| Blade and Arrow |
| Summary: | Alek persuades Dmitry to come back to his tent and compare … notes. P.S.: Not about weapons. P.P.S.: … Some mature content below. |
| Date: | June 23, 289 |
| Related Logs: | Various melees and other tourney logs. |
| Players: |
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| Encampment |
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| Where all the tents are at. |
| June 23, 289 |
Drifting out from the Terrick tents with his hand scrubbing loosely over the beard shadow that guards his jaw, Dmitry is finely dressed in deep purple of understated and conservative cut for all that its color is arresting of hue. He looks a little squinty and distracted, wincing in direct sunlight. The noise and bustle around here seems at odds with his slow step, and he tightens his jaw a little as he glances over his shoulder towards a loud rise of voices.
Woven linen in tans and creams makes up Alek's outfit, nowhere near as lordly as the Terrick's. He moves gingerly, even with the sharp smell of a stronger alcohol than wine on his lips. Catching sight of Dmitry, he angles his path to the other man and greets with an easy, "I saw you did well in the melee."
Dmitry blinks toward Alek. He blinks again, a little like he is having difficulty focusing with those liquid dark eyes; he smiles, then, something wry about the tug of his lips. "Thank you," he says lightly. "Though I believe I may now have spent any coin I had in being underestimated."
"I would not discount it, at least not if you are on the field with me. They'll overlook the cat for the lion," Alek answers dryly, though with an edge of self-deprecation for calling himself a lion, as if it is too much to say that and actually support it.
"Then I ought to thank you for doing me the service, Ser Lion," Dmitry replies promptly. His smile sunny, he asks, "If I'd won, would I owe you a cut?" Then he winces a little, and tests a few fingertips in the dark waves of his hair, feeling at the knot of pain that lingers where the bump on his head has not completely gone down.
Laughter shines in lazy grey eyes as they draw over Dmitry in a casual study, Alek's voice lowering as if in a secret to question, "Depends, what kind of cut could I talk you in to giving me?" A pause. "Ten percent? Twenty?" His attention follows the line of his fingers, a brow curving upwards briefly. "Have you had that looked at?"
"Oh, yes, of course." Dmitry flicks his wrist. "Just got bashed about a bit. Garett hits like an ox." Dropping his hand, he arches his eyebrows at Alek with a gleam of answering humor in his dark eyes. He says, "I don't know, how much of a distraction do you suppose you were?"
"That one, I suppose not much," Alek concedes lightly, lips lifting in a crooked grin. "Too caught up with the Half-Eagle. If you had been in the team melee, however…" He trails off, shrugging up a shoulder lightly as he continues to study the concussed knight. "Did you watch that one?"
"Alas," Dmitry says, laying his hand over his heart. "I'm afraid I missed that honor. Why, Ser?" Dark eyes lifting to meet Alek's, the slight smile pulls a little wider at the curve of Dmitry's lips. "Were you very distracting?"
The twist of his lips sliding into a crooked smirk, Alek answers slowly, "Very skilled, at least." His gaze meets his, something of a question held in the line of his eyebrow, in the drag of his gaze over the other man's features. "It seemed I attracted a lot of attention."
"Neither of those are claims to which I affix any doubt," Dmitry answers Alek with a slight inclination of his head, humor still lingering to warm his gaze. Eye contact lingering just a heartbeat, he glances away again with every evidence of idle normalcy in the rub of his hand over his mouth. A QUESTION YOU SAY. "No dire injuries, I presume?"
"Bumps, bruises. It still hurts to swallow, but I shall live," Alek replies with a rasp that I have totally been posing this whole time, his fingers lifting to a particularly nasty bruise that has begun to color his neck. "So, the same as you, I suppose."
Dmitry's gaze flickers over the bruised skin of Alek's neck, tracking the passage of his fingers. He tilts his head in an acknowledging nod. "Admittedly," he says lightly, "I've had worse mornings after enough wine."
His own breath still with liquor lingering on it, Alek suggests, "I think you are not doing it properly, then." He smiles, a friendly, easy thing suddenly as he moves forward to clap a hand against Dmitry's shoulder. "I'll teach you sometime before the tourney ends."
"What, to drink properly?" Dmitry laughs in a soft puff of breath and rubs at an eye with one thumb, blinking a few times as he drops his hand. He notes the warmth of Alek's hand across his shoulder and the scent of liquor on his breath with a kind of amused quizzical slant to his eyebrows as he looks up at him. "Hair of the dog, do you suppose? It might just make the headache worse, but I suppose it is not very knightly to complain of such things."
"Not very manly, either, if you do not want someone insulting your balls," Alek counters wryly, but his words are paired with a crooked smile and an easy warmth. "I have more back in my tent, if you'd like to take the edge off your headache."
Dmitry flicks a dismissive gesture, one-handed, for all that his eyebrows lift as he glances sidelong at Alek. "Ah, well, but you seem altogether in the habit of insulting my parts," he points out, "as I recall. I should hate to strike down a man's target before he's the chance to fire." Pinning the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, he rubs a little, and then says, "I assume you mean wine?"
A laugh sounds in the back of Alek's throat, a single breath of it as he rolls a shoulder up in an easy gesture. "No, you certainly should always give a man a chance to fire, but perhaps you have proved your parts enough with your performance in the melee," he allows. Adding only, "Or something stronger, if you wanted it."
"Ah, well, thank you for that," Dmitry says, a trifle dryly. He tests his fingertips lightly at the bump on his head again, and then turns his hands out. "Wine without water will be strong enough for me, as of late."
"You're welcome," Alek counters easily, as if he does not hear the dryness to Dmitry's tone. His own hand claps against the man's shoulder again, squeezing briefly as he turns to guide him towards the Tordane camp. "If you're going to be a melee fighter, you'll have to learn to drink like one someday, despite head injuries."
"My archer's eye has not wholly deserted me," Dmitry assures Alek with a slight lift of his chin. He seems relatively at his ease with Alek's easy, friendly attitude, his hands folding into a loose clasp behind him as he falls in with the older knight.
There is a certain cavalier attitude to Alek's words as he replies, "Archery is nothing compared to the blood-pounding, heart-racing thrill of being up close and personal to another man with a sword." His gaze slides sidelong towards Dmitry as they move through the camp, adding a questioning, "Have you ever felt that?"
Dmitry's eyebrows go up as they walk. He looks faintly muddled for a moment, a crease sneaking across his brow before it fades to the more composed expression. He says, finally: "Not as you describe. But this tourney is hardly the first time I've picked up my sword, Ser." Lightly, he adds, "Of course, you speak as a man who has never felt the true satisfaction of his arrow through a man's throat."
"Too young for real battle?" Alek questions with a hint of a laugh, his lips quirking into a smile for all that his gaze lingers on the younger man at the other answer, the other reaction. He nods towards his tent instead, however, as they draw near it.
"So young as that?" Dmitry answers him with the flicker of a wider smile; his eyes laugh, for all that his voice doesn't. "I will have you know, I killed men at the Trident." With this, he shrugs a little, and ducks into the indicated tent without apparent qualm.
Alek ducks in as well, letting the flap swish closed behind him but making no moves to tie it as he instead stalks to the chest in his tent to retrieve a flask of wine from behind its lock. "How many men?" he questions casually. "And none with an arrow?"
"Oh, all the men I killed at the Trident were with my arrows." Dmitry drops a shoulder in a partial, careless shrug. He settles his weight back on his heels, watching Alek with slightly narrowed eyes. "I can't tell you for a certain number how many I slew. Five? But it was a good day's work for a squire, at any rate."
"Just none in the throat," Alek drawls, repeating Dmitry's words with a subtle bit of laughter brushing against his words again, drawing back towards the other knight to offer the flask of wine, sans glasses.
Dmitry hesitates for a bare heartbeat before taking the flask. He takes a pull from it all camp-style, slugging the liquid and then handing the flask back, tipped toward Alek as he wipes his lips on the back of his hand. He says, "And you, veteran of many real battles; do you keep count?"
A chuckle rumbles in Alek's chest as he takes the flask to drink from, a long pull from it as he sets his lips to where Dmitry's were previously. Finally, he answers carelessly, "Never. Bad luck, that, as you never know if you'll get to the next number before you count yourself with the dead."
"Wise of you," Dmitry murmurs in a wry shade of accolade. He sets his tongue behind his teeth, and glances along the side of Alek's tent. Not quite looking back at him as he speaks with an easy lightness not quite matched to Alek's careless tone, he says, "After such thrills as you describe, up close and personal, blade on blade — tourney weapons must be so sad and insipid for you."
Satisfaction shifts Alek's lips for Dmitry's light words, a hint of cocky assurance in his movements as his fingers catch and slide across his jaw in a light trace. Subtlety is dropped from his words, as he answers, "They are nothing like the real thing, but they are better than nothing at all."
Master of mixed signals, apparently, Dmitry ducks away; head dipped, he sets his teeth hard against his lower lip. Breath catching a little in his nose, he makes a grabby, beckoning gesture of his fingers for Alek's flask.
Alek hands that flask over, drawing back sharply with surprise and a look of—worry, anger, frustration. "Sorry," is somewhat flat where he forces it out, "Accident."
Dmitry smiles a very little. He looks up again, eyebrows up as he seeks out Alek's gaze with his own. "Don't—" he starts, thinks about it for a moment, and swigs from the flask with a particularly decisive motion. Wine a fresh tang on his tongue, he starts again. "Don't worry about it." His voice is smoked dark. His ready mouth and able tongue, his quickest weapons for all his vaunted bowman's skill, seem slowed and fumbling. He takes another sip from the flask, suckling at it. Then he sucks on his own lower lip, instead. What a waste of all that subtlety. He doesn't quite say aloud, 'You weren't wrong.'
Smile easy and bright, it does not quiet reach the steel of Alek's eyes. "Must be drunk already," he jokes simply, retreating to flop onto his cot instead.
"No," Dmitry says. He steps across the brief distance between them in the tent to hold out the flask one-handed. He says, "Well, possibly; I can't say how much you've had to drink." Having already rejected these apparent advances, though, Dmitry reaches with his other hand to trace down the other knight's cheek. His nails are ghostly light, the touch hesitating and virgin sweet, because it is opposite day; his hand turns, thumb's pad drawing beneath the curve of Alek's mouth. "Accident?" he says. His lightness is altogether false, his sham more than a little cracked, his eyes dark.
Alek's brow draws up as Dmitry says no, laughing only softly at the appending words as he accepts the flask. He does not lift it to his lips, instead arrested by the soft touch to his cheek, to his lips. That frustration slips back into his features, darkening them even as he catches at the back of Dmitry's neck with his own free hand to drag him closer, lips finding his to steal a fierce, forceful kiss. Drawing back, he says flatly, "Accident."
Dmitry's mouth tastes of stolen wine and the hitch of his broken breath as he loses it to the fierceness of Alek's kiss. As shy as his touch but heartbeats ago, it is less so as their lips meet; there is need in his kiss, a deep thirst of want that drives his able mouth and facile tongue. His fingertips rest against Alek's cheek as the kiss breaks. His eyebrows up, he blinks — a slow kind of surprise in the blink, he licks his lips in a slow slide of tongue as though to check them for bruising. Obnoxious inherent down to blood and bone, for all that he has been rendered breathless and the hammer of his pulse is racing threadily through his blood, he says: "Whoops."
The single sound manages to drag a smile to the corners of Alek's lips, his own gaze lingering on the line of Dmitry's mouth and that flick of tongue. His fingers only tighten against Dmitry's neck, flask flung aside with the contents spilling out to mingle with the packed dirt that makes up the flooring of his tent. "Clumsy today, aren't we?" he murmurs lowly, using the guide of his hand to tip the other knight's head up as he draws closer to breathe in his scent, lips almost touching again but kept apart.
"I hit my head," Dmitry points out. There is still that breathless note in his voice, a darkling crackle that lowers it, thready and soft. In the closeness, he smells of wine and sweat, mostly, and if there is any scent lingering elsewise, like leather and armor polish. "—You must be drunk," he adds. He claims the next kiss, seeking thirstily to drink in the heat of Alek's mouth as his fingers tangle with a certain urgency into his blond hair.
Alek's lips meets his with a hunger of his own. His hand slide between them, seeking out the length of him boldly, responding to that urgency without thinking. He laughs at those explanations, caught between them before he is drawing Dmitry into another kiss, unwilling to break the contact for further quips.
It seems that Alek may have finally discovered a workable pathway to getting Dmitry to shut up. Through layers of fabric, he stiffens in a distinct physical startle well in hand with the hard heat of his cock waking in Alek's hand. Rather than shift away from his touch, though, he shifts into it with a rock of his hips. He is a bit fumblish despite his extraordinary dexterity, a little uncertain and intoxicated on wine and fear (paranoia?) as he turns his other hand to drop to Alek's waist and return the, uh, favor.
***
Drawing away from him, Alek pushes to his feet in one fluid motion that has his whole body protesting from the ache of bruises. He grabs a training towel, wiping himself off on it and fastening his trousers again before offering it to Dmitry silently. He does not speak yet, but his gaze drags over the man in a slow, heavy-lidded study.
Dmitry is a little slow on the draw, reacting to the towel. He cleans himself off with a faintly puzzled crease to his brow, turning the fabric over and folding it in slow passages of his fingers. Turning, he shifts onto a knee on the cot, and then levers himself the rest of the way standing, gathering the pool of soft trousers from round his feet to hike them up. He twitches a little, flexing and tightening his buttocks and then relaxing them forcibly before sliding his clothing the rest of the way back on. Clearing his throat, he glances up at Alek, and smiles: it is a slow smile, slid across his lips with only a little wryness in it, otherwise bright in his dark eyes, like the rest of him sensuous and tousled and well-fucked.
"If you're going to look at me that way, I may very well bend you over and take you again," Alek warns lowly, a smirk catching at the corner of his mouth as he steps all the closer again to Dmitry.
"Ambitious of you," Dmitry murmurs. His eyes drop to slide sidelong toward the undisturbed tent flap as he carefully refastens his trousers with a neat, composed tie. He scrubs a hand over his cheek, as though he thinks he is going to wipe away any telltale flush lingering on his fair skin.
Alek laughs, sliding forward to capture Dmitry's hair in his fist and pull him in for one last kiss, a rough, quick thing before he murmurs against his lips, "You'll just have to lie awake tonight with your ass throbbing and think of me, instead, then." His fingers soften to slip through silky strands for a moment before his hand drops away.
Dmitry lets out a startled cry at that, which may or may not have anything to do with the jar to his head. His hand tightens at Alek's upper arm, bracing fingers to bite at the heat of him through the fabric. "You think so, do you," he says. His tone would make for a better easy, blithe nonchalance without the breathy hitch that threads it in the wake of that fierce kiss.
"What I think is that whenever you let someone else into your tight ass again, you'll think of me," Alek answers lowly, humor twining over his words at that hitch of breath. "Come back again, and I'll see that your arrow finds its way into my throat."
Dmitry laughs in a soft puff of breath. There is a hint of never-quite-forgotten strain in the sound, a wary almost-edge to his flirtation as he says, "What an … accident … that would make." His hand slides over Alek's arm and then off, a light touch pressed to his hip by the other hand, and then he turns to slip a little ways away from him, air in absence left to breathe cool in contrast to the close warmth of proximity.
A chuckle hums in Alek's throat at that wariness, warmed by desire and the lingering bit of tiredness from having spent himself. His fingers lift to rake his own hair in a ginger gesture, gaze tracing after Dmitry. "We'll see how clumsy you are," he agrees simply. "Should I tell Danae you stopped by?" There is a hint of teasing to that question.
Eyebrows climbing, Dmitry slants a look back at him, humor a little edged through the dark veil of his eyelashes. "By all means, convey her my regards," he says, all mildness in contrast to that look he wears. Fair courtesy falling swift from his tongue, you'd think he really had stopped by just to leave his visiting card. Except one does not usually leave one's visiting cards … in the pants. "I should be delighted to speak with her, should we find the chance at Seagard. I believe Lady Lucienne meant to seek her company as well."
Alek could not look more amused at that, the crooked curve of his lips meeting that look as he answers, "I'll let the lady know."
The grin that breaks across Dmitry's face in answer is irrepressible, a boyish flash that youthens features he does work terribly hard to keep composed and mature and at best, sly. Then he sketches an elaborate bow and says, "My thanks to you, Ser."
"No, thank you," Alek counters dryly, his brow quirking upwards in another moment with the easy humor that is reflected in his own expression.
Dmitry tilts his head to answer that, not quite replying but acknowledging. His blink slow, he glances back away from Alek before his gaze can linger overlong on the taller man's features. He draws careful fingers through his hair, trying to smooth it without actually touching the places where it hurts, and then he says a little blandly, "And for the drink. You're quite right; I barely notice my head."
"I've always known the perfect cure for aches of the head," drawls Alek, all mild casualness as he meets Dmitry's look with a wry smile of his own. "But you are welcome."
When, after a few passes of his fingers checking this or that, and another press of knuckles first to one side of his face and then the other, Dmitry is nominally satisfied that he looks presentable and not outwardly, obviously debauched, he tilts his chin up and says, "All well, then." He's so polite. "Good day."
"My lord," rolls the title off Alek's tongue as he lifts his fingers in a careless salute to see Dmitry off, though he makes no move to hold open the flap to his tent of see him to it.
"Ser," Dmitry returns, and then slips out of the tent, squinting into the bright daylight as he goes.
