat had escalated a petty squabble until push came to shove and the pair went tumbling, rolling down an embankment in a tangle to land in a shallow creek with a marginal splash.
Breath stolen from his lungs in an instant—not by the glacial cold, but by Alix's jovial laughter. He had sounded so much like a songbird then: melodious in tune, honeyed in tone. It had struck Xander dumb, even as it cut off abruptly.
Concealed amongst the towering cattails, arms tangled at his sides in the duckweed, Xander had felt near helpless as he watched Alix's green gaze snap to the creamy expanse of his own skin exposed during the landing—then smolder with a deviantly unguarded light. Alix's gaze a physical caress over the dip and undulating swell of his belly.
Seeing the emotion on the face of the one person he desired above all else—the one person he could never have. Duty. Honor. Chivalry. All got in the way when Xander had spared the effort to daydream about his enemy. They were to be guard and prisoner, knight and prince—nothing more, nothing less.
Reality of his role broke Xander more than the tentative scrape of blunt fingernails carding through the trail of coarse dark hair that followed along the thickening track upwards toward his chest, threatening to cross a line both of them knew they should not cross.
Alix was ever the tease, plastering a smarmy grin on his stupidly handsome face to give Xander's pectoral a good scratch as though he were rewarding a good dog. But that dangerous husk lingered in annunciation of the word—"Hairy…"—like a promise never to be fulfilled, viscerally disappointing in the worst way.
The loud thump of the main doors ripped Xander from the melancholic past. To his shame, his hands were trembling as a racing panic he had only ever felt on the battlefield raised his hackles, making him stand, making him walk, then slowly jog across the cavern of space, weaving through the rows of eating benches in pursuit of Alix's shrinking back—something his ironclad loyalties should not allow.
The second Xander was through the side door, he ran as if the Devil himself was nipping at his heels—composure and subtlety both forgotten—as he thundered down the stone passage, bolting for the splotch of wheat-yellow at its far end.
A singular thought pounded in time with his heartbeat: He will get himself killed.
Alix's hair, if nothing else, was a shining beacon. If not for the hefty trailing braid, Xander would have lost him at a twist or two back amongst the growing shadows—a blessing he would begrudgingly take even as he slung the most vile curses he could remember at Cumdelum's heretical pantheon of gods for blessing the scurrying rat with such long legs.
Alix pivoted into a stairway, leaping down the stone steps two at a time. Xander, fraught with annoyance, had to take each stair one by one in order to keep his footing in the frantic descent or risk the injury that would come from falling in such a narrow space.
When Xander hit the landing, he launched himself forward, secured a white-knuckled grip on Alix's ill-fitting tabard with a cry of, "Like hells you will get away!" spinning him about-face with a grunt of effort, and—kissed him. Fast and furious—slotting a chunky thigh between the other man's legs, affixing a bracketing forearm to Alix's torso, boxing him in, pinning Alix's agile body to hard oak so he could not slip through his fingers again.
Never again.
And of all the wildest fantasies that had rioted in the dead of night, Xander had never envisioned their first kiss to be like this: a door supporting Alix's back instead of a feather mattress; a claustrophobic tunnel of damp stone instead of an opulent vaulted chamber. The roaring hearth and its gently flickering light—central to so many guilty imagined indulgences that laid his lover bare like a pagan sacrifice before its inviting orange glow—was nothing more than a dying torch slipped into a circular housing on the wall.
The curves of Alix's body, which had made Xander swallow hard during their time in the exercise yard, were gone. Protruding bone greeted Xander's inquisitive touch as he smoothed a hand over Alix's fluttering chest. The harsh panting, the silky skin—Xander could enjoy neither. Alix had been deprived of so much—and lost even more. Xander was at a loss for where to begin. Or more accurately, where he had left off.
Hello, was right out...
Sorry, seemed to lack the necessary weight as the pad of Xander's thumb stroked the ridgeline of a gaunt cheek.
Finally, Xander said, "Seven years. For seven years I have wanted to do that and—"
"That was all you could manage with me at your mercy?" Alix asked, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. "You need more practice if you want to make me swoon, Sir Xander."
"Well, I... you know my... I could if..." The more Xander floundered, the more excitement carved its way into Alix's gaping expression. As if no time had passed between them at all. The bastard looked irritatingly reminiscent of a cat stuffed full of a meal—until recognition sparked and the warm mirth dimmed some.
"The last time we met haunted me too." The confession was jarring in its soft-spoken way; the malice Xander had expected was absent, replaced by a slight wistful tension. "I came across your prone form in the maelstrom at Averion Crossing—unconscious, knocked off Sterling, I assumed; the stallion was nowhere to be seen. Like that, your head was an easy prize, an advantage too good to pass up. But one I could not bring myself to take. Not with the memories you brought back buzzing in my head. I hadn't been expecting those—nor the feelings I thought had faded with the distance."
"Alix, the pity you felt—"
A raised hand silenced Xander. In the pregnant pause that followed, Alix dropped his eyes, scuffing his toe into the ground in an almost bashful way.
"Not pity," Alix finally said. "I wanted to stab you—oh, don't give me that wounded look, both back then and now. But not with the sword in my hand. Never with that. What I felt for you before has grown in absence, festering into a love that I—"
"Say that again..."
Searing heat flashed to life, licking up his neck, turning Xander's cheeks scarlet and his ears beet red. His fingers tangled in Alix's braid, lifting his head, linking their eyes. "Again."
"I want to stab you?"
The appraising arch of Alix's thick brow made Xander beam toothily. "No. The other thing."
"That I love you?"
"You love me," Xander repeated in breathy elation.
In the fragility of the moment, his own deepest, darkest secret slipped out like a gospel hymn. "I love you too"