Pride colours the aristocrat handsomely, even as His Excellency poises himself as (almost) convincingly humble before the eyes of his companion in his determined veneration. Not quite an illusion, for there is nothing untrue in the deep, sea-like growl of his praising voice or the careful performance of every kiss that has joined the elf’s diamond-bright skin–all meaning something, all genuine in their implications. But he does not hide the way his cunning eyes darken with glee below the gilding of his lashes, or how his pointed smile creases into his cheek when the archmage melts into that miniscule kindness of his caressing hand–when he so indulgently ponders just how long the Count can stand to charm and amuse and entertain. His answer first is laughter, canorous and velvet as it seeps into the intimate quiet of their surroundings. The hand poised in idle adoration on that star-swept cheek emboldens its efforts with a thumb dancing tenderly upon the constellations brightening the man’s skin, as volcanic eyes lazily blink into the wolfish stare of his companion. “I could find myself asking the same of you.” He drawls pleasantly in a tune that is hushed, mirthful–the expression gilding his face turned theatrically impish as much as it is adoring when it accompanies those words. All the better to sell the effect of a voice he knows is not quite heard to his other’s imagination. “A fountain of plenty, a cup that runneth over, an endless vein of the extraordinary that never does cease to please and bespell. You fascinate me, Aaravos. That I fascinate you likewise in our togetherness, or that at least I amuse and delight? Ah…you will forgive that I am empty of any intentions to relent in my effort to delight you.” The thought is joined by that hand mapping its dauntless way elsewhere, fingertips whispering delicately over the shell of the mage’s ear when, needlessly, another moonlit lock is brushed away and behind (an excuse already seen through the first time, one he deliberately proposes again–this time with a look of knowing exchanged between them.) A purr rises in His Excellency’s throat when his touch lingers, considering and anticipatory before his fingers swim through the other’s hair in earnest–and he keenly watches the illusion of it slips fine and silken and sea-foam white over the blue of his beckoning hand. “I imagine you as no less persistent. Or perhaps it is that you cannot help the persistence of your magnificence. You are, by virtue of merely being, a storm upon the senses. It does not shame me to admit that I cannot watch you, share time with you, and be else but enraptured in your company.”
Honey-sweet, thick with blessings. Their praise as always pours with the deliciousness of honesty as they croon and warble to one another like this, delighting as much in the saying of it as the receiving of it. And what praise can’t fit into words and tongues, the Count fashions into the sweeping gestures of touch–no matter that hidden place inside himself that laments the same as the elf in knowing it can’t be relished at its purest. No less, he treats the imagination to a scene with the delicate performance of his smiling lips, expressive eyes, the hand that wanders and grazes the base of one obsidian horn crowning the mage’s head as the Count tilts back his own. Drinking all of Aaravos in with his bright, lordly eyes as they shamelessly rove the ethereal loveliness of the other man’s face. “You prove it possible,” he insists in languid reply, both to that midnight voice and the lavishing hand that strokes its path down the strong cut of the Count’s jaw, that he leans eagerly toward (where it leaves a shudder of delight in its wake, a ripple of phantom magic upon the chill of his flesh.) “As perhaps I merely withhold my awe for what demands its deserving. The many colours and spectacles of this world and its people, or even of the stars now so far outside of ourselves from whence we came–they dazzle me no more as once they had. But so I have already confessed…you have appeared to me, and are bewitching simply in being who you are. Yet have I myself not done so little to deserve the sweet music of your praise? Your eagerness to satisfy?”
And he does not keep them from deepening the intimacy of their togetherness. He does shy from that hand reaching overside his head for purchase on the chair at his back, the knee positioning itself between his own to hoist that comely figure closer into what little space between them there was. But he rises to meet it, even as his posture opens and relaxes into the velvet seat of where he finds himself held suddenly (willingly) captive; where one hand wavers to instead cradle the nape of the elf’s neck, the other opens the cool, welcoming breadth of its palm upon the man’s thigh. Gentle–ephemeral, even, when it airily saunters a path toward the mage’s hip, only then to travel higher to press itself into the narrow trim of his companion’s waist.
“I ponder what more I could ask of your abundant generosity.” His voice deepens in his throat, eyes heavy with new, unbridled pleasure–hiding nothing of himself before the yellowing moonlight of the other’s gaze when the hand at the elf’s nape welcomes him closer.Dangerously close. Forsaking perhaps some clarity in the shapes his mouth pronounce when his head is set to a tilt, when the words spinning off his silver tongue are spoken instead in whispering softness against his other’s lips. “When you have given so much that already I ache inside myself with its immensity.”
He cannot recall a time when he has felt so much while having so LITTLE. When he has experienced every numb sensation like it is a tumbling wave, every skittering jolt of static beneath the surface, and all without having the TANGIBLE world from which it is offered. Because undoubtedly, the nature of his being has not shifted for this interaction alone: wise enough to not permit his hopes lift higher than reality can MEET, and yet... humorously— This is far from REALITY, and somehow through it all, it is as exquisite as if there is nothing barring him from his company at all. His flaw, perhaps, resides there, in that notion that he require a physical presence wherever his broken soul wanders to DELIGHT in what comes only natural for all others. That he should make the mistake that each touch be fruitless on flesh that cannot sense it—that it is FAKE and the work of a mind pathetically attempting to remember what it craves.
How MUNDANE can he possibly get?
Illusions, imagination, stories illustrated from within offer so much more than the outside world; he has, he muses then, simply needed the perfect SCRIBE to drive inclinations into ink, and now—?
Oh, how SPLENDOROUS their creation.
Aaravos soon chokes all reminders of the shackles pinning him an entire world away, and as if not a mere PIECE of a whole, focuses every ounce of his being into this exchange alone. He recreates himself for this soul by whom he is fascinated, ATTRACTED as much, if not plenty more than the Count is in return. And whether or not a thread of this will resonate across the candles he keeps burning—counting, TALLYING in a near endless isolation—is a future he for once cares so LITTLE about. He does not think to the outcome as he is wont to do, a mind trained by the STARS and their portents. Peculiarly. With no degree of regret, nor thought to an impending, Aaravos lives, exists in this moment all on its own.
Words from his side have lessened considerably in their exchange; though he with a mighty THIRST drinks in all that this doting character chooses to give him, simultaneously does he lose himself in compliments and caresses alike—like one FEARING he may miss a stuttering beat if he steals even a moment to embrace the other in a sonorous tone only their minds can reach. Further does he sink down—both body and soul—into the space they’ve chosen to occupy TOGETHER, and steadier do his eyes steel on the gems like licks of FIRE in front of him: both appearance and in the way they burn by mere contact. A good, molten warmth cherished as much as everything else. Aaravos turns his head to every movement, minimal or otherwise, as if a feline following the hand of the one person whom they’ve permitted touch. Fingers through rivers of starlight, he can CRAFT for himself the minute pull and the weight of those long tresses that shift languidly on the same trail. He senses—in his own way—the venture of those same curious and reverent digits while they glide over the elegant curve of one horn. And, much more noticeably when within immediate sight even as he declines RUPTURING the lock of their eyes, how brazen passion has evolved—
A palm grazes along the length of his thigh, slow to his hip, finding a home on his waist, and... indeed. He needn’t the physical plane to divulge how DELIGHTFUL it should (rather, does) feel; there, beyond corporeal, the gesture filters life into his bones. A single exhale that SWELLS in a flutter through every limb. Oh, there is more yet. Just now is he learning how to BREATHE.
“My dear Count—” After so long a QUIET, he beckons his voice. Without need for any slight twitch of his lips, Aaravos still moves them, plain and CLEAR as they draw closer to eliminate any distance still endeavoring to stay between. “I would not extend so ABUNDANT a generosity were it not too suitable of my own interest... my own DESIRES, and those I’d claim unspoken if not for the conversations woven in our silences. You shouldn’t mistake my declaration for disdain, but it is not so simple a matter as that between HEARTS; I believe we equally are too beyond in years and mature to fall for something so banal. This is, INTIMATELY so, of our minds.” Like a phantom, those lips dance over his: another breath to his body gasping for more. “And perhaps it is that I find aching in myself—for what you’ve offered and what yet will COME.”
Fluid is the turn of his head, slow and DELIBERATE as his mouth brushes plainly over the corner of the Count’s. A tease returned. “So you will INDULGE me, won’t you?” His hand mimics that of the palm on his nape, but rather cushions the cut of a shapely jaw to graciously—but with PURPOSE—steer him precisely as he wants him. The promise he has given him in so small a touch upon his mouth brandishes itself fleetingly in his face before Aaravos has in pronounced nonchalance chosen a different path: that which brings his own mouth to the cheek opposite of his hand POSITIONING him. A slow, deliberate venture of his lips, ghosting across skin that can only be yielded from imagination, and he pauses only at the gentle slope of his neck. There, a KISS asserts itself.
“—if it in turn means I can keep you enraptured?”
