saturday's sons

REMI

"Marco—" Remi calls, then pauses to listen.

The sounds of Frey's Breath fill his ears, amplified not only by the fact that his eyes are closed but also by the subtle shift in his anatomy he's employed to better pinpoint his husband's location. The rising steam is a constant purr against the rain-like quality of condensation that beads high above them before dripping into the water. Remi can also hear the flickering of the candles that burn and sputter all around as well as the sound of his own breath, the pounding of blood in his ears, and the gentle ripples of water that rush away from him as he glides through the hot springs.

What he can't hear, is his husband.

"Marco." He calls again, this time sliding out tentacles beneath the water like groping fingers to try and catch the Knight should he simply be avoiding answering the call by hiding underwater.

If you were church, I'd get on my knees
Confess my love, I'd know where to be

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Ronin Taliesin

they say it's all been done
but they haven't seen the best of me

"Polo." Ronin's whisper is one that he knows his husband will be able to hear easily, even if there were a hundred other voices overlaying his own. He isn't hiding under the surface of the hotsprings, however; on the contrary, Vi's demigod is doing the unthinkable and is cheating by being a fish out of water, creeping around the edges of the springs until he can spot a place where he can slip into the heat and steam without being detected by sneaky tentacles.

Once he's confident that he's situated himself accordingly, of course he begins to sneak forward, prowling through the hot water and having to pretend it doesn't soothe tense muscles as much as it does. Once he's in reach of the Bastion, Ronin aims a quick but delicate splash at the other man's back, hoping to get his attention even as he attempts to sidestep, crab-like, out of his reach.

REMI

Spinning, the sound obnoxiously loud to his ears, Remi frowns deeply. Tentacles and hands stretch forward, reaching and groping until he comes to the edge of the hot spring where his fingers find only his carefully folded clothing and shoes.

Hearing the sound of water parting, the Bastion spins again, sightlessly staring. "Fish out of water!" He calls, pointing to the left of where Ronin was, though by the time the words leave his lips, the Knight is already up to his shoulders. "You know, if I shifted enough I could smell you." Remi points out, conversationally, before suddenly spinning in place and shooting his tentacles forward. They land on nothing at all just as a wave from behind splashes over his shoulders and drenches his curls.

"Marco!" Remi demands, slithering forward far too evenly for him to be doing anything other than using his tentacles to pull him along.

If you were church, I'd get on my knees
Confess my love, I'd know where to be

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Ronin Taliesin

they say it's all been done
but they haven't seen the best of me

It isn't often that Ronin is able to be the little shit of their duo, and gods help him but he really is enjoying himself. "How rude," he announces as the other man points just to the left of where he really is, grinning as he wades through the water and carefully orients himself away from the Bastion's questing tentacles. "Are you trying to say I smell?" he inquires as he dances away from said tentacles, trying to get himself behind Remi as he ferries himself forward.

Luckily he's able to propel himself through the water enough to reach his husband, arms outstretched to snag him from behind to wrestle him against his bare chest. "Polo," he hisses against the shell of his ear, before his lips are busy pressing hot kisses to his cheek, neck and down towards his collarbone. So sue Ronin - he can't help himself, not when Remi is trying so hard to find him.

REMI

Are you sure it isn't often?

"You're supposed to say yes or no." Remi points out with a dramatic huff, though based on the way his husband's voice was echoing off of the water and the walls, he was indeed in the water. So fine.

"Oh shut up. You've smelled me as a luxere." He reasons playfully, just in case his husband was angling to try and pretend he didn't know what sort of smell he was talking about. "I bet if I could smell you now there'd be a little salt.." Snapping out a hand to his left, it closes on nothing. "..and your skin smells like hot sand or stone when it gets warm." Darting to the right, again his hands close on nothing. "But no matter how clean you are.." Pausing, Remi inhales ever so softly just as Ronin begins to propel himself forward.

"..you always smell like the sea." He whispers through a smile as Ronin's arms wrap around him.

Letting only one or two tentacles remain purely for balance, Remi combs one hand through his husband's hair as he twists in the Knight's arms, splaying the other across his lower back anchoring them together. "You're terrible at this game, you know." The Bastion whispers mercilessly against his husband's ear before returning the favour and scouring kisses across his jawline that indeed tasted of salt and stone and sea.

If you were church, I'd get on my knees
Confess my love, I'd know where to be

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Ronin Taliesin

they say it's all been done
but they haven't seen the best of me

Ronin is sure, yes.

"Alright, I suppose that's true. But I'd also posture that I'd flee the second I smelled you as a luxere, especially if you were in a more predatory shift." Which, y'know, isn't to say that Remi smelled particularly bad, but that as a prey animal Ronin knows what's good for him and puts as much difference between himself and said smell as possible.

Humming his curiosity to hear what Remi believes he'd smell like, Ronin has his arms wrapped around his husband just to hear the crux of his point, and it's true that he's never felt more at home to smell like the sea than right now. Smiling his approval and tilting his head so that the other man's lips (and arms) might suitably find their way around him, Ronin can only scoff to hear that he is apparently terrible at marco polo.

"Really?" he purrs. "Because I absolutely feel like a winner." Reaching out of the water, he directs Remi's lips against his own, as if they might share their heat in better ways.

REMI

"Are you trying to say that it's my fault that you're too flighty to know what I smell like?" Remi wonders, more than happy to keep goading his husband into speaking if only to better pinpoint his location in the springs.

The rush of emotions through his husband's arms and lips is not unlike the painting they'd made together the season before; prismatic blues, golds, and greens that swirled into hard-to-define shades where they all blend and meet. "Do you?" The Bastion wonders darkly as he allows his eyes to finally blink open, only to have his vision filled by fae-blue and the warmth of his husband's mouth.

If you're the winner, what does that make me? Remi wonders wordlessly as he lets himself slip into darkness again, only this time his impulse isn't to call out Marco, but to moan his husband's name if only to hear it echo off of the cavern walls.

If you were church, I'd get on my knees
Confess my love, I'd know where to be

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Ronin Taliesin

they say it's all been done
but they haven't seen the best of me

"Obviously, yes I am," Ronin retorts with a grin; he's never been apologetic about the ridiculous nature of his luxere shift or the effects it has had over him - mainly because he absolutely couldn't stop it even if he wanted to. Either way, thoughts of their respective natures in and out of shift are promptly overtaken by the touch of hands and lips and the pictures they are able to paint against each other's flesh with emotion alone.

Who says there cannot be two winners? he wonders silently back into his husband's mind, and already his hands are becoming greedy as they wander a body he knows better than his own. Either way, I don't know who Marco or Polo are but I'm not interested in playing their stupid game any more. And why would he be, when he's got the Bastion draped against him?

REMI

The rules of the game. Remi counters silently, and though it's difficult to mentally huff—go on, try—he does his best to communicate his disapproval if only because he'd been winning. I think you want to stop because you knew I was just going to keep beating you.

Far beneath Remi's tentacles begin to tow the pair towards the edge of the pool. "Perhaps if you'd attended Ronin Taliesin's Charm School, you might have said something like If I'm the winner that makes you the prize." The Bastion whispers wickedly, his lips barely brushing against his husband's before pulling back just enough to make out the glisten of sweat on Ronin's tanned brow and the way his eyelashes were clumping together over impossibly blue eyes.

Ferrying them finally toward the edge of the pool, Remi lets one hand slide from his husband to brace against the stones as he absorbs his tentacles back into his legs. "Pity there's no flowers around. I guess we've come all this way for nothing." He murmurs, though the suggestive rasp in his tone suggests he wasn't quite ready to simply hop out and go home.

If you were church, I'd get on my knees
Confess my love, I'd know where to be

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Ronin Taliesin

they say it's all been done
but they haven't seen the best of me

I want to stop for much better reasons than victory, I promise you, Ronin assures the other man, busy trying to sneak kisses along Remi's cheek and against the line of his jaw as he realises they're subtly being ferried through the water - not that the Knight tries to prevent it at all. "Ah, but that would imply that you are my property. Ronin Taliesin's Charm School pales in comparison to the White Knight Academy of Etiquette. If you had attended there, you'd know that where everyone wins, there's no end to the prizes you might get."

As Remi ends up braced against the edge of the pool, of course Ronin is there to lean very contently against him, gazing into too-green eyes with a crooked smile that suggests that he's certainly found something to come all this way for, wink wonk. "You know," he says, "every time we visit this place I'm always reminded of that very first time, when you were sick with that Tanau plague, and the waters finally let you see sense again." It had been a rest that the two of them had been craving across continents, and gods but Ronin doesn't think he'd ever kissed his husband so sweetly.

REMI

"Oh, would it?" Remi wonders, his head tilted slightly to the side as he narrowed his eyes skeptically. "Hnnm." He murmurs doubtfully, of the Etiquette Academy. "That seems like the sort of place bluebloods go, where everyone receives a participation prize."

Letting his hand slip out from behind his husband's back, he walks his fingertips up the Knight's chest, his palm smoothing slowly out across a tapestry of scar and muscle. "Back when you were the Huntsman, and I was the Lullaby." Remi agrees softly, the memory filtering back to him in slow but dark waves. Already he can feel the chilled current of nostalgia tugging at the balls of his feet, as if the best parts of himself had been left in the past. Doing his best to ignore the sensation, to focus instead on the warmth of the pool and the man in his arms, Remi smiles. "We found a flower that time." He recalls, remembering little else other than talk of having (thankfully) not given Sunjata a blowjob on the beach before fucking his husband on a cloud suspended above the water. It inspired a rather complicated stirring of emotions from Remi that he'd not have been able to properly articulate, but thankfully the magic that ran between the two meant that words weren't always necessary.

If you were church, I'd get on my knees
Confess my love, I'd know where to be

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Ronin Taliesin

they say it's all been done
but they haven't seen the best of me

"It would. And you're right, it probably is that sort of place. Being a blueblood, it only seems fitting that I share that sort of knowledge with my fellows, wouldn't you say? I could make an exception and teach you, though, if you ask nice." Ronin tips his husband a wink, before relaxing into Remi's touch and the soothing heat of the water, humming a soft and nostalgic sort of sigh.

"Ah, those were the days," he says, though the raise of his eyebrows already suggests were they? were those the days? and he leans in to gently kiss Remi's forehead as if to head off the dark current of his emotions before they can grow too strong or deep. "Oh that's right, we did," he agrees, tilting his head and smiling. "Do you ever remember what happened to it?"

REMI

Lifting a brow at the same time as one corner of his mouth twisted down, Remi hmphd as if silently considering his husband's proposal before reluctantly shaking his head. "Ah, but without having attended the Academy first, how would some lowly commoner like me even know where to begin?" Should he ask nice with his mouth? With his hands, perhaps? Or some other offering? Gods but Ronin truly was a saint for putting up with him all these years.

Pressing his thumb up the line of Ronin's sternum before taking an abrupt turn to follow the angle of his tattoo, Remi's eyes close softly in response to the kiss as he shrugs in response to the vague swirl of emotions that waft from his husband's touch. "No, I don't..." The admission has lines depending across his forehead before they're wiped clean by a soft sigh. "I don't remember much from that time, though." Remi adds. Had that been when they'd helped free Tanau from the waterfall, or was that yet something else? "It all starts to...jumble."

Only when his hand reaches his husband's shoulder, his fingers working at the thick cords of muscle that wrap around the bones, does he lift his eyes. "Can I say something terrible?"

If you were church, I'd get on my knees
Confess my love, I'd know where to be

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Ronin Taliesin

they say it's all been done
but they haven't seen the best of me

"Oh, that's easy. You've got a great teacher already, you see, outside of the academy doors," Ronin says with a lopsided smile and a kiss smooched to Remi's cheek. It's him. He's the teacher. Do you get it? Do you get it, Remi?

Humming softly as the touch of his husband's fingers strikes all the right chords within him, even something as simple as a line drawn from sternum to shoulder is enough to have the Knight melting against him, and he has to blink himself back into focus as Remi speaks. "Understandable. You weren't well for quite a lot of that time," he reassures him - and that's not to mention all the Ludo memory bullshit that had plagued the Bastion for his entire time as its demigod. (Ronin doesn't mention that, though).

"No you may not," he quips in response to Remi's question, "this is a place for good vibes only." His defiant expression of course relaxes into something warm and sweet within moments, and he nods to the other man. "What's on your mind?"