[ What lifts Darius’s heart, and sets the world at rights: how quickly Enri responds, how he rises from trouble-churned depths and emerges buoyant, bright, all fretting vanished.
How his eyes never stray from Darius’s, and how in them Darius bears witness to a swift-returning hope, to relief, to comfort and assurance.
Darius is accustomed to influencing the minds and moods of others. To marking the precise word and tonal shift required to grip talons at the root of resistance. To urging others toward his aim with subtle-threading charisma or with sharper, blazing assertion. Rhetoric has always been for him a deftly wielded tool, driven with signs of attachment and emotion he never felt to heart, mingling truth and fiction with equal ease, seducing his targets to the precise crossroad at which he would attain his ends: a point won, a negotiation secured, a bit of business sealed, a warning lodged like persistent fire in the target’s soul. It has always been seduction of a sort, in the wake of which he could stroll away and leave the spell to linger, leave the target wondering at how far they’d forgotten their own goals and means, leave the target raw and wounded, bleeding pride or resentment or terror for days.
This isn’t that.
Nothing with Enri is ever like that.
From their first week together, from that first night, it’d been a two-way street with Enri: the boy picking up on Darius’s direction and enhancing it with his own images (’like praying,’ he’d said; red light at Darius’s cheek like blood), imparting thrusts and motifs of his own, turning singularity of pursuit into something shared, something built upon. Something Darius found himself disinclined to shatter or yank wholly from the new-known young man’s grasp.
From that first night, Darius had felt a humming thread wound through himself, attached to Enri. (Hadn’t credited it then with its full power. Hadn’t known how to comprehend or to accept its meaning and the future that it called for.) From that first night - though he hadn’t known it - there had been no question of drifting away unscathed, or of tugging the thread without being pulled in kind.
It’s nothing that he’s ever known before. It’s a force and an aegis he wonders at still, thinks he might glimpse with awe forever: how heartening it is to feel himself drawn with and attached to this man. How much more brilliant the world became when the thread between them struck alight.
When Darius speaks with Enri, it’s in praise, it’s in approval, it’s in shared composition and as a hand caressing invitation. He wants his love to join him; he wants to be joined with this man. And there is place for Enri always in his speaking. And Darius finds heart-rending joy when his words lend Enri buoyancy, when he speaks and finds his Enri revived.
It’s this elation that he feels now, when Enri nods, when Enri smiles, when Enri looks so far from loss and brings Darius into a kiss. (And Darius thinks, it’s all right now. It’s all right; the storm has passed.) (There never should have been a storm, Darius ought to have precluded it’s existence, but if he failed in that regard, he can at least bring Enri back to peace and sureness, and learn better from his own oversight.) It’s this elation that melts him into the kiss and against Enri’s body as he thrills with each inviting touch.
Enri understood him. Enri understands his meaning. (Of course Enri does. Perceptive boy, so capable of knowing his own truths, and of reading every resonance in Darius.)
Enri believes him. Trusts him.
And Darius nuzzles Enri, cheek to cheek. Meets the cocked eye and flickers, grinning, at that little laugh. Traces his fingers slow, down along Enri’s chest, then back up again. A fond and a familiar caress. (He’s going to caress Enri just this way - and in so many others - all the rest of his existence. And that, oh, that too evokes elation.) ]
Clever boy.
Next week; I’ll pick you up and we’ll go over. Take dinner somewhere after.
[ There’s a smirk, an eyebrow raised, and he leans up and in to draw a light lick at Enri’s lip. ]
See how much of an upset we can create, hm?
[ This time, he gives a gentle tug to Enri’s lip, elides into a kiss without bite, without teeth. Soft and brushing light before he moves to seek Enri’s eyes hungry for the sight of beloved amber. Smirking still, though there’s a note of the same awed infatuation that runs dizzy through his veins. ]
We’ll let everyone see how well I love you. How I can keep neither hands nor eyes from my Enri. My Puppy. My adoration.
no subject
How his eyes never stray from Darius’s, and how in them Darius bears witness to a swift-returning hope, to relief, to comfort and assurance.
Darius is accustomed to influencing the minds and moods of others. To marking the precise word and tonal shift required to grip talons at the root of resistance. To urging others toward his aim with subtle-threading charisma or with sharper, blazing assertion. Rhetoric has always been for him a deftly wielded tool, driven with signs of attachment and emotion he never felt to heart, mingling truth and fiction with equal ease, seducing his targets to the precise crossroad at which he would attain his ends: a point won, a negotiation secured, a bit of business sealed, a warning lodged like persistent fire in the target’s soul. It has always been seduction of a sort, in the wake of which he could stroll away and leave the spell to linger, leave the target wondering at how far they’d forgotten their own goals and means, leave the target raw and wounded, bleeding pride or resentment or terror for days.
This isn’t that.
Nothing with Enri is ever like that.
From their first week together, from that first night, it’d been a two-way street with Enri: the boy picking up on Darius’s direction and enhancing it with his own images (’like praying,’ he’d said; red light at Darius’s cheek like blood), imparting thrusts and motifs of his own, turning singularity of pursuit into something shared, something built upon. Something Darius found himself disinclined to shatter or yank wholly from the new-known young man’s grasp.
From that first night, Darius had felt a humming thread wound through himself, attached to Enri. (Hadn’t credited it then with its full power. Hadn’t known how to comprehend or to accept its meaning and the future that it called for.) From that first night - though he hadn’t known it - there had been no question of drifting away unscathed, or of tugging the thread without being pulled in kind.
It’s nothing that he’s ever known before. It’s a force and an aegis he wonders at still, thinks he might glimpse with awe forever: how heartening it is to feel himself drawn with and attached to this man. How much more brilliant the world became when the thread between them struck alight.
When Darius speaks with Enri, it’s in praise, it’s in approval, it’s in shared composition and as a hand caressing invitation. He wants his love to join him; he wants to be joined with this man. And there is place for Enri always in his speaking. And Darius finds heart-rending joy when his words lend Enri buoyancy, when he speaks and finds his Enri revived.
It’s this elation that he feels now, when Enri nods, when Enri smiles, when Enri looks so far from loss and brings Darius into a kiss. (And Darius thinks, it’s all right now. It’s all right; the storm has passed.) (There never should have been a storm, Darius ought to have precluded it’s existence, but if he failed in that regard, he can at least bring Enri back to peace and sureness, and learn better from his own oversight.) It’s this elation that melts him into the kiss and against Enri’s body as he thrills with each inviting touch.
Enri understood him. Enri understands his meaning. (Of course Enri does. Perceptive boy, so capable of knowing his own truths, and of reading every resonance in Darius.)
Enri believes him. Trusts him.
And Darius nuzzles Enri, cheek to cheek. Meets the cocked eye and flickers, grinning, at that little laugh. Traces his fingers slow, down along Enri’s chest, then back up again. A fond and a familiar caress. (He’s going to caress Enri just this way - and in so many others - all the rest of his existence. And that, oh, that too evokes elation.) ]
Clever boy.
Next week; I’ll pick you up and we’ll go over. Take dinner somewhere after.
[ There’s a smirk, an eyebrow raised, and he leans up and in to draw a light lick at Enri’s lip. ]
See how much of an upset we can create, hm?
[ This time, he gives a gentle tug to Enri’s lip, elides into a kiss without bite, without teeth. Soft and brushing light before he moves to seek Enri’s eyes hungry for the sight of beloved amber. Smirking still, though there’s a note of the same awed infatuation that runs dizzy through his veins. ]
We’ll let everyone see how well I love you. How I can keep neither hands nor eyes from my Enri. My Puppy. My adoration.
How you take such care with Daddy. With me.
How I mean to keep you always.