❛ You can’t glare magic into happening. ❜
a darker shade of magic sentences / not accepting
Garen had not noticed just how intensely he had been trying to force his magic to rise to the surface. He could feel the burn underneath his skin, the fire in his body licking the surface of the cage of his own body it was in, hungry to be free, but Garen could not seem to push it hard enough. A heavy scowl had knitted his brows together while he stared down at his hands, lips drawn down into a frown while his chest felt tight and his hands ached from the effort from the savage burn within his body.
Sylas stood with him, his voice calm and reassuring enough to brake the forced focus Garen was trying to maintain. Finally, he relented, sighing deeply and letting his shoulder slacken in a moment of mild defeat. He had payed attention to all of Sylas’s lessons, but to use his magic was so… it was completely different from everything he’d ever been taught to do. To be a soldier of the Vanguard required exceptional precision and control, an awareness of your entire body, your surroundings. Magic was the antithesis; it was meant to be free, to flow and breathe, to exist as the earth and the trees. Garen had always kept himself perfectly composed and in control.
“I know…” Garen finally answered, quietly defeated as he lowered his arms.
The other man moved from beside him, one of his hands settling on Garen’s wrist as he stepped behind him, now enveloping the soldier within his own frame. A flush of color rose to Garen’s cheeks in response, his heart thumping in his chest as those rough, calloused hands ran down his wrists, over the backs of his palms, and finally laid his fingers between Garen’s own. He could feel his heart nearly trembling in his chest, but even so, Garen felt so safe in his lover’s arms. Slowly, he relaxed against Sylas, leaning back against his chest while all that pressure, tension, and fear fell away from him as smoothly as silk. Sylas had become something of an anchor for Garen while he was navigating this very different principal and sometimes quite painful, arduous task of pulling apart the vines of pain and fear that had become so entangled underneath his armor. Finally, Garen felt calm enough to relax, his chest filling with the warmth of his magic in a way that was comfortable for him.
“Remember what I’ve taught you,” he heard Sylas say near his ear, his voice warm and low. “Relax,” he said, softer this time as he let the warmth and shimmering opalescent hues of Garen’s magic begin to seep into his own body. A magic so beautiful he could still see the shifting colors underneath the wraps on his forearms.
Small flames began to curl around the edges of their fingers, dancing in the air in a fleeting moment before settling back into the body that Garen’s shared magic had made its home in. Garen watched with a content smile as wisps of fire licked at their fingers with a warmth that was comforting and shared between the two of them. He wasn’t sure if the flickers of fire were Sylas’s doing or his own, but in a moment like that, Garen did’t quite care whose doing it was. He took comfort in knowing that it was a magic born from his own body all the same and that it was shared between the two of them in an intimacy that only they could share. While watching small flames lick the air from their palms, Garen felt Sylas lay a soft kiss against his neck, his beard brushing his bare skin as his lips lingered and another kiss shortly followed.
“Where would I be without you?” Garen mused aloud as he closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side, baring more skin to his lover.
Several more kisses were slowly pressed to Garen’s neck, a low, content hum rising in the knight’s throat as he indulged in the feeling of warm lips and soft scruff brushing across his skin. “I could ask you the same thing,” he heard Sylas say in response as he rose his head and let his cheek rest against Garen’s temple.
A steady roll of flames flickered around their fingers, traveling from one palm to the next with Garen’s magic being shared between their two bodies. He had never felt more comfortable, more at peace, than here he was now enveloped in the body of the sun and the night, in the arms of the unshacked and the unbound. Fire that did not burn licked the sides his palms, flicking around the edges of their laced fingers. “Maybe you should hold me while I practice my magic from now on,” Garen said half jokingly.
Garen could feel the deep rumble of Sylas’s chuckle against his back, his heart quietly fluttering in his chest in response. No matter how many times Sylas held him, or how close they were, the little moments of intimacy always made his heart tender. He knew that, if given the chance, he could be swept off his feet by this man over and over even fifty years from now.
“I suppose I could, but perhaps you should convince me to,” Sylas replied, laughing under his breath before pressing a soft kiss to Garen’s temple.
Garen laughed in response this time, his lips spreading into a smile that was wide enough to make his cheeks round and his eyes squint. He rose his arms from his lover’s to turn himself around while in his embrace, now facing him and letting his warm hands settle on his forearms. He tilted his chin as he leaned up into his lover, pressing his lips against Sylas’s to kiss him slow and deep, tasting him, mouth moving over his own languidly like the slow roll of waves over the earth.
“How should I do that?” he asked as he pulled away, breathing heavier against the other man’s lips.
