Chapter Text
Two days since Thancred had returned from his failed investigation attempt, and he’d scarcely been seen outside his room since. A few nights of rest, he’d said, and he’d return to his course with due vigor - Urianger had assumed that what he’d actually meant was to take a lover for a day or perhaps a couple and that like a stallion, he’d shake the muck from his hooves through bites, whispers, laughter, and the lewd sounds of flesh. That as usual, whatever dour mood had overtaken him was as fleeting as all his pleasures. But their rooms stood side by side and the nights had been quiet, and when Urianger walked past during his daytime wanderings for a bit of sunlight or a rare meal or a new pot of tea or to replace a book he’d borrowed from one of his comrades (adjusting his path to accommodate his curiosity and feeling annoyed with himself, always, for doing so) the room was always solemn and silent. Had Y’shtola not confirmed his health, it might have seemed that he had died there.
It had been nine bells without a sign of the sorry rogue when Urianger finally grew bold enough to enter. He carried a bag at his side and a cup of mulled tea against his chest. A lit lantern sat by the bedside, but Thancred lay in bed still, slow to wake by his own standards, sprawled with a sort of decadent dishevelement. The smoke that bloomed between their faces painted his tousled hair and parted lips in gauzy light. Awake, his composed charm was slick as blood and glittered like a diamond, but asleep, he showed his latent gifts, which were both subtler and sweeter. Urianger could not tell if it made him a deviant or a romantic, but he did enjoy watching the man sleep.
Had Thancred truly exhausted himself to such an extent? He had briefly glimpsed Thancred upon his return, and he had not seemed worse for wear. He had smiled with his usual exuberance, and if anything, his posture seemed a little straighter, each foot striking the ground with intention and importance.
He’d been drinking, perhaps, which was fine if it did not become a habit, and yet the idea of him doing so bereft of his usual company was bothersome. To go to bed numb and lonely, and to awaken miserable and lonely - Urianger shot a glance behind him to make sure that he had shut the door completely, and then pressed his lips to Thancred’s warm forehead.
Thancred’s eyes snapped open with violence, and Urianger recoiled. A drop of tea scalded his lap, and his cheeks burned with the shame of his impropriety.
“...Urianger?” Thancred said. “Is that you? What are you doing?”
Throughout the entirety of his youth, Urianger had thought himself above this sort of amorous folly, and he had been very foolish - as full as hubris as all his peers. It was more embarrassing at this age, really, though at times the sting of these slight shames seemed invigorating, like tart fruit or bitter tea.
Urianger winced through the pain of his burn, held the mug in front of himself, and bowed.
“My sincerest apologies - I did not intend to startle,” Urianger said to the floor. “Thou hast endured much over these past moons. I only wished to offer succor.”
Thancred took the mug, confusion still painted across his brow. He nearly scalded his lips attempting to down some of its contents, and then held it away from himself, and stared into its depths and the rising steam.
“...And I assumed, poorly, that thou might still suffer under the cruel hand of yesterday night’s indulgences - that it might be preferable to be awoken through gentle, soundless touch.” Urianger forced himself to look at the man. “I apologize. It was a whim.”
Thancred grinned wickedly.
“Don’t apologize, you fool. I’m not hungover. Just out of sorts - drink would be an improvement, honestly.”
He at least seemed spirited.
“I did bring other comforts,” Urianger offered, cheeks still a bit red, and Thancred seemed far more interested in those prospects than he did in his tea. Urianger fumbled with the bag at his side, and then unveiled a bottle of wine he’d kept hidden, not wanting to give the other scions any untoward ideas. “If thou wouldst rather…?”
“ Yes , gods,” Thancred said, setting aside his spurned tea on the side table, and accepting Urianger’s bottle in replacement. “This entire endeavor has been… I don’t even want to talk about it.”
“Art thou well?” Urianger asked, firmer than he had been.
Thancred dragged a hand across his forehead, setting aside a few stray strands of hair. He chuckled so quietly that the noise in Urianger’s head nearly drowned him out. He did not seem particularly depressed, but there was an edge to him regardless.
“Know that thou hast my counsel whenever thou might require it.” Urianger said. “And my silent company when words prove inefficacious.”
“You worry enough for ten men,” Thancred said, patting Urianger’s hip with a bawdy hand, and Urianger burned all the way up to the tips of his ears. Thancred then uncorked the bottle and drank directly from its mouth, refusing to pull away until he needed to catch his breath. Red droplets clung to his lips like those of a beast gorged upon a corpse. Urianger had no idea where that particular comparison had even come from, and yet, he shifted uncomfortably, very aware of his hand a few mere ilms away from Thancred’s thigh.
“ Wouldst thou desire company?” Urianger asked.
Thancred breathed a bit of laughter.
“I would not impose upon thee-” Urianger added self-consciously.
“Urianger, have I not made it clear that you are more than welcome here? Come - drink with me.” Thancred moved to the side, and patted the space between them. Urianger could not say no to his roguish smile.
So he climbed in and sat by him, thigh to thigh, leaning slightly backwards against the headboard and pillows. He smoothed straight his collar and felt rather ridiculous.
“Comfortable?” Thancred asked, a little sarcastically.
“Aye,” said Urianger. His goggles and hood remained firmly in place.
But Thancred was sweet enough to humor him. He did not press further. His acceptance was evident in the warm and silent proximity of his body.
It was all so decadent, passing the entire bottle back and forth, drinking directly from the traces of each others lips. Urianger could not think too hard about it without feeling out of place, and the lull in conversation left nothing to occupy him otherwise, beyond his senses and his hands. His heavy head fell upon Thancred’s sturdy shoulder. His hand, light, traced a line down his thigh. It was dangerous how much easier the alcohol made talking and thinking and sex. How much easier it was to bear the presence of the gorgeous man beside him.
“Give me a few minutes - I’ve been a complete mess. I just need to get my head together,” Thancred said, and worry again breeched the filmy pond of Urianger’s mind.
“I apologize,” said Urianger, but when he tried to remove his hand, Thancred caught it and kept it there, tracing bones and tendons with his thumb.
“A few moments. I want to be good for you.”
“ Thou wishest to be good for me ?” Urianger repeated quietly. Thancred was strange tonight. He spoke well and he looked well considering Urianger had woken him up less than half a bell ago, and yet all the things Urianger had been told not to speak about hung in the air like a swordpoint. The execution of innocents! Beyond being generally inappropriate to think about when he was in bed with another, it felt like a betrayal of Thancred’s trust that his mind would even roam to such territories.
But Thancred continued to squeeze his hand, as if he were the one who required comfort. Urianger tried to steady himself amongst the smooth, regular patterns in the sandstone walls. The humble pillars and archways. The sights he’d labored amongst and slept amongst for hundreds of days, now somehow stifling, like a serpent’s ill-fitting skin. He was warm, not just pleasantly, but overmuch, in his body and brain, and when Thancred pressed a deliberately awkward kiss against his cheek through the fabric of his hood, Urianger finally grew bold and divested it. The goggles came next, and he smoothed fingers over the ugly marks that they had dug into his cheeks.
Thancred sighed as if he’d just stripped off his smallclothes.
“Well now. Who’s this gorgeous specimen?” Thancred asked.
The air scalded his cheeks. Urianger turned his head away and waited to be kissed. But Thancred seemed content to stay leering, and Urianger soon grew impatient with the heat, his buzzing thoughts, and the first shy pangs of arousal, and so he straddled him, nearly falling on top of him in the process, and attempted to claim his lips for himself. He was more full of drink than he realized, and so he only managed to graze Thancred’s cheek before landing a fuller kiss on his collarbone below.
“Hello, dear - I don’t believe we’ve met. I would much adore growing fully acquainted, but I do first like to have a name.”
Urianger brought a knee between Thancred’s legs and planted it flat against his crotch, dug teeth lightly into supple flesh and sucked.
Thancred moaned and laughed all at once. He wrapped a strong arm around Urianger, planted his hand between his shoulderblades, and used the other to take him by the chin and tip his head up. Urianger smiled awkwardly. Somehow, merely staring at the man, faces less than a fulm apart, felt more intimate than lewder things that he balked at describing aloud.
“A lascivious little thing, are you? Well.” A brief kiss to Urianger’s forehead. “I can work with that.”
He then kissed lower, rougher, a wet line up Urianger jaw to the tip of his ear, where he then bit with enough force to send sparks behind Urianger’s eyelids.
“ Thancred ,” Urianger moaned, not even sure himself if he intended to scold or express appreciation. It was a pain that nearly pushed over the line, and yet it left a pleasant buzz in his skin, all the way down his sternum and neck. Each hair stood fully on end.
“Shhhh… shhh,” said Thancred, stroking the mark he’d left with his thumb and looking quite nervous. “Someone’s going to hear us.”
Urianger flashed a rare, giddy smile.
“Thou art something. Truly.” Urianger nudged Thancred’s nose with his own, softening his panic-stricken eyes. “Twelve forbid thine honor be sullied in the eyes of thy comrades. If they knew their own chaste friend had taken a bed-partner, it may well strike them dead. Unmarried, another man, an elezen - they would sendeth callers to Ishgard to shout stories about how thee hadst thyself defiled!”
The hand stroking Urianger’s back strayed lower and pinched his rear in retort, hard enough to startle an affronted gasp out of him.
“Thou art vulgar, truly,” Urianger murmured. He pushed Thancred away, taking care to be gentle enough that he merely bounced softly against the cushions and mattress beneath him. Urianger remained kneeling and held his hand flat against Thancred’s ribcage to feel the quickening throb of his pulse and the slow, deep breaths that racked his body like a tide. “And a shameless seducer of innocents.” Thancred’s shirt had ridden up, and Urianger drug his other hand down across the length of him to meet the soft flesh, subtle muscle, and the light dusting of hair that led lower, under the rim of his trousers, already tented. It continually astonished him how hyur flesh could be so robust and willing. He could not help but touch, feeling out shape and swollen weight through the fabric, wringing a sharp breath from Thancred’s lips. “So quick? Would it take an ocean of lovers to satisfy thee?” said Urianger, knowing full well he had no room to be speaking, eager as he was.
“It’s been a while, actually,” Thancred said through strained breaths. “Too long.”
“Thou hast deprived thy poor and insatiable body. But worry not - I will care for thee,” Urianger said. It verged upon false bravado, and yet he had been kissed enough times, had had enough sweet things whispered into his ears that even now still lingered there. There had to be some pleasure in him. Why else would his presence be tolerated when Thancred had his choice of lovers?
Urianger unbuckled Thancred’s trousers and pulled them down so that his eager cock could spring forth with only the thin, soft layer of his smallclothes to keep it from the warm air that formed a canyon between their bodies. His half-dressed state seemed more indecent than if he were to be stripped entirely bare.
Thancred’s hand still had not left his rear, and it in fact kneaded deeper at his ministrations, practically drowning in him, absolutely obscene.
The first night Urianger had stripped for Thancred, he’d sputtered frantic words of warning that parts of him were not so elegant as what might be expected of an elezen, and Thancred had laughed beautifully, giving him a “That’s not how I would put it”, and gifting him such lavishing, indulgent touches that it was impossible to not to forget his polished charms and believe him, at least for that moment.
Even now, under this treatment Urianger had not the focus to continue teasing. He felt that he was being enjoyed, like a rich meal or a warm bath. To think that he was capable of inspiring it - not immaculate, divine love, or the sentiments of words, gestures, poetry, but base lust - he had never even considered that there might be any part of him that anyone might actually find attractive.
Kneeling above Thancred like a tower, as if all the star’s attention was fixed upon him at once - the air glittered. The walls closed in.
And so he fell once more, feeling suddenly very drunk, landing on the soft mattress by Thancred’s side. He wanted to spend more time kissing, but Thancred’s hand kept wandering, now under his skirts and snaking up his thigh.
“Be patient ,” Urianger muttered. “Thou willst have thy fill of flesh in due time.”
Urianger pushed Thancred’s hand away with his own fingers entangled, bringing it to his lips so he could kiss the back of Thancred’s hand, and then swatting it away as if it were a moth.
Urianger liked to be talked out of his clothing - wooed, he imagined, like Thancred wooed his barmaids. There was a game to made where Thancred would coerce him to lift his skirts a little higher with bawdy compliments, and talk of things he cold be doing, things he could be wearing.
But Thancred’s hands returned to his robes without so much as a word, and when Urianger moved to admonish him, his own hands were wrenched out of the way with enough pain to stun him to silence. He did not even breathe as the cold air hit his legs, his back and his stomach. It was if water had been poured over his head.
He supposed it was only a matter of time before Thancred grew tired of these play-acted games of pursuit - the hyur had a shorter lifespan, and more vigor in all its drives. Urianger’s feigned prudishness and icy admonishments all merely served to disguise that there was still a not-insignificant portion of him that did not enjoy being naked.
When Thancred caught his smallcloth on a single finger, and pulled it down his legs, chuckling as it clung to his cock before snapping free, it was hard to hear anything except absolute disgust. He was back in childhood. His schoolmates had bullied him unrelentingly, had stripped him forecully and left him to run past the girls’ lodgings for help.
Urianger realized, then, that his hands lay limp, and that he suddenly had no idea what to do with them. Thancred stroked his hip, and then his soft, nervous cock, in vain attempt to coax it to attention.
“You are quite slow to rise to the occasion, aren’t you?” Thancred said.
And it was true, though it seemed an impolite thing to draw attention to.
Urianger leaned in to kiss Thancred, aiming to bridge the cold gap between them and cover himself in flesh to mask his shame, but Thancred caught him with a fist through his hair, and maneuvered his head lower, lower, until his lips crashed against Thancred’s stomach instead.
“Aren’t you a strange thing?” Thanred muttered. “Clamming up, and then you’re practically pouncing.”
Whatever plan or narrative Urianger had entered with had long sinced vanished, and he did not want to think very hard about the state he’d ended up in.
“Here. Here you go,” Thancred said, forcing Urianger down even lower, where Thancred’s swollen cock brushed against his cheek, and Urianger shut his eyes at the unwelcome contact. He was not too proud to admit that he really was not very good at this. He tried , certainly - eager lips and eager fingers, chasing moans with studious attention, getting compliments that left him beaming. But clumsy, half-drunk, nerves tangled, he was not in the mood to make an effort.
Thancred tugged Urianger’s hair and tipped his face up, and Urianger gave an awkward smile that must have looked grotesque. He parted lips obediently, and let the cock fill him, feeling at once apart from yet all too aware of his own anatomy. His mouth was dry, his tongue felt clumsy, he did not have the clarity to use his hands at all, and so when Thancred’s grunts seemed frustrated rather than in pleasure, and he straightened Urianger’s addled, awkward rhythm though a firm fist at his nape, it was easier to give himself up, thinking only of his own warm, soft bed, the tea he’d have later to scrub the taste from his throat.
It was only by force that Thancred could get Urianger to engulf the entire length of him, and Urianger found he did not mind the violence if it meant he did not have to think about moving his wretched body. He would usually have used his hands to compensate for his own inadequacies, and so the intrusion in his throat was new and strange to him. The onset of choking, over, and over, like drowning and then surfacing, again and again, but each time as the smacks of flesh grew frantic, his breath seemed shorter, the stinging in his throat and in his eyes grew harder to withstand, and then he could not breath at all, his gut seized, and every part of his body, from his gut to the top of his head burned in terror and in shame, until he could not take any more and vomited hot bile.
Thancred swore and pushed Urianger away, leaving him coughing, and sputtering for breath. A few large tears splattered against the bed, but there were no sobs to accompany them.
“Thancred,” he sputtered. “Oh… Thancred.”
He nearly apologized reflexively before stopping himself. He lifted his hand, briefly, and then brought it back down again. He wanted to retrieve his clothing, but then remembered that he was filthy.
The humiliation suffused throughout every particle of his body and took seed in his head like a dying sun, where it bleached his thoughts to an all-consuming, insensate white, and he could only wait dumb, cold, and alone for Thancred to speak to him.
What was he waiting to be told? That Thancred was sorry? That his hand had slipped? That a sudden bout of lunacy had seized hold of him? Urianger’s head throbbed and his throat burned and his stomach felt like it could betray him again at any instant and still there was only silence.
He did not even realize Thancred had left until he found himself rolled onto his back with a soft, thick towel scraping away traces of filth from his face. When the veil of white lifted, he saw Thancred, so bright, happy, and utterly dissonant with both the present moment and everything he thought he understood about the man that he could not even bring himself to look at his face. His eyes fell lower, to where he saw that Thancred was still hard, and Urianger then shut his eyes completely.
“All this time…” Urianger said. “Is this all from me thou hadst desired?” His voice rung hollow at first, but it rose in volume as he continued to speak. “To shame and deface me for thine own twisted pleasure? Thou wouldst waste mine energy and thine energy on air and lies? Thou couldst not spit on me and be done with me and sate your own grotesque needs in private where I would not have to gaze upon thine abominable face?”
A broad, calloused hand snaked its way around the back of his head.
“ Quiet ,” Thancred said. “For once, in your wretched life, be quiet.”
A pressure came again to Urianger’s lips in the form of a probing finger. His eyes snapped open and a sob seized his chest.
“Art thou touched? Art thou completely-”
Thancred’s fingers wormed their way past his lips and scraped against his sensitive membranes, and it felt as if they hollowed him out.
“I am astonished,” Thancred said, “That you are not too weak and stupid to stand on your own two feet.” Urianger’s body shook with wheezing breaths. His throat clenched to expel a force that was not even present.
Thancred retrieved his fingers, wet with saliva, and held them to the light to examine, and Urianger clamped both hands over his mouth, feeling again nauseous. Thancred stroked his slick fingers along his length, and it took a beat before Urianger fully processed what was happening.
“ Absolutely not ,” Urianger said.
Urianger sprung to his feet and with more force than he thought he held in his body, swung a fist into Thancred’s cheek. There was a wet crack at the jaw, his head hung at an odd angle, but the smile did not disappear from his face.
He was laughing. He did not move properly, and he did not sound altogether right. It was as if Urianger were stuck in an absurd nightmare.
“Is that what your convictions amount to?” said Thancred. “Pray, then. It’ll do as much good for you.”
Blunt fingernails dug into Urianger’s sides like talons. He stumbled backwards, nearly falling, only kept upright by that sharp pain.
“Cease this at once - this is lunacy!” he panted as Thancred shoved him backwards towards the wall. He struggled to force his voice loud enough that someone else in the building might hear. Urianger was taller, but Thancred was stronger and better-trained - he was not going to overpower the man in a grappling match. And within the throbbing chaos of close-quarters combat, spellcasting was hard enough at the best of times. He knew his equations and incantations as if he had been born with them engraved upon the tablet of his mind, but he was less practiced casting from his own reserves without so much as a makeshift catalyst; he was not used to casting naked, or weathering the threat of violation or the sudden betrayal of a friend.
He pushed the pain in his ribs and the acrid sting in the back of his throat from his mind as his skull banged against the wall and Thancred kissed as if he meant to smother him. Urianger knew his magic - he had not studied under Master Louiseux for naught. But a glance at Thancred’s disconcertingly sweet features, his full lips and bright eyes, marred with a hunger he could not recognize, tested his resolve.
He struck with a blow capable of killing because he could not be sure elsewise that he would strike at all, and the air erupted in a mist of sparks, blue light crackled within the candlelit room, and he could hear and smell the scorch of fabric.Thancred’s hair was a mess, his nose was bleeding, and yet his face and the hands pinning Urianger had not even flinched.
Thancred groped Urianger’s mortifyingly half-hard cock.
“Every onze of hatred in your body - is that all of it?” Thancred said, with wolfish glee. “Is that all you can muster?”
Urianger’s head ached. The aether sapped left him dizzy, and the room pulsed and throbbed around him. Thancred hooked Urianger’s limp legs through his muscled arms, folded him over, and lifted him, until he was held aloft between them and the wall. The gangly length of his body fit awkwardly over Thancred’s relatively compact form.
“Like stepping on a bird.” Thancred said. “A little mouse!”
Uriangers breaths came too quickly to sustain him. He groped wildly against the wall for any kind of handhold; any sense of stability with which to orient himself, but found nothing. He said nothing, he thought nothing, he did nothing.
Thancred slammed into him and every muscle in his body tensed at once to resist.
“That feeble act of resistance earlier only served to prolong your own suffering,” Thancred said.
Urianger realized that he was bleeding and let out a cry more at the concept of it than the pain, but it was strangled by soft lips and whatever monster lurked beneath them. Thancred dug teeth into him, let desperate, full-breathed moans into him, and so Urianger bled from the mouth as well without even the strength to lift a hand to wipe away the trickle that itched as it made its way down his chin.
There was no rhyme or reason to the disorienting rhythm between their bodies. Urianger may as well have been a pile of doll limbs, torn apart, and then flung together. Urianger’s cock bobbed between them with each thrust, slapped against his stomach, and the fleeting bursts of arousal came like stabs. Thancred moved like his skin troubled him, like there may have been an army of starved fiends beneath it, and whatever paltry comforts Urianger’s body offered only served to stoke their want.
When Thancred finally removed his mouth, he lapped at tears Urianger did not even realize he was crying. He felt vaguely that he should call out. But what on earth would he say? Did he even want to be found like this?
The blood at least eased friction, and it grew easier and easier to tune out the madness around him. It felt as though he might as well be dying. He faded slowly, limbs heavy like stone, and with Thancred still thrusting into him like a mindless beast, his last hold on consciousness at last faltered.