@pxnkrps asked: plots please
Viktor hosts a discreet supernatural salon where old creatures trade favors, secrets, and rare services, and it's here that Emory arrives on his family's behalf to negotiate something they need — a debt, an alliance, a piece of history someone else holds. Out of his depth among effortless full shifters, painfully aware of how incomplete he looks in such company, Emory catches Viktor's attention anyway. Genuine fascination. Viktor makes himself the boy's guide for the evening, part protection and part courtship.
The room smelled of old money and older magic, and Viktor had long since stopped being impressed by either. He drifted through the gathering with the practiced boredom of a man who had seen every trick the supernatural underworld had to offer, until he spotted the boy standing too stiffly near the back wall, hands tucked into his sleeves as though he were hiding something. Viktor recognized the posture immediately: not fear, exactly, but the particular discomfort of someone convinced he didn't belong. When he drew closer and caught the faint, contradictory scent clinging to him – wolf and bear and something unnamed underneath – he understood why. He'd met full shifters by the hundreds over his life, and they had all, without exception, bored him.
This one didn't. Viktor offered his arm with more formality than the room required, murmured something about difficult negotiations being easier with company, and watched the boy's eyes flick up to his – startled, wary, and unmistakably interested despite himself. It had been a long time since Viktor had felt the particular pleasure of discovering something he hadn't already catalogued, and he found himself in no hurry to let the evening end. Whatever Emory had come here to negotiate, Viktor decided, quite selfishly, that he would make himself part of the terms.
Randy takes a summer job crewing on one of Blake's yachts, not realizing who owns it until the man himself steps aboard. What starts as professional distance slowly erodes as Blake begins requesting Randy specifically for small tasks: pouring his wine, laying out his robe after a swim. And Randy finds himself living for the sound of his name in Blake's voice.
Randy had folded a hundred towels that week, but only one set of hands seemed to notice the difference. Smoothing the corner Randy had already smoothed, as if searching for an excuse to linger. Blake said nothing about it, only thanked him in that low, unhurried voice that made the word feel like it belonged to Randy alone, and went back to his book like nothing had passed between them at all. Randy stood there a moment too long before returning to his work, aware of exactly how close Blake's fingers had come to his.
That night, told to bring a bottle up to the sundeck, Randy found Blake already waiting, barefoot, watching the lights of Positano bleed into the water. Blake didn't ask him to pour the wine right away. He asked him to stay, just for a minute, and Randy obeyed the way he obeyed every order from that man, entirely, without needing to be asked twice. The silence between them stretched comfortable and dangerous all at once, and Randy understood, standing there in the dark with the bottle sweating in his hand, that he would stand on that deck all night if Blake wanted him to.
blakekathryn
2087
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
titsay
