Dentis 10, 2718 | Passive Dorms | Night
Obviously, the blond passive didn't want to be crying, not in front of this relative stranger, didn't want to appear weak and sort of ridiculous. Yes, he'd been through a lot tonight but plenty of passives went through some serious stuff but that didn't mean that they started bawling their eyes out.
The last thing that Fionn wanted was the other’s comfort. Touchy-feely stuff had never been his wheelhouse and given that he associated overly emotional behaviour with women, he’d never been keen to embrace it. Of course, he had been that little bit more emotional in the beginning during his early Brunnhold days, maybe because he’d had his sister to open up before that, someone who had allowed him to think that his emotions were reasonable and it was all right to acknowledge. It was the sort of thing that had made him sob so in the beginning and while there were plenty of things from those early days that were frankly a blank in his mind, there were some things that he seemed incapable of burying, some people.
Ayden.
Ayden had seen his tears and provided comfort, given Fionn the one thing he’d been starved of for so many years: attention, love, care. The irony that he had had to come to this place, to this horrible life to find such things wasn’t lost on him now, neither was the fact that it had all been twisted by ulterior motive. The older passive had been very good at playing people, finding their weak points so he could exploit them. He hadn’t had to use violence or threat but had used a softer, more subtle coercion. By the time he showed his true colours, ruining him and shattering his innocence into pieces that he had ground to dust in the succeeding period, Fionn had actually formed a dependence on him. It was the most warped thing imaginable but the young man had used the child’s impoverished emotional needs against him in disgusting and sinister fashion.
Once upon a time, he had gone to Ayden for comfort, even accepted it when the man had abused on one hand and made it up to him on the other. Since the older passive had been assigned elsewhere, the blond had not sought comfort from anyone in the intervening years. Certainly he’d engaged in various activities with others, had partners that he had actually enjoyed being with but he’d never been there emotionally. Had always kept them away from him as he did with everyone, except for the children. They were the only ones he cared about for they were him, what he’d lost, what he would likely have inevitably lost but perhaps not so young, not so cruelly. Everyone else, well... why should he even empathise with them?
And here was Lars fucking it all up, the young man left in the agonising position of being simultaneously attracted and repulsed. He wanted the closeness, that warm and gentle comfort that had been so rare over the course of his young life but he also didn’t want the pain again, didn’t need to risks and also didn’t want to impose himself on the older boy, no matter how briefly. What started as comfort could so easily escalate to something more, the association between comfort and sex permanently linked in his mind. It was impossible not to associate closeness with other thing, just as he associated his sexual relations with guilt and disgust and pain. If he went down that route then he could hurt Lars, something he wanted to avoid. The hurting might be mutual but even if it was returned, it wouldn’t reverse any damage he might inflict.
But he couldn't deny that he liked the way the boy had shifted closer to him, the nearness definitely pleasant and he could keep things in check. He thought he could at least, he had himself under better control, the tears stemmed, the vulnerability lessened. Fionn was more his normal self, able to laugh softly, a very good facsimile of a genuine grin on his face aside from something not quite right at the corners and the tense and rigid way his mouth was held. The bitterness was more readily identifiable in his voice though as it mingled with sarcasm.
"Oh yes, if you don't want something to happen, you just say so and everyone listens," he remarked, that soft laugh coming again but with a harder, cynical edge to it that wouldn't have been there if the mirth was genuine. The servant shook his head. "No, it's not as simple as that. And it wasn't attitude, it was- it's complicated or at least it was."
That was going to take some getting used to, the notion that Fred was gone, no longer there to torment him or be readily wrapped around Fionn's finger. He wondered if the man's replacement would be someone he could enter deals with. He wondered if he wanted to enter into such deals again. His body was good currency and if he had to grimace through things or not think about them too much while they were happening then it was an okay currency to utilise, especially as it could never be fully spent. What was inherently him inside might be used up in the process, something in his soul worn away on each occasion, but his body remained intact.
"Yeah, it's over and done with, I can forget him but... he isn't the first and he won't be the last. Oh, the first to properly try to kill me sure but... did you see my scars earlier? In the baths? I'm marked by every hand and foot and belt and whatever else that people have used to try to break me and I've had plenty of them raised at me. Like I said earlier, it's always my own fault."
He shrugged, perhaps hoping to dislodge the other's hand, except that when it did move, he felt a resigned disappointment.
However, for all his desire to avoid closeness and intimacy - a difficult thing indeed when that hand had remained on his shoulder so persistently - the moment that Lars shifted his arms around him, there was honestly nothing else that the young man could think of... at all.
A hug. It was quite a loose hug but a hug all the same.
Well.
Fionn tensed a little, licking his lips as he suddenly found him dry - his whole mouth dry in fact - and he was sure that the sound of his tongue on the parched skin was audible. Maybe it was just him, his senses suddenly ramped right up in their sensitivity. There were just too many stimuli, the other so undeniably there that the young Madden didn't know how to cope.
The other hadn't washed earlier, his skin and his clothing still marked with an older scent, not one characterised by absence and artificiality. In fact, the other's natural scent was there, strengthened by the sweat he'd shed as he worked, the skin harbouring its own perfume that had been activated and released during his labours. He didn't stink, not in any manner of dirty or unpleasant way but he did have his own aroma, a musk that was impossible to ignore this close, especially now that it was so very close, so unavoidable. He breathed it in and sighed, having to fight with every fibre of his being to stop himself from leaning into him, wrapping his own arms around him and kissing him.
He managed to snap himself out of a brief fantasy of what points on the other man's neck he would kiss, catching himself tilting slowly and subtly in Lars' direction.
Well, if that wasn't a sign that he needed to get the hell back to his own bed and put as much distance between himself and Lars as possible then he didn't know what other one there could be. Not unless one of the Circle's number was about to drop in and tell him that he should move his arse out of this situation. He definitely didn't want to dwell on the fleeting idea that said higher being would actually encourage him, perhaps dropping in to proclaim, "Now kiss!"
Instead of giving into every urge that his body seemed to have activated, the young man cleared his throat a little awkwardly, a hand moving to gently, but firmly, disconnect Lars from his person.
"Regardless of what happened with Fred or why, I did just want you to know that I'm gonna look out for you. That I'm in your debt. If I did something that meant I deserved to die then well... I guess that's a life debt replied, life for a life in a, um... weird way."
Provided that Lars didn't attempt to stop him, Fionn would move a little to the side, putting some space between them before standing, a hand pressed against the mattress as he leaned down so he was still on the other's level, his voice still low.
"But that'd be a shame, wouldn't it? Awful waste of my pretty face!" he added with a snigger, adding levity into the otherwise serious situation with a wink added for good measure that was likely seen even with the hearth flame. There was definite cockiness there, a confidence that had been missing earlier, more akin to what Lars had seen on the first day they'd met.
But for all his outward nonchalance as he headed back to his own bed, his heart had been beating wildly in his chest since the moment Lars had wrapped his arms around him, the palpitations still quite noticeable as a nervous giddiness went through him. He tried not to feel anything towards the other, neither sexual nor emotional as he tucked himself in for the night.
And failed utterly.