EVENT #22: KHION - IC LOG

[abraxasmods]

Event 22 - Khion

OOC Event Log ⦁ The Nether

Despite the unsettling tremors from the previous month, the citizens of Abraxas are determined to enjoy their winter festivities. For you, the collective wintertide celebrations - The Dimming, The Festival of Enlightenment, and the Winter Solstice - have often been held in your home territories or Nocwich.

This year brings a change. You'll receive a personal letter from the Nether, signed by Aster, the Guardian themselves. Whether you were there to aid the Nether or not last autumn, the letter thanks you nonetheless for your assistance and informs you that much has changed in their lands...for the better. Indeed, so much so that the Draconae wish to invite you back so you can see for yourself the positive impact you've had.

Their gates will open DECEMBER 16 and close on DECEMBER 20. Because the Draconae do not possess magic as powerful as other races in Abraxas, they kindly ask that you stay for the week since they cannot maintain a persistent portal.

The major plot occurrence will occur at the end. The fallout of this incident will carry over into January.

Above and Below

Previously, only the Obsidian Heart - the volcanic city - was accessible as the area above was far too cold and desolate. Now, with the adult dragons having returned to their full strength and their hatchlings growing by the day, the Draconae have begun to reclaim their territory beyond the volcano.

You'll be able to explore areas within the Heart, but you'll find most of the festivities above-ground. The Draconae are a fun-loving people and they're quite fond of the Summoned after all the help you've given them. They also understand that tensions between the major territories have been high as of late...and would like to grant you some reprieve from a war many of you didn't ask to be a part of.

Accommodations

This time, guests will stay in stone huts built from the Nether's volcanic stone. The stones preserve an unusual amount of heat, meaning the huts are very warm. Bedding is comfortable, if simple, with room to store your belongings. The Draconae believe strongly in mutual respect, so the doors contain no locks. Your safety is assured, but if you're nervous, you can ask for a guard to watch you at night.

If you don't do well in the cold, the Draconae will offer you warming potions and thick furs. Curiously, the furs closely resemble what the werewolves in Luna wear, suggesting that the Nether and Nocwich have resumed more active trading in recent months.

◎ A larger community hut is in the center of the small village that's slowly being built. The dining area consists of open-fire grills, pots, and raw ingredients - including spices and fiery hot peppers. As great believers in self-sufficiency, the Draconae will leave you to make meals to your taste and liking.

◎ You can hunt and fish your meat, as well. There are numerous spots for ice fishing. Since the natural world is steadily being restored, game and fish found are of the common variety like deer, bison, and trout, as opposed to the stranger creatures that were found inside the Obsidian Heart's lava pools. Feel free to share your catch with your friends or offer to cook for the culinarily challenged.

◎ Hot springs can be found to the north. You'll have to hike to reach the area but it's a lovely walk. The waters themselves are crystal clear. At night, they glow with hundreds of tiny unknown creatures. These creatures are believed to be the result of the previously sickly hatchling, Anthusa, who creates bioluminescent algae. Now that Anthusa is much healthier, it can be spotted playing in the hot springs and lakes.

◎ Large fuzzy rodents the size of a small cat will occasionally invade your sleeping quarters or eating areas. They're easily chased off but they can be a huge nuisance by stealing your food and chewing holes in your blankets. You're warned only to chase them off not injure them. Unfortunately, their blood is quite corrosive and can cause a harsh burn to the skin. While the burns will heal up in a few days, it's best to avoid the situation altogether.

Sights & Activities

Opal Flats

The Opal Flats are natural wonders that have recently come into being with the dragons' increasing strength. The pearlescent icy surface glows at night which makes it the perfect place for ice skating after sunset. You can borrow a pair of ice skates and join the Draconae on the ice.

◎ When you're done with the ice, you can join one of the tents nearby that are hosting spiced cider workshops. Here, you can make your own spiced cider blend. Flavors include clove, cinnamon, and berries unique to the Nether. You can test infusing your blend into small cups of cider until you're happy with the results. Your final personalized blend will then be packaged into a jar and tied off with a ribbon. Enjoy it yourself or give it to someone special!

◎ Keep an eye out! The young dragons are troublemakers and will sneak into the workshops to steal cinnamon sticks, drink from the steaming cider pots, and knock down hanging decorations. You can help rehang decorations or remove the dragons from spaces they shouldn't be in...though they'll soon find their way back again. The Draconae seem exasperated but tolerant of the hatchlings so you shouldn't worry too much about the mild chaos. It's to be expected.

◎ Once more, Khloris is the biggest menace and it's grown larger since. While Khloris has learned to better control its powers, it's still prone to causing flowers to sprout in your hair should you come into contact with too much of its pollen. Fortunately, the effect is temporary - just a few hours.

Dusk Falls

Each day, starting at dawn, two Draconae guides will lead a hike up the mountains. Make sure you bring your hiking boots! The slopes are frosty and can be dangerous but they'll keep you safe as much as possible. Otherwise, it's a lovely trip and takes about two hours to reach the top. You'll encounter a beautiful view, fresh mountain air, and a cavern at the peak where you can go inside and look at some frozen waterfalls.

◎ Unusual ice-like spiders infest some portions of the cave. While they're quite big (about the size of a wolf spider), they're harmless and seldom bite. On the occasions that they do, the bite is easily treated with a bandage and a few days to heal. However, they do have a bad habit of dropping down from the ceiling onto the heads of passersby wandering through the caves. The experience can be startling if you're not expecting it.

◎ Once you've all finished enjoying the sights, you can return to the bottom. Luckily, you won't have to climb down. Instead, the group will get to ride one of the two adult dragons in the Nether: Hierus, the Obsidian Drake, and Kruos, the Glass Serpent. They'll bring all of you safely back to the base of the mountain.

Cinder's Core

Walking through the Ashlands no longer requires any special potion. The air is now clear. Cinder's Core lies at the southern end. Previous visitors will recall that it was full of petrified trees and fossilized bone. The detritus of a fallen ecosystem remains, but alongside it is new growth of flourishing green thanks to the young dragon Okenus. This includes the trees growing the unique kydros fruit.

◎ You can help harvest the kydros fruit to contribute to the feast above the surface. Now that they're growing freely again, the Draconae are no longer reserving them for the potions and have reintroduced the fruit into their regular dishes! Mildly sweet with a hint of citrus, it tastes somewhat like a pomelo.

◎ Be careful when harvesting or traversing the area! While the jungle is starting to recover, it's still a jungle full of tripping hazards, slippery vines, and high cliffs - some of which now have refreshing waterfalls. There might also be a hidden snake or aggressive birds. These creatures aren't dangerous to any real degree, but if they bite or peck, it'll leave a mark!

Mysterious Gifts

While the Draconae participate in traditional gift-giving, this occurs only between the closest of mates and friends. More common is an activity they call Krypto's Box. Krypto's Box is a massive jar in the middle of town with a hole carved out at the bottom to function as a sort of dispenser. Filling the jar are hundreds of vials containing a mystery potion. Each year, the batch of potions is blessed by magic from the young dragons of the Nether. In other words - these mischievous creatures have influenced the potions' effects.

You can take a potion and gift it to someone. Neither of you will know what the effects are until the recipient opens it, but you can trust it'll be something mild, temporary, and amusing. During Khion, it's not unusual to see the Draconae wandering around covered in glitter, swirls of flowers, or hovering 2 feet above the ground. Accepting a mystery potion is part of the fun. The local Draconae will gift you some alongside your Summoned friends!

If your character has received a potion - whether from a Draconum or another Summoned - comment HERE to see what effect they'll receive. If you don't like the effect, simply disregard your character having received a potion to begin with.

Making Friends (NPCs)

The occasion is less formal this time, so Anneth and Aster will each be available for you to meet regardless of your status. There's also one surprise guest that some of you might recognize from last year's Epulum event in Ikorr: Babis, the cheerful Draconum who was merely looking for a good time and found himself embroiled in a mysterious theft.

Descriptions about the three NPCs and where they can be found will be in their character comments below. Depending on who you talk to, you can learn a little more about neighboring Endsmuth, the dragons, and relations with Nocwich. The meetings might not last very long, but you'll be able to get in one or two questions!

Characters of any rank can speak with one of the three NPCs available.

To do so, TAG IN with your character under the NPC you want to meet.

Renewal

The Nether's limited magic means that they seldom feel the effects of the Dimming. However, even the Draconae begin to notice something is wrong as the final day draws near wherein the Singularity should go completely dark, falling into its usual state of hibernation. The dragons, in particular, are disturbed and have communicated as such to both Anneth and Ermis, the Keeper.

Before anyone can determine what's truly happening, a massive quake strikes all of Abraxas. As far away from the epicenter as the Nether is, even they feel the effects, a tremor that knocks over decorations and cracks foundations.

For any who are near the cliffs overlooking the ocean below, they can observe a giant tidal wave that consumes the island where some of you recall being held captive on.

Portals Awry

Naturally, you want to return home after such an unexpected event. The Draconae hurriedly open the portals to your individual territories and assure you they will assist in any way possible, though they are equally unsure of what's just happened.

Stepping through the portal, you expect to pass through and face the familiar sights and sounds where you reside. For a small handful of you, that may be exactly so. For many others, however, you'll find yourself in a completely unexpected place.

Indeed, it seems that whatever force has caused the quake has also disrupted the Singularity's no longer waning magic, corrupting the portal magic and sending you into an opposing territory. In a time of war, this could be disastrous for all involved...and it's clear from the locals who greet you on the other side that they are as baffled as you.

Players can choose to mix things up and send their characters to a new territory for the duration of January. Since this will be temporary, feel free to separate close CR or put your character somewhere they won't enjoy. It won't last long!

Characters will not be placed under any restrictions for accidentally landing in a strange place. They will, for the time being, be treated as guests while officials determine what to do next.

The Wrap-Up will detail how characters' experiences will go once they are in their new territory.

---

Comments

[ordinar]

I hope it brings you good dreams, Kelson had written on the note that accompanied the necklace. When he left, it transformed into a talisman of a different sort. A memory made physical. Evidence that it happened at all.

By now, Wilhelm has missed him for longer than they were together. It has faded into a bruise, the missing — he forgets until something bumps against it and brings it into sharp focus. The love, once so bright and fierce in the only way he knows how, has burned away to leave behind, like a solemn candle, the hope that Kelson will be okay someday, and the quiet acceptance that they were never going to last forever.

Somehow, it feels important, in this moment that feels like a held breath, to leave it all behind.

As they sink into the magma, it sinks into Wilhelm that this atmosphere hanging around them, quickening like the air before rain, whatever it is, it isn't his alone. It belongs to Iris too. Maybe it's this realization tentatively taking hold. Maybe it's the proximity aching between them, or the sense that the world holds only them right now. Something loosens the caution he's been drawing like armor around himself.

He allows his eyes to skim across Iris' skin. He allows himself to admire the lithe turn of his shoulders into his limbs, the cinch of his waist and the fine ridges of his hipbones disappearing into the magma. Wilhelm has caught glimpses of the strange markings scrolling across his skin, peeking from his neckline and sleeves. He has long wondered what they are but never asked, because he wasn't sure if he was treading somewhere he wasn't welcome. Their purposeful arrangement reminds him of magic runes — a channel, maybe, by which Iris' power courses through him.

The question perches uncertainly on his tongue. In shared silence, he squats down in the flow of magma so that it covers his shoulders and casts his submerged skin in its blue glow. When he lifts his feet from the bottom of the rock basin, the magma suspends him in place.

"Do they...mean something?" Wilhelm asks, finally releasing the curiosity he's been cupping close. He reaches out to brush a finger down Iris' arm, carefully tracing the curve of one marking. He'd painted his nails a deep midnight for the Dimming, the time of year when the Singularity's power wanes, and their dark color contrasts with the red etched into Iris' skin.

cw: abuse, humiliation, allusions to organ trafficking

[inventure]

Iris follows the trail of Wilhelm's finger and find himself stifling a sigh. Where does he even begin? How does he even begin?

"It was a lesson."

It sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Iris almost wants to just leave it there, let it lie however Wilhelm would like it to, giving just enough that the other boy can take it and fill in the blanks in whatever way would make him the most comfortable. It feels almost wrong to tell him the full story, here where they'd been carefully cultivating a quiet and safe space for just themselves... but Wilhelm had been honest with Iris at every turn, and shared more of himself than he perhaps ever wanted to. What kind of friend would Iris be, if he can't even offer the same sort of courtesy back?

"My mom's the leader of a group of demiflora — that's what people who're born with powers are called — and because of her, because she makes sure none of us use our powers, and that we all fall in line and just live out our lives pretending living in a tower and never seeing the outside world is good and fine, we get to all live safely without having to fear getting hunted down for parts, or just because of who we are."

He forces himself to keep talking, and finds it gets easier and easier the more he just does it, rather than think about it.

"But I told you before, right? How bad I was at following rules."

He searches Wilhelm's eyes, wondering if he's given enough pieces now for it to all sort of fall in place together.

"I liked my powers too much. I liked how using them made me feel. And I would use them every chance I got, but the worst she'd do is send me to my room without dinner, or ground me. It didn't really seem like that big of a deal... Then one day somebody from the outside snuck into the Tower. It as the first time I ever met anybody from the outside, but he was trying to get something of his. Something... that belonged to his family. And that's when I found out my mom was working with the very people she said she was protecting us all from. So I hid him. And I lied about it. And she didn't like that."

He can still remember her ordering him to strip down. He can still remember handing her the marker that she used to draw those cuts all over his body.

How could he have known what would happen? She had told him she loved him, before.

"So she made an example out of me. In front of everybody."

He looks up to meet Wilhelm's eyes, and there's something a little like an apology in his. There's no regret here, in being open and honest with Wilhelm, but there is, perhaps, a little bit of a disappointment. That in doing so, that electric and delicate atmosphere between them shifted into something that would leave a bad taste in one's mouth. If he could do it all over again, he would have chosen a better time and a better place, or maybe he wouldn't have said anything at all just to keep any trace of worry or pity out of the lines of Wilhelm's face.

But, well, it's out now. Aired like the dirty laundry it is, hanging heavy between them. The phantom pain he would still occasionally feel seems so very miniscule in comparison to the waiting he sits through now, wondering how at all Wilhelm will react.

[ordinar]

He begins to think it was a mistake to ask. As Iris' countenance grows overcast, Wilhelm drops his hand into the magma. And as Iris explains, and it hits him with gut-plunging force that the truth is so much worse than anything he could imagine, all he can do is hold his gaze to let him know that he's listening. To let him know that he's here.

By the time Iris finishes, the fluttering thing in his chest, which moments ago felt like it might take wing, has fallen still. It's replaced by an ache pulling apart his ribs. The atmosphere gathered around them, this pocket of warmth that's as if the mountain is cupping them in its hands, doesn't fizzle and fall away. Inside of it, the borders between them erode. Iris' hurt becomes his hurt, and he hopes with a fledgling ferocity that his strength, however fragile it might be, can become Iris'.

"I'm sorry," Wilhelm says quietly. The words feel as insubstantial as the steam billowing from the magma around them. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

Now when his gaze traces the markings, distorted through the molten rock but still visible, he can only think about how painful it must have been. How it was someone Iris trusted and loved who did that to him. His expression is like a thing smashed open, spilling everywhere. There's sympathy wobbling in his eyes, horror in the set of his mouth — and in the tightening of his jaw, anger, which now swells in his voice.

"Moms are supposed to protect their kids. What she did to you...it was only to protect herself. That was the only lesson...'don't question me', 'don't challenge the way things are.' It doesn't matter what you did. Nothing could have made you deserve that."

He reaches for Iris' hand under the magma and, if he'll let him, clasps it between both of his. He couldn't protect him then, in the past and worlds away, but he can try now.

[inventure]

He had been keeping it together fairly well, all things considering. Had gotten through that whole story without so much as a hitch of breath, able to recollect it all with enough distance as if he were simply an observer to the events, rather than the main participator. Perhaps that made him cocky.

Or perhaps it was simply a matter of time before it finally took its toll on him.

See, the thing is, Iris hasn't really sat down with any of that since the first time Lillium asked him to. Even then, he couldn't bare to linger even more than a single thought on the matter, before all the complicated feelings that welled up inside him threatened to just choke him out. He had stopped it before the talk could really get anywhere, and he hasn't let himself really consider it since.

Right now, this very moment, marks the first ever time Iris has really let himself put voice to all that had happened... so maybe it's not all that unexpected that at the first sign of Wilhelm's comfort, he would break.

It starts with a sharp gasp — like air after a deep plunge. It tapers off into a sickly, wet sound, and he chokes on it before another inhale forces its way out of him. Then another, in quick succession, and soon he's hiccuping, or hyperventilating, and his eyes blue and burn with the tears he didn't allow himself since it happened.

Mothers are supposed to protect you. Mothers are supposed to love you.

So what was it about himself, that made him so unlovable?

Beneath the magma Iris' hand clutches at Wilhelm's, and his sobs make his shoulders shake. He'd dropped down to chest-deep by now, and the magma suspends him in a strange sort of gelatin embrace. But ebbing off of every inch of his skin there are — vapors, almost. Like the steam off the rocks, but blue-green and curlings and wispy. Not unlike the smoke always present with each of Iris' manifestations, except the ends of these begin to tinge an ominous red-orange, causing the air around Iris to thicken and warp.

[ordinar]

Like a cliff face ceding to erosion and sliding into the sea, Iris crumbles into sobs. Wilhelm wishes he could pull him into a hug, but naked as they are, he hesitates to make the other boy uncomfortable with what's meant to be a comforting gesture. (Not to mention, he doesn't trust his body with all that precarious closeness.) All he can do is squeeze his hand, caress his knuckles in slow patterns as if activating some kind of ward.

He wishes he could reach inside of Iris' chest and pull out the hurt. As easily as clearing weeds, or loosening a knot. He imagines it rising out of his friend like the strange vapors pluming from his skin right now — every heavy thing he shoves down and covers with a smile.

Suddenly, the ache in Wilhelm's ribs splits open. A tide of emotions rises in him, dragging to the surface all the ways he has never felt like enough. He spent his whole life looking for his mother's love. In every step, he was compared to Erik; in every step, he fell short. His brother was the golden boy whose hands flew beautifully over the piano keys, who won trophies and won people over as naturally as breathing. He was going to be a good king someday.

What she felt for Wilhelm was more duty than love. He was an unfortunate situation she had to make the best of after Erik died. He was her son second, her heir first — not his own person but an extension of her legacy. When it came down to it, rather than standing up for him — rather than bringing to justice the person who leaked the video filmed through his bedroom window — she chose to sweep the whole thing under the rug for the sake of preserving the family's reputation. Her reputation.

He needed her to be a mom, but she only knew how to be the queen.

The prickling behind his eyes becomes a blurring of his vision as tears spill down his cheeks. Clinging to Iris, holding the knot of their hands between their chests, he leans forward to rest their foreheads together.

"You deserved better," he whispers. "You...you deserve to be loved. You're worthy of love, Iris."

Meanwhile, as this torrent of emotions pours through Wilhelm, Iris will feel the salt sting of his sadness ebbing. As it sweeps out, it leaves behind a startling calm.

[inventure]

He doesn't remember the last time he cried — really cried, with body-shaking sobs that threatened to leave him breathless in the worst ways. He must have been a child, back when life was so much simpler, and the worst thing to ever happen to him was accidentally breaking one of his new colored pencils.

It had been just as long since he'd been held this way, too. Maybe even longer, if he really wanted to be honest with himself. The tenderness with which Wilhelm held him did not escape Iris, and those words permeated through the worst of his sobs with precision and ease. He wasn't inconsolable, despite his shuddering gasps and seemingly endless tears. And the more Wilhelm held him, the more Iris felt the gaping ache in his chest begin to soothe.

He deserved love. He was worth it.

How easy it was to believe that, now, in arms that held on so tight.

It — It felt good. It felt okay... And that in and of itself, so suddenly, felt so very, very strange. Something was off. Something was wrong. And when Iris draws away in confusion, he can see quite clearly how the colored vapors warping around him drag against the air, as if being sucked in a vacuum... towards Wilhelm. As if Wilhelm himself was that vacuum.

"Wille... What's happening?"

How quickly he changes their positions, from being cradled to the one reaching out now, gripping Wilhelm by the shoulders in urgency.

"Wilhelm — what are you doing?"

[ordinar]

Until Iris grabs his shoulders, and Wilhelm's eyes flutter open to meet his again, he doesn't realize that anything out of the ordinary is happening. He didn't understand why ghosts of Iris' scars seemed to be rising from his skin, but that was displaced in his concerns by his friend's sobs. He couldn't feel the pull of his connection to the Singularity, like an invisible web of threads, underneath the suffocating swell of sadness.

"I don't...I don't know."

But then the tide pulls out, and in the numbing calm that follows, he realizes that he has been here before. Two years ago, Wilhelm had stumbled upon the strange power to push his anxiety out of himself by pouring it into somebody else instead. It happened quite by accident. One moment, he struggled to breathe as he felt the heat prickling in his palms, and he wondered who he would hurt this time. The next, he felt...nothing. Light, airy nothing.

It's the same stillness Kelson could impart by taking his hand when nightmares stalked him and splintered his sleep. Like he was smoothing his fear away as easily as smoothing his hair, thanks to the ancient power singing in his blood. He remembers thinking how unfair it was that Kelson could pare away everyone's pain but his own.

Wilhelm curls his hand over Iris' where he still holds onto his shoulder. His fingers trace his knuckles, the knob of his wrist.

"Suddenly, I was...sad," he tries to explain. "I guess I started thinking about my mom too." An embarrassing thing to admit when you're naked in a pool of magma with a painfully cute boy, but he feels safe sharing it with Iris. "Then...it all just went away."

A pause thickens as he tries to measure if any of this makes sense to Iris. He waits to share his hypothesis on what the hell just happened, even as his certainty of it hardens.

[inventure]

Dark eyes seek lighter ones in the strange glow of the magma pools. Without any real idea what to look for, Iris searches for what he thinks he might have found were he to look into his own eyes, moments ago: fear, hurt, exhaustion. He sees none of that when he looks at Wilhelm now, save for the faint lines of strain that pull taut on the boy's brows, and while that alone should have been reassuring — it only makes his confusion grow.

There should have been pain there, just like there should have been pain in him, too. He had heard it, just a few seconds ago. And now... nothing. Nothing in him, either.

"I was sad too." Obviously. The tracks of tears down his cheeks are still fresh, though growing steadily drier by the second. "And then I wasn't." More than just a plain statement of fact and confirmation, he puts voice to his own hypothesis, though he hadn't nearly any other substance to it other than a single, unwavering certainty: "You did that?"

[ordinar]

Then he knows what his gut already knew. Wilhelm nods slowly.

"I think I...absorbed your feelings. They became mine." His own shade of the same ache. "And I got rid of them."

Like some kind of conductor, catching lightning to diffuse it. A laugh cuts from his lips, not because any of this is especially funny, but because it's so strange that someone like him should hold this power. It's like putting tinder in the path of a wildfire, only somehow all that kindling manages to choke the flames.

"I didn't know I could do that."

Now an apology perches in his expression. He squeezes Iris' hand.

"Sorry." What he's apologizing for, he isn't sure how to put into words. To pull what Iris was feeling out through his ribs and let it fill his own chest borders on an invasion of privacy. It's an intimacy that stretches beyond the naked state of their bodies and the shrinking space between them. "Sorry if...it was weird. You were hurting, and it was killing me that I couldn't do anything about it. I just didn't want you to hurt like that anymore."

[inventure]

Hearing Wilhelm confirm what he had already begun to suspect is... an oddly humbling experience. It's a feeling not unlike his first few days among the settlement, finally seeing demiflora of all kinds use their powers and with ease — having living proof right in front of him that the world is so very, very vast, and he is but one drop in the ocean of it. A power like the one Wilhelm is describing seems so wholly inconceivable, and yet it describes what had just transpired down to a t. Trying to resist it would be both a giant waste of time and a disrespect to what the other boy had just done for him.

For him.

Wilhelm saw him, folding under all that pain, and his instinct had been to take it away, even to the point of taking it all onto himself and — and who does that? Who cares like that?

"Wille..."

His tongue stalls. He wants to tell him he's got nothing to apologize for. And he wants Wilhelm to know he's never experienced such gentle kindness, and how that somehow feels more intense than even the sadness that was barely letting him breathe just a few seconds ago. And he wants to make Wilhelm promise him he'll never do that again, not for him, not if it'll have him hurting too. And he wants to hear him say it again, so he can hold the memory of it that much tighter.

He wants a lot of things, suddenly, and some things maybe not so suddenly, and all of them feel like a stormy mess battling out inside him that it seems only right the one thing that gets through should be the messiest one, the one barely thought-out, for how often it's thought.

Eyes closed, breath held, he has his mouth kiss where words fail him for the moment, something sweet and tentative and so immeasurably brave.

[ordinar]

The thing is, he would do it again. Even knowing now that he'd have to endure the churn of Iris' heartache in his own chest, to retread the dark places he has plunged to, he wouldn't hesitate to do it again. Because Iris has borne enough hurt. And Wilhelm knows what it's like to bend under unbearable sadness, to crumple in the void of loneliness, to hurt so much that you don't know if you'll ever feel okay again.

Iris shouldn't have to be there alone.

In the silence that follows his name, a current of anticipation crackles through him. Without knowing what Iris will say next, he prepares to hold it close — as if he might save it for later, like a flower tucked into a jar of water. He studies his friend, luminous in the blue wash of the magma, beautiful in a way that won't let him look away. He lets himself think it — god, he's beautiful.

Except, Iris doesn't say anything. Wilhelm's heart shimmies into his throat as he catches onto what's about to happen the moment before it does. They sway into each other, and their lips meet, and he realizes that he has been waiting for this since the day they met.

That first kiss is like skimming your fingers across the water's surface. The next is like wading in, slow and steady but already slanting into eagerness. He pours his attention on the soft jut of Iris' lower lip, brushing his across, grazing it with his teeth. His hands rise from the magma to cradle Iris' face, thumbs tracing the red marks across his cheekbones.

His armor is gone, all the measures he took to try to keep himself from wanting exactly this. There's nothing between Iris and his heart but skin and muscle and bone.

[inventure]

He had thought about this before, in all the ways he could have, in all the ways he shouldn't. He'd let his mind dance past the line held them steady as roommates, and the even more delicate one that kept them as friends, and wonder what it might feel like if they were a little something more. At his core, Iris is a creature of greed, someone who had never been very good at being told "no," even when the person doing the telling is Iris himself.

The thing is — he could have kissed Wilhelm a dozen times before. There were moments for it, more than half of them even felt secure enough that he was almost certain they'd be reciprocated, but each and every time he held himself back because he thought, this time, he won't dare to ask for more. In Thorne he has begun to craft for himself a new home, but it's in Wilhelm he's found a space he can truly feel safe in, and even someone as impulsive and reckless as Iris knows better than to try his luck in an area where luck has very repeatedly proven to him he hasn't any.

He was supposed to be content with just friendship, because even just friendship felt too good to be true. And he was — is — content with it. If Wilhelm pulled back now and wanted to laugh or never talk about it again, Iris would follow along without hesitation, if all that meant he could keep the other boy just for a little while longer. He readies himself for it, prepares to do what it takes to make sure he doesn't lose the one last good thing in his life.

But Wilhelm doesn't pull back. Wilhelm kisses him like he's been thinking about it too, that first press of lips more relief than want, and Iris feels a little like he's flying, soaring instead of suspended, because now his mind finds itself running wild with all the possibilities he'd been tol afraid to chase down even when he'd let himself imagine their first kiss. That's the thing — every time he's ever imagined it, it had always just been a first kiss. Suddenly, stretching out before him, unfolds the possibility of a second, and a third, and god maybe even a fourth. And Iris has never felt so frozen by possibility before—

Until Wilhelm cradles his face like he's something delicate — no, precious, and Iris finds the only proper response to any of this is seeing where else it could possibly take him. Something that might have started soft and tentative and maybe even a little shy surges now with the intensity of all the first kisses ever imagined; Iris's arms are there, slipping around Wilhelm's neck. Iris's legs follow soon after, drawing him closer through the magma so that he can seat himself more comfortably astride Wilhelm's thighs. There is the distinct awareness of where they are, and all the clothes they're lacking, but that awareness is off to the side somewhere, unbothered, before Iris now knows exactly how Wilhelm tastes, and he is already most inconveniently addicted.

[ordinar]

To be continued here.