Work Text:
“Olly, are you sure you’re getting enough rest?” Qifrey deflects first, when Olruggio confronts him. He’d followed Qifrey into his quarters after the girls were all asleep and shut the door behind them both. Qifrey had pulled an exaggerated expression, made his smile wide and beaming and then twiddled his fingers at Olruggio like the unknowing’s ideas of spellcasting. “I think you might be seeing ghooosts.” It’s the tone Qifrey uses when trying to make the girls laugh.
There is the lie: in the preciseness of his wide smile, and the distance in his eyes. When Qifrey nudges him towards the door, it’s with the playful tussle of long friends. His hand even goes up to ruffle Olruggio’s hair. “Go get some sleep. You need it.”
Olruggio stays.
“Don’t you know, you’re really quite overbearing sometimes,” Qifrey says, holding himself with an easy, performative lightness, looking down at Olruggio and then away, like the conversation didn’t matter to him. “You’d think after all these years, you’d realize I don’t want this. Let me alone for once, will you?” That one hurts, a sticker burr caught under his skin, raising it up. A bit of pain lingering as a reminder. The hilltop winds are howling, tonight, rattling the windows.
Olruggio stays.
Afterwards, again: “Olruggio, stop.” There’s a crack in his mask, in his smile, and Olruggio knows he’s getting close, getting to the core of whatever Qifrey’s been hiding, whatever’s been hurting him. He hesitates, even so, when Qifrey begs him, soft, “Please stop. Please. Don’t do this again.”
Still, Olruggio stays.
“Qifrey,” he says, and steps closer. They’ve been playing a game of chicken around the room for the whole of the fight, Olruggio trailing after Qifrey as he always did. “I know you’re not telling me something. I know you think you’re trying to protect me. Can you damn well listen?!” Qifrey stops, finally, looking down at him miserably. His fingers twirl through the empty air, absent, his age-old fidget for the ribbon on his cap. “I don’t care what it is,” Olruggio says, and is certain of the truth of this, just as he is certain: “I can help. Let me help. Whatever you’ve done, whatever you’re doing, I forgi-”
Qifrey’s hand pushes over his mouth. The palm is warm against his lips and his long fingers curl over the side of his face, through his beard, blocking out his words by force. Qifrey looks almost as shocked as he feels, his half lean forward executed in one exhalation of breath, a smooth burst of frantic energy. The black fabric of Qifrey’s turtleneck brushes up against Olruggio’s jaw.
“I can’t.” There’s a nonsensical quality to Qifrey’s voice, abstract and lost. The low rumblings of a gathering storm. “I cannot-” and they’re staring into each other. The pressure over his mouth ripples as Qifrey’s other hand goes up to the back of his neck. His head lowers, his long pale lashes fluttering against his cheeks, and Olruggio realizes what’s about to happen right before Qifrey’s forehead bumps against his own, a perverted vow, kaleidoscopically distorted after so many years.
“Just a little longer,” Qifrey says, and it’s nonsensical. This whole conversation has been nonsensical, a maze of disconnected thoughts that Olruggio can’t find the center of. He doesn’t understand any of this, anything. How can Qifrey look at him like this, and hold him close, and not tell him what’s wrong? There’s a dread in his gut, low and boiling. He can feel Qifrey’s pulse, quick and light, fluttering against his skin.
“Wait for me just a little bit longer.” Qifrey whispers the words into the space between them like he’s admitting to a secret. The tip of his nose bumps up against Olruggio’s. “Won’t you do that for me, Olly? Please.” He’s breathless, when he repeats, “Wait for me?”
And Olruggio, despairing, not quite present in the sensations of his body, succumbs. If he were a better man…but he’s not. He’s not. He closes his eyes first, a meaningless defense, and nods. The hand on the nap of his neck spasms, tightens.
When he opens his eyes again, the vibrant blue of Qifrey’s eye is crinkling in a fragile not-smile. “Thank you,” he says, like a trickle of warmth down Olruggio’s spine, and then his gaze flickers down to his own clamped hand on Olruggio’s face as if seeing it for the first time. Olruggio can’t help his indrawn breath, the way his lips part against the skin, calluses enticingly rough. The shift in tension seems to occur to both of them at once.
Olruggio sees it, the minute flinch, the moment that Qifrey is going to pull away. Like hell. Like fucking hell. In an instinct of pure insanity, he grabs at Qifrey’s hand before it can retreat and holds it still. “Don’t,” he says, lips moving against Qifrey’s skin, voice gruff and insensible, “I’ll ask again. You know I will.”
There’s a fragility in the air, the warm light of their spellcasting setting the whole room in soft, sepia tones, despite the howling winds outside. The dregs of their argument squelch, ugly, blackening the corners of the room. Somewhere in between half-spoken truths and Qifrey holding him and silencing him both, a dreamlike quality has fallen over Olruggio’s perception, like this is a fairytale he half-remembers.
He never liked fairytales. Too many tragic endings.
It takes too long, within the comforting silence, for Olruggio to see the unnatural stiffness in Qifrey’s limbs or the curled-in, protective hunch of his shoulders. He’s looking at Olruggio with something unnamable and wretched in his gaze. Guilt, maybe, or pity. It takes too long, but once Olruggio notices, and cannot unsee. The familiar embarrassment is like a douse of cold water.
His foolish, hopeful heart. He thinks bitterly, ‘Wait for me.’ Qifrey, what the hell was I supposed to think? and then is immediately ashamed. Not Qifrey’s fault, the mess of Olruggio’s heart. Qifrey has placed in him his life, his home, his teaching, even his fucking kitchen. Abundance. Olruggio should be satisfied. He is satisfied.
Goddamnit, he knew better.
He releases Qifrey’s hand and makes to turn away, wishing and wanting and tired, when Qifrey grabs his jaw with bruising force and kisses him.
In the moments of weakness when Olruggio had allowed himself to fantasize, this plays out as gentle. They bloom for each other. They are twin stars, illuminating each other’s magic and art, their bodies and souls.
This, instead, is a collision, violent and desperate. Qifrey pulls Olruggio close with frantic, clawing hands. He tugs at his hair, puts his tongue in his mouth, reaches down and squeezes his ass.
“Olruggio,” he says, between biting his lower lip until it stings and trying unsuccessfully to shove a hand under his belt, “Olly, please, yes, I’m sorry. Olly.” He’s everywhere, a writhing, wanton creature, and all Olruggio can do is hold on, steady, and try to be what Qifrey needs.
Qifrey mouth is open and hot against his, even as he pushes Olruggio backwards towards his bed. The night’s unreal quality is back, Olruggio’s perception torn asunder by the solidity of the body before him. When Qifrey pushes him down, he is shocked to see a manic smile dancing across his face.
The image of Qifrey standing over him, panting like he’d just run a marathon, eye wild and glasses askew, grinning, will remain clear in Olruggio’s memory for the rest of his life.
The damn pallet is harder than it looks. Just as Olruggio shifts – didn’t Qifrey have pillows? – any discomfort ceases to matter in the wake of Qifrey crawling into his lap. “What do you need, Olly?” he asks, and nuzzles Olruggio’s ear, nips at his earlobe, at the corner of his jaw, and this doesn’t seem real, nothing seems real. “Let me make you feel good.” Fingers find the clasp of Olruggio’s cloak, and it falls to the bed behind them.
Belatedly, Olruggio raises his hands from their tentative placement on Qifrey’s hips, running over the water-proof smoothness of his shirt, touching the strength of his chest and shoulders. He feels like he’s grasping at something impossible, mist in the air. He looks up to see Qifrey watching his movements like a predator, a hawk who caught sight of some small, crawling meal. That’s too much to think about so instead, concentrating, he leans forward to kiss Qifrey again, a small noise coming, embarrassingly, from the back of his own throat. He finds the clasp at Qifrey’s collar, ducks to place a kiss where the black fabric runs into skin and begins to unweave the leather there. His fingers dance across Qifrey’s neck (his neck!) caressing the skin each strip unveils, taking his time enough that Qifrey eventually bats his hands away and perfunctorily finish the task on his own.
The exposed throat is smooth and pale and beautiful, and Olruggio has to take a moment to just breathe. He’s seen Qifrey without his collar before, but here, now…Olruggio needs to bite that patch of skin, he needs to, but when he leans forward to do so Qifrey strokes his up neck, and quick as a quadryphon, grasps his hair, holding him fast. He can’t help the low needy whine that startles out of him. He stays where Qifrey puts him.
Qifrey’s voice is oddly intense, low and serious, as he murmurs, “Olruggio, I need you to answer when I ask you a question.” There’s a quality to the sentence Olruggio is long familiar with, firm and demanding, unwavering in the assumption Olruggio will fall into step beside him. Every great change in Olruggio’s life has been precipitated by that voice, every great joy.
At Olruggio’s slurred, “Wha-”, Qifrey repeats, with the long-practiced patience of a teacher, “What do you need? Tell me.” Which seems, frankly, hypocritical.
To his hindbrain’s great dismay, it’s the hypocrisy which betrays to Olruggio how oddly the situation is playing out. Even now, there’s a tense quality to Qifrey’s tone, and when he looks up to meet his eye, the familiar detachment is back at the fore. This, more than anything, stops Olruggio cold, brings him crashing back down into his body.
Why this is the moment his brain decides to conceptualize the weight of Qifrey’s ass on his dick he couldn’t say, but it probably has something to do with being put on this world to suffer.
“I…” he says, searching Qifrey’s face as if he might find an answer there, as if he ever does. He can see the scar just peeking out from under the soft, silver fringe. “I just want you to feel good.” It comes out strangely, like a confession. Qifrey looks at him, and hums low, not quite an answer. Olruggio wonders what he sees when he looks at him, aware, suddenly, of the softness in his body and the bags under his eyes, the winding burn scars and the scruff. His chest feels hot and tight.
He doesn’t want to ask. It feels like inviting the shattering of glassware, something handmade and beautiful slipping through his fingers.
But he’s always been good at saying things he doesn’t want to say.
“Qifrey, sweetheart. Do you want this?” The endearment slips out without his permission, and he regrets it immediately when Qifrey’s hand falls away from his head. There’s a strange calculation in Qifrey’s face, and Olruggio sighs, shuffles, and huffs out a self-conscious breath. “We should probably talk a little. Let’s slow-” but he doesn’t finish before Qifrey says:
“No. Yes. Don’t do that Olly.”
The bundle of wrongness doesn’t go away. Olruggio shifts, again, and why is the bed so damn hard? He inhales, intending to dig, when Qifrey puts a thumb to his mouth with smooth, intentional inertia. He chokes a little – he should have known Qifrey would be a menace about this – before the thumb dips between his lips, presses down lightly on the tip of his tongue. Qifrey inhales, mouth parting, and licks his lips.
There’s a feeling of vertigo in Olruggio’s chest. He knows he should harp, knows what it means that Qifrey won’t let him. His heart feels like it’s breaking, like it’s been breaking, because he also knows that in his selfishness he’s going to play his part on Qifrey’s stage. He’ll accept whatever Qifrey deigns to give him with grasping, greedy hands. He always has.
He wishes, desperately, for that sweetness he’d imagined, and then lets his wishing go.
“You should take better care of yourself, Olly,” Qifrey purrs, arching forward to brush up against, his ear, intentional, theatrical, and diverting, “But if you really don’t know what you want, then let me take charge for a bit, okay? Can you do that for me? Can you trust me?”
Two fingers replace Qifrey’s thumb, hinging his jaw open, and Olruggio closes his eyes, yet again, and nods with them in his mouth. Like all his trust in Qifrey, it hurts. It burns.
His eyes stay closed, his mouth stays open, when Qifrey embraces him. It’s an intentional movement, languid, with a slow roll of Qifrey’s hips that resparks Olruggio’s flagging interest. There’s a moment of Qifrey just holding that’s really rather nice. In parts, Olruggio finds the scattered bits and pieces of himself and slots them back into his shape. Qifrey sighs against his shoulder, a soft, broken sound.
When Qifrey digs his knuckles into the tense muscles of Olruggio’s neck, punctuating the sensation with another slow roll of his hips, Olruggio groans in earnest. Methodical pressure rubs away the tension of his upper and lower back, rhythmic with the luxurious friction of Qifrey’s ass grinding down on his cock.
He finds himself unwinding, sinking into Qifrey. When his head falls onto Qifrey’s shoulder he receives a pleased hum and skritches at the base of his neck. “Good, Olly, that’s it. Relax.”
After some time: “This is closer, isn’t it?” and there’s a strange vulnerability to Qifrey’s voice. Fingers press into the ridges beneath his shoulder blades, kneading. “I know you like to start from the beginning. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Iz okay,” Olruggio manages, turning his head further into the bare skin of Qifrey’s neck and inhaling. He smells of sweat and herbs, growing things. “It was fun,” he whispers, and is rewarded by Qifrey’s chuckle rumbling through his chest.
“Mmm,” there’s a smile, and Qifrey reaches down between them, and palms at the tent in Olruggio’s skirts. The burst of pleasure is so sharp as to be unbearable, and Olruggio gasps at the intensity and trembles in Qifrey’s arms. The professorial tone is back, a light, airy cadence with a hint of theatrics and wicked humor. Olruggio, knowing the shape of this mask, can’t find it within himself to be anything other than comforted by it. “…There are far too many layers. Lay back, will you Olly?”
Olruggio does so, shoving his cloak aside, as Qifrey stands again, and, with a smug smile in his direction, undoes the ties to his skirts and braies to let them puddle around his feet. His legs are long and shapely, his cock, nestled in a bed of white curls, thin and elegant. And even though Olruggio knew this already, has seen Qifrey naked many times, he’s never been invited to look before. Desire and anxiety mix together, and he feels hot, lustful, and hyperaware of the humanness of himself, the hairiness of his body. Qifrey is ethereal, all ropy musculature and elongated limbs, a bit of moonlight tricked into human shape.
Then Olruggio’s lower back, newly relaxed and malleable, twinges at the hardness of the pallet beneath him, the general sparsity of comfort. He grunts, “Stars, Qifrey, have you never heard of a mattress?”
Instead of answering, Qifrey climbs over him, shoves his skirts up above his waist (Olruggio magnanimously helps to gather them) and starts on the ties of Olruggio’s braies. “Reach into the side table, if you please, and hand me the oil and notebook there.”
Olruggio wiggles to do as he’s asked, eyes the notebook with suspicion, and sets the materials beside him on the bed. He says, “Y’know, I might’ve guessed you’d like bossing me around here too.”
Qifrey swats at his leg, a brief sting that has no right to make Olruggio feel as untethered as it does. He says, not quite playful, “Like I wouldn’t do anything you ask,” which sets Olruggio back in this night enough to be extremely annoyed at the blatant lie.
‘Anything but tell me the truth,’ Olruggio thinks, a thought that would probably kill the hard-won mood dead if said aloud. Since he would rather self-immolate than do so, he settles for pinching the closest part of Qifrey he can reach, which happens to be his shoulder.
Qifrey kneels up between his thighs, at that, and laughs at him even as Olruggio generously assists with the layers problem by kicking and wiggling until he’s free of his undergarments. “Really, Olly,” he censures fondly, humor all through his voice, and he picks up the spellbook. Where he produced a pen from, Olruggio could hardly guess.
“Done this often, have you?” he asks, and is briefly horrified by the real undercurrent of jealousy marring his voice. He didn’t have any claim on Qifrey before this, still doesn’t really, and what the man draws spells for in his free time is not any business of his.
Qifrey’s calm smile reasserts itself with barely a flicker. He replies, mild, “Maybe I just had someone in mind,” and before Olruggio can process that at all, with the elegant flair of a master spellcaster, Qifrey closes a circle.
Thin cords – and they must be water, Olruggio notes with interest, though they feel dry and comfortingly warm – start winding around him, securing his hands above his head, forcing his knees apart and putting all the dark wiry hairs of his crotch on display. Two cords tie up his skirts, which is when Olruggio really starts to gasp. That cheeky touch was drawn with a specific outfit in mind.
Qifrey smiles at him, something gentle in his gaze, and whispers, “Beautiful, Olly.” He carefully folds his glasses, puts them on the bedside table, and then lowers the whole long length of his body down onto Olruggio like an attempt to touch everything at once. Olruggio, held open, feels Qifrey’s cock press against his own, light and unguided. He moans at that brief sensation, and finds his open mouth caressed with the pad of an ink-stained fingertip, and then Qifrey finally, finally kisses him again.
It’s slower this time, with a precise focus that’s so intimately Qifrey that for the first time this whole, wretched night feels real. When he’s not throwing himself at Olruggio like he’s the last pocket of air for a drowning man, Qifrey kisses him with artistry, a scholarly exploration. He nips and tugs at his lips as an experiment, fingers flick over one of his nipples like a conclusion. Qifrey finds the padded love-handles of Olruggio’s hips, pushes a hand through the hair on his chest and navel, fingers the bead of precum on the head of his cock.
When Olruggio tries to chase after him, even in the limits of his confines, Qifrey holds him down with an easy, thoughtless strength. “I’m going to cast another spell,” Qifrey says, and then, an afterthought, “Can I-?”
“Do what you want with me,” rasps Olruggio, and begs, “Please Qifrey. Qifrey. I need…”
“Shh, shh, I know, love,” Qifrey says, and Olruggio loses words, loses sight of everything but the man in front of him, the quiet, focused expression on his face. He feels the deep-rooted urge to worship. He feels, absurdly, like bursting into tears.
Another scratch of a spell, and darkness falls over his vision, a physical sensation, soft like the knitted things Qifrey sometimes makes. The wind, still howling at the window, fades into silence. Then there is nothing. Nothing at all, until Qifrey kisses the inseam of his hip and thigh, and the sensation is so loud that he groans with it, broken and vulgar.
His next few minutes are an education. Qifrey’s touches, Qifrey’s panting, Qifrey’s clever fingers on his thighs, his hips, his cock. In the silence, each touch lights him on fire. “Needy, Olly,” taunts a whisper in his ear when Qifrey cups his hand over his balls and kisses the length of him. “So desperate for me,” which is when Olruggio decides to enjoy the rest of his life in insanity, for he will never again be sane.
Qifrey plays with him, touches and tempts and teases until Olruggio is so hard it hurts. He writhes in time with the sensations, moaning, pliant in Qifrey’s hands. When Qifrey tugs him a little too hard, strokes his hand down Olruggio’s throat, he starts to unravel, all his carefully placed pieces falling apart all over again. “Qifrey, please,” he whispers, and isn’t sure what he’s begging for, “Qifrey, I, I can’t.”
“You can,” says Qifrey, everywhere and nowhere all at once. “Just a little longer,” and he pinches Olruggio’s nipple and twists. Starbursts of pain. Olruggio gasps, arches, feels tears begin to gather at the corners of his eyes.
Qifrey’s thumb smears through the gathering moisture, presses it into the center of his throat, saltwater on skin. Everything is sensation, everything, and he can’t process, can’t see, can’t even see Qifrey’s minute calculations, that true constant, in all of this sensation. He’s held down, held back, experiencing everything on Qifrey’s terms alone.
He breaks.
Every piece of tension, every thought, worry, fear, floats out of him. He settles, stays, breathes deep, and hears Qifrey go, “There. That’s it, Olly. My Olly.” And, ludicrously, “Thank you.”
Strong hands are on his chest. There is tight warmth, and fingers, and Qifrey begins to sink, slowly, onto Olruggio’s cock. When had he prepped? Olruggio tries to grasp at the worry, heightened to reality briefly by a pained grunt. He mumbles, slurring, “Qifrey you can’t just…did you?” He feels the oil, dripping, but Qifrey is tight, so tight and hot and squeezing. “– ah – AH.”
It’s important, he thinks, floating out of his head. He wants Qifrey to enjoy this. He tries to pull himself back down. Starts, “Qi- Qifrey,” and then both of Qifrey’s hands press down over his mouth, and Qifrey begins to pump himself, slowly, on Olruggio’s cock.
The pleasure is everything, everywhere, all that is left in his feeble attempt at existence. Qifrey knows him, owns him, and is delivering unto him a mindless contentment unlike anything he’s felt before in all his wretched life.
He can hear Qifrey’s ragged breathing, and he’s spasming on Olruggio’s cock, tightening and clenching and shaking all down his thighs. He reaches to Olruggio’s cheek, comforts, “You’re here. You’re here, Olly. Stay with me,” and then, “Oh goodness!” which is so familiar, so fundamentally Qifrey, that Olruggio comes.
--
Somehow, despite everything, Olruggio didn’t expect Qifrey to let him stay the night.
Qifrey’s gentle with him, in the aftermath. He undoes the spells carefully, caresses sensation back into his skin, cleans up their mess. His fingers move soothingly through Olruggio’s hair and beard until he returns to himself, piece by piece.
He lets Olruggio curl up with his head in his lap, lets him clutch his hand. He’s rustled up a blanket at some point, apparently content to sleep without one, like a psychopath, but unwilling to let Olruggio do so. He tucks Olruggio into it with focused care.
Olruggio waits and waits, dreading, counting down these peaceful moments all the way until he falls asleep with his head in Qifrey’s lap.
--
Olruggio wakes up in the middle of the night to find Qifrey staring down at him like he’s committing him to memory. The black tassel of his white witch’s hat, Olruggio’s tassel, passes hypnotically through his fingers. There’s a dreamlike quality to the air as the black silk winds in a complicated knot, loosens, lets go. Over and over and over. Olruggio’s not sure Qifrey realizes that he’s awake. At one point Qifrey puts a hand in his hair, gentle, then removes it again when Olruggio sighs.
The wind had died down at some point during the night. Eventually, Olruggio falls back asleep.
In the morning he wakes up, stiff-backed and alone. There it is, he thinks, and goes to find Qifrey.
--
Qifrey’s cooking, of course, and when he turns around to face Olruggio his smile is as bright as the midmorning sun, shining. “Rest well?” he asks, and Olruggio can’t deal with this right now, so he simply goes to steal whatever heavenly smell is coming from the cast-iron and settles at the table with a sigh.
“The girls?” he asks, after devouring what’s in front of him in record time.
“Out at a picnic,” Qifrey says, and sits across from him, skirts flowing. “I’m sure they’re cooking up something dreadful by now.”
Olruggio nods.
Qifrey says, “A couple of requests for you came by this morning. I’ve taken the liberty of putting them in your workshop.”
Olruggio nods, again, staring at the dregs on his plate.
Then: “Coco’s getting better at incorporating the wind and air seals into her inventions. She showed me this morning. I’m very glad! She sees possibilities in the ink that even you or I haven’t thought of. She’s going to be a great witch someday.”
Olruggio sighs. Closes his eyes. Opens them. Looks at Qifrey.
“Tell me it wasn’t real.” There’s a hoarseness to his voice. His lips are red and swollen. There’re hickeys all along his chest, and his heart feels full to bursting, dread and love and something unnamable all mixed together. The skirts did their best to hide it, but Qifrey was limping when he walked.
The silence stretches, an answer in itself.
Olruggio nods, again, processing, trying to make sense of the whole, awful thing. “But you don’t want to do it again,” he says, following the line, trying to work it out like it’s a puzzle, a client. If he gets too close he’ll break again.
The brushbuddy hops onto the table, chitters, and Qifrey, gingerly, reaches out to put a hand in its fur. It circles, tries to settle, and then chitters at Qifrey again, before jumping off the table and going who-knows-where. Qifrey says, “I’m sorry.”
The worst part, Olruggio reflects, is that he’d known. Foolish man. He cannot catch someone who doesn’t wish to be caged. Love is free. His voice is quieter than he’d like when he says, “Can I ask why, at least?”
A bird is chirping outside, some fragile, beautiful song. It’s a long time before Qifrey answers, just enough for Olruggio to edge truly into gloom, but eventually Qifrey does. He does. He says, with strange detachment, “I’m not ready yet. I can’t give you anything else, anything more, anything,” a sigh, “Anything you deserve. I’m too…broken, I suppose.” He reaches out, grabs Olruggio’s hand from across the table. Olruggio lets him.
“Will you let that twisted, lovely night be ours? We can hold it, together, while we wait.”
There is only ever one choice, in this, for Olruggio. He squeezes Qifrey’s hand and he stays.
--
“I know I said I would drop it,” he says a few days later, clearing up the plates after the girls go practice, “but in my defense, there were some extenuating circumstances.” He laughs, self-deprecatingly, and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I really do think we should talk, y’know, about whatever else it is you’re hiding.”
“Okay,” Qifrey says softly, an easy acceptance. He’s doing the dishes in the kitchen, turned away, the sun’s rays softening his sharp edges.
So at least something came out of it, Olruggio thinks. At least some future came out of it, maybe, in the end.