Archive of Our Own

“Beloved, I have missed your company.”

I watched the words affect him, and watched him rein their effects into his person, collecting himself like so many unruly colorful ribbons. His teasing was such a relief, as was that old smile, but it filled me with a thick and sudden sadness. Somehow I missed him even more in this moment than I had in the months of our mutual disdain. 

He bid we leave it there. He was grateful. He was my Fool, and I was his beloved Fitz. I bid him goodnight, and held his endearment inside my heart like Lord Golden’s precious feathers in their fur-lined case. 

I thought his forgiveness hinged on the passion of my regrets, hearing how deeply I wished I could eat my ugly words. The better part of me knew the awkward tenderness of his given name finally cradled in my mouth had been my real offering. How ignorantly I’d scoffed the day he gifted me such magic - the shame I felt now could have blackened my vision.

I did not deserve such grace. I wanted to snap at the offending hand that offered it, much like Nighteyes when I pushed at a spot too tender for him. I tried to remember I had gone from “Badgerlock” to “beloved” in an evening. It was the most I could hope for, balm over a long endured ache. No reason to punish each other anymore. Every painful step on the way to my new chambers tugged at the terrible scar of distance between us. That was punishment enough.

And so a bruised and restless peace lay quiet in the weeks that followed, as rough as a fine linen too carelessly handled which no amount of diligent ironing could smooth. But it was peace. 

However, it did not take long to realize he was carefully, methodically saying his goodbyes. When I returned to his chamber one day, he reached to remove my earring he’d worn for so many years. My sullen air snapped in a heartbeat - I nearly shouted at him when I bid him stop. 

He did stop. I smelled brandy on him, same as the day he’d leapt from his saddle into my arms. I wondered when he’d begun to feel the need for such a leg up, for some extra strength or snark or spirit when it came to me. Was it so warranted?

Then again, was it not?

I sat there and listened to him regale me in all the ways he had given and spent and given and spent. My creeping betrayal against him itched under my skin as I realized with steepening horror how tense the circle his vulturous creditors must be hovering. Leaving him here would be nothing short of disastrous.  

“I hate this,” I spat, my desperate honesty rendering my speech clumsy and blunt. “Watching you…watching you hollow yourself.”

“Oh, Fitz,” he said. “You need not make this hard. It all has to be done. And there’s purpose behind it. I’m able to take care of my friends, now. I’m glad I’ve been able to leave those I love with what they need. More than what they need.” 

What about me? What about what I need? What if I need you to live? What if I need your wisdom? I need more time with you to—

No. My needs were nothing. He gave those he loved what they needed. There it was. He did not love me anymore. He could not. How could I blame him? I had crushed it out of him. Spoiled the grape and soured the most cherished vintage to foulest vinegar. 

“Besides,” he said, pouring himself tea. “Few are gifted a timeline. Fewer get to enact a living will into the world, or so completely. I’ve suspected my end would be on Aslevjal for a very long time. If I have to face my death so knowingly, then I’d like to die well.” I snorted. My palms were sweating. He ignored me. “I’d say that, despite what everyone may think of the unsavory, unscrupulous Lord Golden, I’ve done the best I can. Now I just have to try and enjoy the time I have left.” 

His heart wasn’t in the words. He willed them to be true. I saw him trying to saturate himself with the belief, like a stiff brush scraping at the memory of long dried ink. Even the many little joys of the everyday he so painstakingly nurtured had been singed away by the burning yoke of purpose round his throat.

“So all this…this is a sort of tour of farewell.” 

“You could say that.”

“And…you’re content to lean into this charade, to ensure Lord Golden’s name tastes like shit in everyone’s mouth?”

“Quite a way of putting it, but not entirely inaccurate.”

“How would you put it? What else would you call this, spending your final days in Buckkeep indulging every fancy ever denied you?”

“Well, not every fancy. I have some self restraint. And there are some that even the wealthiest man cannot satiate. You know that.”

“And what do you do about those?”

“Some things it is better to do without.”

“The ones that matter, I suppose.”

“I’m not sure what you could mean, Fitz.” His airy voice had turned ice cold. Forced. Guarded.

“Don’t you?” He shook his head. “I do not believe you. I know there are things you want that you won’t—that you refuse to ask for.”

“I suppose you’re begging to enlighten me,” he said tartly.

“Why do you insist on this course? This funeral march? What must I do to make you stop? If I humble myself before you? Be your servant again, swear myself like a king’s man and revert back to titles?”

“Say what you mean, then, Badgerlock.”

The name was a barb. He was annoyed, now. I nearly faltered, but the driving whip of my anger at his morbidity propelled me forward. I went to my knees before him. I snatched the teacup from his hands and slammed it on the table. My own cup rattled beside it with the impact. I seized his hands. They were gloved, but my thumb skimmed the barest peek of his wrist.

In that brief moment of contact, my mind’s eye lit up. Clear as day, I saw him lifting his hair, revealing the twining serpents that adorned his naked back. The tension between us had been cold and forbidding as a great wall of ice, yet he’d been brave enough to bare to me more skin than he ever had in his life. Something had shifted in my awareness of him then. It had never in all those years truly occurred to me that he possessed a body beneath his clothes at all.

I remembered the raw edge of desperation in his voice when he bid me leave so he could put a shirt on… It felt silly, a casual state of half-undress I’d never have blinked at myself. And yet the solemnity of it had quieted my judgement. I thought of every morning I’d beheld him perfectly dressed, all the thoroughly intentionally chosen clothing. Even over the course of our mountain trek, there had not been a single moment, ever, where anyone saw him as he did not choose. He had always been hiding this secret. Further, I suspected, lay some other, deeper shame. 

I wanted to take it all from him. I wanted to eat it. I wanted to let it burn me inside if it meant he might move through the world even one breath lighter, even if such a burden would destroy me. The unending scroll decrying the ways I had so casually wronged him unfurled and unfurled in my head until I could feel them twisting my face. I must look a sight in my struggle, but he stared, and was still. He was absolutely still.

“I will not listen to talk like this. I cannot. Seeing you do this, seeing you so resigned… it’s like watching a star die.” I hardened my voice, willing it not to break. “What kind of bodyguard would I be if I let you die? I will not let you fall on Aslevjal, my Lord. I don’t care if it kills me. I swear it will not be your end. You need not fear.”

“It’s done, Tom.” Lord Golden again - he was indulging me, matching the act like trying to indulge a child at play. He sounded almost bored.

“It isn’t. The fight is not over un—“

“No. It is.” Firm, now. I knew he was trying to harden against the fear my reckless words flared in him. “You have to live. It has to be this way. My death is part of all of this. I’ve known it for years.” His mouth twisted. “Don’t make me endure your end again, Fitz. I’ve lived it before, already. I told you. Everything ended. My life was over. It—“

“You can’t possibly believe it would be different for me.” 

“It is different!” His voice rang in my ears like the peal of a cracked bell. It was a voice I’d never heard before, from the depths of his very core, like he hoped the words might cast a spell of understanding, or a Skill command to push aside the fact that his death would madden me. “It is different.”

“No, it’s not,” I murmured. He sat back in his chair with a thump, affronted, color rising in his cheeks. Then he sagged, and looked older and more miserable than I ever beheld him. 

“I don’t want to think about this more than I have to. Please.” He closed his eyes, leaned his head on one side of his armchair. He did not let go my hands. “My dreams were once so beautiful.” He sighed, and tried to regain himself. “It tires me, Tom.” 

The words rose to the back of my teeth before I could stop them. “Then come lay in my arms, Lord Golden.” Even as the words fled my mouth like clumsy, half feathered fledglings, I knew they were the wrong ones. 

A line appeared between the Fool’s brows. “Don’t tease,” he said, coldly, but unable to fully don the aristocratic sneer that had become his numbing mask. 

“I can’t,” I told him. “Not like you. I’m not clever enough. You were always the one with the quickest tongue, my Lord. One might even guess you were a court jester in another life.” 

“You grow too bold, Tom,” he said, almost believable. “Insolent.” 

“Naughty, even?” The ice I skated was deathly thin. A gleaming eyebrow rose warningly toward his hairline, but there was exhaustion in the gesture, a pleading. Still, a wrinkle winked wry at the corner of his mouth. 

I relented, resisting the urge to offer him dock my pay, have me whipped, sent to the stocks. It wasn’t who we were anymore. All the jests suddenly seemed tired, worn, belonging in the mouths and repertoires of our shucked selves, never again to be used. They did not feel appropriate. I should not have spoken at all.

He sighed. The look he gave me could only be called ardent. Something pulled exquisitely in my breast to see such a gaze after so many months, to see him placid, at my mercy even as I knelt in supplication. I could have easily pulled off his glove and invited him to feel how sorry I truly was. But then...

“I can’t,” he said, simply. The dregs of his hurt bled out of him, bitter and dark, like water too hot for the tea leaves. Only a year ago he had beamed with elation, had turned my humble cottage into a warm and inviting home bedecked with art, where we had drunk and laughed and sprawled about on the floor like we were boys again. The longing for such sweet simplicity was ivy twining round my heart. We were different men, now. Perhaps different people entirely, as he’d said. A pair of strangers, staring dumbly at the brutal marks we left on each other.

The pain swelling in my heart was one I knew we shared. “I know,” I replied wearily, to everything. I squeezed his fingers again, then sighed, and sank my face into his beautiful hands resting on his lap. He brushed his thumbs over my cheeks, not unkindly, and even allowed me to recklessly kiss each of his gloved palms. “I had to check.”

“Beloved,” he sighed, real pleading in his voice, turning my face up to his. “You don’t have to make offers like that. It doesn’t matter the way you want to think it does. I know I can’t explain it. I love you, I do. I don’t mind how you love me back. You can love me however you wish.”

I wanted to tell him again that I did not believe him. I knew he would not believe me, in turn, if I said I did love him in the way I had so viciously denounced. I could not fathom how he could cherish someone so stupid, so selfish as me. But I knew in my bones that I would not have offered him something that I was not willing to give. I would not have offered something I did not in turn want.

With him looking at me, so golden and so gorgeous and glowing in the light of glorious, terrible destiny, a great, physical longing like sickness washed over me. I could have wept. It must have showed on my face - he looked away hastily. I did too, pretending not to notice when he brushed at the corner of his eye with a gloved hand. 

After a moment, in merciful unspoken agreement, we recovered ourselves. My knees ached as I lifted myself from the floor. He poured us glasses of his cherished apricot brandy and proffered all the perfectly tailored clothes he’d had made for me in my serving days, as well as the beautiful sword I refused to use. He knew I did not want what he offered, but offered them anyway. I thanked him, after some stumbling, and accepted. I hoped it satisfied him, but suspected little could. I told him I had a Skill lesson to teach - he agreed to come with me. It was almost business-like.

I felt that he had drawn a line. Not just a boundary, but a limit, despite his insistence none existed between us. Perhaps my own actions, my own words, had tested his theory, and shattered it. Within the hour, I reckoned with how wrong I could be.

A wolf did not belong at sea, Nighteyes had once told me. The journey to Aslevjal proved beyond miserable. There was so little comfort in such close quarters. 

It was night, and I was alone, truly, for the first time in what felt like months. Even my mind was solitary. Thick, who’d been moved to a different cabin to weather his sickness, was protected in his dreams, cloaked and guarded well by Nettle, keeping him completely contained for his safety and comfort. Dutiful and Chade were quiescent as well. We’d all, somehow together, retreated behind our own walls to take precious time to gather our own thoughts, strengthen our defenses. I needed to rest while I could.

I assured myself over and over that it was a mercy the Fool was not with us, that such tight spaces for the extravagant personality that was Lord Golden had been out of the question, for practicality’s sake alone. But my justifications churned my insides worse than seasickness. 

I wish he had not seen me. I could barely stomach the fact that the last glance I may have ever shared with him was there on the shore, in time for him to witness my cowardice, to behold the exact moment of my abandon. It might have been kinder to just spit in his face. I nursed the sentiments like a tongue to a bad tooth. 

My mattress smelled stale and sour. It made me even more ill. I turned over again to try and find some semblance of fresh air in my suffocating cabin. I was too hot one moment, and too cold the next. I jerked one leg out to from under to lay atop the blankets instead, closing my eyes. My mind spiraled down and down like a marble on a child’s contraption. The fabric of my pillow scratched against my cheek. My pulse was thick in my temples.   

I wondered how obscenely soft Lord Golden’s bed had been. Unbearably so. I would have ached in the morning, my spine warped after hours sunk deep in its depths, in his arms. 

I should have done as I wished the night my wolf had died, when I had woken and beheld my Fool’s sleepy-eyed gaze. I should have crawled to him in his bed and let him hold me, like we were our young selves in the mountains again. He’d wanted to, and he would have, as he had held me through my fit at Galekeep. 

If I had asked at any other time, would he have relented? Would he have held me in the deep, opulent feathered mattress of Lord Golden’s chambers? It did not matter. He wouldn’t now, after all this. Maybe before I had left, before he felt the surety of my —

Abandonment. Betrayal. Condescension. 

He would live, now, though. A full life where his long years could stretch out before him. Released of his burden. He could find that woman in Bingtown. Jek. She would make him happy. 

They probably spoke of me in letters, now, and bitterly, him and his gold-braided friend from Shoaks. What a pair they’d make. She must have found him after our quarrel. No, found Amber. That was who she knew. Amber…my Fool could not have chosen a more fitting name. Strange and luminous as precious stone…

Only Jek had known if there had been rage or tears or an icy avulsion of sentiment completely after that horrible afternoon. She could have torn me asunder with those white, white teeth. The contempt in that final gaze shot through me like an iron spike. Doubtless there’d be a bounty on my head in Bingtown. Only love angered like that - Amber must be so loved. There had been so many unknown names I’d heard them speak with such familiarity. The names of friends she could go back to. Life in Bingtown would suit her. 

Did Amber not want long years with someone who would so viciously defend her? Who worshipped her? Who held her with clear and obvious joy? Someone who would take her to bed and hold her tight and—

A vivid image flashed through my head of a tawny-haired woman dropping from the deck of a Bingtown vessel to kiss another, tall and blond and muscular. The back of my neck felt hot.

I tried in vain to bat the thoughts away. I did not want to think about Amber and Jek together. I did not want to think about how Amber made love. Not her, or Lord Golden, or my Fool. The thought felt like holding my hand over a fire, but my hands were cold, and I could not stop. I huffed into my pillow. My breath burned in my throat. I could change nothing. I could barely think for myself. 

My teeth found the inside of my cheek. Stupid. Cruel. Selfish. My highest, most everlasting traits, it seemed. I did not need reminding. I had known going in that I would pay this price. Is it not like a death in itself? To risk any trust between us again? Is this how you show your love? 

My love was nothing. My love was a shadow chasing the shape of the real thing, snapping at its heels. I could not escape the grief borne of my hideous, pathetic imitation of love.

More images thickened and swirled around me like blood in water. The slow, intentional baring of a shoulder, just an inch at a time, every movement plotted, planned, rehearsed. I had seen those shoulders, possessing none of the sweet, round curves of Jinna’s, or Starling’s, or Molly’s; they were sharp as wings, as knives. I would recall their exact shape, even if I never saw them again. Dragons slinking over a canvas with the smooth shift of muscle beneath. Slim, deceptively strong. Climbing the rigging, tumbling between the ropes to let loose the billowing sails.

Those arms had carried me with no qualms, no struggle. My Fool had been as careful as he could not to hurt me in those moments, as I teetered on death. He could be strong and tender without effort. He could be so many things at once. He was everything I could not be. Fluid, mercurial. Evolving.

Changing always, but not like you, Changer.

The sidestep into dreaming was unusually seamless. The part of me always alert, always walled and protected, felt at ease, but awake. Aware. Faced with the memory of something. A memory of safety. I knew that there was no one but me here. Me and—

“Tom Badgerlock.” 

Lord Golden was sitting by the fire, as he had so many times, in his luxurious chair. My heart leapt. It was both a shock and a joy to hear his voice. But there was nothing flippant or fanciful about how he looked at me. His haughty gaze was wooden with displeasure. It brought to mind the memory of those terrifying talking ships that had put me so ill at ease in my travels south. He was angry, I knew. Perhaps so angry that the emotion was too much effort, transcended now to some mix of contempt and listlessness. His gloved hand held a snifter of brandy. He swirled it languidly, fumes wafting toward me, stronger than anything in waking life. I swayed, dizzy.

“Fool,” I said.

His gaze became a glare. 

“My Lord Golden,” I corrected. It should have been frightening, really. It was like facing charges from the man who was both my victim and my judge.

He crossed his legs, tipping his head. An air of some primal emotion radiated from him. It was like being repelled, like being pushed, but it was a pulling, a tugging. A beckoning, even as he glared and glared. 

“Why are you here, Badgerlock?” he said. “And in such a state.” His voice was broken glass. One wrong breath might shatter the image of him. I dared not breathe.

His scornful glance dropped down to my hands, held plaintive in front of me. I felt them before I saw them, the carved beach feathers. Such a paltry offering he had already refused. They crumbled to powder as I held them out to him. I felt dismay as the dust ran sandy between my fingers, leaving nothing, not even a trace of powder behind. I had nothing, nothing to plead his favor. 

“Fool,” I said again, the word like honey in my mouth. I realized that I was naked. Naked, and wet, my skin flushed and raw as though he had scrubbed me half to death in boiling water. My feet left damp, dark prints on the rug, the water making little branches of hair on my legs. He appraised me sternly, his face all angles in the firelight. 

“Hmph,” he snorted. “Is there anything really so ridiculous to behold as a man at full mast?” 

I looked down, saw he was right. I was hard, almost unbearably so, my cock all but pointing at him like a beckoning finger. I found his eyes again; they were the color of sun-toasted wheat, and so cold and indifferent that I made a plaintive sound. I felt drunk. Mindlessly, I took a step toward him. His chin lifted, but his disinterest in my naked body suddenly seemed false and forced. I paused. My hands clenched into fists, then released. Clenched, and released. How had I become so breathless? He was suddenly standing, and in front of me, striking distance. Kissing distance.  

“What do you want?” he asked. “Tell me, or I shall make you leave.”

I could feel my pulse through my whole body, all my blood centered in one jutting indignity, my tongue heavy in my mouth. “I…don’t know how to ask,” I said. “My Lord,” I added again, for good measure. It was truthful in a way I never had courage to be, and despite my shaky nerves, I did not feel in any danger. I felt safe, even under his thumb, even looking into his face iced over in anger, all hard lines beneath his carefully practiced apathy. A strange thrill. 

“Indulge me,” he sneered. This was good, I told myself. His rage was proof that I had kept him safe. Proof that I had done what I needed to to prevent…to keep—

“I wanted,” I said, and my voice was almost unrecognizable. I cleared my throat. It did not help. “I wanted to give you something.”

“Give me something, you say?” 

“Yes.” 

“And what about what I asked of you? You can’t give me that?” 

“I don’t know, Sir.” 

“Because you’ve tried to take it away already.”

I swallowed. I wanted to lift my hands, but dared not. Not yet. “Yes. I did.”

“Why?”

“You know why, Sir.”

“I thought you smarter than that. I thought you better.”

“I was a rather terrible servant, wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” he said. “You were. Too many of your own ideas. I should have known.” He took a long breath through his nose. “I once heard that the most prized stallion is the one that resists the bit.” Lord Golden shifted, then he looked down at the little dark watermarks on the carpet around my feet with distaste. “You’re making quite a mess.”

“I’m sorry, my Lord.” 

“I suppose I should do something with you, since you won’t leave.” Brandy still in hand, he reached around to take my wet hair in hand and squeezed, hard. I gasped. Water streamed down my back. Gooseflesh rose on my arms, but not from cold. His nearness, the strength of that golden grip made me shiver. It felt good to be handled. It was almost like being held. Let him be angry at me. It means he’s alive, that he is out of harm’s way. 

“No it doesn’t,” Lord Golden sneered. Dissatisfied. Despondent. My heart filled my mouth. I was dumbstruck, turned my palms up to him, as though baring to him the lines of veins would somehow endear me to him as he appraised me, waiting for me to —

explain? surrender? beg? 

“What do you want from me, Tom?” he asked. His hand released my hair, fingers splaying over my scalp. Tingles traveled down both my arms. My knees quavered. “Why have you come here like this? What are you asking of me? What do you need?” His voice had changed. Deepened, inquiring. I wanted to play this part, I must have. Otherwise the shape he took here was…

“I want you to answer,” he said, and it was not entirely Lord Golden who commanded me. “I want you to ask.”

I could ask, here. I could ask for anything, and he would understand. He would.  “I want you to—” Hurt me love me forgive me punish me fuck me release me hold me destroy me— “Humble me.” 

“Humble you?” he said, with such careful, airy amusement, I knew it was to hide the color of surprise. “Such a choice of words. Do you know what that means to a man like me? Do you really know what you’re asking for?”

“Yes,” I said. “That…that I want you to have me. To use me as you want, however you want. For your pleasure, my Lord.” There were things I wanted that I had no name for, that I could not ask for, even if pressed. I might be presumptuous to imagine he knew what I meant, but I trusted him. I trusted the Lord Golden that I conjured, even if it was not truly him, knew what a man like me wanted. I had felt around the edges of those unspoken desires when we had joined so briefly, those unspoken actions, and imaginings, and held them. I think I had always felt them, connected as we were. How much control he has, I thought. How many secrets he holds inside himself. How can you stand the heaviness?

I would not let him think anymore. I stepped toward him, naked and aroused as I had ever been in my life, and put my hands on his throat. He did not resist. I kissed him. I kissed my master, my Lord Golden, and sealed off the dream like a vault to contain whatever wildness he would visit on me. I would not let myself free until he was done, until he expelled me. There would be no one to witness but us. 

“Please,” I whispered, and then I did sink to my knees, my hands dropping to his shoulders, down his arms. It felt so good to kneel before him, I’d done it once already. “Please, please—“

“Spare me the begging,” he drawled. He took in a breath, and let it out. There was decision. Decision, and assurance. When he looked down at me finally, it was like watching a predator walking into the room. It was realizing you were prey. His hand found my jaw and bade me look up at him. “Open your mouth,” he said. His voice dripped with something that set my scalp to tingling as he pressed his thumb to my lower lip. He was so above me. I obeyed, my jaw dropping open obediently. He grinned, sipped his brandy and bent, and kissed into me a mouthful of sweet, promising heat. 

Perhaps it was the reminder that he put no limits between us, how the dream-space shifted to hold us. I could feel the world around us reforming, dissolving and changing, as though to create a vessel wherein the desires fed by us - or me, and what I remembered of feeling inside him - poured out like molten glass to be formed by our desperate hands, taking color by whatever sands of longing we threw upon it. I do not know whose wants were whose at that point. I only know that I was overcome with a scalding need to offer myself to him, bared like a sacrifice - to be forgiven, and craved, and held, and undone. I wanted to undo every shackle our waking world held on me and let him do as he wished. I wanted to crawl inside him and pull out every unspoken dream, for I felt if I did not now, I would never be able to face him again, if I even lived long enough to do so.

My Golden lord would not disappoint. This was not only the Lord Golden notorious to the Buckkeep court, this was the Lord Golden of my creation. It felt like the only face he could take here, the one he had so long hidden behind, the one who channeled all the raw emotions into glittering games, who found his dear Tom Badgerlock’s unpolished ways both charming and infuriating. It was the mask that hid all the hurt of my dearest friend, the persona he knew best to punish me with. Now I was seeing his legendary lusts on full display. It was Buckkeep’s sin-soaked hedonist who surveyed me with a mix of boredom and amusement, deemed me worth a tumble, and pushed me back on his soft bed, climbing over me with an expression as resplendent and dangerous as sunrise over a wildfire.

He kissed me as I’d never known it could be done. He struck me with it, locked us together like warring animals. It was like a lancing - his tongue pressed into my mouth in a self-serving plundering wherein he could have lazily pricked my heart and bled all my earthly desires into him for his nourishment. I’d have let him.

The licking flames of my hunger had jumped to a great conflagration. I burned. I starved. I reached for him, and reached in me, scrabbling for any wispy edges of grounding to hang on to, even here, even in this most strange and liminal of spaces. I was at his mercy, but I was safe. I was his to do with as he pleased. It felt right. He did not care about my still damp hair across his pillows, he did not care that I was clumsy and uncouth and that I so clearly did not know what I was doing. I was his, to pluck and tear and squeeze and bite and paw and shake like a toy. A mere plaything. 

Even dreaming, my mind could not bear to undress him. It felt like something I should only allow him to do himself. I was utterly bare before him, watching the silk of his jacket rippling as he lavished over my skin with hands and teeth and tongue. Only the one hand was bare, as always, but it did not blunt the sensation of his fingers biting into the meat of my flesh. He was not gentle - he grabbed and squeezed as he wished, kneaded my muscles and pulled back to sink his teeth into flesh as though to taste its suppleness. He flicked my nipples, pinched them until I yelped, gripped the muscles of my chest in his hands and ran his tongue between them. 

He planted himself between my thighs, tossing his hair impatiently over his shoulder. I remembered vaguely, as though from another life, the times Starling had gone to her knees. I knew she had wanted to please me. 

This was different. If I found any pleasure, that was incidental. He was sating something inside himself, some brutal, driving lust. His mouth found my cock, possessed by a craving I had not known could strike another person. His mouth was wet, wet and hot, like the only part of him that could be, and I surged forward with a supremely undignified sound. 

He pushed me back impatiently. “Don’t worry, I don’t need your help,” he said, and went down on me again. I watched him, incredulous, trembling as he worked over me, mapping out every inch of my flesh. He ran his tongue up one side, then the other, kissed the spot at the base just over my sac, paused to take me in his fist and pump me experimentally. My thighs quivered. I covered my face with my hands and peered, panting, through my fingers. He smirked, kissed the glistening tip with an almost tender fondness. The sensation shot through my nerves. I watched clear fluid coat his lips. He licked it away, then wrapped his long, beautiful fingers around my shaft and stroked me as he sucked me down, his hand and mouth working in perfect tandem. It was like worship, his lips flushed, his expression knit with enjoyment. The noises I made were mortifying. He glanced up at me only once, after minutes that felt like years, then moved away from his task to peel my hands away from my very hot, very pink face. 

“What a treat you are,” he said, with a small laugh. “How I wish I had never dismissed you. We could have had such fun if you’d only just asked.” 

“You sound like…” I broke off. 

“Sound like?” he pressed, knocking a knee beneath each of my thighs and towering over me. My head swam. It was bizarre to have him on top, my legs draped over his hips, like he would—

“You don’t feel much like talking, do you?” he asked, moving back just a touch, like he’d move away. I started to rise to my elbows, my heart lurching at his retreat. He leered at me, but I could tell he was paying very close attention to my expression. “I don’t either.” He quickly, neatly flipped me over with the ease of folding a bedsheet. “But if you do,” he adds, and his mouth graced the space between my shoulder blades, where, months before, the years-old mark of an arrow wound had shone bright and raised with scar tissue. “You’ll tell me, right?” 

He was rubbing my back with both hands, long slow strokes up and down. He paused at my low back, tracing the bones at the top of my pelvis, moving lower. I turned my head, gripped the pillow under me, drunk on dream-touch. It was better than Skilling, somehow. Was I Skilling? This felt better. Felt—

“Tom?” he asked again, more firm, and flicked sharply at the back of my thigh. “I asked you a question.” I startled, and the slight movement traveled through me. His burnished hair tickled my shoulder as he leaned over me to kiss the spot just in front of my ear. “I want you to answer, or I’ll have to stop.”

“Yes,” I said. “I will. I will tell you.”

“Good,” he purred, and the warmth of his approval rendered everything in me to melted butter. He lay atop me a moment, mouthing over the line of my neck, sliding his hands down my arms to clasp my hands and guide them to the ornate carvings of the headboard before me. Details were building before my eyes; I was sensing and creating all at once. I felt the resistance of his tailored clothes against me, felt his weight, slight, yet dense, and let the breath rush out of me. I rocked my hips against the mattress, against him, and he made a pleased, almost surprised sound.

The path before us seemed straightforward, but he did not do as I imagined. His clothed knee pressed between mine again, this time with intention. “Give me some room to work, won’t you, Tom?” I realized hotly what he meant, and slid my legs apart to give him room, felt the heat of his tongue, the only truly warm part of him, travel down each knot of my spine. “There’s a good boy,” he said, pressed a kiss low over the crest of my hip, his fingers dancing playfully over my cock where it was flattened to the bed beneath me. 

“My Lord,” I whispered as he bent to kiss where his hand has just been. I bent my knee and moved my thigh further up the bed to give him room, then gasped almost comically loud when I felt the hot, wet, unmistakable press of his tongue against somewhere deeper, unspeakable. The sensation ricocheted in my awareness like pain, like lightning, like a line of explosive powder lit along my spine. My voice jumped half an octave in my throat from my shock, and he laughed. He laughed, the wicked thing, as I shuddered and buried my face in the pillow, my knees digging into the bed as he tongued obscenely inside me. My body reacted unprompted, arching up and back into his lascivious attentions. He made a sound of satisfaction, wrapped his arms under my thighs to keep me there, and watched and worked lazily, and greedily, on utterly destroying my sanity. 

I could not fathom where he had learned such an act, such skill - doubtless by having it done to himself at some point. I didn’t have enough wherewithal to cast any sort of judgement. I wanted to find whoever had taught him and kiss them on the mouth. I could barely breathe. So much of me was stimulated beyond comprehension, beyond my control. At some point, his fingers became involved, and I knew I was making noise, but I could not even comprehend what, if anything, I was saying. It could only be pleading for more, only “yes, fuck,” and, “oh Eda, please,” and “my Lord, my Lord, Lord Golden…”

He was finding a deep pleasure in it, too. I could feel it, in the ginger stroking of my sides, the eager, loving movements of his tongue as he encouraged me grind into the mattress. His touch was firm, knowing, more than intimate. My body was his. He would always know the knew the shape I cut in the air. He would always find me. The spider’s silk thread between us remained unbroken. In the moment there, I felt for it, reached for it with my awareness like a harpist’s fingers to a string, and carefully strummed.

He paused, if not in action, then in his awareness. Like one might at the sound of a bell, or a note hanging in the air. I pushed myself off my chest, and turned to him. Lord Golden’s affected extravagance had dropped away for a moment - his countenance remained the same, but he seemed to soften, to neutralize as I turned over. I reached for him, laid my hand on the back of his neck and brought our mouths together. 

He met my kiss without resistance, without the aggression and violence of before, but just as much fervor. With longing, liquid desire. Perhaps he was astonished I would deign to do so, after where his mouth had just been, but I had no room for such disgust. His mouth was warm, like I had expected, and he dropped his hands to either side of my shoulders, then went to his elbows, giving me more of his weight. I wanted to put as much care into him as he was into me, and my fingers on my other hand went to the laces at his throat. 

I could feel him losing himself in the pleasurable drop into our connection, into me. The aristocratic persona flickered, like silt in cloudy water filtering to the bottom. He did not move to stop me as I tugged the laces of his collar free and opened his shirt. I broke away from his mouth with my own and kissed down over the lines of his beautiful bronzed throat. His cool skin under my lips reminded me of putting copper pieces in my mouth, feeling them warm to body temperature under my tongue. He did not moan, he did not make any real sound, only sighed and threaded fingers in my hair, his breath rasping loud and delicious in my ears as I laved over the graceful shape of his collarbones. 

He was so thin. So ravished by his own hungers beyond the physical. By the passion of his purpose. He was scentless, which made him familiar, and I wondered for a moment if he would have no taste as well. I doubted it, and suddenly ached to put my mouth on him, to press him down and coax his thighs apart and to do to him as he had done to me, to wring the sounds and sensations out of him that would remove him from his mind, from his horror of the future, from his grim certainty of his known and numbered days. “Fool…”

“Ah-ah, Tom,” he scolded, a touch winded, hand tightening in my hair. “You’re getting carried away.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “My Lord.” He looked amused, the color in his cheekbones high as if he’d just spent a whole day by the water. 

“Always an afterthought,” he said, and trapped my nose between his knuckles, giving me a gentle shake. “Am I doing as you wanted, Tom? Am I humbling you appropriately?” He pet my face with both his hands, gloved and ungloved, smoothing my mussed hair from my forehead. “Have you had enough?”

“I think that’s up to you,” I said, a little boldly. My arms went round his waist, and I splayed my hands over his back. “I might need more. I’ve heard I’m the worst valet Buckkeep has ever seen.”

“I suppose your surliness was a break from all the simpering fools trying to slip their hands into my accounts. But I could have prayed for the Pocked Man to strangle you in your sleep, the way you handled my shirts,” he said. “I’m surprised I turned up to court looking even a smidge presentable in the last six months.”

“Oh, yes. It must be so difficult, being beautiful and witty and lorded as the most majestic peacock in court, when you’re secretly cavorting through the walls of the keep with your ruffian of a manservant.” 

His jaw dropped, and I saw him mouth the word cavorting as though no greater insult had ever been levied upon him. I smirked, kissed first his gloved palm, then the naked one, and let go of him, laying back and turning over with a little less elegance than I could have afforded. I hoped my message was clear. 

It was. “Oho.” He leaned down to nip at my shoulder. “You’re a saucy thing, Badgerlock. You were always too fresh to be trusted to always do as you were told.”

“I tried.”

“Mm, not very hard.” His fingers walked up my hip, then traveled lower to where his mouth had been. “You were never meant to be a servant, I suspect. To me or anyone else. Always pulling at the rein, not content to be just a tool, a means to an end.” 

“You could build a monument to my failures. Poor servant, worse assassin, cataclysmic Catalyst.” 

“I couldn’t possibly know what you mean, Badgerlock.” Tight. Cold. My betrayal seemed too painful to speak of anymore. The walls of the dream seemed to shudder, but they did not give. They held. 

His fingers moved over me. I knew what was coming. I wanted it. I wanted it with a single-mindedness I could not believe I had so successfully hidden from myself. I bit the inside of my cheek, then relaxed and opened my mouth to sigh out my breath. “My Lord…”

He spat where his fingers lay, and touched me again, more intentional. I felt so raw. He could hurt me if he wanted. He’d earned the right. “You’ve bid me humble you, Tom. Use you, as I want, however I want. Is that right?” 

“Yes, Lord Golden.” 

“And you know what that means?”

“Yes, my Lord.” 

“You still want me to do so?”

“Yes. If you want to, my Lord.”

“I do, very much. I think I will have you now, Tom, and I assure you, I plan to take my fill.” 

“Thank you, my Lord.”

Things became hazy, then, for a moment. My mind seemed to be catching up to the dream space, fighting for more awareness with a sprinkling of panic, but not the desire to escape. The desire to remember, to cling to this. I would never have this again. I would never have him again. The realization wanted to drag me back to my waking self, longing to punish me with the reality of his absence. But the boundaries of the dream were firm, if flexible. They held me. Held us. 

There was a soft whisper of laces, the smell of some sweet oil I recognized. It was the one he once used on his skin to make him catch the light, as though within him he held a gentle, ever flickering flame. I felt his clothed thighs against my bare ones, and grinned - the fact he had not even bothered to undress felt intrinsically fitting - and closed my eyes as he pressed forward and inside me. 

The sensation was shockingly intense. I moaned a single long, low note, but my body held no resistance. What need had I to resist? Had we not been rushing toward this moment for all this time? I had always longed to know such a part of him that felt so human. He had always woken the dulled and sleeping parts in me. I wanted him to, forever, always waiting to melt and ripple to life under the sunbeam of his love. 

How could you take this from me? How can I live without you?

“Beloved,” I mouthed into the pillow. There was no air left in me to speak the word aloud.

It was the Fool brushed my hair fondly from my neck, and Lord Golden who tongued a spot before biting down with a pleased huff, like a big cat. He did not wait. He fucked me, hard and luxurious from behind. He was skilled. He was a man who knew and reveled in it, and he used me for his pleasure as I had so wanted him to.

I tried to hold onto some of my dignity. I wanted to be good for him. I did not want to be reduced down to a mindless mess, but his cock was so deep inside, and he moved with such perfect, predatory grace. How right he had been. I was not even a quarter as skilled. He would have been so disappointed in me, had he waited. It was good he hadn’t. Perhaps we should not have at all, now that the truth—

“Now, now, Tom,” he purred. His fingertips traced the crease of my thigh, then gripped my hip to pull me back in time against him. “All this work I’m doing and you’re so quiet, so loathe to show your appreciation.” He tsked softly, almost to himself. “Do you need more? Less? Perhaps I cannot give you what you want,” he mused, fingers dug into my flesh. His grip was iron under that soft glove. 

“More?” I asked, more as a question that there even was such a thing. And then there was more - I did not so much let go of control as had it torn from my weak grasp without effort.

His pace became brutal, his cock stabbing unbearable sounds of pleasure from me. My groans boiled over from deep in my core rather than my throat, mixed with the obscene sounds of him slicking in and out of me, and the rhythmic clack of the wooden bedframe against the wall, scraping the floor.

“Enough for you now, Tom? Am I deigning to fulfill you now?” 

Yes, my Lord, I tried, but it stuck in my throat, clotting like blood, and finally came out in a slurring, reed-rasping truth. “Yes, my love—“

I was overtaken, and he knew it. I moaned and sobbed and begged him not to stop. And he did not, heeding my every word and never ceasing in the snap and roll of his hips as everything inside me went to liquid fire. He was murmuring my name, now, but it was the name I didn’t want to hear. It was not my name. Please, call me by any other name. Call me what I am. Fitzchivalry. A bastard’s imagining of Chivalry, with none of my father’s grace, none of his goodness. Not a kind or unselfish shred of sinew in my body. I deserve to be rent at the seams. I deserve to be broken in two. To be shattered by you in ways much worse than this. I deserve my loneliness, my guilt, my shame. I deserve to be isolated and unloved and—

“Fitz…” 

His silvered fingers on my back, now. Ungloved. It was alarming how real they felt - I could hardly draw sense enough to marvel at my mind’s strange alchemy, how apt it was able to conjure in this liminal space what I could not even capture fully in memory. 

I felt him inside me then, all of him, and at once felt the heat and comfort of my body around and against his, our souls entwining around each other like sun-seeking vines. I arched back, meeting him, imploring him with my whole self to envelop me, to extinguish our selves and become— or return to — a single great something. 

“Fool,” I wept, as he moved in a slow, rolling grind. It was good, so good, maddeningly so. My cock drooled all over his rich bedspread. His body bent over mine, his chest flush to my back. Those fingers darted up to caress my neck. I floated so far from the poisonous thoughts of myself that I knew they could not be my own. I bathed in yearning, in adulation tinged with bluest melancholy and heart-weary hope. He had gone quiet. His breath ghosted near my ear. Soft as it was, it was so loud, a stark reminder that each breath was one less he had, one more he spent with every waking day…

I reached back and touched his face. He pressed his cheek to mine, and I curled my fingers in the bedspread. It felt different now. The blanket was old, simple, worn thin from many years. The bed made a louder, more ominous sound beneath us, like it might topple with our exertions. And then I saw, as though from above, within, behind, before, all around, the two of us in my bed in my old cabin, the room awash with the fading sun, the black of his glorious riding clothes tossed amongst my workman’s garb on the floor. 

Gone was the practiced facade of the aristocrat. He was plain, here, as I knew him best, his tawny skin bare against mine, cool and misted with sweat, strange and human. The blissful, unguarded look on his face as he moved inside me was like looking into the sun. He was so beautiful, thrown into sharp focus by the simplicity of the room around him. The light flickered over the planes of his face with his movements, his eyes closed. The dragons danced on his back like they could writhe free into the sky. I wished they would. I wished they’d leave us here, here to lives that were ours only, no trifles with past or future, no duty, no oaths, only the now, and us, with nothing and no one to ask anything of us again. Only Wolf Time.

I clung to him. He had me on my back, now, trading our name between our mouths like a prayer. “Beloved, beloved, oh Beloved…” 

Give it to me, I told him without words, asking for more than what his body could give me. I wanted his suffering. I wanted his pain and fear and anger and hurt. I wanted his hopelessness. Let me take it from you, let me take it, let it fill me up like Girl-on-a-Dragon. Give me your anguish and disappointment, I deserve to carry it for you, I deserve to take it, I deserve to be crushed under its terrible weight, as long as it’s from you. I will be your dragon, Fool… If he wanted a dragon, I would be his, and take it all, and him, inside me forever. “Give it to me, all of it, all of you…”

He made a choked sound. I was so close to my peak, and could feel the edges of this liminal world starting to give. He was looking at me now, eyes wide, and for a fleeting moment, he looked frightened. No - he looked found out. The brand-like searing of his fingertips on my arm did not dissipate as the walls of the dream crumbled and darkened, spilling me into the void like so much smoke. I jerked awake, coming so hard that the seizing muscles in my thighs locked up in agonizing cramps. 

It hurt to breathe. My head buzzed, the inside of my trousers was sticky. I sat up too fast and banged my head, dropping back into my bunk with a harsh cry of pain and frustration. I lay there, panting, aching, trying to catch my breath and recover myself, still my shaking legs and slow my thundering heart. Minutes passed in silence. I realized I was waiting. For him. My thumb circled the echo of his touch he’d left all those years ago. I could not believe how close he had felt. It was like he had just left the room.

I had to get up. More cautiously than before, I creaked to my feet. There was already a lump, hot and swelling on my head. I swore at the vile feeling of my damp trousers against my skin, the ugly sloshing of my stomach as the boat swayed beneath me. It took me only a few moments to clean up, but I decided to walk to the top deck anyway. I did not think I could sleep again. 

The briny bite of the sea wind slapped my face as I came above deck. It was bracing enough to ease the sudden anxiety building inside my chest like a swarm of bees. I crossed the deck and leaned against the rail, and breathed, and felt I could do nothing for a moment but simply exist.

So many years ago, I had seen someone - I had seen Amber, my Fool - lying on the deck of a ship like this, unconscious. I had felt the hatred of the man who drew near, and had, without hesitation, done what I could to protect the person I loved. I had always wondered what had called out to me in that moment. My Fool, who possessed neither the Wit, nor the Skill, had come to harm. I had known somehow, and answered with both. 

I marveled at how cruelly reversed our positions were. My Fool could not truly call to me. He could only ever hope and wait, in pain and in vain, for me to turn and focus. Unable to change or move or fix anything, cursed to sit and watch, to live all the consequences of my blindness at once, to hope I didn’t destroy everything in the process. How he had not given up on me so many times before was unfathomable.

I wondered how many times Amber had stood on the deck as I did now and felt me near, and seen me look away. How many times she had felt the depth of her invisibility, if it sharpened every edge of her loneliness. I wondered how often she had thought of me, touched the earring she wore, and prayed for my help. I wondered how many times I had left her in silence to fend for herself. I wondered how she could have loved someone like me for so long, someone who had never even seen her face.

I ached for Amber, then, and I ached for my Fool. I closed my eyes, and the yearning that swelled to a knot in my throat nearly brought me to my knees - I let the tide of it rise in me, let it surge so it might spill out to flow free and reach wherever and whoever it must. 

I will not pretend it transcended Skilling, nor did it mirror the Wit’s questing. It was not an unlocking of some sudden and secret magic. But it was something I felt we could both do, to simply and wholeheartedly long for each other. To hope even in vain that the other was missing you just as much. I looked up in the sky, the stars blurring before my stinging and watering eyes, as though something waited up there for me, calling in a way I once understood. I waited, and waited, hoping as a child might for the echo of some heretofore unknown call, some uncanny, longed for reply. 

And for a moment, I thought I did see something, streaking across the sky, quick and beautiful as a rogue star. Something only I could see, for only I had been looking for it. But I blinked. 

It was already gone.