His companion's hands were soft and delightfully warm as they quested along the topography of his face as a blind man might, his fingertips ticklish as a paintbrush as they explored every slope and curve of his delicate features. The boy could doubtlessly envision his face even in the darkest corners of the earth, like a sunspot scorched for all time on the surface of his retinas. It was a deeply erotic thought; his groin seized in spite of himself, hard, within the folds of his white sleep bottoms. Alcuin couldn't rightly figure when his eyes had slipped shut like a tamed and undeniably contented animal, only that the darkness on the other side of his eyelids lent itself to fantasy and imagination. He allowed himself, for a moment, to imagine what it might be like to be touched elsewhere by those reverent hands.
Would the boy pebble his nipples with his thumbs? Would he count the hard ridges of his ribcage? Would he press just hard enough to notice the hard knot that made up overzealous bone, just beneath the acre of gnarled and wounded flesh? It was a rare thing, to desire hands other than his own upon his body. Would Alcuin desire such a thing from the boy? Yes; oh, yes...
But the words withered at the tip of his tongue when next he opened his eyes, the spell woven by imagination and not a little heartfelt desire broken by the slumbering figure in their periphery. Scott had done everything for them; given them a home, sacrificed his own bedroom to assure their privacy, fed them when they hungered, and never once laid an unwanted finger upon them in their time there. Their ilk could ask for no better, and he knew beyond the shadow of doubt there was plenty worse. “That would not be wise,” he whispered, his eyes flickering briefly in the direction of their master as he drew up and away, settling back on his haunches at his companion's side. “mon petit.”