abraxaslogs | [closed] they told me all of my cages were mental

Little by little, Wilhelm has built a new routine that pulls him away from his bed — where he's spent more hours than he'll ever admit trying to avoid existing. Trying to avoid thinking and feeling too, but the thing about staying still is that it makes it easy for all those emotions to catch you, hold you down, and beat the shit out of you.

It's a little bit like building something out of a heap of rubble, sifting through for what can be salvaged.

He's found that helping others — helping to allay the chaos that's broken out since last month — helps quiet his mind. Dozens of tiny atonements to lighten his guilty conscience. A few days a week, he follows Rhy to Nott. Most of those who sustained injuries in the fire have recovered, but there remain a handful of severe cases who require continued attention. While Rhy works his magic, Wilhelm assists. Or he runs errands around town, performs chores for the people hit hardest by the fire's destruction.

By the time they leave, which falls somewhere in the hour approaching dinner, Wilhelm feels accomplished. He even feels tentatively optimistic that sleep will come without much coaxing tonight.

Leveraging the autumn chill as an excuse to keep close, he walks arm in arm with Rhy to the portal that will take them back to the castle town. The rumors of undead roaming the countryside are another good reason to stay together. During a pause in the chatter, Wilhelm turns an intent look on Rhy.

"When we get back, do you want to go to the bar again, or...?"

What jolt of boldness makes him toss in that or, he isn't sure. The question trails off like breadcrumbs deliberately placed.

Edited 2022-10-19 15:15 (UTC)

Rhy has always been susceptible to guilt and self-doubt, placing too-high expectations on himself; it's not so unusual that there are periods when it gets worse, and with everything that's happened since Nocwich, at first, he doesn't notice. Nightmares plague him often enough, he didn't notice the one that was unusual, didn't linger much on it when other things occupied his waking hours, and those spent asleep are always short and fitful. The little whispers in the back of his mind are more vicious. His mood is more volatile. He fights with Kell, and goes to Nott despite the dangers, giving into the urge to simply get away and ignore what ails him. Cover it up with other things.

The work in Nott should have been fulfilling. Now, he's spending more time helping to replenish supplies and providing potions and elixirs from the castle infirmary, rather than handling the injured directly. When Wilhelm asks to tag along, Rhy agrees without thinking. The boy is easy company. Like a puppy. (He shouldn't think this, but he cannot stop himself.)

He's so obvious, too.

"Do you want to go, Wilhelm?" Rhy turns the question around on him immediately.

He shrinks a little at Rhy's directness. A slow breath in, eyes drifting upward over both their heads.

"I was thinking...it's always so crowded there. It could be nice to find somewhere quieter." Clearing his throat. "More private."

He senses a distance in Rhy, who in his experience has almost always radiated warmth. Now he's more like the stars in the night sky, cloistered in unknowable darkness. After Rhy has soothed his aches and anxieties so many times, with a word of reassurance or a sturdy shoulder to lean on, Wilhelm feels compelled to try to do the same for him.

Of course, not all of his motives are so beatific.

He's only been humoring you, you know, whispers the air around him. By now, Wilhelm knows better than to look around for who the voice belongs to. It's his own insecurities, crawling out of his skull, as hard to kill as cockroaches. He's never going to see you as more than an annoying kid he's too nice to turn away.

As nasty as the taunting is, it's worse when the voices multiply and start gossiping with each other. The susurration of whispers invokes the feeling of walking into a room and knowing that everybody's been talking about you, everybody's watching you. No matter how often it's happened to him, Wilhelm has never been able to build any defense against it. His heart drops into his stomach. Self-consciousness prickles under his skin.

It's honestly pathetic. He just latched onto the first pretty boy who threw him a bit of kindness.

Did you see him at the Roadhouse? He was all over Rhy, following him around like a stray puppy all night.

A slow smile spreads over Rhy's face; it is sharper than usual, knowing, almost a smirk. Rhy lets his gaze obviously linger, looking Wilhelm up and down.

He leans in closer, giving his arm a squeeze. Brushes his lips over Wilhelm's ear and breathes in before he speaks in a low whisper.

"Is that so? Tell me more about this private place you have in mind."

All of a sudden, Wilhelm will feel the pull, the temptation overwhelming and desperate. It drags at him, tugging the words from his lips, uncovering the desires squirreled away inside his chest.

Though Rhy doesn't understand what exactly he's doing, that he's using any power at all, the rush of self-satisfaction he feels suddenly leaves him almost giddy. Grinning. Assures him that this is exactly what he wants to be doing right now.

The seconds that follow stretch into a chasm. A whole crowd of voices is now enumerating Wilhelm's faults, both superficial and structural. Too much acne, too much baggage. Just as he starts to pull away, sure that that smirk is making fun of him, Rhy pulls him back in with a squeeze of his arm, a caress of lips at his ear. Oh. He almost forgets how to walk.

The whispers have dispersed. All he hears now is the low thrum of Rhy's voice, stuck in his head like the hook of a song. Tell me more. What began as idle curiosity, spun from some volatile combination of loneliness and hormones, suddenly deepens into gravity.

He might have suggested somewhere more neutral, less heavy with implication — some obscure corner of the gardens, for instance. But something pries him from shyness and makes him propose:

"My room?"

Oh. Despite his urging, he doesn't expect Wilhelm to say it, or to get to the point so quickly.

"My, you have gotten bold." He pulls back laughing, apparently cheered by Wilhelm's proposal.

"And here I thought you were all puppy eyes and tail-wagging. You've found your courage, after all."

None of that is a no.

Under the barrage of teasing, Wilhelm groans in embarrassment, ducking his head to hide his grin in Rhy's shoulder.

"I do not look at you with puppy eyes," he protests with a shove.

Though he pulls out of the link of their arms, he can't seem to break contact with Rhy altogether: two steps later, he's reaching for his hand. He's always found comfort in touch, and he intends to indulge himself as much as Rhy will allow. Now, the familiar gesture takes on a new weight he isn't fully sure how to wield. But right now is the happiest he's been in a long time.

Just as he settles into that feeling — with the headlong recklessness of someone trying not to get caught — the whispering voices conspire to sabotage him.

What about Simon? Are you just going to forget all about him?

The thing is, Simon is the one who had ended it. Now he's already been here longer than he ever knew the boy who took up so much space in his life in such a short time. But guilt, like any other emotion, isn't always logical. Wilhelm tries to shut it out with a steadying breath. By now, they've reached the portal out of Nott. He pauses before it, shifting his weight from foot to foot, playing with Rhy's hand.

"So...what do you think?"

Perhaps Wilhelm will be relieved when Rhy automatically takes his hand, gives it a little squeeze. He's so cute and fidgety, clearly nervous and trying not to show it. Rhy lets himself enjoy it, the sweet innocence and embarrassment of someone still learning how to navigate this dance.

"I think, if that's what you want, then I would be happy to accompany you there and hear more of your bold new ideas."

Rhy's answer momentarily stills him. He breathes out a smile, pushing his hair back in a daze as if he can't believe what he's done.

"Okay. Great," is all he can think to say.

Now he has no clue what the hell to talk about the rest of the trek back. Every possible topic of conversation fades into the realm of uninteresting and irrelevant. The whispering voices take advantage of his silences to prick him with reminders of Simon, who remains an open wound. They barb him with warnings of all the ways getting too attached will burn him down.

Fortunately, once they step through the portal, it's a quick walk to the castle's entrance, and from there an obstacle course of corridors and stairs up to the North Wing.

At this hour, Wilhelm's room is awash in a dusky pink glow — enough light to see by, enough darkness to instill a deep sense of privacy. Shutting the door behind them, and making sure it latches properly, he turns to face Rhy. His glance slides to the messy nest depression has made of his bed, the scattering of discarded clothes he never bothered to pick up off the floor. Fuck. Hoping to keep Rhy's attention on him and not on the state of the room, he steps into his space. His hands find Rhy's waist, his head tilts to fit their lips together. The first kiss is like standing on a precipice and peeking over the edge — and then he jumps.

Rhy continues to hold his hand as they walk back, as long as Wilhelm wants him to. He isn't bothered -- especially not lately -- by who may or may not see. He doesn't really care about anything right now, except how much he wants to see Wilhelm finally give in to his desires, finally acknowledge those little moonstruck gazes Rhy catches him at and pretends to not have noticed.

It is adorable, and though he'd have been amenable probably at other times as well, if Wilhelm really wanted to, there's something about now, that influence that isn't his, that whispers in his ear to keep pushing. It will feel good. For both of them, of course.

When they finally make it to his room, Wilhelm looks a scattered mess, but nervous or not, he reaches for Rhy, bravely. Rhy rewards him for it.

He leans into the touch, and slides his own arm around the small of Wilhelm's back. It is a soft kiss at first; Rhy meant to let him lead. But his self control is rather nonexistent right now.

Squeezing him close, Rhy deepens the kiss, pressing his tongue between Wilhelm's lips to seek more of him.

When Rhy hooks his arm around his waist, Wilhelm slides his hands up his chest to grab onto his jacket collar. And when he slips his tongue into his mouth, Wilhelm obliges with lips parting. With their bodies crushed together, there's no space to think about anything else. The whispers have finally shut the fuck up; they're replaced with the wordless murmur of mouths moving together, breath rising and sinking in sighs.

It's not like it all just washes away, all the things weighing on his heart and wakening him in the middle of the night — all of him suddenly renewed. But the surge of arousal spinning his head offers temporary absolution. He can make himself out of just the pieces he likes. He can do what he wants.

After a prolonged moment of...getting better acquainted with each other, Wilhelm pulls out of the kiss, but only to slide his lips down the curve of Rhy's neck. Pressing his nose into the warm brown skin there, he laughs softly to himself as if in disbelief.

"You're so beautiful it's unfair," he breathes.

He hadn't planned on saying it; it just falls out on a sigh. Maybe he just felt that he's supposed to say something in all of this.

Rhy laughs, soft and breathy. His fingers slide through Wilhelm's hair, holding him there gently at the back of his head, feeling his lips move when Wilhelm speaks against his skin.

"I get that a lot," Rhy admits. It might come off as bragging, but he says it so absently, it doesn't really sound like that's what he intended. Like Wilhelm, he's got little control of his tongue.

"I'm happy that you asked me here."

His heart dents a bit from Rhy's idle answer. It's not jealousy — he imagines that Rhy has collected shelves of admirers and lovers, and he can't blame any of them. But he'd like for this to mean something to Rhy. He'd like to mean something to Rhy. So the next confession provides the reassurance he craves.

"Yeah?"

A hopeful note. Working open the fastenings of Rhy's jacket, Wilhelm coasts his hands down his chest and around his waist. He clutches at his shirt inside his jacket, enjoying the feeling of trespassing somewhere secret. His lips stay busy at Rhy's neck. A constellation of kisses dots his throat.

It's not love. He knows what love feels like, though sometimes he wishes he didn't. Whatever it is, it's better this way — love had left him smashed open and raw.

"You've wanted me for some time, haven't you?" he asks, perhaps surprisingly gently. Fingertips settle against the back of Wilhelm's hair, ruffling it softly, scratching his scalp and down to the nape of his neck.

He does not stop Wilhelm from undressing him, but neither does he reach to help. Instead, he allows Wilhelm to make his advances, watching his actions and reactions through lowered eyelashes.

"Tell me what you want, Wilhelm," Rhy urges, and unknowingly draws on the power of the herald he'd met in that dream. It leaves his skin tingling, pleasure curling through his nerves that is on a different wavelength entirely from what Wilhelm's touch brings.

He presses his lips to the boy's temple.

"I want to know your desires. I want to give them to you."

Humming in affirmation against Rhy's throat, he pushes his jacket from his shoulders, letting it slide to the floor in a crumple. His hands roam all over, mapping Rhy's chest and back and stomach through his shirt, pulling it loose. Rhy must have known before he did that he wanted him. Wilhelm was just looking, he insisted — because after everything, wanting somebody who isn't Simon felt...wrong in a way he can't pin down with words. It felt like leaving his old life farther behind.

As he'd once spilled at the tavern, he was almost elated to have an excuse to abandon that life: the title, the expectations, the pressure. But that doesn't mean there's nothing he misses, nothing he wants to hold onto. The person he was with Simon is one such keepsake. The person he could be.

Loneliness makes it easier to crash into somebody else — especially somebody whose eyes seem to possess their own gravity. Fooling around with Jesper made it harder to forget how much his skin misses touch.

"I want to suck your dick," he murmurs in Rhy's ear. Soft but with a surety that surprises him. Shyness catching up, he laughs in a breathy little rush.

For someone who has lived most of his life according to someone else's terms — keep up appearances, keep your real emotions locked up, stop being selfish — voicing his wants still feels like a battle. Like a taboo he's smashing. But it feels good to break it, yanking off his own jacket, swaying into another kiss, tugging Rhy along by the shirt. His own bed is a disheveled mess, but there are three other perfectly good beds in here.

Edited 2022-11-25 20:31 (UTC)

Rhy may have more experience, and he might be acting cool and collected, but his composure cracks a bit when Wilhelm finally voices his desire so bluntly. His breath brushes Rhy's skin, the whisper tickling his ear, and he can't help himself: he shivers, visibly, that request more a promise that shoots through him with an anticipatory jolt that goes straight to his cock. The bulge begins to grow in the front of his trousers. And they happen to be tight.

"I want to feel your mouth on me," he murmurs back, stumbling forward when Wilhelm tugs him along.

"I know you'll feel so good." Another kiss, which he ends in a teasing pinch of teeth at Wilhelm's lower lip. His hands settle on the boy's hips, guiding him to turn so Rhy's back is facing the clean bed instead, and he can sit when his thighs hit the edge.

"But first. I want to see you. Undress."

Like ripples spreading across water, seeing Rhy so affected by his words, his touch, affects him in turn. It thrums through him. The full-body thaw that began under Rhy's heated kiss quickens. The nip at his lower lip, hands pushing at his hips. Rhy, arranged so nicely on the bed, anticipating him. The firm command — undress. All of it pools deep inside of him as heat, stealing away his speech so that all he can do is nod.

I want. I want. He wants so many things. And he's not afraid to reach out and take them now.

Wilhelm pulls off his shirt like the drape of fabric against his skin aggravates him. Underneath it, he's slender in the way of all young men still filling out, subtle muscles contrasting with soft skin. He yanks off his boots. As he unfastens his pants, which are tented in front, his eyes flit away from Rhy. Nervous and excited in equal measure for the weight of Rhy's eyes on him, he finishes stripping. And then Wilhelm is draped only in the glow of the sunset slanting through the window and the shadows gathering inside his room. His cock stands flushed and full.

Drawing closer to Rhy, running his hands through his dark hair, he studies him with soft, bright eyes. His fingers flutter down his chest, slipping into his collar, before landing on his thighs. Curious, he traces the hard line of Rhy's cock through his trousers. Imagines its heat filling his mouth. His breath falls out in a sigh.

The look he presses into Rhy asks for him: do you like what you see?

"Very good," he tells Wilhem softly, and the way he says it, the words are only warm praise, not at all patronizing. Rhy lifts his chin when he steps closer, eyes on Wilhelm's face at first, watching his expressions shift. Then, he lets his gaze drag very obviously, slowly downward.

He lifts a hand when Wilhelm's within reach again, thumb tracing the curve of his ribcage before his palm settles on the boy's waist. Slides down to his hip.

"You're lovely."

A shaky breath escapes him. His cock pushes against the cloth very obviously, an unmistakable bulge in his too-snug trousers, and Rhy bites his lip. If Wilhelm had any doubts he likes what he sees, the physical proof would be impossible to ignore beneath his curious fingertips.

"Help me with the laces," he orders easily, in that same warm honey voice. There are no edges in it, no or else or even forcefulness; he says it in a way that has already assumed Wilhelm will not only obey, but want to.

It's the same exact way he bids Wilhelm, "On your knees."

Desire trembles through him as Rhy caresses him first with a measuring look, then his hands. Wilhelm sways into his touch, soaking it up like a neglected flower finally drenched in the sun. A soft smile warming his face, he hangs onto every word pronounced by those agonizingly gorgeous lips. Lovely. It brings to mind delicate things that break too easily, but here it's not a condemnation of fragility, but an appreciation for...something precious.

He's starting to forget that he's lonely.

Whether Wilhelm will obey the order is not a question. Wedged between Rhy's thighs is exactly where he wants to be right now. But he rebels just a little in the way he palms him through his trousers for a lingering moment, holding his golden gaze, biting his lip, before he folds himself onto his knees. The woven little rug thrown beside the bed softens the floor enough.

"Rhy," he sighs, gliding his palms along his thighs.

As he sets to prying apart the laces cinching Rhy's trousers shut, an idea hits him. Leaning in, he noses the outline of Rhy's cock, ghosts his breath over him. Then snagging the cord between his teeth, he tugs it loose, slowly, sinuously. There's nothing innocent about the little smirk he aims up at Rhy.

"I learned this trick from Jesper."

What compels him to confess this, he's not sure. Maybe it's because he already knows Rhy and Jesper are intimate that he loosens his hold on the privacy he usually prizes. Maybe it's because he desperately wants to prove to Rhy that he's not some fumbling, blushing virgin.

The surprise shows clearly on Rhy's face when Wilhelm goes for the laces with his mouth. It startles a laugh out of him, a brief bark of amusement; he meets Wilhelm's smirk with a grin, and a stroke of his fingers and blunt nails through the boy's hair.

"Oh, of course. He is a wicked creature, that one." He's only met Jesper on a few brief occasions, most of them involving Mat and not all of them involving clothing, but the overall impression is a fond one. Rhy doesn't know him very well, but he seems a very good friend to Mat. And perhaps to Wilhelm too... at least the sort of friend who teaches him things like this.

"I'll admit it is incredibly sexy. You must've been a good student." He scratches Wilhelm's scalp, down to the back of his neck, gentle and coaxing while he works. "I'll have to thank him later."

A warm shiver zips up his spine, for the blunt drag of Rhy's nails along his scalp as much as his heady praise. He got the reaction he wanted. Grinning to himself, he finishes loosening the laces.

"He told me that you'd been together."

He says this as if it's a secret, though apparently neither Rhy nor Jesper hold an ounce of shame for their affairs. With the front panel of Rhy's trousers flopped open, Wilhelm can now sneak his hand inside the layers of fabric. He tiptoes his touch along the hot, hard swell of Rhy's trapped cock. Hungrily tugs the loose garment down his thighs to free him. Want throbs in his own cock, squeezes the air out of him for a second.

"I've..." Eyes tilting to the floor, he leans his cheek against Rhy's thigh, where all the fine fabric is bunched. He swallows. "I've thought about it. You and him...being together."

As he makes his confession, he takes Rhy in hand and tests him with a slow stroke — which might indicate something about the context in which Wilhelm has thought about it. His cheeks heat, and an apology shadows his expression. What the hell is he thinking, saying something like that? If someone were to blurt out that they got horny watching the video of him and Simon, he'd feel sick to his stomach. Moments like that aren't meant to be intruded on.

Watching him through lidded eyes, Rhy allows the soft sighs and groans to escape him freely, encouraging. The smile spreads slow and warm across his lips, with only the faintest twitch of a wicked smirk, there and gone.

"It was a pleasant tryst. Though I seem to remember we both spent a majority of our attentions on Mat. Wanted to make him feel special."

His thumb strokes Wilhem's cheek. His hips roll up into the touch.

"Would you like that, Wilhelm? Jesper and me, on either side of you."

Rhy's fingers slide up to his ear next, stroking and rubbing, testing his reactions.

"Or did you just want to... watch?"

The starry look that settles on his face — too intent to be described as dazed, an impression of aftershock like some implosion has collapsed his thoughts — tells Rhy that he's imagining it right now. Two bodies cradling him. Two pairs of hands igniting his skin, two mouths teasing him. Glowing pink, Wilhelm buries his face in Rhy's thigh with an embarrassed groan.

"I don't know," he admits, muffled against skin. That's the naked truth. Just watching, he would feel like an intruder, inheriting all the excess awkwardness Rhy and Jesper so easily slough off. Sharing them is overwhelming enough in theory never mind in practice. "I'm pretty sure I would, like...explode."

He laughs softly, keeping his hand busy with Rhy's cock. His grip tightens at the base, releases at the top. His thumb languidly circles the head. Though he keeps his face hidden, he keens into Rhy's touch. Before Rhy can probe further, he tilts to press a kiss to his shaft, smears his lips up to the tip, which he traces with his tongue. There's something defiant in his eye, daring Rhy to tease him.

He does not tease.

Rhy bites his lip, muffling a low grunt; his hips twitch, thighs tensing noticeably with resolute self-restraint as his breathing deepens and his eyelids drop.

"Saints, but you're so gorgeous, with your clever little tongue," he murmurs, thumb tracing the curve of Wilhelm's ear again, watching it turn red with his blush.

"I think I'd like to make you explode. Unable to contain yourself. I think Jesper would like to see it too."

His smile is like a secret that he's only sharing with Rhy. All coy glances and pink cheeks, he laughs into the kiss he crowns Rhy's cock with. It's not exactly a yes, but it's not a no either. He would be thinking about it now, there was no helping it. Jesper and Rhy both possess such persuasive tongues, too...

There was no helping that either.

Soaking up all the little signs of Rhy's pleasure, tipsy from it, Wilhelm wraps his lips around the tip of Rhy's cock. He sucks on it, smothers it with his tongue. He hums a sigh as if the pleasure prickling under Rhy's skin is his own. One hand pulls at Rhy's trousers, still tangled around his thighs; the other pets his shaft, strokes like light skimming water.

As he bobs down — not yet filling his mouth, but testing out Rhy's girth the way you dip your toes in the pool first — his eyes flutter up to measure his reaction.

[closed] they told me all of my cages were mental

rhy - october event

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slaps a nsfw warning on here oops

very good

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