I know your name 'cause it's ringing in my head forever
Sometimes it's like the only thing I hear.
A continuation of the voyeurism scene in Chapter 13 of Blue Skies, Green Grass, and You, where Henry spies on a stolen moment between John and Sam.
(Rating: E, 2.8k words, KCD/DA x-over, Jamuel smut, Andrastian symbolism)
-x-
"Vhenan? What is it?" Samuel swallows, making a painstaking attempt to keep his breathing in check. It is dangerous how easily John's presence could spin him out of sorts. Even more risky is how dizzying his absence leaves him. Like a falcon, talon-bound and spiraling with his equal in the air, plummeting to the earth, knowing that upon release, they'd both rely on centripetal force to keep them in each other's orbit.
John had heard something outside–a voice he swore was that of a lord's, and a name he swore was that of a Warden's. Braies modestly gathered against him, John walks to the door to investigate, and Sam, without his anchor, without his love, sags back into the empty space. He’d been held against the table’s edge and was now bearing his weight onto the top of it with slightly curved palms, fingertips pressing hard into the rough grain of the wood.
He stares at the brightening half-moons of his nail beds as he leans on locked elbows. His jaw clicks tight, back teeth trembling from their brace. He inhales sharply through his nose—
"Sam."
The sound of his name fills the aravel like the rush of fresh mana after consuming a lyrium potion. It grounds and liberates and gives Sam such a feeling of immortality and freedom, knowing that he would still fall upon a blade at the first threat to John's life. He’d bind himself to John in lacelike vows, a gossamer marriage, delicate and indomitable. He’d drag himself down to the bottom of all things because he knows that all John will do for the rest of their lives is lift him high enough to soar.
"It must have been the wind carrying conversations from the fire," John's voice reasons, closer now, halfway returned from the door that feels a million miles away.
He is so oblivious to his own power, Sam thinks as his eyes flutter closed and he flattens his palms against the grain of the table. "But I heard it too, and my hearing is keener," he argues, his voice shaking and husky with trapped arousal.
John's breath licks the shell of his ear, and Sam instinctively settles into his lover in a desperate reunion. "There is no one," the voice purrs, soft and honey-sweet, the tip of John’s tongue teasing a stripe up to the summit of Sam’s ear before gently biting down.
It rips a moan straight from Sam's very spirit; John’s ability to break a man was always stronger than any magic. He swears that the man is a blood mage in disguise, despite John once saying that he'd be the first person in the history of Thedas to hex himself if left alone with a staff. But Sam isn’t so sure; the way he can pry anything he wants from a man–secrets, confessions, seed–speaks to ancient, innate mastery.
"There is you," Sam defends, fighting for John to give himself credit. The man is no soldier in the traditional sense, but he'd raze nations for those he loves the most. One thing John will not do, however, is acknowledge his own importance in the lives of those who love him with the same ferocity. Frustrated at this, Sam reaches behind him to bat at the hand still holding up the braies. With a patient laugh, John lets the loosened garments fall, and they pool over his knees.
His fingers—tendrils, John would say, when he would admire Sam's spell-weaving—curl around the exposed erection, and he tugs on it like a leash. John gasps in surprise as he is forced forward, and Sam hums in satisfaction. "There is this cock," he continues, pumping the length in one single, gratuitous motion before he turns around in his arms. His hands slide around John's hips to knead into his backside like a daydreaming cat basking in the sun.
In a way, that is what John is to him. He is the very object that all things revolve around. Sam, his moon, considers himself lucky to catch fleeting moments of his warmth, coveting every single eclipse like it is life essence.
He would beg for more of that light, and he drops to his knees because there is no other choice, because he could choose. "There is this spirit," he murmurs against the lean valley dividing his abdomen and the soft, fine hairs that dampen under his hot breath. If he could, he'd call upon June, the god of his vallaslin, to craft a tool that could pierce John's flesh without causing harm, so that he might burrow inside and kiss all of the untouchable parts of him.
As if knowing Sam's very wish, he feels John's hand brush along the fern-shaped mark stretching up his cheek, his thumb so gentle as it caresses in slow, sweeping lines. He looks up at him, his hazel eyes shimmering in the candlelight and so full of fondness that Sam can only turn into his palm and press a slow, intentional kiss into it.
I love DA2. The shitty graphics. The horrible gameplay. The story so unavoidably devastating and beautiful and horrible. Everyone hates each other. Everyone loves each other. You’re constantly filling the streets with bodies and there are no ramifications for this. There are ramifications for everything you say and do. Everyone’s bisexual. There’s a dragon in the mine. You lose everyone and everything you love and care about and it’s inevitable. Isabela gets an STI at one point. Merrill is a blood mage. You go from rags to riches to going on the run. You have a dog. You set your friend up on a date with the guy she likes. You hunt down a serial killer who takes the last member of your family away. Your doctor friend is possessed and loves cats and commits domestic terrorism. You have no control. You control everything.
Category: Characters
Main characters: John & Samuel
Relationship: Romantic
TW: Suggestive
Lying overtop of his body, John propped himself up against Samuel’s bare chest. The eyes of the man underneath glimmered affectionately as he lazily ran his fingers through John’s loose curls.
“We could get away for a while,” John said wistfully. “Head back to Austria to one of my family’s estates.”
“One of… You have so many you can choose?”
“I can find an empty one somewhere.”
Samuel dragged his hand across John’s lower back. “How would your family react if they knew you’d found yourself in the bed of a lowly Jewish man? Which part of me would they hate the most?”
John cupped the side of Samuel’s face. “The rest of the world is outside those doors. The politics, and war, and suffocating expectations. None of that is in here when it’s just you and me. I don’t care that you come from a common family.” He leaned in and kissed Samuel’s cheek. “And I don’t care that you’re a Jew.” He pressed his lips to the other one. “And as for that last fact…” His eyes dropped to Samuel’s mouth before greedily taking in his fit body. “Well… I like that fact very much.”
Category: Locations
Main characters: Samuel & John
Relationship: Platonic
TW: None
“Samuel!” A woman called out to him as he passed. “Alfie mentioned to give this to you when I saw you.” She pulled out a folded blanket with an emblem on top.
“Thank you,” Samuel replied.
The quarter bustled with activity, joy, and laughter, as he and John kept walking. Two children stopped playing and waved at Samuel.
“Samuel!” A baker heartily called out. “I have your favourite again!”
Samuel chuckled. “Not today!”
They turned down a street and squeezed between an alley. Samuel then poked his head into the backyard of a house.
“Mother, I’ve returned.”
Sara looked up from her grinding of herbs and smiled. “Thanks for letting me know, love.”
Just as quickly, Samuel was moving again.
When they reached the King Solomon Tavern, a plainclothes guard nodded at them. “No sign yet, boss. Patrols are looking in the bathhouse.”
“Understood.” He stepped inside and passed the kitchen, doing a brief doubletake. “Ah! Miriam. Micah. I have your payment here.” He reached into his pouch and took out a handful of groschen, handing it over” He then turned towards John. “Come on, let’s head downstairs.”
“You certainly are popular,” John commented as Samuel led them into the basement. “I didn’t realize the Jewish Quarter was so lively.”
“What did you think it was? A funeral? Depressed people waiting for it to end?”
“Of course not. I just didn’t realize how happy everyone would look.”
“Happiness is not a birthright of the Christians. Believe it or not, Jews are people too. And when we have lost so much, we find happiness in so little.”
That noose could have claimed not just one life, but two. With this artwork, I wanted to highlight the stark contrast of the moment: for Henry, the person on the gallows represented the only light distracting him from the grief of Skalitz’s fall; for Hans, the noose revealed the sorrow of peasant life and the horror of war.
