From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
06-03-2021, 03:54 PM (This post was last modified: 06-03-2021, 08:26 PM by Remi.)
i wish I could say I am a light that never goes out. but i flicker from time to time
Remi wakes next to Ronin, naked as usual, and feeling all the more guilty and uncertain for it. Smelling of the sea and sex, the alchemist pushes back the covers and flees to the bathroom. Ronin nearly always wakes up when Remi uses his dreams as an anchor for travelling, and so while he tries to be as quiet as he can, he also realizes that his efforts are mostly in vain.
With knees scraped and raw from fucking kneeling in tidal pools and his back pink and suggestive of having been ground repeatedly in the sand, Remi closes his eyes against the minute aches and pains in his body, grinding the heel of one of his hands into his eye while bracing himself with the other on the edge of the sink. The alchemist has never dealt well with situations such as the one he's just come from, where promises tug in opposing directions such that all his thoughts seem to fall unhelpfully on one side or the other.
Turning on the water in the shower, the alchemist lets it run quite cold before stepping in.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin does indeed awaken as Remi appears, but rather than being able to roll over and curl around his husband to go back to sleep, the alchemist is simply gone. Blinking himself into full wakefulness, the Star automatically slips out of bed to follow after the fleeing Lullaby; he has no empathy magic, just all the knowledge collected from a veritable lifetime with his partner. And that's enough, in this case. "It smells like sex," he mumbles, hiding a wide yawn behind his hand and shimmying out of his sweatpants as Remi turns on the shower.
Because obviously where the other man goes, Ronin follows. He doesn't count on it being freezing cold, though, Ronin hissing in a breath and letting it out again with a shudder. It doesn't stop him reaching for Remi though, calloused hands seeking out the warmth and familiarity of a body he knows very well indeed. "I'm here," he murmurs. "Do you want to talk about it?"
i wish I could say I am a light that never goes out. but i flicker from time to time
The water is a shock to Remi's system, just as he'd intended it to be. He hadn't counted on hearing Ronin boil down the situation so succinctly though, and it's the Star's observation that causes the alchemist to draw in a shivery breath. "Not for much longer." Remi mumbles in surprise, turning into Ronin and instantly putting his arms around his husband's shoulders. "Today was...strange. And potentially has some...very bad consequences." Remi murmurs into the side of Ronin's neck as the cold water washes away the sand from his back and further irritates the skin on his shoulders which is nearly rubbed raw.
Pouring feelings of confusion into Ronin, Remi's emotions will seem a bit like coloured pearls of oil dropped into water. Occasionally the colours mix, but for the most part things stay compartmentalized and separate. "I went to Frey's shrine after meeting with Isla in Torchline. I meant just to leave my offering for them there—some peaches and nudity." He begins slowly, the freezing water making his thoughts and words slow. "Hotaru was there to pray as well. She...lost a companion and was hoping Frey might give it back. That, or attuned her the way Safrin attuned Deimos." Swallowing, Remi pulls back that he might peer into his husband's eyes, Remi sighs ruefully as he gives his head a single shake. "I thought I might just...be some background object during her prayer."
Despite the chill building from the icy water, Remi's blood still manages to flash cold for a moment. "I was not."
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin welcomes Remi into his arms, fingers gliding over his hips and along his lower back, catching all of a sudden on the sand and the abrasions to his skin. Brows drawing together at the sight of it, he holds Remi all the closer, carefully helping to wash the sand away with the cool water - and sneakily reaching out to nudge the tap towards making it a little warmer. "Oh," he says softly, his hands drifting up and into the alchemist's curls now instead. Smoothing wet hair back from his face, Ronin leans in to press a chaste kiss to Remi's cheek, as if to invite him to talk about it.
The confusion that rocks through him is almost enough to unbalance him, and he breathes out a deep sigh and listens as the other man begins to explain, sluggish as it might be. "Oh," he says again when it all becomes apparent, blue eyes meeting green in a mix of confusion and a hurt that feels unfair, given how little choice Remi would have had in the arrangements.
"Are you alright?" he asks, guiding him further beneath the stream of water now that it has begun to warm up.
i wish I could say I am a light that never goes out. but i flicker from time to time
The warm water feels like a luxury Remi doesn't deserve, and the alchemist can feel his body wanting to tense and tighten beneath the stream. "You are allowed to be upset." He murmurs, his eyes downcast and his voice sounding hollow; Ronin's emotions are nearly as palatable in Remi's mind as Ronin is beneath his fingers, and the alchemist doesn't blame his husband one bit for them.
"It was with a woman." That, if nothing else, should explain much of the confusion about everything. Especially given recent events with Isla and Maeve, that Remi would ever find himself in bed (or the beach) again with a woman was reason enough for the cascading swirl of his feelings. But the colours therein hinted that there was more to come, as did the way Remi held his breath for a moment, considering his words.
"It was Hotaru."
The words feel like lead leaving his lips, and behind Remi's eyes he sees Sunjata falling dead in a dream, Ronin stepping across the room from him, and Nate threatening Mateo (or seeming as though he had). He sees all the complications his actions had caused once, and though he doesn't grasp the full extent of what tonight will do to an already complicated situation, he can more than imagine it. So despite wanting to hold Ronin close, should the Star back away, the alchemist will allow him his space.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin has already gathered as much, from Hotaru and prayer and Frey, and so before Remi says it he's already trying to wrap his head around it. It doesn't feel as though he's allowed to be upset; the alchemist has been free to explore himself with whomever he pleases, even after Ronin gave up that decision. Confusion is the main thread of his feelings, ricocheting back into Remi as he shudders out a breath. After knowing he was still gay with Maeve, and with Isla, this is a little... he doesn't know what it is.
Blinking down at their feet, the Star takes a second or two as he continues to digest the information, and even he doesn't expect the sudden surge of jealousy that rears its ugly head. It's not yet Leafchange, so it isn't nearly as bad as it might be when Ronin's luxere is at its peak, but it's potent nonetheless. He's mumbling an apology about it even as he reaches forward to draw Remi against him, pressing his cheek against the other man's curls. "I am upset," he mutters eventually. "But not at you. And I don't quite know why I feel this way."
i wish I could say I am a light that never goes out. but i flicker from time to time
Remi fully expects the surge of jealousy but is left unbalanced by the lack of anger. He thought they would come part and parcel, regardless of who still had their hall pass and who did not. So when Ronin tugs the alchemist against him, rather than taking a step back or leaving the shower altogether as Remi had expected, he feels his muscles seem to sigh with relief all at the same moment such that for a few seconds, Ronin is the only thing holding him up.
"I do not know how I feel." Remi admits softly, interspersing the words with kisses against Ronin's neck. "Before Frey arrived I told Hotaru I would help her however I could. And so when they did, when they looked like you and said that Hotaru needed to orgasm before they did..." Leaning his forehead against Ronin's shoulder, his gaze blured by water droplets streaming down bronzed skin stained with ink, Remi presses his teeth together for a moment before continuing. "..You have never been around Frey before, but...it..." But what was he supposed to say? He hadn't been tricked into anything, and blaming what had happened on Frey's potency was disingenuous. He could have walked away. It was his own choice that he hadn't. Frey's presence had merely made it possible for him to have sex with Hotaru, but ultimately Remi was the only who did it.
"Tell me what you're thinking?"
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
For Frey to have looked like him somehow makes it both better and worse, the Star swallowing hard and closing his eyes as he turns the tap further, steam beginning to fill the shower with a comfortable heat that does nothing to remove the tension from his muscles. "Careful," he whispers into sodden curls, meaning the kisses Remi is currently pressing against his neck. "This is one occasion where I would throw myself into old habits very easily." It almost feels like he ought to, in fact, to replace Hotaru's touch with his own, to leave fresh marks so there can be no mistake as to where Remi belongs.
He has never been around Frey before, it's true, but that doesn't really help, and Ronin's arms slip more tightly around his husband, more than happy to hold him up. He huffs out a humourless laugh as Remi asks what he's thinking, and he shakes his head softly. "I'm thinking about holing us up in Stormbreak forever and becoming a security guard for your shop," he mumbles. "I'm thinking of taking you here in the shower, or being taken by you, or both. I'm thinking of destroying shrines and saying some very unfair and unsavoury things about someone I imagine is quite lovely." Someone being Hotaru, of course.
i wish I could say I am a light that never goes out. but i flicker from time to time
"And yet I am so good at being careless as of late." Remi whispers back, edging a step closer and focusing his thoughts on the salty-familiar taste of Ronin's skin against his lips rather than the way the water pounds against his skin.
"We could always keep the door locked and the closed sign-out." The alchemist muses. Having found his footing, he lets one arm slide from around Ronin's neck so that his fingertips might begin to scatter their way toward his husband's hip. "Mateo and I have our boat to build after all. So long as you remember to feed us, there is no reason for me to leave." So saying the alchemist tilts his head slightly that he might capture Ronin's lips—and any protests they might try to make—as his hand slips between their bodies to gather Ronin up in his fingers.
'I would destroy a thousand shrines with you." He muses against the Star's lips, tilting his body slightly that he might press Ronin's back against the wall of the shower. "And you can say what you like about her. I plan on having my lips be far too busy elsewhere to repeat it." So saying, unless stopped, Remi will begin to trail kisses down Ronin's chest and stomach, bending his knees and kneeling easily between the Star's legs.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Mm, don't tempt me," Ronin mutters about closing up the shop and keeping them locked up for a while. Remi still has one shrine to visit as far as the Star can remember, and so definitely has reason to leave, but he conveniently forgets about it as the alchemist's lips tilt up to capture his own. Soft and rough all at the same time, Ronin's warning dies on a tongue that's all too eager to press against Remi's, his protest nothing more than a low rumble in his throat and a stuttered inhale as his back pressed against a cold wall.
Then Remi's fingers are around him and he's arching off the wall before he can tell his body otherwise; unexpectedly wound up as he is, there's little stopping Ronin from rising to the occasion. Wait, he wants to say, because there's still something about this that doesn't feel right, or comfortable, or how they've said things should go. But as he gazes down to find Remi between his legs his resolve crumbles all over again.
"Are you sure--" he just about manages, his voice all but lost in the pounding of the water.
i wish I could say I am a light that never goes out. but i flicker from time to time
Remi doesn't know if it's an attempt to justify what he's doing or if it's the truth, but at least the difference here is that the pair talked about their feelings first. They were honest with one another in a way they wouldn't have normally been, before diving into one another. So this was fine. And if it wasn't, gods Remi didn't have the energy to care. Already there was heat in his belly and he found himself frustrated by the fact that mere physical contact with his husband never quite seemed to be enough.
Taking the Star into his mouth, as Remi looks up Ronin's body, he rather selfishly delights in the attractiveness of the man he's married. It is still Ronin and Ronin alone who turns him on so, no matter how many dalliances with others Remi might find himself having engaged with. (And all women this year too, unpredictable as that is). Greedily Remi's hands go to his husband's ass, pushing the Star's hips forward and into Remi's waiting mouth. Humming around his husband's cock both that the Star might enjoy the vibrations as much as to communicate his satisfaction, Remi pulls in a breath through his nose before lavishing the head of Ronin's cock with desperate attention.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Well, that answers that. As hot water pounds down onto his shoulders and Remi takes him into his mouth, Ronin completely loses himself. A soft moan thrums out through his chest and throat, his fingers tangling loosely in the back of wet curls. He's already hard (no surprise there), his free hand seeking out the top of the shower so he might brace against it. With Remi guiding his hips, Ronin has to stop himself from arcing forward in earnest, driving himself deeper into a waiting mouth and a very talented tongue.
"Gods--" he groans, unsure how long his husband expects him to last like this, having only just woken up and on the tail end of some quite upsetting news, and his fingers flinch in the alchemist's hair as his attention moves to the head of his cock, as the humming of his lips seems to vibrate through him. "Don't stop--"
06-03-2021, 08:12 PM (This post was last modified: 06-03-2021, 08:12 PM by Remi.)
i wish I could say I am a light that never goes out. but i flicker from time to time
Just now there's something about the pull of Ronin's fingers against his curls and the way his husband's cock makes it hard to breathe that feels cathartic. Remi wants to work for this, wants it to be anything but sloppy and haphazardly done. He adores his husband's jerky movements, the way the muscles of his body tense and flinch. Let go, Remi encourages silently, his mental voice sounding breathless somehow, even as he tugs in a deep breath through his nose that will hopefully last him through to Ronin's climax. Please, let go.
With his fingertips pressing into Ronin's skin to try and erode Ronin's need to keep his hips restrained, Remi closes his eyes that he might envision he and Ronin on the rock Frey had occupied. Ignoring the heat between his own legs, Remi doubles down on his efforts, though only allows his pace to speed up slightly. His tongue and lips increase their pressure as his hands tug against Ronin's ass to bring his husband's hips more forcefully forward with every bob of his head.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
For all of their moments together (and their very active sex life, thank you very much), it still feels like a rarity for Ronin to find himself like this. And as Remi's voice echoes through his mind, his head lolls back against the wall, the warm water raining down into his dark hair and across his cheeks. Let go isn't something he's told to do very often, but with strong hands pressing against his hips to urge him on, he's heedless to resist.
Already his pulse is hard and fast in his ears, already his dazzle suffuses his skin with a starlit glow, and behind closed eyes he sees the Lullaby in a myriad of positions and situations, some memories, some imagined. A curse slips from between his lips - Remi is entirely too much with the work of his tongue and fingers alone. Ronin's orgasm begins as an itch in the ball of his feet, threatening to roar up the backs of his legs and through his teeth all at once.
"Remi--!" Heedless of how the growl of his husband's name is loud enough to echo through the bathroom, or how his hips are driving forward of their own accord by now, Ronin cums hard enough to damn near buckle his knees, stars exploding behind his vision, his whole world narrowing to silken touches and electricity dancing in his blood. His fingers are tight in Remi's hair, as if to hold him in place, and he can't help the way he wants to reach out and smash at the wall behind him, like the only thing needed to make this complete is a little bloodletting.
