Look Into My Eyes and Tell Me What You See | Anatole x Oz’mandias
Prompt 11.- Morning kisses that are exchanged before either person opens their eyes, kissing blindly until their lips meet in a blissful encounter, requested by @asras3rdeye in Ozynana’s awaited (for us) comeback. 1k words.
While Anatole preferred to wake on his own terms, when his body decided, out of both habit and the type of medication he took he had become accustomed to rising early. He would rise between twenty minutes minus seven at the earliest and twenty minutes past seven at the latest. Forty past in a particularly indulgent work-week morning.
Not until his drops or coffee settled in, Anatole’s normal disposition was tainted by irritability, the world fully revelling in the irony that was a man named after the sun being at such odds about having to wake up himself.
Dear Gods he did not have a particular inclination for, save him from Oz’mandias who woke up at ungodly, godawful early hours. As if anticipating Anatole would not appreciate being stirred from where he was (between Ozy’s arms, face squished against his chest), he could feel the ghost of Ozy’s lips against his skin, in a still half-asleep stupor. Lips that pressed wherever they could find, from Anatole’s head to his temple, the shell of his ear or his arms.
With a whine of complaint, Anatole buried himself deeper against Oz’mandias, wrapping himself around him and preventing him from moving as he had just tried. He kissed Anatole’s cheek from a strange angle, then moved, but Nana had different plans.
“But I’m comfortable,” he mumbled. His displeasure was apparent, yet harmless.
Oz’mandias rolled on his back, Anatole followed through without opening his eyes.
“It’s too early.”
“It’s eight,” Ozy said, kissing the crown of Anatole’s head as his fingers traced patterns over his naked back.
“It’s Saturday.”
Ozy laughed and let Anatole have his way, but not without a little teasing on his end. Nana nipped him softly in retaliation, kissing the same spot afterwards.
“I get to have you once in a blue moon, spoil me at the very least.”
Without looking at him, Nana could tell Ozy was about to say something, he himself readying another nip if he had to, but something must have gone through Ozy’s mind that made him decide against it. Instead, he began tracing the patterns of Anatole’s spine, feeling him hum in satisfaction against his chest, the ghost of his smile against his skin. Anatole found a way to half wrap his arms around Ozy too.
Oz’mandias chuckled to himself.
“What?” Nana’s muffled, sleepy voice quipped.
“Maybe you’re right, you do deserve spoiling. You work too much—”
“Not this,” Anatole groaned, wrapping his arms underneath Ozy and squeezing him, trying to bury himself a little further against him.
“Then what?”
“This.”
Ozy thought Nana was going to squeeze him more and fall asleep again. Perhaps roll them over so he could fully wrap himself around him. He even had a sun-snake joke at the ready. Anatole, however, started to kiss him. Without a clear pattern, he began giving his chest, clavicle and shoulders small, blind kisses. He pressed his lips against Oz’mandias’ skin with tenderness and affection, and just a bit of stubborn sleep that still hung onto his mouth, as some of the kisses lingered more than the others.
The spot Anatole kissed the most on his chest was right over where his heart was supposed to be, though he didn’t leave his kisses there. Untangling himself from Oz’mandias, he began kissing his way up his neck until he reached his lips. When he did, he looked at Ozy through half-lidded eyes, smiling at him after kissing him a couple of times.
Ozy traced the shape of his smiling lips. “Your smile is very radiant.”
“Your heart is beating very quickly.”
Ozy gave out a nervous laugh. “You caught me.”
When Anatole kissed him again it was a little less sleepy and for far longer than the other times.
“Do you want to go meditate while I settle everything else, and you can take me through a hike in the City while it’s entirely too early for a Saturday?”
“I already did that, I’ve been awake for a while.”
Anatole sighed, rolling his eyes affectionately. “Of course you did.”
He sat back, straddling Oz’mandias and letting the bed covers fall back. He took his hands in his, lacing their fingers together. “I can also offer you showering together before breakfast.”
Ozy didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on Anatole, taking in how he looked in the morning light; despite it not being the first time he saw him in it, it felt like it was. Perhaps they all felt like the first time, because every time they were together, Anatole found a way to challenge and disarm him. He looked beautiful like this, hair loose, brow not furrowed…
He looked away. He could hear Nana’s concerned frown in his voice as he rubbed absent circles against his hand.
“Hey, look at me. What is it, sweetheart?”
“Now I feel a little guilty about prying you from your bed, you probably don’t want—”
“I will stop you right there,” Anatole said as he pulled him up, so he could sit and look at him (somewhat) face to face. Untangling one of their laced-together fingers, he cupped his cheek. “I do want to. I want to see pretty much everything you want to show me, I’m just irritable in the mornings, especially before coffee. It’s not you. Please, never doubt it isn’t you.”
When Anatole asked if he could kiss him again, offering space and reassurance in the same act, Ozy closed the distance between their lips before replying a little too earnestly. He couldn’t put it to words then, but inside his head, inside that heart of his —the one he didn’t always know how to verbalise or even notice— it make perfect sense that in that moment, Ozy needed to kiss this man who carried the world in his arms with such devotion, or he’d die.
Well, not really, but he’d try to think about how to explain it another time. Right then, he was all too happy to have Anatole’s freely offered attention as he followed him into the shower, so he could follow Oz’mandias into the streets afterwards.
I come bearing fluff. Thank you Coco (@asras3rdeye) for letting my borrow Ozy! I love him!
Jai has never been an affectionate person. Blame it on their parents, blame it on the stars. Blame it on the fact they never liked anyone enough to casually touch them.
But there in the late afternoon light in their study, they are finding that they could be. They shifted slightly in Oz’mandias’ (Ozy, he often corrected them softly) lap. Nuzzling his neck, they caught a whiff of bright citrus. It was a stark contrast to the heady smells of old books and the dragon’s blood incense they tended to favor. They buried their face further.
“Tell me again how your magic works?” They whispered against the soft skin of his pulse.
They could feel him swallow against their lips. “I have explained it a few times Jai.”
“I want to hear it again. You always get so… passionate when you talk about it.”
“Do you like it when I get passionate?”
Had it been anyone else Jai would have thought he was flirting, being borderline salacious, but it was Ozy. Brilliant, a damn near genius, but he was hopeless when it came to matters of the heart. Jai chuckled as they moved to face him.
“I think I just like you,” they said with a smile.
Deft fingers tangled around the thin locs framing his face. Hazel eyes watched in rapt attention as Jai leaned in closer, brushing their lips against Ozy’s, his lip ring a cool contrast.
No, Jai was not affectionate by nature but with him they were learning to be.
1.7k words. In between chess games, Anatole tries, and fails, to figure Oz’mandias out.
For @asras3rdeye, to whom Ozy belongs to, because why have one nerd pining, when you can have two.
What happened when one fell prey of one’s own conventions? And of the fairly set conventions between others? Anatole didn’t know. Usually, he thought himself resourceful enough to untie himself from plethora situations, something he successfully did on the regular. However, he doesn’t remember the last time he had to undo his own set of rules.
Oz’mandias was… confusing. Anatole was never very sure what to do with him. He hadn’t been lying to his cousins all the many times he had stated he was his chess partner alone — he was glad to have their weekly chess games, chat with Ozy over the table and use his brain in something which wasn’t reading documents or drafting things, or worrying about this or that diplomatic envoys and what they might or might not want, after detecting several degrees of you’re-not-being-completely-truthful in their words.
He didn’t expect his job to be any different, yet that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate those respites of human connection. He liked his games with Ozy for the same reason he liked working in the City so much. He got to talk to people and learn from them in ways you couldn’t when it was you, your papers, your desk and your office. It kept Anatole humble to remind himself who and what he was working for, in a very similar way than losing to Oz’mandias in chess did. It made him try new things, come up with his own strategies and pour himself into it whole-heartedly, like he did with those things which truly interested him.
Not that Ozy always won. Not quite. He was better at chess than Anatole but he was far more comfortable in traditional patterns than Anatole ever was. Structure was his aide, true, but only in the measure which it let itself be accommodated to Anatole’s many necessities and ambitions. At the verge of 30 he is more than aware of his own unconventionality, and much more willing to use it in his favour than he was 10 years ago.
That he had learnt to trust his own propensity to veer from convention didn’t mean that he had all the answers. He thought he had just stated the opposite, but at least when it came to his job he always found them: if he himself didn’t have them, someone in his team did. That was half the point in teamwork. Chess, however, was a lone man’s sport, when it came to Ozy he had no one he could ask. Kind of. He could ask Kipling, but as far as he was aware Kipling tolerated Ozy, barely now starting to truly coexist after things which Anatole was not privy to.
It was him, his brain and a game of chess per week.
He wasn’t exactly sure when everything had begun to change — when Ozy began observing, catching up to his patterns, making winning more difficult. He didn’t know when Ozy had stopped talking as much and began listening instead. He didn’t know when, or why Ozy began flexing his arms distractedly before picking a piece and making a move. Perhaps the last one had been his own doing. Some games ago, Ozy had dropped a piece on accident and Anatole had caught it for him; when Oz’mandias said thank you, Anatole squeezed his forearm, eyes twinkling with something warm that slipped to them unallowed.
Maybe all of this was his doing, him being the one to blame for his own predicament. Maybe it was how he seemed to throw himself into things he was passionate about with everything he had that had created this halo of what-is-truly-going-on-here. Was Ozy enticing him? Somehow? Anatole didn’t think so, but there was a keen interest in his voice, and he doesn’t remember the last time someone listened to him ramble on and on so attentively.
That’s a lie, he does. One thing is listening to the debonair diplomat, and another was listening to Anatole in private, where he allowed himself to just exist in his complexities and multitudes without paying attention to whether it was or not appropriate. Not that only people who had been interested in Anatole beyond a platonic connection listened to him, that’s a lie. His family did, his cousins did — Milenko and Amparo at least, Artemisia wavered — his friends, for whom he lived and loved, also did. His issue with Ozy was Anatole could not tell what interest any of them had in it.
There was friendship in his words, but there was something he could not distinguish the cause of. When people were themselves in a state of confusion Anatole could pick up from the confession itself (if people had a good grasp of their emotional responses and correct ways of dealing with them) to all of the feelings which aided in creating the confused state, yet access to none of its origin. Sometimes Ozy was the former, others the latter, where affection, hesitance, doubt and genuine interest rolled off his tongue.
Was it him? Anatole longed for that option in the same measure he dreaded it. Was it someone else? Was Ozy unaccustomed to friendship? Was the fact he hadn’t really settled in Vesuvia yet? Or rather, he had done so physically but his heart was still elsewhere? Was it all of these and more Anatole could not have any idea of? He didn’t know and it was driving him crazy.
His cousin’s sarcastic snort when he insisted he was studying up new chess moves because he wanted to impress Oz’mandias as a friend, didn’t help.
“Ah, yes,” Amparo said, “because it’s when you’re friends with someone that you desperately want to be noticed by them.”
Anatole shot her a look.
“Alright I’ll let it be, but Nana— you know if you actually want to talk about it, we’re here, right?”
Anatole wanted to, but he didn’t even know where to begin. He made a pained noise that made Amparo laugh before throwing her arms around his neck. “Too many thoughts.”
“Way too many. It would be easier if I found an excuse to do something with him that isn’t playing chess, without it sounding strictly like it’s platonic or strictly like it’s a date.”
“So you do like him?”
“Yes, but I don't know, Lele. I don’t know. He’s my friend, I like him as a friend, but there’s something that I can’t place between us, and I have no clue where it came from, and it’s driving me insane.”
“You could just ask.”
“No, no I can’t just ask. Don’t give me that look. It’s just I know Ozy, alright? We don’t just play silently, we talk, and he mentioned in passing how liking people is weird. Usually when he’s told someone likes them he just likes people back, and then he said a myriad of things but you get the idea.”
“Sounds to me like he could’ve been waiting for you to say something.”
“Maybe, but I don’t want him to like me because I like him. I want him to like me because I’m me, Lele.”
Amparo hummed. “Doesn’t Lenko date his cousin or something?”
“Kipling? I’m not asking Kipling. Just—”
“No?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, good luck.”
Anatole sighed, throwing himself back on the chair he was sitting on, groaning into his hands. Eventually he went back to the book he was reading and the notes he was taking, with its poor yet adequate sketches of some of the chess pieces and the moves he wanted to try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he supposed, only if it applied to the game right now. One thing was venturing, the other was taking a shot in the dark with one eye closed and pretending you knew what you were doing. Anatole was very much not going to do that.
He’d find a way to spend more time with him, he told himself, but now their weekly games would have to do. With a new week, a new game came. This one found Anatole and Ozy having round after round of them, even stopping to get some fresh air and refreshments together, both of them standing close to each other in the small balcony near Anatole’s office, and then finding their way back in again for another round.
This time Anatole won, he tried his luck with one of the new things he had studied previous to their game, and it worked.
“But, that’s— that’s new,” Ozy said, bewildered. Anatole thought it was a cute look on him.
“Abaco, how dare you not prepare him for this,” Anatole laughed, taking Ozy’s king. “I have met a traveller from an antique land,” he began, reciting absentmindedly as he played with the King, moving it between his fingers. “My name is Oz’mandias, King of Kings,” Anatole looked at his friend, a smirk and a raised eyebrow on his face, “look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing besides remain.”
His attention had gone back to the King however, and when he looked back at Oz’mandias, he was staring. Anatole blinked, and the other cleared his throat, focusing on something else.
“That’s not fair,” Ozy complained, “I’ll never finish figuring you out if you keep pulling new moves.”
It was like everything stopped moving, impossibly still for a moment as Anatole took in his words. He stared back at him, aghast, his mouth hanging half open — all of his teasing, his cocky brow and debonair flew out of the window, just like that. His face felt too hot not to be blushing, and of course it’d be just his luck that now his elusive blush decides to appear.
“I— uh, thank you,” Anatole has never sounded more ineloquent in his life, but now it was Ozy’s turn to be surprised.
“For what?”
“For paying attention… should we play another round?”
He asked before the topic could go on, heart raising in his chest. Ozy said yes, and began arranging the pieces once more. One last round with the excuse of not leaving Anatole’s presence just yet.
As he made his first move Anatole wondered what would happen if Ozy had decided to wipe out his little smirk by throwing all the pieces away and just kissing him. Incredibly dramatic of a thought, he was well aware, but it was better to think about dramatic impossibilities than think about how their knees almost brushed as Anatole chose to move a pawn.
512 words. In which her new acquaintance sends Kipling a poem. Follow up to ‘Aquarius’, by @asras3rdeye, to whom Kipling belongs to. Milenko x Kipling
Through the mist in the prairies they come
their breaths on your neck.
Through the hills in the countryside they come
their claws through your chest.
Tip tapping of feet unheard,
pacing through the wilderness —
all shadows fade and leave their gloom
for the pacing-not-gardener gardener.
Surefooted they do come,
darkness steeping from their juices
but altogether they stop
for you’re the piper of my musings.
Oh, pacing-not-just-a-gardener-gardener
I wonder… has anyone ever told you
that someone poured the sunset into your smile?
Not someone but her, mother earth in her dreaming
gave us the beauty of your smile appealing.
Doubting when you leave, lingering, expectant
you smile upon my way
and they leave in sure repentance.
Tip taping of hearts unfelt,
cradling dreams not dreamed upon their bosoms
pacing-not-gardener gardener, you make poetry from me blossom.
Milenko threw himself on one of the chaise-lounge in the cousins’ favourite parlour, throwing his feet over the edge so he didn’t damage the fabric, even though he kicked his shoes off. Amparo and Anatole —both of them absorbed in their own things— turned to look at him, exchanging looks of confusion.
“Not even a hello?” Anatole said with a lopsided smile.
“Long day, or poetic flare?”
“I think I found a new muse.”
Amparo and Anatole exchanged pointed looks, as Milenko handed him his notebook for them to read the poem. They read in silence, giving him their approval when they were done. Amparo began doing a dramatic reenactment of the poem, musing about what ‘they’ could be, making both of her cousins laugh. She walked on chairs, barefoot, and danced and acted what the poem evoked to her, goofing around.
“Where did you write this?” Amparo asked, giving Milenko his notebook, dropping herself on the chais Milenko had sprawled himself.
“In the Palace’s gardens. Her name was Kipling.”
Anatole gasped. “No way! You mean Kip? Ozy’s Kip?”
“Whomst?”
“Oz’mandias? Ozy? the guy I play chess with?”
“Oh, you mean the guy who beats you at it,” Amparo teased.
“We beat each other.”
Milenko snorted. “That doesn’t sound like playing chess.”
Anatole threw a cushion at him, but after a moment of silence, he spoke again. “Do you want to send it to her?”
“Yes, I think I would.” Milenko’s smile was wide like a crescent moon.
They sent Antu, as he knew the city better out of the three familiars, strapped with a little, custom made leather bag for when he ran an errand for Anatole. Inside there was an envelope, with Milenko’s slanted handwriting, addressed to Kipling.
To the Sunset Queen, it read, I hope you accept a copy of the poem you caught me writing today. I would send you the original, but if I did I would lose my notebook.
Yours truly,
One Whose Name Was Writ On Water.
As they watched Antu go out of the window and into the roofs of the city, Milenko hummed, thoughtful, squinting into the horizon. When Antu was no longer visible he spoke: “Do you think I Should’ve sprayed it with perfume?”
I started this as a joke, but then it just became something else. It’s entirely accurate and if anyone has carried the burden of writing for one of my babes, then you could probably relate.
I started with Ozy, but the rest are under the cut.
***
Ozy
Me: clean your room
Ozy: but it’s better this way. i can find things easier. the costs of the disorganized appearance don’t outweigh the benefits. trust me.
Me: I don’t care. clean you room
Ozy: okay mom!
Later: Ozy, why isn’t your room clean?
Ozy: you never told me when I had to clean it.
Me: ....
Ozy: I love you!
❁❁❁❁❁❁❁
Khleo
Me: clean your room
Khleo: give me that toy first
Me: who do you think you’re talking to? I told you to clean your room!
Khleo: you want this room clean? I wan’t that toy.
Me: this is not a negotiation, khleo. you’re not the one in charge here.
Khleo: oh? I’m not?
Me: ....right. you’re not.
Khleo: are you sure about that?
Me: yes, I’m sure! w-why are you looking at me like that?
Khleo: give. me. the. toy... I want to hold it.
Me: here! take the damn thing!!! now will you clean your room?
Khleo: I’m sleepy.
❁❁❁❁❁❁❁
Kipling
Me: clean your room
Kip: but I’m so cute
Me: w-what does that have to do with anything?
Kip: nothing. I’m just cute.
Me: that’s true, but you still have to clean you room.
Kip: I want to go outside and play.
Me: you can right after you--
Kip: and talk to my friends and give them kisses and braid flowers into their hair and plant gardens.
Me: kipling...
Kip: can I do that instead?
Me: but your room...
Kip: look mommy, I wrote you a poem about why I love you so much
Me: that’s very sweet.
Kip: and why you should let me go outside and play instead of cleaning my room
Me: ... okay. but just this once.
❁❁❁❁❁❁❁
Sun Bai
Me: clean your room.
Bai: you and I both know that I’m lazy and obstinate and I’m going to grow up to be a pirate one day.
Me: so?
Bai: so I’m not cleaning shit!
Me: Bai, so help me, you better get your ass up off that couch and clean this goddamn pigsty or else--
Bai: or else what mom? you can’t ground me twice!
Me: or else I’ll come over there and hug you!
Bai: ... you wouldn’t dare.
Me: one
Bai: ...
Me: two...
Bai: Ugh! Fine! I’m getting up! God I can’t stand you
Could Kip possibly get 4 with Milenko? Should come as absolutely no surprise that she’s very weak for dorky poets!
And 23 for whichever pairing you want!
Of course! We’re going with Milenko x Kipling first.
4. An accidental brush of lips followed by a pause and going back for another, on purpose.
The sound of Kipling’s steps against the cobblestones of Goldgrave was muffled by the bustling city. If Vesuvia slept, that surely did not apply for both the ever bohemian Goldgrave and the chaotic South End, never still, like water always flowing.
She wasn’t surprised that Milenko lived there, it suited him. What did surprise her was that he didn’t live in the same place as the rest of his family — she had been commissioned to take care of their winter garden more than once, and the last time she had gone, she kept waiting for Milenko to show up. If she always found him by the fountain of the palace, it made sense to Kipling that she would find him near the pond in the winter garden.
She hadn’t, and Milenko had told her he didn’t live there, he just spent a lot of time with his cousins.
Kipling made it to the building, and from there, she knew she had to go to the very last floor. Milenko’s quarters weren’t big, but they weren’t small either — an apartment made out of the attic of the building it was located in, with a small terrace that looked into the canals, per Milenko’s own description. The closer she got to it, the more nervous she was, yet she steeled her resolve, and knocked on the door.
No one came.
She knocked once more with the same result. Did he forget? Was he getting something and hadn’t returned? Or had she mistaken the day? Overthinking on all the possible results, deciding to wait some time before knocking for a third time (no one was around that she could ask anyway) she leaned to far against the wall, and accidentally pushed the door open.
It wasn’t locked.
“Mila?”
Though no answer came, Kipling was too curious not to investigate, taking her an anticlimactic short time to find Milenko, sitting in the tiny terrace, one foot against the stretcher of the table, another over the seat of his chair. Laying down at his feet was Ursula, his familiar, who did notice Kipling coming in and was wagging her tail at her.
Milenko’s eyes were fixed on a near by canal, as he messily scribbled on a notebook with his slanted handwriting, changing to a clean page when needed, all without looking. He muttered words as if describing something, writing away things only he could see. The evening breeze playing with his curls.
Kippling watched him write, his fingers changing the page with the same motion he did when he played on the strings of a mandolin — she had seen him play in the coffee house him, Amparo, Anatole and their friends used to go. He had asked Kipling to tag along, a gentle, encouraging smile on his lips, as his brown eyes examined her face, hoping. He had been sitting on a sofa there just as badly, only with a leg over Kipling’s, playing a tune he made up as he went.
Eventually, Ursula made a noise to call Milenko’s attention, bumping his leg off the stretcher.
“Hey!” He complained to his dog, at the same time as Kipling said: “Hi, the door was open.”
“Kip! I—” he looked at his hands, inked. “I didn’t, did I leave you waiting? I’m so sorry.”
“Please, don’t worry! I’ve always liked watching you write, you look so absorbed in it.”
“But I promised drinks, not keeping you waiting.”
“Oh, hush.”
She smiled, and Milenko returned it. He stood up to greet her, keeping his inked hands away from her clothes, he leaned down to kiss her cheek, but Kipling had had the same idea, so when they met each other half way, their lips brushed.
“Hi, my sunset,” Milenko told her still looking at her lips.
“Hi,” Kipling replied, closing the infinitesimal distance between them to kiss him, this time, on purpose.
