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Draped in a loose, light robe dyed a pleasant pale green, Auguste sits upon the low bench beside his bed and reaches up with his left hand to release his hair from the twist Ovinus put it in. It takes two tries to get his fingers to cooperate, but eventually he manages it, hair falling down his back in an inky cascade, thick enough that it's still a little damp from his bath, even with how carefully Ovinus squeezed the water out.
Then he waits, pushing his toes deeper into the thick, springy wool of the sheepskin beneath the bench at his bedside. The rest of his room is floored with wood, a costly show of status for the provincial administrator's family in a home that is otherwise no grander than any other. He keeps the floor well-covered around the bench to cushion and insulate his bare feet as he gets in and out of bed, and bare in the rest of the room so it's easier to traverse in his chair.
The arrangement of his room speaks to a careful balance. All of the furniture is far enough apart that he can easily maneuver in his chair, but close enough together that he can, if need be, make his way around without it. He can walk if he does it on his knees, but the way the ball of each of his hips rolls outwards makes him unsteady enough he doesn't like to without something to hold onto.
Beside his bed, the bench, placed perpendicular halfway down its length, facing the doorway. Against the wall just beyond the end of his bed, the vanity, with its little drawers and graceful, tree-like stands for his jewelry and adornments, his combs and his hairpins, and everything else an administrator's son might need to make a proper showing in public. Beside that, the wardrobe, tall and wide enough to fit a couple of good-sized men inside. Furniture for lounging fills in the gaps in the rest of the space; a sofa here, a high-backed chair there, all placed with great intention.
And then there are the shelves, climbing up every available bit of wall as high as Auguste can reach, filled with the fruits of a decade's painstaking, secret work.
Time becomes quickly formless for Auguste if it is not carefully kept, and in the dim, silvery light of the moon-lamp, he can't make out the face of his clock. Right now, he doesn't mind. He's still pleasantly warm from the bath, his stiff muscles as relaxed as they ever get, the low back of the bench a sufficient brace for his body's weight for now, and he knows Ovinus won't keep him waiting long enough for it to start to hurt. He is a punctual man, and he never takes long to finish his own ablutions.
As Auguste waits, he considers the following day, picking absently at the skin over his collarbone with his right thumb and forefinger as he does. It's the date of the month's second council meeting, so he ought to have Ovinus wake him just after the first blush of dawn, which comes earlier and earlier these days as the season waxes towards spring. That will give him time to eat, dress, and travel to the meeting hall early enough to establish himself in a prime spot. Those meetings, after all, are no less a part of his work.
A soft rattle draws his attention. The door to his bedroom, being deep within the private parts of the home as it is, consists of a thick, quilted leather curtain sandwiched between two made of intricately strung and patterned beads. From it emerges first the pale moon of Ovinus's face, then his square shoulders and the rest of his stocky body. His robe, belted loosely at the waist, offers an intriguing slice of his chest and belly up for view.
"Wake me up," Auguste says, before the thought slips away, "just after dawn." Unceremonious, but what need is there for ceremony between the two of them after so long?
"How far?" The shepherds on the northeastern shore of the Sweetwater Sea measure time from dawn to noon and then noon to dusk by fingerlengths between the sun and the horizon. Ovinus still slips into it in unguarded moments - never in public, never with anyone other than Auguste - although here in the winter town, with all the weight of the earth above them, there is no horizon, and time is kept with clockwork or reckoned by the color of the sun-lamps which reflect the light from above. "Thirty minutes, are you thinking?" He kneels behind Auguste and gathers up the fall of his hair.
"An hour," Auguste decides. The hall within which the city council meets is the same one in which the provincial administrator does business, so it's close by. "And I want the -" He reaches for the word and finds it gone, as he so often does, its absence marked only by the maddening sense that it shouldn't be. Frustrated, he draws a wobbly circle in the air with his left hand, as if he might summon the word from wherever it's gone. "Thing."
"Do you mean your little scribe?" Ovinus guesses. He brushes Auguste's hair carefully, in sections starting from the bottom, so gentle Auguste barely feels the pull of the comb's teeth.
"Yes. Remind me." His 'little scribe' is a box of finely carved wood, stone, and bone which unfolds into a machine to write down what it hears, and it weighs as much as a very small child - although not, Auguste supposes he must concede, as much as any of the flesh and blood scribes the council employs to keep its minutes. He has been given to understand, by the mage-artificer who he commissioned to make it, that the inner workings of spellcraft needed to turn sound into the movements of a mechanical arm such that those movements produce the legibly written form of the sounds in a specific orthography are complex enough it's quite a feat of craft that the thing isn't as large as a grown adult.
It would be simpler - to make no mention of how much less of Auguste's limited allowance it would cost - to use the council's own minutes, which any citizen can view at any time, provided they visit the archive. Auguste prefers to keep his own copies.
"Of course." There is no sound, for a moment, other than the whisper of the brush through Auguste's hair and across Ovinus's palm, and then Ovinus asks, "Two days ago, we didn't come home straightaway after your class, do you recall? There was still some light, and I believe some topic of the lesson was caught in your mind, so we went down the artificers' street."
"Mmhm," Auguste hums, just to show he's paying attention.
Whether or not those north shore shepherds speak at such length is not something he can say, having only known Ovinus closely, but it's the custom here, where a gracefully drawn-out and eloquent phrase has more worth than an entire string of the deepest abyssal green mussel shell beads. Ovinus has taken to it with the same studied effort with which he cultivates his southern accent. Listening to him is hardly unpleasant; his voice is deep and smooth and dark, like the glossy little stones of the beach above, tumbled perfectly round by the tide.
"As we walked, I told you about the salon I passed the time in during your lesson, if you recall?"
Auguste considers carefully. Ovinus is always off visiting cafes and salons and booksellers when he has the time, and he has a singular gift for sniffing out new ones. The sheer number of them has begun to seem improbable, even for a port city and province capitol, even for a mirrored city as extensive above as it is below, and the particulars of the location of each escape him sometimes.
This one, at least, was a recent discovery, so he knows it must down here in the winter town. Come spring and snowmelt, they'll all move back up to the summer town beneath the sky, and then it will truly be anyone else's guess where Ovinus's newest hole-in-the-wall spot is. Perhaps sometime back in ancient history, there were few enough people in the city that the winter town was kept dark and closed until the snow began to fall again, but they're long past that point now.
"Loon Park?" Then, drawing a mental line from the mage-school all the way to that little park, close enough to the butchers' block that it's not well-frequented nor nearly as well maintained as it ought to be, "Why were you over there?"
Ovinus laughs softly. "Do you know, you asked the same thing last time, too? I just wanted to stretch my legs, I suppose. The sun was very nice."
It was, Auguste remembers. It was the sort of day where the light was bright and hard, glinting off all the polished stone from which the winter town is carved, and the warmth of it on one's skin slaked that gnawing winter sun-thirst.
"But just so," Ovinus goes on, "that's the one. While I was there, I overheard that there was to be a poetry competition there tomorrow evening. Do you think you'll like to join me? It's roomy inside, and their doorways are wide." Which means: your chair can fit inside the building.
After a morning spent attending the council, awash in the tumult of questions, answers, speeches, sidebar conversations, and arguments, diligently watching and fixing the scroll of paper in the scribing machine with his stiff fingers, Auguste can't imagine he'll want to go anywhere but home.
He doesn't say so right away, though. Last week, he heard a group of students batting a new form back and forth on his way to class, one with a striking enough rhythm he slowed down until his chair was practically crawling rather than rolling so that he could listen a little longer. Attending an impromptu competition in a dockside salon gives him a better chance of hearing it again than trundling to and fro from his classes and hoping.
"If there's time. To come back and eat."
The first proper meal after breaking one's fast is supposed to be public, but that's another thing he simply won't have it in him to do after the meeting. As the spouse of the currently acting provincial administrator, Auguste's uncle is the first seat of the city council. Without a doubt, he'll spend the entire time not looking at Auguste even if some trick of etiquette requires they speak, and Auguste will have to spend the entire time pretending he doesn't notice. His capacity for the hot needle-prick of humiliation, well-exercised as it is, will be exceeded for a time.
"There ought to be," Ovinus says. The knuckles of his hand touch Auguste's back now, warm through the thin-spun fabric of the robe, and Auguste sighs softly through his nose. "No respectable poet would turn up in time for supper."
When he reaches the crown of Auguste's head, he puts the brush aside and neatly divides his hair for a braid. His fingers slide sweetly over Auguste's scalp, making every inch of skin tingle pleasantly halfway down to his elbows. The urge rises in Auguste to ask for more, but he keeps quiet. This, right now, is still business.
Ovinus plaits Auguste's hair half a dozen times, then leans in and presses his lips to the newly bared curve of Auguste's shoulder where it meets his neck. Only a brief kiss, but a clear promise: pleasure will come in time.
The braiding goes quicker than the brushing did, or perhaps it's only the sweet savor of anticipation building in Auguste's belly that makes it seem so. It's finished soon, and Ovinus nuzzles once more into his neck, closer and more firmly. His hands come up to cup Auguste's ribcage, fingertips sinking into the sides of his breasts, while his mouth lays a trail of hot, sucking kisses up the side of Auguste's neck and across his jaw.
Too eager now to wait, Auguste twists around as much as he can, angling to help their mouths meet. He reaches up to slide his hand into Ovinus's hair, far finer and fluffier than his own, at the same time as he presses his tongue into Ovinus's open, waiting mouth.
As if he were simply waiting for Auguste's permission all this time, Ovinus abandons any pretense of chaste and proper distance, surging forward to curl around Auguste, chest and belly firm against his back. His hands press boldly forwards as well, to cup and then appreciatively squeeze the pillowy heft of Auguste's breasts through his robe. One of them stays there to knead at that abundant, yielding flesh, while the other moves slowly down.
Auguste's awareness of his body is anchored at three points: the union of their mouths, the palm rubbing teasingly over his stiff nipple with every movement, and the fingertips trailing down along the soft curve of his stomach towards the junction of his thighs, leaving a pleasantly ticklish trail in their wake.
He leans back, letting Ovinus take his weight, and makes an open and inviting vee of his thighs by letting his left knee sprawl to the side. Those questing fingertips push through the thicket of his pubic hair only to stop just short of where he wants them, then skip sideways to curl, along with the whole palm of Ovinus's hand, into the flesh of his thigh.
Gently, Ovinus pulls his leg a little farther open, and holds it there. The cooler air of the room licks into the humid space between his legs and up against the slick, hot seam of his cunt, bringing him to exquisite awareness of how desperately wet he already is.
He breaks the kiss and takes a breath, flexing his thigh experimentally against Ovinus's grip, which doesn't move. An empty, clenching ache of almost-pleasure throbs up through him, belly to chest to throat.
"Tease," he accuses.
Ovinus chuckles, as if he has made a joke. "Sorry, little prince." He is utterly unapologetic, even as he presses a conciliatory kiss to Auguste's cheek. "If we keep on like this, you're going to stiffen up and undo all of my hard work, not to mention how my old bones can only take so much kneeling."
"Old," Auguste repeats scornfully. "You aren't forty yet."
"But once I am, then do I have leave to complain?" As Ovinus comes around the front of the bench, Auguste is gratified to see the beginnings of an erection peeking through the folds of his robe.
His belt isn't even tied, rather twisted together at his hip, and only just tightly enough to keep him decent on the walk from bath to bedroom. Auguste pulls it loose with ease. With a shrug, Ovinus sheds the robe as well, sending it to puddle on the floor with the belt, and stands casually naked before Auguste's inspection, all shadow and silver in the moon-lamp's pale light.
He is powerfully built, thick with muscle beneath a healthy padding of fat. He's not beautiful in the elegant way a man ought to be, not with how short and stout as he is, not with his hairy belly and his pale northern coloring, but there is no southern man he's ever seen who ignites the same hunger beneath his skin as Ovinus does.
Auguste puts his hand on Ovinus's hip, then slides it back to grab a greedy handful of his ass, which is as pleasingly solid and rounded as every other part of him. He pulls Ovinus in closer to him until they're nearly nose-to-belly, then ducks his head down to nuzzle first into the crook of Ovinus's hip, right at the edge of his thick bush of pubic hair, then at his half-hard cock.
"Oh," Ovinus breathes, his hands coming out to cup the backs of Auguste's shoulders and brace him, "yes, please."
As if Auguste needs to be begged to do this. As if he hasn't spent the past two weeks searching for any moment he might get his mouth on this man and feel that thick, stubby cock swell and stiffen between his lips. In that breathless plea is the knowledge that Ovinus, too, has felt that same frustration, no matter how much he likes to play the tease.
Not without some regret, he lets go of Ovinus's backside to curl his palm around his cock and hold it in place as he slides the wet, open seam of his mouth along its side. Root to tip, back down, back up again, then further down to lave and mouth at his balls, tight and full with arousal. He's drooling, but for once he's not embarrassed or excruciatingly conscious of what everyone else must think. Sex is best when it's messy, Ovinus said to him once, and on that point, they are in full agreement.
Ovinus's cock throbs as it hardens, a hot little animal with a racing pulse trapped between Auguste's lips and hand. Fresh from the bath, he tastes mostly of skin and soap, except for when Auguste tongues beneath his foreskin. There he's wet, and slippery, and tastes faintly metallic and almost sweet.
Auguste breathes a low moan, shifting his hips restlessly on the bench. If he could only unbend his right arm from where it's curled tightly - and uselessly - in against his chest, he could press that hand between his legs and rut himself against his own rigidly flexed fingers for some relief.
"And you have the - mm - gall to call me a tease," Ovinus says unsteadily. He is quiet when he takes his pleasure, with heavy breathing and soft noises that he swallows almost as soon as he makes them and murmured speech pitched low for Auguste's ears only.
Even when he's fully hard, Auguste can take Ovinus all the way into his mouth. He thinks about doing that, lets the thought blossom into a vision - Ovinus holding him steady by the shoulders as he sucks, or perhaps holding his head in place to fuck his mouth, his grip so carefully gentle even as he trembles with the restraint it takes, even as he tenses in approaching climax and Auguste can tell how badly he wants to simply ravish Auguste's throat with abandon, and finally the caught breath, the pulsing of his cock, the hot and briny spill of his seed across Auguste's tongue.
And after, Ovinus might get back down on his knees, put Auguste's legs over his shoulders, and return the favor. Or perhaps he would sit beside Auguste on the bench and kiss him while he uses those clever, dextrous fingers of his to tease an orgasm out of Auguste. Both, Auguste knows, are perfectly lovely ways to carry out a tryst, but neither is what he wants right now.
He presses one last kiss upon the leaking tip of Ovinus's cock, then pulls back. "Fuck me."
"As you wish," Ovinus says, "little prince. Come here." He bends, allowing Auguste to loop his arm over his shoulders while he slides his hands beneath Auguste's thighs. "Ready?"
Auguste is not fourteen anymore, and he's hardly little. Toe to crown, he's a handspan taller than Ovinus, and if he isn't as heavy, it's for lack of muscle, not mass. Still, Ovinus lifts him smoothly and with little apparent effort.
Strictly speaking, it's not necessary. Auguste can and usually does get himself in and out of bed. He knows Ovinus enjoys these quiet shows of strength, though, as well as how pliant Auguste becomes for him during them, and Auguste likes it as well, this giddy swoop in his belly that is not fear, though he's very aware of the distance to the floor.
In the summer house, his bed is a beautifully carved box of wood with finely woven netting for the hottest nights, the sort where he would drown in sweat if he didn't keep both sides open for a cross-breeze. Down here in the winter house, it's a deep nook carved into the wall, with a single sliding wooden door.
He is set on the edge of the thick, firm mattress, then bidden to lay back. He takes a moment to extricate himself from his own robe - shrugging it off his left shoulder and then carefully maneuvering his right arm through the generously-sized sleeve - before it becomes an annoyance, then does as he's told. It's his turn, now, to be laid out for inspection.
Auguste does not typically like to be stared at, although it happens often enough that he's had to grow a callus over his awareness of it. Beneath Ovinus's gaze, though, there is nothing of him held back, no tender part shielded from view. He's soft and naked and as unafraid as he was, just a moment prior, of being dropped.
People have often said he could almost be beautiful. When you sit for your portrait, his cousin said to him once, after his aunt finally sat for hers, you should tell them to paint you in profile, because you're perfectly lovely from the left, but from the right, you look like a dead spider. She folded her arm in against her chest like Auguste's was, with no particular malice in her face or her tone. It hurt, because he was still adjusting himself to how little range of motion he had left in that elbow or shoulder or any of the little joints of those fingers compared to before, but he appreciated her for saying it plainly to his face.
Before: his parents died or the awful, empty year that followed which he barely recalls, during which he wouldn't let his aunt or uncle touch him, wouldn't do any of his exercises, and hardly even ate because he was so full with the absence of his old life. Before Ovinus.
When Ovinus looks at him, his eyes so dark and intense that the weight of his gaze feels like being touched, Auguste does not feel almost beautiful.
Ovinus steps up close, holding him just above the knees with his legs nearly as far apart as they can each comfortably go, a boundary Ovinus is well aware of. His cock prods into the inside of Auguste's thigh, pulling Auguste forcibly from his thoughts and back to the present. "Will you touch yourself for me?"
"I want you to touch me," Auguste says, even as he begins to draw his fingers slowly, haltingly down between his breasts and over his belly.
"I will." He says it quietly, despite how thick the stone is between this room and the one on the other side of the bed wall, which is his own in any case and not occupied by any listeners-in, but with an edge. "I would like to watch you do it first."
They've had this conversation before. It's very nearly the first one; not ever, not by some years, but the first one held like this, each quiet word like a caress of breath against the skin. The first one as lovers.
Back then, Auguste was as shy as he was eager and wholly inexperienced, but he's learned a lot in the intervening years. He knows, now, how to make a show of himself, so when his hand comes between his legs, he doesn't slip a finger past his lips to rub away the needy ache in his clit, but cups himself in his palm, then parts his fingers to spread his cunt open. Lower down, to begin with, so Ovinus can see in the dim, cool light just how wet he is, how ready. Look what you've done. He presses his middle two fingers down into that wetness, then slides his whole hand up until he can work his newly slick fingertips slowly back and forth over his clit.
That very first proper touch where he's needed it for so long now makes him moan, high and stuttering. He bites his lip, knowing Ovinus will shush him if he's too loud, knowing Ovinus is right to, that even with the thicker walls of his winter bedroom they still need to be careful. The only noises he should allow himself are the little ones that come out more breath than sound and disappear into the space between them.
He tries to go slowly and to tease rather than immediately satisfy, but he is so suddenly dizzy and desperate with arousal that he can't stand it for long. He hasn't abstained from this for the last two weeks, but there is a greater urgency to it when he's being watched, with Ovinus's fingers flexing and shifting against the backs of his thighs and Ovinus's cock twitching now and then, smearing sticky wetness across his skin.
"How long do you plan to watch?" Auguste asks as steadily as he can manage. The very ragged edge of his composure is clenched between his teeth, and will not be for much longer. To try and draw it out, he shifts his hand so the tip of his clit slides between his two fingers, a vaguer and less direct stimulation.
"You're usually more patient than this," Ovinus says, which is only halfway true. In all other matters, Auguste is as patient as winter ice, but sex is one of the vanishingly few things he can simply demand when and how he wants it.
For the most part, anyway. "Two weeks," he reminds Ovinus. Two weeks of Ovinus helping him dress and putting up his hair each morning, massaging out all of his stiffness each night before kneeling to wash his feet and legs and back for him in the bath, every careful professional touch sparking a hundred bodily memories of being squeezed and pinched and groped, of that carefully proper mouth on his neck or his breasts or his thighs, whispering sweet obscenities to him.
Sometimes, the distance between what he gets with Ovinus and what he wants is the most maddening of all, because it's so small. Sometimes, the fact that he cannot even bed the man he loves without worrying who might find out is such a sharp humiliation it makes him sick.
"I'm caring for you well indeed, if that's your idea of a dry spell." Light and teasing, as if Ovinus isn't watching Auguste pleasure himself like he can't look away, as if his cock isn't dripping all over Auguste's leg just from the sight. As if laying Auguste out on the floor to guide him through his stretches each day doesn't make him think of anything else, and as if he has kept his attentions strictly proper during those moments these past two weeks. "Do you fear I'll leave you wanting, little prince?"
"You haven't," Auguste starts, and has to bite down hard on his lip and stop moving his fingers entirely to keep from tipping over the edge right then. That low, throaty tone from Ovinus, so heavy with promise it almost feels like a threat, is like fresh oil upon the bonfire of his need. His cunt clenches once, hard, and stays so tight he's afraid for a long moment that he didn't stop soon enough. He hardly breathes until the tension ebbs back from its peak. "Touched me. Yet."
"Two climaxes is -" a catch in his breath, a wobble in his voice, so brief no one who doesn't know him as well as Auguste would notice how it gives the lie to his pretense of patience - "is fair recompense for two weeks without, wouldn't you say? Go ahead and let yourself have this one now, and I promise you the next one will be on my cock. Go ahead."
Even if he wanted to disobey that gentle coaxing, and he certainly does not, Auguste is at the limit of self-denial. He closes his eyes, focusing on the warm bulk of Ovinus's body between his parted thighs, on the twinned sensations of his wet fingers sliding over his clit and his stiff, swollen clit pulsing beneath his fingers, and lets it happen.
It hits him like a wind-swept wave, shocking in its intensity. His whole body shudders and goes tight, and all the usual pain flares up everywhere his muscles were already too tense, and his hand begins to cramp, but he keeps rubbing at himself until it doesn't feel good any longer, just raw and over-sensitive. Then he rests his hand in the crook of his thigh, where it has its own intermittent aftershock spasms.
He opens his eyes and looks up at Ovinus, who stares back down at him with such naked hunger that it makes of him a raw and dripping morsel ready to be swallowed.
Ovinus bends over him, belly a hot, fuzzy stone pinning him in place, and plunders his waiting mouth. He kisses hard, fingers digging into Auguste's thighs until Auguste wonders giddily if he'll have bruises there tomorrow, where no one else can see but where he'll be able to feel them ache every time he shifts in his seat.
Finally, Ovinus is close enough to touch again in turn. Auguste first cups his round cheek, then the back of his head, and then lets his hand drift down to map the muscles and contours of that broad back. Over the flexed shoulder, down to the ridge of the scapula, over into the dip of the spine and then up. He digs his nails in all the way to the back of Ovinus's neck, all that solid muscle shivering above him. Pressed between Auguste's belly and hip, Ovinus's cock flexes like a muscle of its own.
Ovinus pulls only far enough away to mouth down along the soft line of Auguste's jaw and then his neck. "Thank you," he breathes into the crook of Auguste's shoulder. "You are a vision." He presses a kiss there, open and humid with just a hint of teeth.
Cautious as he is, Ovinus never risks biting Auguste where the marks might show. The mere reminder that he could, though, sparks to life the idea that he might, and Auguste's neck and chest and arms break out in tingling, ticklish gooseflesh.
This is one caution they don't have to share equally. No one looks askance at the idea that Ovinus might have a lover, so Auguste is free to scratch long, red lines down his back or suck livid bruises into his throat as it pleases him. It always does please him to see his own claim laid so boldly on Ovinus's skin, but it galls him too, unpredictably, to know that no one outside the two of them recognizes it.
Ovinus's grip on his thighs shifts. Anticipation swells in him that now might finally be the moment where Ovinus eases his legs further apart and positions himself between them to slide in and relieve him of his aching emptiness. But Ovinus only straightens up, the absence of his weight and warmth an emptiness of another sort, and says, "Sit up, now."
Auguste levers himself up on first one and then the other elbow until he can get his left hand beneath him to brace against the mattress. Once he's upright, Ovinus climbs onto the bed past him, stretching to grab and carefully rearrange the pillows. Even with the door open, the inside of the bed box is dim enough that he becomes a series of shapes and shadow: a brief and pale curve suggestive of his profile, his burly shoulders, the flexing of his broad back, the round and eminently grabbable shape of his ass, the shifting shadows between his thighs when he bends forward.
Never one to let an opportunity pass by, Auguste puts his hand just above the back of Ovinus's knee, then slides it slowly, haltingly up his thigh, until there's soft skin and wiry hair against his knuckles. He leans in and twists his wrist so he can cradle the tender weight of Ovinus's heavy balls, the nearly febrile heat of them against his palm making his skin tingle. They tighten under his touch, pulling up taut against Ovinus's body, so Auguste follows, boldly rubbing his thumb up and down over the flesh just behind them.
"Would you like it if one of these days I played the man of fine status," Ovinus asks, his voice catching briefly when Auguste presses with his thumb just so, "and you the servant, and I laid back for you to put my legs up?"
Auguste kneads steadily at that sensitive spot while he considers the idea of how best he would like Ovinus. "On your knees," he decides finally. "I like seeing you from behind." Kneeling, back arched, knees far enough apart to see the fine, fuzzy hair growing up his thighs and along the inner curve of his buttocks and to grant a shy glimpse of his hole between them, the firm bulge of his perineum exposed for Auguste to massage all the way down to his hanging balls and expectantly stiff cock: Ovinus makes a lovely vision like that, if not one Auguste sees very often.
"And that's just how I want to have you tonight, so I suppose it would only be fair." Ovinus sits up, having arranged the pillows to his satisfaction.
He turns slowly, so Auguste has time to settle his hand on his thick waist instead, and then catches Auguste up in a hungry kiss. His hands find Auguste's breasts right away, kneading at them with familiar desperation. Fair is fair, so Auguste grabs his ass again and digs his nails in, imagining as he does that they're his teeth.
By the time they pull apart, Auguste is dizzy, and reluctant to open his eyes to a world beyond Ovinus's mouth. That mouth - wet and parted lips, the peek of a wide tongue atop the bottom teeth - is all he can stand to look at, as Ovinus first breaks away.
"Come here now," Ovinus says, and Auguste is slowly able to swing his attention to - the pillows, yes, piled up into a careful fortification meant to buttress Auguste at his hips and chest and head so he can lay himself out comfortably.
His arm gives a couple of abortive, aimless jerks before he can push against the mattress, and for a moment, all his legs want to do is spasm and tremble. He lurches shortly to his knees and crosses the expanse of bed, glad for the relatively stable firmness of the mattress. There's not far to go before he can let the pillows take his weight and hold him, propped up and ready to be taken. So displayed, he fancies himself a sacrifice for some ancient ritual to summon fertile spring from back a thousand years before civilization.
Ovinus's weight shifts on the mattress practically as soon as Auguste is settled. First, he delicately lifts Auguste's braid off his back and out of the way, his hand only briefly brushing Auguste's skin as he does so. Then he takes Auguste by the waist and leans in to drop a series of soft kisses across his shoulders while he slots their hips together. At the first blunt press of his cock, Auguste rocks backwards, sighing out in sweet anticipation.
"I wish that you could see yourself like this," Ovinus murmurs against the nape of his neck. Both of his hands lift from Auguste's hips; one reappears between his legs, gently pulling the outer lips of his cunt apart, and then the head of his cock presses home against his slick, waiting entrance. "Breathe out."
As Auguste does, Ovinus pushes all the way into him with one quick, smooth motion. Every muscle in his pelvis clenches as he's breached, but he's relaxed enough from his earlier orgasm that it's not so painfully tight as it might be. He breathes in and slowly out again, willing himself to loosen, while Ovinus strokes his sides - the fingers of one hand slightly sticky - and whispers against his skin about how wet he is and how good he feels inside.
Despite the desperate edge to his voice, Ovinus stays patiently still until Auguste's taut muscles finally loosen. "There you go," he coos, and with one final kiss, he straightens up, holding Auguste by the hips once more, and begins to move.
He gives Auguste the space of three slow strokes all the way in and out to adjust, and then his patience reaches its end. They've done this often enough that he knows exactly what Auguste can handle. He knows, too, that Auguste likes it hard and fast, likes to be held in place while Ovinus's hips snap against his raised ass so there's no jolting forward away from it, likes having his cunt hammered open again and again by Ovinus's thick little cock.
He must know by now that Auguste wants it to ache all the next day. He certainly fucks him like it.
Pleasure is an infrequent and fleeting enough visitor that Auguste simply dissolves into it like each time is the very first. Under such a relentless onslaught of sensation as this one, conscious control of his body all but leaves him; Auguste is a collection of loosely connected limbs, squirming and twitching, unable to do much more than sag into the pillows and muffle his moans against his forearm as he takes what he's given. The wet, obscene clap of their bodies meeting fills the box of the bed, punctuated by Ovinus's bellows breathing and the bitten-off grunts he barely lets leave his throat.
Were it summer, Ovinus would have to fuck him far more gently. He rarely fucks Auguste at all, in fact, during those hot and languid months up there where the wooden bedbox creaks with all but the slightest of movements. They lay beside each other and use their hands, instead, or take turns with their mouths, so that by the first snowfall he's all but forgotten how it feels to be filled, and then Ovinus spends the whole long winter reminding him.
"Oh, you're - so - lovely," Ovinus pants above him, hot breath stirring the fine hair at the back of his neck. "You - fit me - so well." As he speaks, he insinuates his hand between Auguste's belly and the bulwark of pillows, fingers teasing through the wet curls of his pubic hair. He runs his fingertips along the taut rim where Auguste is stretched around him, then drags them back down between the slick press of his lips to his swollen clit.
Auguste gives a sharp, stuttering gasp, shuddering hard all over, and squeezes so tightly around Ovinus that for a moment he can't tell which of the two pounding pulses he feels is his own.
Once more, Ovinus is obliged to stop, although his fingers thankfully don't flag in their steady rubbing. Each fresh, convulsive spasm of Auguste's cunt pulls a brief, breathy sound from him, and occasionally an answering throb of his cock as well. "I could - mmh - find my finish just like this. You truly have needed - needed it very badly, haven't you?"
Yes, Auguste wants to cry up to him, yes, my skin has needed yours against it like it needs the sun, I have ached so maddeningly for you that it's been at times all that I can think about, and it has been far too fucking long since I've been able to have you; what comes from his open mouth is instead a hoarse and clotted moan without words or form. Were he in Ovinus's lap, he might be able to sink his teeth into a nearby shoulder or bicep and express much the same thing, but as it is, the only arm he can bite is his own, and he can't risk losing control and leaving a suspiciously shaped bruise in such a highly visible place.
In lieu of anything else, he grabs a fistful of the pillow beneath his left hand, while the thumb and forefinger pinch spasmodically at a generous fold of his chest, just under his collarbone. A mark there, at least, won't raise any eyebrows, given how constantly he pulls and pinches and picks at the little patch of skin those fingers can reach.
"Relax, then," Ovinus says, stroking his flank with a palm as tender as his tone, "and let me give it to you." By slow increments, Auguste does, until the clenched fist of his cunt has loosened enough that Ovinus asks, "Ready?"
"Yuhhh," Auguste manages. It's enough for Ovinus to put hand back to hip, bracing him in place as he picks back up the rhythm of his thrusting. Not so quickly as before, but in combination with what his other hand is doing between Auguste's thighs, the hot tension crests in Auguste like a wave, higher and higher and higher. Each second feels like the next ought to bring him to the wave's peak, but it climbs as he does, continually just out of his reach.
"There - mm - there you go, there you are." In the darkness behind Auguste's eyes, Ovinus's low voice drapes over him as if it were a well-worn blanket. Beneath their comforting warmth, he surrenders his weight even more to the pillows beneath him."There's my - perfect prince - and his - his lovely - needful - grasping - perfect - perfect cunt - opening up so - so sweet - just for me -" As he speaks, he takes up the coiled end of Auguste's braid from the bed and wraps it around and around his hand until it's just taut enough - not so much that it risks wrenching Auguste's neck, but enough so to tug at his scalp.
A polite and proper man, Ovinus rarely swears, even when they're alone. He chooses his moments carefully, and they're often like this one, where he knows that hearing how his smooth, deep voice caresses the word cunt will stoke Auguste's need nearly as high as having his hair pulled does. More than either of those exquisite pleasures, though, what drives Auguste wildest is knowing that it's Ovinus's aim to make him finish faster. That he's close as well, just as he said, and hoping not to make a liar of himself after promising Auguste an orgasm on his cock, so he's using every little trick in his repertoire to propel Auguste to his peak first.
It works, of course. Even should he wish to, Auguste can hardly resist such expert manipulations. His previous orgasm this evening was sharp and sudden, but this one comes over him like the steadily higher-lapping tide, gentle at first but utterly inexorable. The first warm fingers of it reach up and curl within the cradle of his pelvis as if to knead his cunt lightly from the inside, and there passes a luxurious span of time where he is suspended between the start of his climax and its inevitable finish, awash in a pleasure that feels like it can't ever end.
The tide climbs higher; that gentle hand tightens its grip; he turns his head to jam his open mouth more tightly against his forearm and muffle his cries as the pleasure washes over him. His cunt bears down so hard that even Ovinus's cock, velvety soft and delicate thing that it is even at its most roused, stiffened only by a surfeit of blood, becomes a bruising intrusion.
He's asked, before, if it hurts to be inside him when he comes. Yes, Ovinus said, but enjoyably so.
In his current state of mind, reduced to an animal body that wishes only to be rutted, Auguste hopes for his spasming to milk an orgasm from Ovinus as well. Not a thought is given to the hassle of making sure he doesn't fall inconveniently and tellingly pregnant afterwards, not when he's busy imagining the counterpoint pulse of Ovinus spilling inside him.
His pleasure hits its peak and begins to subside, but can't fully, because Ovinus's fingers are still working diligently over his clit. Quite quickly, it takes on a raw edge, painfully intense and then just painful. He still can't coordinate the movement of throat and tongue and lips enough to say stop or enough. With great effort, he extracts his arm from under his head so he can reach blindly back and push at whichever part of Ovinus his hand finds first.
Right away, Ovinus stops. He withdraws his hand from between Auguste's legs to take hold of his other hip, then pulls out, the drag of his cock making Auguste whimper as he does. There is distance between them for only a moment before Ovinus presses back in close, his cock settling between the slick-smeared lips of Auguste's cunt, threatening briefly to slip back in before he corrects his angle to be just a touch higher.
Having seen to Auguste just as he said he would, Ovinus is now free to selfishly chase his own pleasure. He drags Auguste back against him by the hips, fingertips sinking in deep, and humps at him without any rhythm save that of a man on the very edge of bliss.
"Ohh," he breathes, "oh, oh, Auguste -"
His seed spurts into the channel made by Auguste's buttocks, a distinct and delicious shock of wet heat before it drips down and mingles with Auguste's own fluids. He stills not long afterwards, breathing hard, leaning into Auguste as if Auguste is all that's keeping him upright. When he leaves, the unobstructed air of the room begins to chill the wet and sticky skin of Auguste's intimate parts.
Ovinus walks quietly, but Auguste can still track his progress through the room, both by how familiar this routine is and by the other sounds. The tap beside his vanity squeaks when it turns, and then there's the musical trickle of water, the long moment to let it warm up, and then silence until once more the mattress dips beneath another's weight and a damp cloth touches the back of Auguste's thigh.
Neither of them speaks while Ovinus cleans the mess of their lovemaking from Auguste, nor much afterwards while he wraps and buckles Auguste into his nightly assortment of braces and splints: both hips, both knees, only one ankle because the other can't be moved from its painfully fixed curve, and the harness that draws his shoulders back as straight and even as they'll go. He helps Auguste into a pair of his short sleeping pants, which are thick, soft, and cautiously absorbent, and sits in companionable silence on the edge of the bed while Auguste rearranges the pillows to his own particular liking.
At last, without needing to ask or be asked, he settles into bed behind Auguste, drawing him back to recline against his chest, a heavy and possessive arm draped over his waist, and begins to pet his belly. Sleep has been ever elusive for Auguste, but it comes almost easily when Ovinus holds him. He drifts pleasantly towards real slumber, secure in a comfort he hasn't felt since he was eleven years old.
Just as he's on the edge of unconsciousness, Ovinus carefully withdraws his arm and sits up.
Auguste swallows, trying to limber up the rusty muscles of his throat, and croaks, "Ovinus." Or near enough, anyway, that Ovinus stops moving.
"My apologies, little prince," he whispers. "I thought you were already asleep."
I know. "Stay. Please." If he asks, Ovinus will lay back down and pet him until he does truly fall asleep, so that each time he wakes in the night to an empty bed, he can imagine Ovinus merely stepped out for a drink of water or the privy, and will be there snoring gently beside him the next time. It's a kindness Ovinus often does him.
But that's not what he's asking right now, and they both know it. "Auguste," Ovinus says, so carefully that it makes Auguste want to scream. "You know I can't."
Say I had another one of my fits and you were afraid to leave me on my own for the night. Say my hip came loose from its socket once again and I needed you. He doesn't offer up either of those excuses. There are a hundred hundred of them Ovinus could make for spending the night in Auguste's room, and not a one would mean a thing if it got back to Auguste's aunt. It's her signature on Ovinus's contract, not Auguste's, and should even the faintest whisper of a rumor that the two of them are anything other than caretaker and patient ever reach her ears, she'll have Ovinus fired and on a ship sailing for the furthest shore of the sea before the day's end.
She would do it because she had to, or else people would begin to talk. They would recall, perhaps, the state of Auguste's deteroriation after just a year in her care, before she hired Ovinus, and they would wonder just how long she'd known what he was doing to her poor, stupid, helpless nephew, and though it wouldn't likely cost her the provincial administrator's seat, her credibility would suffer.
And she would do it to hurt Auguste, who she has always resented for surviving the accident that killed his parents.
He knows that every bit as well as Ovinus does. It's a truth so bitter he's like to choke on it, so sharp it cuts him to try to swallow, but swallow it he must.
"I know," he says, hating the catch in his voice. Years have passed since the last time he cried save for in the extremity of pain or sickness, and he isn't going to now, although it does briefly occur to him to wonder if Ovinus might stay if he did. Such petty playacting has no place between the two of them, so he shoves the thought aside, swallows his dignity - an ever-smaller throatful each time it goes down - and asks, "Until I fall asleep?"
"Of course." And there he is again, as warm and solid as if he'd never left, his palm and fingers drawing slow, soporific circles on Auguste's stomach. "I love you." This offered up in an almost conciliatory tone.
"Love you," Auguste echoes. He simply wishes it didn't have to hurt so much, that instead it was easy. His parents always made it seem easy, between their own example and the stories they told him.
A weariness suffuses him which has nothing at all to do with his earlier exertions. This life where he's had to learn to lie and twist the truth and obfuscate and hide is a skin he's long overdue to shed, but which he can't. If all goes well, then perhaps he'll be able to within the next handful of years, but that's of little comfort to him now, when he's unsure he can stand another second of it. Ovinus has overwhelmed the practiced numbness he tries to cultivate, as always, and left him too tender.
Some long minutes later, Ovinus quietly calls his name. Auguste is still not quite wholly asleep, but this time he neither speaks nor stirs. After a moment of expectant silence, Ovinus presses a kiss to his temple, then pulls away. His weight disappears from the bed, and then the curtains rattle as he ducks out into the hall, and Auguste says nothing.