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Qifrey's hands were soft.
On some level, Olruggio supposed he always knew that. He grew up holding onto them, after all... cradling them between his own worn awful fingers.
It was innocent knowledge, when they were both kids. It was just a way not to get separated, a way to get away with clinging, a way to get through towering crowds that seemed hell bent on jostling them about it. A guide, in more simple terms, perhaps in more ways than one.
He remembers the innocence of standing behind Qifrey, too, and draping himself over skinny shoulders to show him [needlessly, indulgently] how to hold his pen, how to move his arm to get a neat circle.
They were so soft then, under the calloused curve of his fingers.. they're even softer now.
So... soft..
But now...
"...you're shaking," Olruggio murmurs, to the quivering form beneath him, his thumb pressed to its pale palm.
...this knowledge was much less innocently gained.
"Yes.." Qifrey's answer comes on a shaky exhale, and with fingers curling over to brush his, "I wonder why."
Cheeky bastard...
The two of them lay tangled, the fabrics of their skirts and robes enmeshed on the bedspread beneath them. An actual bedspread, mind you, not one simply lazily thrown over his hammock or window seat for a nap.
Their legs have become quite helplessly tangled as well, as things go; with pales knees bracketing hips and darker ones nudging into bare inner thighs. A twitchy, scarred ankle draped over a braced calf.
Qifrey's dress had been pushed off his shoulders some time ago, long before Olruggio got his hands on him like this, and left to dangle over his belt. The very same belt that's been carefully rucked loose.
Not off, but... loose. Loose enough for Qifrey's thigh straps to have been untied.. and the trousers beneath them discarded, in any case.
Olruggio's in a similar boat, draped over him in just his shirt and skirt, free hand planted beside his ear and loosely encircled by familiar willow-thin digits.
"Too much?"
The single candle in the room flickers; sending long-reaching fingers grasping for a pale blue blue blue eye.
"..no."
...hm..
Olruggio catches his love, his snow plated eternity, gently by the jaw- tipping his head back against the pillows he was strewn upon and taken captive.
Those willow-thin digits fall limply beside him.
"Qifrey.." the contraption maker breathes out, a prisoner by his own right, and a mere dream from lips he can't kiss quite yet, "Have we not moved passed this?"
Have I not yet earned back your trust?
..I'm sorry... I know I promised you, all that time ago.. that you wouldn't have to lie anymore. I'm so sorry.
"I'm not lying," the professor insists, something small and hurt swirling in his crystal blue, "I.. not this time, old friend, I only- hmmf."
Though a kiss is out of the question, tabled in favor of this spiny discussion, just for now, squeezing his love's face is not. Olruggio finds himself huffing down at him in vague offense, though soothed in some way by the soft skin giving beneath his fingers.
Cowed by the mildly irritated glare he's getting, though, he lets go.
For the most part- that is. His right hand remains pressed around Qifrey's left, thumb stroking that shivering palm and beginning to tease down long sleeves, and his other shifts to cradle something long obscured to him.
"What was that for, Olly?"
There it is... that nickname. It's as sweet to hear now as it was when you gave it to me.
"Position's a bit more than friendly, now isn't it?"
The cheek beneath his own palm, and the one not, blooms a bright red- one that's stark when paired with beauty so pale, one that's obvious. Despite it, Qifrey's mouth twists with something wanting.
Something carefully restrained and starved for years now.. all because Olruggio couldn't bear to keep going without him.
"...I never thought I'd.." Qifrey starts, and trails off, and settles into the scarred palm holding his face, "..I'm just... nervous, I suppose.. I never thought you'd.."
..get to have this... want me.. He doesn't say it, but Olly's gotten pretty good at reading between his lines, and filling in the blanks. The ones he lays out in conversation, when their... their girls are around, or when they'd have rare company.
The ones he'd drawn between them after the Tower.
...the ones Olly had forced him to draw.. over and over again.
He makes himself swallow.
"All I've ever wanted was you."
You, you, you... From the moment he'd caught a glimpse of his snow-pale hair, the moment he'd pulled him from the ocean's depths.. it's always been Qifrey. Always..
Qifrey huffs out a tragic sounding laugh, "Don't be ridiculous, Olly."
Something battered in his chest twists, and Olruggio frowns.
"I'm not," he impresses, shifting closer.. if only to feel his love's legs shift further to accomodate him, "Why would you say that, huh?"
That can't have been too corny, could it? It was the truth. Qifrey's always been it for him.
A pale hand comes up to brush through his dangling fringe, making to tuck it [fruitlessly] behind his ear. It's far too slinky to stay there though, at least for long. Just as well, really, when it means that hand will stay.
"I'm far from the perfect package, Olly," his love sighs, tiredly amused and so so wrong, "It's alright-"
"It's not."
"Olly-"
"It's not-"
"It's alright if you wanted-"
"I only want you."
"-someone less-"
"Qifrey."
"-someone less dam-- mmf!"
This time, Olruggio does shut him up with a kiss. To hell with that nonsense, to hell with wherever that was going. To hell with waiting. Everything he's ever wanted is here beneath him, and he's- he's talking like..
Olly presses them together until he feels Qifrey jump and, at last, give; until he takes that hand in his hair and uses it to draw Olly closer.
..like he ever needed more.
Qifrey is a pliant coldness under his hands, barely warmed even when surrounded by softness and held. That's always much been the case, with his poor circulation and fuck knows what else. Stress, probably, and skinniness.
He pulls back, just enough to speak against gasping lips, "You were saying?"
His love bites at him for that one- sharp and catching on the heel of Olruggio's palm, from its cradling of his fringe covered cheek.
"Oh, may I speak now? Is that allowed?"
Olruggio loves him. He loves him so much it curves his face into a grin.
"You may."
"I despise you sometimes."
"Clearly."
As if this tangle they were in was purely Olruggio's doing. As if those willow-thin hands hadn't divested him of his cloak and belt long before Olly had returned the favor.
He pecks Qifrey's pouting mouth once more, unable to resist, even as the mood sobers once more.
"I have never once thought you damaged, Qifrey," the contraption maker breathes, firm, though he gentles his hold on a thin wrist, "Or anything less than absolutely beautiful."
It's, frankly, absurd to even imply. Blasphemy, if he had his way.
"I'm missing an eye," Qifrey tries to refute, like such a thing means anything to him, "Surely, you-"
Olly brushes away pale fringe, dragging his own scarred thumb over the branches of torn pink tissue below snowy lashes. The scar was bigger now, than it had been when they were kids. Longer, with the removal of a silver seed of torment.
It's an easy target to press his lips to, and draw out a pretty and shuddering gasp from his love.
Three, is what he needs to cover it entirely in his love; one to its pointed edges, one to its middle, and the final landing on the empty socket itself.
That lovely, gorgeous red from before surges anew.
"Olly-"
"Qifrey."
Honestly..
"If your eye had ever been an issue," he starts, lips still pressed to blushed skin, "Why would I have spent so much time teaching you spells? Hm?"
"You're kind," comes the resolute response, without a hint of hesitation, "The kindest star I've ever met."
Another swallow, though he can't quite tell from who..
"...you meet a lot of stars..?"
It's a pitiful deflection, they both know it. Olly particularly knows his own face is matching his love's by now. And he knows, down in his bones and pitch of his heart... that it's not true.
I'm not kind... not to you, Qifrey...
A kind person would've never condemned the boy they loved to such a life. Never would've forced his hand in the ways Olruggio did, just to keep them tethered so close.
I'm not kind at all.
But maybe that's okay, if it means.. well, if it means this.
If it means being the one to unravel Qifrey like this, and kiss his scars and hold him. It means he can drag his sleeve down, and reveal and kiss the silvery indents that have lain there for decades. Is he any better than the restraints that once replaced his own hands-?
Qifrey pulls him down like he is, and loops his arms around his neck like shackles of his own-- Olruggio his helpless prisoner.
"Only one that's ever mattered," his love tells him, on a shaky and yet true breath.
Their lips brush once more. Olruggio presses closer, sliding his hands down trembling thighs. One finds its home on a covered hip, and the other a raised knee.
He may not be kind.. but selfishness is what got them this far in the first place. Selfishness is what sees them through the night.
His candle flickers out.