25 Spring 519
It’s rare for Caspian to invite company over. Not that he’s against it - not that he’s much of anything to hide, and he’s sufficiently tidy enough about cleaning up - but when he’s out to have a good time, he’s very much out for it, whether that’s at Saticath’s tapestried and fur-swathed bower, Thancerell’s unit adjacent to but blessedly separate from his parents’, or whatever and whichever party Caspian finds himself flitting through. Lately, though, it’s gone beyond errant preference to spend his free time out of doors, because with Taalviel now some permanent fixture at his table, or perched at the foot of his bed just to gaze from a certain vantage point out the window -
It would be nefariously cruel indeed if Caspian were to subject someone he even remotely likes to her glowers.
This is one of those rare moments, though, because against all better judgment and aversion to encountering unpleasantness if manageable, he’s in his own apartment, on his own bed, his limbs akimbo and head in Thancerell’s lap.
They’re passing a bottle of wine between the two of them, something Caspian dug out of Thancerell’s parents’ well-stocked cellar, halfway through its contents as the sun reaches the halfway mark of its setting.
Things haven’t been so seamless between the two of them. They’ve hit a new point - or more accurately, Caspian’s found a vigorous series of nadirs - and he’s letting Thancerell play with his hair at the moment, but it seems rather incidental more than some signifier of willingness to acknowledge any assumed level of affection.
“Little on the sweet side, isn’t it?” Thancerell says, following a sip and a sigh.
Caspian accepts the bottle that’s proferred to him, inclining his head the minimal degree necessary to swig from the bottle himself without causing it to spill. “Better than the last we popped,” he replies despondently, and hands it back.
Thancerell’s fingers have found their way fast through his dark hair. The wall opposite them is blank, and as he gazes after it, it takes on a nullity not so different from the abyssal comforts of shutting his eyes. For the sake of idle experiment he chooses to, settles back into the calm of feeling his mind being cloaked, and there’s something to be said - but wiser than to do out loud - about resting in this space, where he can more readily imagine that the hand possessively twirling through his hair belongs to someone else.
That someone is faceless at first. It isn’t necessarily a man, either, at least at the outset - but the roughness of Thancerell’s digits and the bulk of his lap soon readily rules out the possibility of imagining he’s curled against a feminine form. A man, then - taller than Thancerell, darker and deeper, handsome as all get-out and of a more elegant strain. It’s not that Thancerell isn’t good-looking but there’s an absence of refinery there, a serrated edge to his attitude and mannerisms that’s begun to wear doggedly on Caspian’s own particularly cultivated inclinations.
He might have ended it some weeks ago; the fact remains that he might end it now, and rid himself of this feeling of imprisonment in his own bed. Ridiculous that he’s reduced to feeling tethered by an appendage as flimsy as a hand woven through his hair - but if this is the state of things, surely that’s enough to warrant his taking decisive action.
And yet -
“Almost forgot,” Thancerell says, and he’s shifting around, sending the bed creaking and tugging Caspian out of one of his more arid reveries. “Got you a present.”
Further rummaging around in his pockets and the leather knapsack lazily tossed beside them stuns Caspian entirely back into the materially immediate.
“Please tell me it isn’t another fishing lure,” Caspian replies, taking the wine bottle for himself. A sip - a second one, and deeper, for good measure - and he flops back against his bed, amongst the pillows that feather his fall, tucking one arm behind his head and holding the bottle jauntily aloft.
“This is Ravok. You can’t have too many.”
“A point that might prove valid for, likely, anyone else. Have you ever even seen me fish?” There’s a joke well within reach there, surely, about his prospectively standing with pole in hand - but Thancerell doesn’t rise to the occasion.
It’s in the knapsack, though, slim and wrapped in soft black leather, the whole of it bundled with a length of twine.
Taking very many liberties - all of which perhaps Caspian might blame himself for volitionally doling - Thancerell bounds back to him, very pleased with his having brought Caspian a present to begin with, and here’s that sensation of imprisonment again, under his own roof, atop his own covers, because he can feel Thancerell’s very eager eyes upon him, that his breath is bated, that tussled up in this are several volumes of premeditation and expectation and if Caspian doesn’t smile or shift his expression in the appropriately and generally socially accepted ways, Thancerell will take a turn towards his own volume of disappointment and despondency, and the unpleasantness might stretch on for hours, or even days.
The whole of it is overwhelming, and makes Caspian’s face burn.
There’s no way out of this - but fortunately for Caspian, opening presents is something he’s had a fair amount of practice doing, and its complications restricted only to any accompanying implications.
What he finds is far from an errantly toned, pointlessly flourished fishing lure - it’s an iron dagger, hewn in tight, bright spiral, about five inches in length, handle expertly ridged in aesthetic extension of the blade.
It’s -
“Gorgeous, right?” Thancerell’s grinning.
And he very much deserves to, because gorgeous is very much what it is.
“Obfuscate,” Caspian reads aloud, finding the dagger’s name etched in dashed, flying script towards the pommel. “Thance - it’s - I mean, really, it’s -“
“I just thought, you know - that creep you mentioned the other day. Maybe if you’d had something like this on your belt, you could -“
Caspian doesn’t want to dwell on that memory much further. But yes - had he a weapon on his person, a weapon like this, if only just to be secure in the awareness of closely possessing something for his own defense -
“Thank you,” he says, and finds that he means it.
—
WC: 1,075