Work Text:
It stings under his skin. This feeling… What is it? Every now and then it demands his attention, and he’s indulged it but ignored any deeper implications to what it might mean, content to continue life with the chance and opportunities he’s been granted. It disintegrates as quickly as it stirs, and he goes on.
But. Adrenaline still thrums through his blood, unsettled. Sharp metal clangs still echo through his ears, and rain still beats onto his face and scalp. The world around doesn’t exist; only him, his grip on his blade, the blade that crosses his, and the grip that holds that.
“So… You’re no different from the others.”
The memory of the words flexes his jaw. The stormy blue eyes that meet his.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Yes, he knows. Those words escaped from his rib cage, their prison of hurt, but he can’t catch them to lock them up again. They’ve all fled free, fugitives seeking out only one safe haven.
“Just like everyone else!”
That isn’t true, but this anger has branded his heart with a similar that only activates where two people are involved. One of them is Shuri, who pulls their blades together, the magnet that connects them because their own poles refuse to line up. Neither of them turns for each other, but they will for her.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I know you just want to protect her.”
No, he knows what was meant, even before the wrath pierced his limbs with wire and began haphazardly puppeteering him around. They’re the same, but it’s easier to thread string through his body groomed for the stage of their lives in society than a body whose wood petrified out of self-preservation.
“You wanted me to confirm.”
He closes his eyes and breathes through the memory of the words.
“If… Shuri and I wanted the same thing… What… would you do?”
He strikes. The block holds them frozen. Those vibrations still buzz through his body, the sting under his skin. They’re locked there, and although a tree, no matter its grandeur, should never be able to understand the ocean, branches reach down to dip their leaves into the stormy waters.
“Do you need a guard dog to protect the lion’s den?”
And the ocean whips the branch right off.
“If that’s what’s needed, I’ll gladly volunteer.”
“Tch.”
He refrains from digging the heel of his palm into his eye after disengaging from the Knight Commander, whose enthusiasm about the match couldn’t be genuinely shared. Shuri comes to him after, draped head to toe in beautiful burgundy that offsets her rosy heir and spring green eyes, and he considers cutting off the conversation before it begins to sweep her off onto the dance floor before the numbers can begin in earnest. The thought is locked up behind newly-forged black iron bars of acceptance, encrusted in sapphire.
Shuri is surprised by his lack of preening and teases him about it. He wishes he could preen, that blades had crossed in the same way they always had, instead of one flying away and the other snapping in half. That isn’t a win. Not for either of them—especially not for him. He says as much.
Shuri understands. Yes, she always does.
But. He doesn’t allow the stinging under his skin to show any longer and turns the conversation to the various noblemen who won’t stop coercing him into the idea of marrying one of their daughters, which Shuri inevitably finds humor in and teases him about. He plays his grouchy act and uses the excuse of hiding from them for a while to escape. The hall is beginning to stuff up anyway.
By miracle, he reaches outside the hall without interruption from well-wishers. The air is not uncomfortably cool, but enough that the mounting warmth from being inside is soothed, allowing for his lungs to decompress. In spite of the flash storm a few hours ago, the clouds have thinned to striping wisps that waft along the sky. He pushes his hands into his pockets and closes his eyes, breathing deeply while the breeze combs through his hair like tender fingers.
He'll move past this. Too much is at stake to be stuck like this, mourning what can’t be had. Desires aren’t always fulfilled, and dreams must stay in the mind. He will conquer it.
“Rare to see you in such deep thought.”
His eyes languidly open, though he doesn’t see who it is. He doesn’t need to.
“Speak for yourself,” he responds naturally. “Can’t imagine anything else goes on in that head of yours but swords and rabbits.”
“Hmm… Then I guess we’re not much different.”
He snorts. “Don’t lump me in with you, rabid dog.”
“I’ve been demoted?”
“Don’t act like you’ve ever been anything more.”
His hand moves to place over his chest. “And here I thought we were best friends, Jeremy.”
He hears his name and takes a moment too long to answer, drawing blue eyes onto him. He rolls his own.
“I never claimed to make good friends. A rascal like you definitely can’t be counted as well-behaved, Nora.” He tilts his head to finally look over. Nora’s hair is slicked back to leave his rich line of sight uninterrupted.
Nora huffs. “What will the scary little kitten do, grab me by the scruff and take me back to the den?”
“Dogs and cats don’t mix.”
“Neither do cats and rabbits.”
“Neither do rabbits and dogs.”
Their eyes meet evenly, verdant green clashing on velvet blue. Jeremy hears the clanging again.
They both snort, and then it breaks into snickers. Jeremy shoulders Nora, just to be shouldered back. He almost escalates but promptly remembers where they are and how they aren’t fifteen anymore, smudged up with dirt and leaves and twigs, on their way back to be scolded by Shuri for dragging filth into the house.
Nora seems to think the same.
“If you really want, I can strip off your jacket and push you in.” He nods his chin over the balcony at the stream.
“I’d grab onto you and then we’d both go down. Is that what you want?”
“Would you hold on tight?”
Jeremy’s thoughts stutter, but only briefly. He looks over, directly.
“Would you?”
Nora looks back at him, eyes roaming his face in search. He hums, a little smile playing on his lips. “Only if it were the den.”
“You’re really adamant about that, aren't you?” he says, nearly cutting Nora off.
Nora laughs a little. “Well, like I said before…”
Before, in the rain, when you were baring your fangs to snap my neck, and I was going to take it because I’m the only one who can.
“One apology is all you’re getting, Nora.”
The outside cool isn’t enough to combat the heat rising under his fabrics. His fingers flex in his pockets but the line of his shoulders stays relaxed. The wine coursing through him helps.
“One is all I need,” murmurs Nora. “And… For the record, I think dogs and cats and rabbits do mix. If you do it right, anyway.”
“They’re going to have to,” he says under his breath, though Nora hears him anyway. “Especially if they’re important to you as you said.”
“I meant what I said,” Nora states firmly, snatching Jeremy’s gaze, his own intense and dark. “They’re important to me, and… You are, too.”
It wells through Jeremy before he can stop it, only escaping his mouth as a sharp click of the tongue. He spins on his heel to strut off, heavy-footed over the paved stone as he heads for the shadow of the building. Footsteps tap behind, leisure and light.
Moments later, they’re towered over by the building, blanketed by its shadows that only deepen as evening sets in. No windows line this side of the walls, and trees shroud them with their flowering racemes crowning just above their heads.
Jeremy stops under a low-reaching raceme with soft pink blooms, five petals each. He plucks one from its vine and counts the petals once. Counts them twice. Five petals surrounding the bud. Five that have unfurled beautifully and so full of life from the bud.
Then, he says, “You get on my damn nerves,” rolling the snapped stem between his fingers.
“Is that so?”
Jeremy instantly rounds on him, expecting amusement plastered onto that ever-carefree face. Instead, Nora is leaned up against the wall, his hands tucked into his pockets too as he watches Jeremy. He glances at the flower between his fingers.
The wall is close enough that Nora is able to reach one hand out and pick the flower from his hand. Jeremy’s other hand clenches in his own pocket, though he doesn’t stop him. He watches Nora turn it over in his own fingers a few times, eyes softening at it. Jeremy is startled when the gaze doesn’t change as it moves to him. His brow furrows.
Then, he stiffens when Nora reaches up to set the flower behind his right ear. His lungs freeze and his eyes are unable to cut away from being pinned in place, like a particularly fascinating insect, the first of a flourishing collection.
“What are you—”
“A crown for the prince of the lions, as honored by their loyal guard dog.”
Nora’s fingers don’t skim off the shell of his ear one second before Jeremy is snatching him by the lapels and shoving him against the wall. Like with everything else between them, Nora takes this in stride. Jeremy's eyes flick around, searching, searching for the truth, seeing a gate with the garden of paradise beyond and pleading that it isn’t a trap.
Nora doesn’t fight back.
“You can take your anger out on me as much as you want.”
Nora doesn’t blanch when Jeremy’s mouth is slamming onto his, solid body laying in so hard that he’s now parallel with the wall. He allows Jeremy this, patient and tolerant and expectant—and then Jeremy bites his bottom lip. Hard.
Hissing, he pushes back, hands no longer idle, reaching to grip at either side of Jeremy’s neck, thumbs pressing into his lower cheeks, fingers wrapping tight around his nape.
Neither of their eyes are closed, both heavily lidded as Jeremy greedily licks into Nora’s mouth, demanding compliance that he knows Nora won’t give. It’s effortless; a competition, the same as everything else between them always is, and perhaps that’s why it isn’t jarring or upsetting, heated and fierce instead.
They break at the same time, foreheads falling together as the string of spit connecting them falls apart. Nora can feel Jeremy’s brow furrow as his eyes drift down to the side, hands still tightly wrung in the front of his suit.
Nora’s mind is blissfully empty, lips pleasantly buzzing and likely a mirror to how swollen and pink Jeremy’s have become. The cut stings, but when his tongue pokes out to dab at it, Jeremy follows the motion, cheeks lovingly rosy in the same way Shuri’s hair is like the flower behind his ear. Nora finds that he likes this color in both places.
“Aren’t you just the blushing bride,” he murmurs, hold on Jeremy’s face and neck loosened only slightly.
“Shut the hell up…” Jeremy breathes.
“Why don’t you make me?”
Perhaps not the wisest idea, but when Jeremy pushes back in with fervor, Nora lets himself be swept away in whatever form of punishment this is supposed to be.
Neither of them has kissed another before, but it doesn’t matter when all Jeremy can think of is Nora’s determination to carve his place out in their lives with the hope that the divots won’t be packed back in, regardless of what he can or cannot have. Something about that… obstinacy picks at the agitated, pink edges of a brand over his heart that has hardly begun to heal—but it’s a cool, soothing salve that he can’t turn away either.
These sensations war in him and have no outlet but this mystifying and perplexing touch. Underneath these fabrics that he wouldn’t take off even if they were ablaze with Nora’s touch—they very well might be, with how one of his arms has mysteriously wound around his lower back to pull him in closer, closer—everything that’s happened until now has amalgamated in this: the taste of Nora’s blood in his mouth.
When he unwittingly presses a knee between Nora’s legs and elicits a low moan into his mouth, Jeremy is mercilessly yanked back into the present. It spurs a chain of, What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck, that cycles and cycles until the sound of Nora’s arousal is etched into his brain permanently.
“That’s not you shutting up,” he pants, palms pinning Nora’s shoulders to the wall in a bid to push out of the alluring fog of… whatever that was.
“Too far?” Nora says, flushed though amused.
“I hate you.”
“I adore you too, best friend.”
With a click of his tongue, Jeremy untangles them and becomes acutely aware of the tightness in his own trousers. He huffs and pushes a hand through his hair, stepping back from Nora’s furnace of a body to bathe in the cool air and hope it’ll be enough. If either of them are seen like this…
Dear God… That sound will haunt him for the rest of his days, won't it?
“They’ll be looking for us soon,” Jeremy murmurs between breaths to derail his mind, feeling for the flower behind his ear against his better judgement. Still present; Nora must’ve been careful of it. Why is that endearing? Why does it have to be endearing?
“No,” Nora says between his own labored breathing, “they’ll be looking for you.”
Jeremy scoffs though he knows it’s true, stepping back in to consider Nora’s appearance. It’s fortunate that this is a formal affair and that they are locked behind so many layers, otherwise a carpet all the way to the bed chambers may have very well been rolled out by his impulses. (Would Nora have gone along? Questions for another time.) He begins to, so they’ll both calm, methodically sort Nora out, and Nora lets him, docile in a way usually reserved for Shuri’s touch exclusively.
“You’re not much for balls or galas, sure, but that also means you haven’t been hearing the young noblewomen absolutely swoon after you.” Sharp mirth plays over Jeremy’s mouth and eyes, though Nora is only looking at one of the two.
“And you also know only one matters to me.”
Jeremy snorts, tugging Nora from the wall and turning him around to inspect the back of his suit jacket. He begins dusting it off.
“No need to be concerned with that,” he replies mildly. “Shuri will find her way to you eventually.” He then says, more quietly, “She always does.”
“Planning to limp away, lion prince?” Nora teases, turning back around when Jeremy taps his shoulder. He begins straightening out the wine and burgundy fabrics wrapped around Jeremy, who he stops from batting him away. “After the beautiful moment we just shared… I’m hurt.”
Jeremy snorts again, derisive. “Don’t lie, mutt. There was nothing beautiful about that.”
Then, he jerks back slightly when Nora leans into his space, pushing their faces close. He narrows his eyes, and Nora says, “Sure. But I’ll remember it as beautiful.”
Jeremy wants to shove his face away with his palm but restrains himself, irritation twitching in his brow.
“You are so—”
“Handsome? Charming? Irresistible?”
“Fucking obnoxious.”
Nora laughs, though not loud enough to break their hideout of wall and tree, and moves his hands to tidy Jeremy’s hair, as if his fingers hadn’t been demanding at it minutes ago.
“Shuri wouldn’t say so.”
“Shuri is—” Jeremy pauses, narrowing his eyes further and choosing his words more carefully. “Blissfully ignorant.”
“Nice save.”
“I should’ve made your lip bleed more,” he grouses, making the final adjustments to his own cape and ornaments. Nora hums, a mischievous glint in his eye.
“Maybe next time.”
Jeremy scoffs. “In your dreams, mutt.”
“I'm counting on it, kitten.”
Every ounce of self-control is summoned for Jeremy not to throw a white-gloved fist into Nora’s smug, self-satisfied and content face. The bitten lip, they can excuse. Black eyes and swelling bruises… Shuri would quarter him herself. Nora knows it, beaming even more. Jeremy rolls his eyes and begins to step away with a final check over himself.
That feeling… It’s settled. The brand will scab over, peel clean, scar, and he’ll touch it every time he wants to remember how and why it was burned there to begin with. The arena is blissfully silent in his ears.
A different, more tantalizing noise isn't, however, but that's neither here nor there.
Before he can round the corner to rejoin the festivities, he pauses with a slight turn of his head.
“You’re important to us, too. Rachel and Leon… Elias. Shuri.” He lingers a moment, eyelashes fanning down. Nora can see how long they are from this angle. “I’m the same. Unfortunately.”
“You can’t let me have anything nice, can you?” Nora says easily, eyes curving. Jeremy starts to walk away, the sunset gleaming rosy gold off of his hair.
“Not a chance. Welcome to the lion’s den, wolf.”
Nora doesn’t follow, though Jeremy doesn’t expect him to. Despite those words—I’ll be counting on it—this won’t happen again. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but Jeremy is still toiling away on his self-control and emotional stability, so he allows this for himself.
But, well… That it led to this—he pulls off his glove to grace at the flower behind his ear, and then plucks it to smile softly at it before tucking away in his breast pocket—he can’t say he regrets it.
Nora watches Jeremy disappear back to where he is the victorious hero and Nora is simply the kicked mutt and looks to the blooming tree that had been sanctifying Jeremy earlier. The color of the flowers is lovely, and he finds himself picking two blooms from it, counting five petals on each. He brings them to his lips to place the softest, most reverent kiss.
Later, after Shuri has once again peeled back all he is and laid those layers into a path to the future that he doesn’t even have to think twice about following, she asks, in her, as Jeremy had said it, blissfully ignorant way:
“It isn’t bleeding anymore, but it’s still fresh…” She puts a gentle hand to his cheek, and he doesn’t resist nuzzling into her silken glove. She laughs softly. “Will it be alright?”
“It’s just a little cut,” he reassures as they begin to leisurely stroll back to the grand hall. “I’ve had worse.”
Shuri frowns, but he smiles. “You didn’t have it when the ball started,” she says. “You didn’t fight with anyone, did you?”
He can’t help but laugh, adjusting his coat around her shoulders. “Not at all,” he promises. “You see, there was a stray kitty that I’d seen among the wisteria. I was very honest with it and adored it, but,” he laughs again, “it was a little feisty, so I had to let it go.”
“Oh, dear,” Shuri says, eyes curving, so resplendent and vibrant. “You seem to attract trouble wherever you go, don’t you?”
“As I said, Lady Shu, you don’t have to worry. You’ll find that if I wander into a lion’s den,” he sweeps stray pink hair behind her left ear, “I’ll come out with more friends than I had before.”
And when Shuri’s smile beams brighter, Nora knows that regardless of what the future holds, regardless of any action he’ll be forced to take, it will all have been worth it for this smile, and this happiness.