Work Text:
The campfire glows, throwing flickers of warm light that illuminate Wyll’s body as he sits on his bedroll, mostly undressed. Beside him, Karlach gives off a muted light of her own, tendrils of flame dancing in her hair as always. Above them, the sky is black and twinkling. The crackle of the fire and the chirping of a nearby cricket are the only sounds; the other members of the party are all in their tents already, fast asleep or else in trance.
Looking at Karlach, Wyll follows with his eyes the intricacies of her skin, the way pale scar tissue weaves an organic web across her body that contrasts with the harsh-edged black lines of her tattoos. She’s sharp and soft by turns, with the way the patterns on her skin intertwine with one another. The metal studs that seal her body shut and keep her engine affixed within her chest reflect the light of the campfire, a faint orange glow from her humming heart just barely visible beneath the skin of her breast. She’s a work of art.
Sitting here beside Karlach, saying and doing nothing other than enjoying her company, Wyll’s mind wanders to last night, when she’d told him, I want to ride you ‘til you see stars. A thrill had gone through him upon hearing the words, even though they can’t be acted upon. It’s nice to know that she wants him, and nicer still to hear it aloud from her own lips; Karlach is refreshingly forthcoming. He’d love to have the opportunity to touch her in any way she wants. Not just in the context of her desire for sex, but to offer her a hand when she gets up from a seat, or to have her clap him on the back when they’ve done a job well, or elbow him when she makes a joke. He can practically feel what it would be like to live in a world where Karlach could be casual about physical contact, and while it makes him glad he doesn’t bruise easily, he still wants Karlach to have that kind of freedom. He’s sure she’d take to it well, the ability to put her hands on him.
As if she’s reading his mind, Karlach sighs and says, “I know I said I shouldn’t tease myself, but sitting next to you like this while we’re both in our skivvies is torture. I just keep thinking about all the things I wish I could do to you.”
Wyll lets out a chuckle, and the fire pops and sparks like it’s laughing along with him. He tells her, “I was just thinking something similar.”
Her wistful expression turns smug. “Yeah? How similar? Copper for your thoughts.”
He’s honest: “I was thinking about how nice it would be to get to shake each other’s hands when everything is over.”
She gives him a tender smile. “Yeah. That would be nice.” After a moment of quiet, she adds, “I was thinking about shoving you to the ground and straddling your face, but a handshake sounds great, too,” and the corners of Wyll’s mouth turn up as he averts his eyes. She teases him, “You blushing?”
“Hardly,” he snorts, turning back to look at her. “I’m not the bashful sort.”
“Aren’t you? Son of a duke and all. I thought you high society types are s’posed to be prudes.”
“Do I seem like a prude to you?” Wyll demands, feigning offense. “Gods forbid a man be polite.”
“The Blade of Frontiers and his manners,” groans Karlach, fighting a smile. “I could stand to hear you be a little less polite once in a while, you know. Right now, for example.”
“Whatever happened to not wanting to be teased?”
“Well, it’s different if you’re the one teasing me. It might be a little fun, then.”
“I’d bet you’re more creative than I am.”
“Oh, come on. You’re not going to have me do all the talking. You’re the one with the gifted tongue.”
“And by that you mean…?”
“You tell me.” Her cheeky grin warms him even more thoroughly than the fire.
Wyll glances around the campsite. Everyone is long since tucked into their tents, the flaps closed and unmoving. The night is quiet, and if Wyll lowers his voice, he can drop its volume below that of the crackling fire.
Barely at an audible level, he flirts: “Well, I never have had any complaints about my tongue.”
Karlach leans in to hear him better, heat radiating off her skin. It makes the air around her shimmer, makes his hair stand on end and his skin prickle. She whispers, “Do go on.”
“I liked your idea quite a bit, I will say. Wouldn’t mind having your thighs bracketing my ears.” He imagines it: the bright crimson skin of her inner thighs brushing the sides of his face as she drips into his mouth, the scent of her in his nose. “Although—” He reaches up and wraps a hand around one of his horns. “These might get in the way.”
“Nuh-uh,” Karlach says. “They’re just handles. The better to hold you where I want you.”
A little frisson of arousal goes through him at that: the idea of Karlach manhandling him. It’s not that he particularly likes to be manhandled, but when it’s her—well. He thinks he could get behind that. Her hands are so big; they’d be so solid and steady gripping him. Under her control, he could feel safe.
“Do they bother you?” Karlach asks out of nowhere, sounding downbeat enough that it snaps Wyll out of his fantasy.
“Does what bother me?”
“The horns.” Karlach rests her elbows on her knees, folding one hand over the other and looking down at her own overlapping fingers, avoiding Wyll’s face. “I mean… They can be a nuisance, can’t they? Certain sleeping positions are uncomfortable, certain shirts don’t fit…” She inclines her head, her voice trailing off with an uptick at the end that tells him that her list of hypothetical grievances is deliberately incomplete. There’s something else about them that she thinks he might be harboring a dislike for.
“They don’t bother me,” he assures her. “They’re just… a part of me now. Another thing about me that changed because of my pact. Can’t do anything about it for the time being, so might as well embrace it.” It’s true that he’s unbothered—on most days, at least. At her contemplative expression, he wonders, “Why are you asking?”
She sighs through her nose, giving him a sheepish smile. “I feel bad, ‘cause I really like them.”
“You… like my horns?”
She’s shifting her thumbs back and forth, the motion so small as to be barely visible in the flickering firelight, and Wyll wonders if she’s imagining stroking his horns like that, rubbing her fingers over the rough-textured keratin. She turns to him to make eye contact and says, “Probably selfish of me to like them, isn’t it? Kinda fucked. But you risked a lot to protect me, defying her. You didn’t even know me. She gave you those as a punishment for what you did for me. So I look at your horns and they remind me how kind you are.”
Well, now he might be blushing.
“Doing what was right, was all,” he says, trying not to sound too prideful. He touches the base of one of his horns lightly. “Well worth it.” Her eyes look like liquid gold in the firelight as he smiles at her. “And when you put it like that, I suppose I like them, too.”
“I wish I could kiss you,” she says, and the spark of heat flares brighter in him.
“So do I,” he murmurs. “Tell me what else.”
“You’d look so good on your back for me,” Karlach sighs. “Could get my hands all over your chest. And I bet you’d feel perfect inside me.”
He imagines it: the heat of her body wrapped around him, her mouth open against his own. The thought makes him shiver, and Karlach glances down at his lap, but her view is obscured by his folded knees. Obliging, he lays his legs out flat on his bedroll so she can see the slight bulge in the front of his undergarments. He’s not really hard—not yet, at least—but she licks her lips anyway, her chest glowing brighter orange with the rising heat of her engine.
“Wanna know exactly how you’d feel,” she continues. “I’d get so wet for you. Hells, I already am. Been thinking about it for a good few minutes.” She laughs breathlessly.
Wyll tries to keep his breathing steady as he requests, “May I see?”
“Was hoping you would ask.” She wriggles out of her smallclothes, tossing them aside to bare herself to him. Between her legs is a thatch of dark curly hair that’s damp with arousal, and when she leans back and spreads her thighs wider, the sight of her makes Wyll light-headed. He must be wearing a dumbstruck expression, because she grins and teases, “Alright, soldier?” and then runs two fingers up along herself, from her entrance to her clit. Now he’s halfway hard, and growing more so.
“You’re beautiful,” he tells her, and she rolls her eyes fondly.
“Sap.”
“I am an earnest man, Karlach,” he says, placing a hand over his own chest.
“You’re a sap, is what you are.”
“Sentimental.”
“Sappy.”
“Alright, fine, maybe a little bit sappy. I’ve the right to be.”
“I wasn’t complaining. Do feel free to go on saying nice things. I think it’s your turn to talk, anyhow. Impress me with that silver tongue.”
“Would that I could,” he says, eyeing the shine of slick on her tender flesh. “I bet you taste incredible.”
In response to his words, she swirls two fingers in the wetness between her legs, gathering it on her fingertips and bringing it to her mouth. She licks herself clean, tongue flickering along the pads of her fingers, her sharp teeth gleaming in the dark. She purrs, “Yeah, not bad,” and shoots him a wink as all his blood rushes southward. “But don’t you think you ought to be showing me yours, too, seeing as I’ve shown you mine?” She glances down at his lap again, more pointedly this time.
Wyll tugs himself out of the waistband of his undergarments, his cock flushed and firm. With a few strokes of his hand, he gets it all the way erect and weeping a little at the tip. The wetness catches the dying light of the campfire, which has burned down to just the barest flickers, and somewhere nearby an owl hoots; Wyll realizes he’s let this get rather far for being sat right in the middle of camp where anyone could see.
“Should we perhaps move into one of our tents?” he proposes. “If one of our companions decides to come out for some fresh air, we, ah… Well, we’d have cause to be rather embarrassed, wouldn’t we?”
“I’m shedding heat like a furnace,” Karlach argues. “If we go into an enclosed space together while my engine’s in overdrive like this, we’ll have to explain to the others in the morning how you ended up with heatsickness. And anyway…” She flashes another toothy grin at him. “The risk is kinda fun, isn’t it?”
He raises an eyebrow at her, non-judgemental but curious. “You think so?”
She nods, grinning, opening her legs wide and flexing her hips as if putting herself on display. “A little bit of danger makes everything more fun.”
“Says the one who can cover up in a second by putting her knees together,” Wyll points out, letting out a huff of laughter, and gestures to his prominent erection as he says, “I’m a bit more exposed like this.” He does a quick survey of the camp, picking out the closest occupied tent, scarcely twenty-five feet behind him and sporting githyanki metalwork hanging from its frame. “Can you imagine Lae’zel’s face if she stepped out of there while I’ve got my cock in my hand? She’d look like she bit into a lemon.”
“She always looks a bit like that,” Karlach dismisses him jovially. Then her smirk widens and she instructs him, “Say ‘cock’ again.”
“Say it again?” he laughs.
“Yeah! Come on, I’ve never heard you say a dirty word before. My ears are practically tingling. Indulge me.”
“I can’t just do it on command. That would make it less impactful when I do choose to say it.”
“Oh, is that why I’ve never heard it before? You only cuss on special occasions, do you?”
He gestures to himself grandly, with both hands, and reminds her, “I’m polite,” and the whole motion is perhaps lent a sense of irony by his cock jutting up out of his waistband. Karlach has to bite her fist to strangle a much-too-loud wheezing cackle, and Wyll mentally pats himself on the back for making her laugh.
“I bet I could make you cuss like a sailor,” she muses, and her hand finds its way between her own legs again. “Fold your legs up by your ears and have you shouting.”
He throbs, and quickly wraps his hand back around himself with a shaky exhale. “I don’t doubt it,” he says, thumbing over the sensitive head and being rewarded with Karlach biting her lip as she watches.
She pushes two fingers into herself, giving a shivery sigh and letting her legs fall open farther. “S’pose we ought to keep our voices down for now, though,” she decides. “Bit of a shame. But someday…” She arches a mischievous eyebrow at him, then her eyelids flutter slightly as she pulls her wet fingers out of herself and traps her clit between them.
Wyll swallows hard, nodding, and gives himself a firm stroke to expose more of the dusky head. As he does, he keeps his eyes on her hand, tracking the way her slippery fingers move against herself so that someday he’ll be able to replicate her motions just the way she likes. A twist of his wrist, just like that; a curl of his fingers, this way. Wyll’s hands are just as deft as his tongue. Gods, he’d love the feel of her around his fingers: soft and slick and so very hot inside. He shudders, gripping his shaft tightly.
The sound of Karlach’s panting sends little jolts of pleasure through him as he strokes himself, wordless vocalizations occasionally slipping through between her breaths. The quiet gasping moans she makes are music to his ears.
She gives him a lazy grin and goads him, “C’mon, you can do it faster than that,” nodding in the direction of his hand on his cock. “Expert swordsman, aren’t you supposed to be?” He responds with a chuckle and a speeding up of his hand, and Karlach continues, “What about me? Think I’ve got the finesse to handle your sword?”
He eyes her hands. They’re bigger than his, certainly, with long sure fingers and callused palms. He can see the way the tendons shift beneath the skin, knuckles protruding, as she works. They’re nice hands.
“I’m sure you could manage,” he finally tells her, laughing a little.
Her hips are jerking into her own hands, her chest heaving. Wyll can’t get enough of looking at her like this, her fingers sliding along her dripping cunt, her eyes bright with humor as she gets herself off for him. The fire in her hair is burning hotter than he’s ever seen it outside of combat, white and blue in its intensity, curling around her horns like the flame itself is alive. It’s probably too soon to say he’s in love with her, but—he might be anyway, just a little bit. How could he not be, when she beams at him like that?
She comes with a quiet groan, and Wyll gets to watch the way the muscles in her strong thighs tighten, her body going stiff. He can see her cunt twitching around her fingers, too, wetness spilling out around them, and he mutters a quiet, “Gods.”
Karlach slips her fingers out, body posture going languid as she relaxes. As she catches her breath, she says, “I’m counting that as an expletive. You just swore.”
“I suppose I did,” he says, a bit too caught up in stroking his cock to contribute a more thoughtful response.
“Knew I could get you to do it.” Karlach wipes her sticky fingers off on her thigh. “Hey, you know what I just thought of? I bet we could get a toy. Something that doesn’t transfer heat too much, like polished stone, maybe. Then we could be touching each other without touching each other.”
He envisions it: something smooth and marble, something he could grip at one end and nudge inside her while she eggs him on, or else that she could press into him, if that’s something she’d like to do.
He gets confirmation when she asks, “Would you let me fuck you with it?”
“I wouldn’t be opposed,” he tells her, voice ragged and breathless as pre-come dribbles across his knuckles.
“I’d really like to fuck you with it,” she declares. “Bet you’d look so good on your hands and knees for me, eh? Stretching around something of a good size. You’d have to prop yourself against something, since I wouldn’t be able to hold you steady. But one day I will. And then it’ll be your turn. Can’t fucking wait to have you inside me. Or your mouth on me, or your hands. Did anyone ever tell you that you’ve got nice hands?”
He comes all over his belly, twitching with the pleasure of the release, and sighs.
Karlach jokes, “Guess it’s from playing with your sword all day,” and a laugh bursts out of him, just a bit too loud to be acceptable, the rush of his orgasm making him giddy and a little bit foolish. He scrambles to tuck himself away even before he goes fully soft.
“I think we’d better retire to our beds before we wake anyone up,” he reasons, although he’s loathe to say good night. “...After I wash up a bit, anyway.”
Karlach hums a little, eyeing the pearly streaks of come on his abdomen like she’s thinking about crawling to him and licking them up. She acquiesces: “Alright, fine. Guess we’d better.”
They spent a few moments cleaning themselves up, Karlach pulling her smallclothes back on. They bundle their bedrolls into their arms to bring into their respective tents, which are near one another closer to the edges of camp.
“Good night, Karlach,” he tells her as he stands in front of his tent, but something about the way she’s still watching him hungrily makes him linger outside instead of going in.
After a moment of silence, she finally says, “Gods, I can’t wait ‘til I can actually get my hands on you.” Then she disappears into her tent.