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18. Flowers	By : IkariAkiko Category: +S through Z > World of Warcraft Views: 1449 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own anything from Blizz. Entertainment nor any WoW derivative. I make no money from posting/writing this fanfiction, and I have permission from the respective players to post their characters.

Chapter List
- 1-18. Flowers
- 1
It is cold today, but then it is usually cold every day here. Northrend is only what I expected it to be and little more: it is a land not always covered in snow, but all of it is unyielding and implacable, full of death and sorrow.
To make a point, I suppose, I have seen very little in this forsaken northland to make even him smile. His smile is usually so quick to show itself, his expressions of amusement and joy are things that I used to find somewhat annoying and now find myself secretly missing whenever they are absent.
(Merosiel.) Even in my head, he is rock and stone, a crushing weight that is not entirely unpleasant. He smothers me through our link but only with gentle patience. This bond between us is thanks to my ingenuity.
Ah, Meros, I think to myself briefly as I touch the wooden bead tied at my throat, you�re so immodest. The physical chains connecting us act as foci his prayer beads sans one bead for him, the missing bead for me while shadow magic weaves a knot, a mental bridge, between us.
(Yes?) My thoughts and my sight are always inevitably drawn back to him; usually I fight it, today I cannot muster enough energy to ward off both the chill and my impulses.
He pauses in front of a vendor�s stall at our right. I stop obediently just to his left, completely invisible, unnoticed; I wait. I can feel the welcome heat of him next to me where my shoulder barely brushes his arm, a constant, unspoken reminder that I remain at his side. This mountain of a man does not intimidate me despite his larger size--although it is a strange thing indeed for a kal�dorei to find himself shorter than another being. I only just crest his shoulders.
Waiting at first in silence, I blow into my cupped hands in a useless attempt at chasing away the cold that seeps into them through the thin leather gloves.
(We�re due at the Flight Master�s quarters in less than ten minutes,) I remind him when several moments pass without action or response.
He says nothing still, and when I turn my head to look up at him, his dark cheeks are darker with cold and breath mists out from his thick lips. I suppose that I am brazen in my stare, perhaps more so because his inability to notice is an advantage I abuse frequently. Against a blind man, stealth is hardly the only cloak shrouding my voyeurism from discovery; the boldness he cannot see, he also cannot defend against.
(May I have the use of your eyes, please?)
He always asks for permission, like a small child hoping for a rarely-afforded luxury; I will never understand this pretense of consideration. I signed a contract, did I not? This body is his, these eyes are his. I am guard, guide, servant, assistant; whatever my employer has need of because I care little what he does with what he pays for. I am a vessel for him, nothing else.
(What are you doing?) I counter silently, but allow my eyes to drop from his face to run casually over what the stand has to offer.
There is a small irony nestled here for me to find. The vendor�s wares are various flowers, and when he reaches through the link binding us and looks through me--a dizzying feeling that I am certain I will never grow used to--the sensation can really only be described as the unfurling of petals. Something rich and warm blossoms behind my eyes, and then they are no longer just mine to use. It is not a merging of our sight, only a slight widening of the thin thread connecting us so that where my eyes wander, he can see.
He could simply take control of my body and move my eyes where he wills them: he certainly has the capability--and the paid privilege--to do so. But he only ever asks, and then only for this much and no more. My employer is neither a man fond of using force nor of exhibiting dominance. He never takes, and never abuses what advantages he has. I hate the part of me that wishes he would.
(Why are we looking at flowers?) I force my tone not to contain curiosity, to speak only with boredom instead.
As expected, he ignores my question. My employer is apt to do so when it suits him. At first it irritated me, but now I find it almost a game between us and so the irritation is feigned more often than not. I ask the questions, start the conversations, and he continues to ignore them unless I successfully startle, distract, or trick him into responding.
The subtle pressure behind my eyes vanishes as swiftly as it has insinuated itself, telling me that I am free once more to look at him without consequence. The woman hovering near us still has yet to speak, likely too nervous with this giant of a draenei crowding her stall all by himself. The stink of her nervousness clogs my nose, distracting me from the more pleasant musk of the male next to me and the soap he chose this morning to shave with.
Although I want to fault her for her reaction, she has no means to either sense me or realize I am even present. She cannot know that of the two of us, I am the one far more likely to harm her out of sheer whim alone. And it is quite true that my employer looks fiercesome to those unused to him.
When he is lost in thought as he is now, there are many not-so-subtle differences throughout his features that turn him into a completely different person on the surface. His muscles and his dour face work against him, never hinting at his pacifism; they only speak of the immense strength and the ability to use it, rather than the true intentions behind them.
For me, my employer�s bulk only engenders approval; is it so wrong to enjoy the harsh, oblique lines that comprise his form, rather than to fear or respect them? I wonder sometimes, considering others� responses to him. Regardless, the unvoiced pleasure I take in his company certainly is not part of why I am here, nor part of the use he has for me.
�Is... is there something you wish to purchase?� The girl�s voice is reedy, thin; I don�t like it at all, but then I rarely like other people or their voices. My employer has suggested more than once that my dislike is really masked envy for their ability to speak where I cannot. Perhaps, perhaps not.
He nods slowly in response to her question and his brow furrows heavily, shading small, kind eyes and breaking up the monotony the smooth planes of his face usually create.
Snow begins to fall in abstract patterns, dusting us with a light coat of white within a minute or two. Instead of another attempt at urging him onward and out of the cold, I watch as snowflakes land on his nose. Impulse has me pulling off the glove of my left hand to brush the melting slush free.
Perversely, as if to defy me, my fingertips linger a moment or two longer than necessary, tracing the smaller ridges scaling the bridge of his somewhat flattened nose. He gives no complaints for this, yet my touch is as light as the falling snow, and likely as cold. Emboldened by the lack of restraint, my wandering fingers casually ghost upward and stroke over the beginnings of one ribbed horn where it melds into the overlapping plates at his temple, while my eyes trace the path I cannot reach, privately admiring the graceful weapons of bone that arc from his skull like the coiled spiral of nautilus shells.
Because of this impressive rack I have often idly mused that my employer�s head would likely be far too top-heavy if not for his thick neck and shoulders broad enough to sit on. It would take a rogue of far more brute strength than I to snap his spine or to smother the life from him; but as that is most certainly not a part of my current employment, I can freely enjoy how the lighter skin of my hand looks against the velvety dusk of his throat.
The tendrils connected to his strong chin are missing the embellishments I am accustomed to seeing on other draenei, yet my thumb finds the scarring the metal rings have left behind--or perhaps these are not scars, only lighter bands of flesh rubbed raw where the rings used to be? I have not asked yet; I should.
As I touch the second tendril they firmly cut short my explorations and hold me captive. These strange extensions of himself are quite strong, too, and I believe that they could snap the bones in my wrist like kindling sticks. Instead, he strokes their tapered ends over my palm and inscribes small but tantalizing promises on the tender instep of my wrist so that I shudder involuntarily. Closing my eyes, I swiftly become enthralled both with the possibilities these dexterous parts of him might be capable of and their suggestive, lazy movements.
Releasing my wrist, he tilts his chin downward while I lean up, resting my ungloved palm against the broad expanse of his chest. Feeling the quickened thud of his heart under my fingers and the cold puff of his breath in my face, I open my eyes to watch his mouth near mine, only to be quite abruptly shocked out of my daydream when he speaks.
(Bored so quickly, Merosiel?) My employer�s soft and craggy voice is a lightning bolt in my mind; I blink and there is no gentle snowfall, just a few lone petals scattering in a mild--albeit frigid--breeze.
My hands are still gloved and tucked under my armpits for warmth--a telling gesture. Just another idle fantasy; very smooth of you, Meros, I grouse to myself mentally.
I am helpless in this obsession to worship with my eyes what I do not have. The ghost of his scent haunts me and the ripple of muscle as he moves is seared to the backs of my eyelids; every sound he makes--down to the minute way he breathes a little more slowly when he�s excited--are all with me from the time I wake to the time I sleep. But what kills me is the need to touch him in ways that are wholly not platonic: I want to taste him. I want to map every inch of rook-dark flesh with my tongue, to trace the ridged lines of his abdomen with my palms, and to grip the proud horns as he thrusts up into me.
Thoughts of him are always like this: full of heat and need that wrings me out like a rag. I can feel wetness on the inner side of my thighs, trickling slowly to soak into leather as if he�s already come and gone, only it�s just me and my own imagined desires to blame for my discomfort.
Once more I wonder at what is wrong with me and once more I strive to ignore how hot I am for him and once more I cannot distance myself from the sensation of flesh rubbing against leather; with every idle movement I make I wish that it was his large hand stroking me.
(Are you there, Merosiel?)
(We�re going to be late,) I whisper silently rather than answer his gentle confusion. His mild reactions always force me to speculate on if this mental projection of my voice betrays me like it would if I were to speak to him aloud. That option is closed to me, of course, but the possibility that he knows and says nothing is there and torments me.
I decide that there is very little danger of him picking up my thoughts or the lust lacing them, not with how careful he is to give me privacy despite our bond. I probably should be more grateful that even for a priest, he is unassuming and courteous, but there is a traitorous part of me that yearns for him to be more suspicious and less trusting.
His generous mouth puckers at the corners, draws downward in the barest of frowns. Like always, he takes his time in choosing a reply, and his serene dismissal of, (Then we simply take the next flight out,) has me pulling a face at him behind my mask. Yet another thing that I am braver to do with no one, especially him, to witness it.
(Fine,) I retort, (it�s your gold, not mine.)
A sudden flicker of movement in the corner of my vision and a tentative touch to my leg startles me into looking down. It is only his tail, I realize after a moment�s uncertainty, and watch the supposedly lazy sweep it cuts the air with. He�s making sure I�m still here, I note with some surprise; I was unaware until this moment that I had taken a step back, thus severing the assurance I had previously afforded him.
As free from the expected jewelry as his tendrils are, his tail usually holds itself prudently aloft so as not to drag in the street. At this moment, however, for every couple of heartbeats that stutter in my chest, the tip of that dark appendage quests innocently to his left, whispering upon the back of my calf. To an observer, it would merely look as if he were restless, which he must be, I reflect quietly, unless that moment of lost contact startled him that much.
Forcing myself to disregard the potential of that equally prehensile limb rubbing artlessly against my leg, I try once again to distract myself with my surroundings. Inexorably my averted gaze magnetizes itself once more to his body, following his tail to the wide hips and the hint of groin that even the loose, shapeless mass of his traveling robes do not entirely conceal. The goatish legs and the lustrous black of his hooves are details I cannot see at the moment but are quickly filled in by memory bubbling unbidden to the forefront of my mind.
The previous night I cleaned his hooves and treated the minute cracks repeatedly caused by the stress of constant travel over uneven and often rocky terrain. Now the liniment�s sharp scent mocks me along with the recollection of other evenings spent attempting to knead the tightness out of his tense and knotted muscles. My employer refuses to admit it because he is a stubborn old bastard, but the cold of the northlands does him much ill.
His submission to these attentions required of me is a reluctant one, and I have yet to figure out if he dislikes this part of our contract because he is wary of physical touch--however innocent--from another man or because he dislikes needing help at all. It is difficult to tell when I know he has been independent for so long; to him the idea of any assistance, whether minor or not, instantly turns him from mild-mannered giant to irritable little child. His opinions on gender remain his own and, as of yet, completely unknown to me.
He hands the flower girl enough coin to send her eyes wide and her pert little human mouth curling in delight--stupid wench must get paid on commission, to be so pleased at so little. Hardly even a few gold, really, yet when she hands over the few roses that he's purchased, I get the feeling that he'd gladly pay more, pay anything, for who they're meant for.
A brief, irrational surge of jealousy spikes through me when I realize that, naturally, flowers bought at a flower stand from a flower girl mean one thing: they are a gift to another. I smother this envy; the wound is clean at least, there is no poisoned hate festering inside. I keep expecting that to accompany these little injuries.
(We�re late, now,) I mutter, injecting more boredom into my tone while I watch those that pass us by, bustling on their way through the streets. He glances up, blind eyes staring ahead sightlessly, staring for long enough that the flower girl-- Aerith I think, is how she introduced herself to my employer--questions him with that irritating expression of pity everyone seems to give him because he cannot see.
"Yes, probably." He says in that voice of crumbling stone that never fails to make my gut clench in useless anticipation. I know without having to ask that he answers me, and not the flower girl, but she lacks this knowledge and smiles that empty smile humans have when they think they are humoring someone.
(Talk here, that�s what it�s for. Infuriating old man.)
"I know." His stony expression hardly falters as he answers me a second time. For his one-sided conversation, the flower girl must think him senile, or perhaps half-mad; it would hardly be a new sight, I think, with all the madness pouring out of the northlands like mist and crushing all in its path as relentlessly as the glaciers that surround most of the continent.
(Why buy these things? Why waste precious resources? Don't you see?) Here his lips twitch for my mental gaffe. (Only going to die in a few days.)
(Yes.) The one syllable masquerading as answer is mercifully silent at last.
(Why?)
�Because some things must be observed no matter where I go.�
Although all I am is a contracted killer turned to contracted butler, he calls me his shadow with a reserved kind of affection. This minor possession in the endearment does not annoy me quite as much as I make him think.
We move away from the perplexed flower girl; I am as bewildered as she and dislike this notion immensely. Diving back into the crowd, I am at my best--or at my worst, I suppose, considering just how much I truly vex him at times--keeping still to the shadowed side of the world and concealing myself from the light and the touch of other gazes. I rarely walk with him in public and remain visible; his are the one pair of eyes I want looking at me, and yet I know that they will never run in appreciation over my body or trace the line of my hip.
I shy away from this thought: it pricks at me as much as the uncut roses prick the priest's hand. Instead, I drift and listen to the dull click of his staff and the duller clack of his heavy hooves on the paving stones as we walk. And in a way, at least with this man at my side to tease my senses, I will never truly be cold in Northrend.
- 1
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18. Flowers