rhy maresh (goldenhelm) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2020-05-11 19:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, alucard emery, rhy maresh |
WHO: Younger!Rhy and younger!Alucard, part 2
WHAT: Sorting out a few more things
WHEN: After this one, still today
WHERE: Maresh Palace
WARNINGS: I don't think there are any in this one, just a lot of feels.
Rhy thought about leaving the palace and exploring the world outside, but he suspected that would make him feel even more disconnected from everything he knew. Besides, he had no idea what unknown dangers might be lurking; at the very least, there was always the threat of getting lost and being unable to find his way back.
So he wandered the palace, stopping to look at family portraits and familiar tapestries, poking his head into various rooms. He found one that had been turned into some kind of a workshop, full of unfamiliar equipment and many different shapes of blown glass and wrought metal. There were a few glass balls with small flames inside them, similar to ones he had seen at the Night Market. Who had made them, he wondered, Alucard or Anisa? Even Rhy himself had possibly had a hand in the glasswork; perhaps that was what the equipment was for. Maybe this world had instruments for that which could be used without magic. His old element box was on a shelf in there, as well; perhaps he had leant it to Anisa. Or maybe he’d dared to study magic again.
Eventually he came back to the hallway where his bedroom was. There were multiple parts of the palace he hadn’t found, but somehow, strangely, they didn’t appear to be here at all. Either that or they had been hidden somehow, and Rhy didn’t know how to access them.
He reentered the bedroom and looked around it with fresh eyes. A strange red and white ball on the bedside table caught his eye; he picked it up, and it opened, releasing a large bird. Rhy startled backwards, but the bird made merry noises at him and fluttered over to sit on his shoulder.
“We’re friends, are we?” Rhy asked, surprised and delighted. The bird rubbed at his neck with its head and sifted through his curls with its beak. Rhy dared to softly brush its feathered chest with a fingertip, and didn’t get pecked. Warmed by the sudden, uncomplicated companionship the bird provided, he set about exploring more of the room, talking to it as he went.
“Oh, look,” he said to it, when he opened a large tome and found it full of pictures. He sat down on the couch, and the bird hopped down to sit on one of his knees as he went through it. It appeared to be a chronological depiction of his time here, the dates and descriptions labeled in his own handwriting. They were mostly pictures of himself and Alucard, but quite a few of Kell as well; apparently he had been here. They were in so many different locations, with strange labels, like Alola -- this was where the bird first appeared in pictures, along with a much larger one that appeared to be made of metal that stayed at Alucard’s side. There were some wonderfully happy pictures labeled Alucard’s birthday. And there, that must be their wedding day -- the same clothes as they were wearing in the painting, and there was the picture that the painting must have been done from.
This was wondrous. How had he taken all of these pictures? He was superbly grateful for them now, for the documentation they provided of his life here. It made it all feel much more real.
He was so lost in the picture book that he didn’t hear the footsteps outside the door, and looked up, startled when it opened. But it was just Alucard. The bird, he noticed, seemed supremely unconcerned about this, but of course, it would be used to Alucard being around. Rhy was not, quite; his cheeks flushed with heat, his heart fluttered, and he felt flustered and off-balance. The effect Alucard had on him, particularly when he wasn’t guarding his heart against it, had always been intense. And this was worse than usual, because oh, saints, that was his future husband.
“Hello,” he said, and then, for lack of anything else to say, “How was your time with Anisa?”
--
Although there had been so much to catch up on with Anisa (a year or so for him, more like five for her), Alucard had not forgotten about Rhy. Nor had Anisa. She also had friends and more to do than hang around with her older brother all day. So she had left the palace with her own agenda and confidence in his ability to use this place’s communications devices. Strange as it was for everyone to have their own device, it was stranger that such communications had so many options for privacy. But nothing more so than time to oneself. Rhy had had such time.
Looking at him now in Rhy’s room — in their room — Alucard hoped it had been enough. At least, for the moment. “Remarkable,” Alucard smiled. “Much more of her talking than me. I could happily listen to that for days.” Restricted to letters that could find him, their communication had been limited. And it held so much distance, so much unsaid between the lines of text. “There was plenty she wasn’t saying. But then, five years and another world is… a lot.”
He had his suspicions she had left out some of the saddest moments. But Alucard wasn’t in a hurry to learn every last tragedy. So much happiness was overwhelming. He could barely imagine a happier future. And if it was up to them to do it again, knowing they could, he was going to do the work. “Did you know we have a ship?” Alucard asked, smiling.
It was easier to see what influence he had had on the room, the ways it was theirs, not just Rhy’s. It reminded Alucard of his quarters aboard the Night Spire, if for some reason they had come with a crown prince.
--
Rhy smiled. “Yes, I found pictures. It’s called the Besame, I’m not quite sure what that word means. But we were engaged and married on it, and it looks like we’ve thrown quite a few parties on it as well.”
Saying that aloud made his heart start thudding in his chest. It felt so strange, and glorious, to talk about such things as engagement and marriage in the past tense, while knowing that it was to come in his future. The pictures had served to demonstrate, better than anything Alucard could say, how much he was wondrously, deeply loved and how happy his lover could make him, given the chance. It was all over their faces, even in the less significant moments.
He cleared his throat and gestured to the bird sitting on his knee. “Did you know we have birds? I’m not sure where yours is.”
After a moment’s pause, he patted the couch beside him, inviting Alucard to sit down beside him. “Come and look.”
--
The couch was fit for a prince or even a king. It was on a scale it could easily encompass them both with room for others. That presented Alucard with the choice of how close to sit to Rhy and the need to consider how close Rhy wanted him. They had cleared up the past before considering this future, and they had kissed. Alucard longed for more, but where they stood with each other mattered more. Alucard longed for Rhy’s heart far more than for his body.
He sat fairly close, directly beside Rhy, so as to be able to see the images of their future lives, the life he had been imagining most nights. Well, he tried to focus on the steps from where he was to where he wanted to be. This whole… sudden situation skipped over all that, and it left Alucard a ship at sea without an anchor. “Mine is with Anisa,” Alucard said. “It accompanies her frequently when she goes about, in its magical encasement if it would be an unwelcome sight.” He frowned slightly. It was an odd place to grant them so much but then require they hide all sign of magic and anything else. A world without magic. Alucard had read what little he could about it. But still.
Still, they looked so happy. Alucard hummed. “Anisa didn’t fully explain it,” he added, “said it was too long a story, just yet. But I survived some kind of… magical curse. That’s where the silver comes from.” He mentally traced the lines visible in all the photographs. What he endured, what he had lived through, had continued to leave its marks on his body, something that could be read and understood, if someone knew or could determine what they meant.
He stared at them in the photographs, the clear love and happiness between them. “I’ve only dreamt of being so happy,” Alucard said. Engaged. Married. They weren’t a surprise in so much as Alucard had already begun working toward them. But they had been uncertain, a dream, not a guarantee.
--
The world tipped, shifted when Alucard sat down next to him, as if he had a gravitational pull. Rhy was so, so aware of how close he was, driven nearly to distraction. It seemed like he could feel the warmth of Alucard’s body even where it wasn’t touching him, or maybe that was the way his own blood heated.
He swallowed.
“I was wondering about that,” he said, brushing a fingertip over the silver lines in the picture. Alucard had changed much more than he had in whatever span of time it had been. Had Alucard said five years? That was a long time, longer than Alucard had estimated until he would be back. But maybe it included some time after he’d returned. “You look older, too, not just the silver. Still very handsome,” he added, which was truly an understatement for how attractive Rhy found him in these pictures. A lot of it had to do with the warmth, gentleness and kindness he radiated in them, but the aging and the silver lines also served to make him look refined. “The silver suits you.”
Hesitantly, he brushed the back of Alucard’s hand with his fingertips, and then covered it with his own. Softly, he said, “Me too.”
--
“Hmm,” Alucard considered the photos. Like the painting, Alucard had certainly aged more. He noticed in the lines around his eyes and his mouth. The silver lines tracing over all his visible skin obscured some of it, so bright and noticeable it stole much attention for itself. But Rhy was right, and Alucard did not have a firm grip on the entire explanation. “Sailors often look older than those who live and work on land,” he said slowly. But he had spent some time at sea, perhaps a third of what he expected, and Alucard looked far from a third to that increased dignity, as was the polite term for it.
He spread the fingers on his hand, so Rhy could better hold it. And Alucard leaned, ever so slightly, further toward Rhy. Possibly the curse explained it as well. But the whole matter stuck like a thorn in his side, a small dagger buried deep. It was safer, without the right preparedness, to leave it there. But Alucard was not the best at leaving things well alone, not when they were his. “You’ve grown so well into yourself in these,” Alucard said. “With all the qualities you already possess, and more confidence. Assuredness. It is attractive, most of all to see you as sure of yourself as you are good at presenting.” He couldn’t help the wicked grin, the fact that he had observed Rhy long enough to learn so much about him.
It had been necessary, for his own safety. But it had only made him ever more fond of Rhy, the more he learned. “It is a wondrous future,” Alucard declared. “One I do not wish to take for granted but see to that it comes to pass.” His attention was on Rhy, not the photos. Alucard wasn’t one to sit back on his laurels and pat himself on the back. He hadn’t done this yet. He had to earn it.
--
Rhy dared to meet his eyes as he smiled at him, and then blushed furiously and looked away as Alucard continued. He didn’t have the faintest idea how to respond to that. He clearly didn’t have that same confidence yet, although he felt buoyed up by seeing it in the pictures and hearing it from Alucard’s lips.
“There’s also,” he made himself say, before they got thoroughly distracted, “This.” He turned the page, pointed to a picture of himself shirtless -- wearing almost nothing, in fact, except for a cloth draped around his waist and glittery paint on his skin. The picture was dated in June 2019 and labeled simply, Pride. But the part that Rhy was pointing to were the circles that appeared carved into his chest, and below them, a scar that looked like a knife wound. “It looks as though something happened to me, as well.”
But in the picture, Rhy seemed completely unaffected by it and unconcerned with his scars being visible. He was brimming with happiness and confidence, glowing in the sun. “Perhaps another magical curse of some kind,” he suggested, although he wasn’t sure he believed it. Whatever it was, it hadn’t happened to him yet; the skin of his chest was still smooth and unmarred. He was very aware that Alucard had gotten a good look at it this morning, and soon, he hoped, would happen again.
--
Alucard glanced up toward the ceiling as Rhy looked away from him. With all the evidence around him, with all the certainty he had in his own feelings, Alucard could project that outward into such strong declarations. Yet he still had so far to go, to become like the man he saw in the photos, the man who successfully courted a prince. He had grown more confident in himself, unwilling to hide who he was or to live any other life. His crew all knew and supported him, either directly or via how little they cared about his preferences. It was a far cry from pulling it off in London or wherever the country Texas was in this alternate world.
He looked at the photograph long and hard, nearly willing it to reveal its secrets. But these images did not preserve traces of the magic portrayed in them. For whatever exactly those circles were, Alucard was sure they were magic. His thoughts skipped back to the liran, but it was worthless, with the two of them. Neither of them had lived to remember this yet. If they did, they wouldn’t need the mirror. It was something else Anisa likely knew. That rendered the liran meaningless again because asking her to remember this event was as good as asking her what had happened. His sister was good at keeping secrets. For their own good, he suspected.
“You survived something,” Alucard agreed. The scar lay over his chest in a lethal position. There would not have been much time to save him, no time for the priests to set up a healing ritual, with all they needed for it. With no overlay of magic, Alucard couldn’t pick apart the circles for what they meant. But if Rhy had been stabbed so lethally and someone had managed to save him, his wager was on Kell Maresh. Blood was far more readily available, and Rhy’s life was perhaps the one matter they held of equal importance.
It was far too easy to die. Even a crown prince. Arnes lived in a time of peace, where people felt the royal family was golden, untouched by tragedy. But Alucard had heard many stories of Maxim Maresh growing up. War and bloodshed were not even a full generation behind them. Peace had to be maintained. “And I am glad for it. I could not forgive you for dying on me, before we have the chance for a true and lasting relationship between us,” Alucard teased. Because they knew an end. It meant all such happy ends were more likely. And even then, it was not the end. They were still young.
--
There were dark times ahead in their future. It was unclear to Rhy where this had happened, here or in their home world. At a guess he would have said it happened in Arnes, where magic was in abundance; the brief look he had gotten at the city outside his window did not seem a place for magic. Unless Anisa knew the answer, there was no way to know, and he wasn’t going to ask her right now.
Still, Alucard was right, that knife wound did look as though it could have been fatal. He must have come close to death, but had somehow survived. Kell had likely saved him; he had done it before. He felt a stab of guilt for making his brother bleed again. But the circles still indicated something else, something more than Kell’s magic. When Kell had healed him before it hadn’t left scars.
“It looks as though we will both survive whatever time and hardship lies between us and this future,” he said. He chanced another glance up at Alucard; it was hard to look at him without being completely overwhelmed by longing and wanting, without being reminded of the ache still lingering in his heart. “And… while we’re here… there is no banishment, is there? You don’t have to leave?”
I’m not leaving you, Alucard had said before they’d parted briefly. Rhy wanted very badly to believe it, to be able to give in to the desire to be kissed, touched, held, loved. He might have resisted if Alucard was leaving again, or maybe he wouldn’t have, he didn’t know if it would have made that better or worse. But here it didn’t seem like he needed to go anywhere. No one who would care was here to know. Which meant that maybe, just maybe, he would stay the night, and the next night, and the next. Maybe while they were here he didn’t have to be abandoned.
Rhy held his breath and maintained eye contact, hoping.
--
With Rhy present, wholly and physically present, looking at him so intensely, the future wavered and faded in his thoughts. They were here together now — not some future, not after he had proven to himself he was ready and worthy of all being together meant — for whatever that meant. Whatever they made it mean.
“My banishment was from London, in Arnes,” Alucard replied. That included the royal palace where it sat magnificent bridging the isle. But that authority only extended to Arnes. It did not reach other Londons, other worlds, whether they had a London or not. “As I understand it,” his smile curved upward, “I am perfectly obeying that order of banishment when I am right here.” They hadn’t forbidden Rhy from leaving London, even if he were too busy to go away from politics and power.
They had nothing but time and each other’s company. And from the photographs, that of friends as well. “I have no obligation to leave and no desire to, either,” Alucard said. He raised their hands, kissing the back of Rhy’s, and turned further to face Rhy. “I am here, as I always intended to be.”
--
Rhy hadn’t thought about it that way, but it was true. He turned it over in his head; could he possibly find a way to leave London to be with him, even just for a night? The answer was… maybe. It would require Kell’s cooperation to pull it off without his father finding out, both because he had the magic to transport them quickly and because it was not the kind of secret Rhy could give his guards, who also answered to his father. Lying to the king would at the very least lose them their jobs if they were discovered, and he couldn’t do that to Gen and Parrish. But Kell already kept secrets. Kell would also likely enjoy getting away from the castle. He would get in trouble if they were caught, but he was Rhy’s only brother, his father’s only Antari. And Rhy could take the fall for him.
But that was a whole world away, and Rhy didn’t even know when he would find out what had actually happened to Alucard, or that Alucard truly loved him. It was impossible to keep thinking about it when Alucard was here, so close to him. The warmth of his smile and the touch of his lips made Rhy wish they had never bothered getting dressed.
And he was very clearly waiting on Rhy, as if it wasn’t obvious that Rhy was already lost, fully under his spell. He found the presence of mind to withdraw his hand so that he could carefully close and set aside the book of photos -- his bird had already left his knee without him even noticing -- and then took Alucard’s face in both hands and kissed him.
--
His heart soared, and Alucard wrapped his arms around Rhy. They pulled him closer, closer, so that Rhy would not slip out of his grasp. One hand traced down his spine, over the white silken shirt. The great size of the couch had returned to being a blessing, another place they could joyfully come together. Patience, Alucard tried to have, to demonstrate, to thoroughly enjoy every part of what they did. But he had been away so long, and no one else compared to Rhy. Alucard did not care to separate long enough to move to the bed. They had been naked there, earlier, and done nothing about it. He laughed, amused, and kissed Rhy again and again.