Home Away from Home [Aurin]

[Torin Kilvin]

4th Ash, 124

It was late, and it was early.

The two humans had made their way through the elven city in the early twilight from the workplace where they had woven magic together. Food had been procured, though the younger had hardly paid any mind to what it had been. Anything Aurin gave him to eat, he would; had done so when he was too tired even to open his eyes and see what was passing his lips. He was not quite so tired then, but that might have been because he was finally with his fox again. They ate in the airy apartment Torin had rented and though his Semblance told him that Sivan was present the elf was gracious enough to know that his lover wouldn't have the energy for anyone but his man.

When he had had enough that he wouldn't be miserable in the morning he pulled the red-head into his bedroom where they fell, in many ways.

Torin must have slept, though he didn't remember that particular falling, because he woke up in the time before morning twilight. In the darkness, warm from the body close to his own. Aurin might have been asleep, it was difficult to tell, even for a master Sembler. Some old instincts never die.

Torin stretched a little, more to feel skin on skin than anything else, and allowed himself to explore Aurin's aura. He knew where not to go in the way that one knows their own tender scars, avoiding them thoughtlessly. All the familiar things were there, and some new ones. Connections that didn't feel entirely new in their places within the man, but which Torin hadn't encountered before. Connections that he knew well mixing with emotions and situations to form outlines that Torin could read as though they were written in the book he'd gifted his man. They might be, for all he knew. Only Aurin could read within, unless to chose to share but Torin liked that Aurin was a creature made of secrets.

"Missed you," The smith whispered into the darkness that cradled them both, because it felt good to say it.

[Aurin]

Aurin hadn't been sleeping well. There were things that needed taking care of before coming to Sol'Valen, the arduous trip itself—the fucking elves couldn't make anything fucking easy—and then he hadn't done much sleeping with Castor. He was going to have to check on him soon to make sure his new Rune wasn't fucking with him. Aurin was better at initiating people now, and while he knew in his head he hadn't done anything wrong that caused Torin's nearly fatal reaction to the "gentlest of Runes," it still fucked with him.

There were plenty of things to do while in Sol'Valen, and he had to get himself to Zaichaer within a few days' time to answer Imogen's call, but tonight, he was warm and enveloped in Torin and Torin's bedding, smelling him even as he slept, limbs entwined. Of course, he would always be able to wake up to full alertness in an instant, the remnant of old trauma, but he felt safe enough to sleep deeply, and to drowse as he felt Torin come to wakefulness.

He could exist in that liminal space between waking and dreaming.

"Missed you," he mumbled in sincere response.

And, "coming more."

Were he waking, that would have been a prurient promise, but they had spoken already. Apparently, the elves had their hooks in Torin and he would be sharing time between Kalzasi and Silfanore a while longer. Aurin didn't know if they would ever give him any sort of official status. He rather hoped Torin had grown to see how good he was here among the illustrious, mystical, magical elves, and wouldn't need their approval to know that he had learned what he could from them and move on.

No, he meant that he would be visiting more. Searing had been for Sivan and Silfanore. Ash would be for Aurin and all the rest too.

There came a faint whimper from the fox of a man. He clung to Torin like a child in fear of abandonment, not even wanting him to slip out of the sheets to take a piss.

Perhaps Torin had ideas of the shape of Aurin's past between what he had shared and the negative space left by what he didn't share, by what Torin learned even while being circumspect about the patterns hidden under the other patterns that made up his soul.

[Torin Kilvin]

Torin was, for a moment, concerned, but the scents of others were laced through his lover's aura, some heavier from recent attachment, some lighter going further back. Aurin had not been bereft of anyone to take care of his needs in the smith's absence. Which was silly to even think, since the redhead would always have company if he wanted it.

Snuggling deeper and closer the broad boy sighed contentedly. The truth was that as much as he could be desperate to learn, he missed his home and his people. Without Sivan there with him he would have long hence been overrun by homesickness. A season at home would do him good, but a season without working would drive him almost as far into melancholy as one without any of his friends.

A soft sound came from the form tucked close to his own that his mind refused to put a name to but which his every fiber responded to. Nuzzling close he kissed whatever skin came under his mouth, worshiped with soft lips and soft words that he knew would have earned him mocking and scoffing in the light of day. Even the moon was set now and that was good, for there are somethings that thrive in starlight alone.

There in the nearly perfect darkness Torin set about to prove that his home would always be wherever Aurin lay his head; that it was where the smith belonged and that, no matter how far or how often they had to part, Torin was Aurin's home too.

Dawn was beginning to glow golden and pink through the wide windows by the time he had exhausted himself with his efforts. They would both need a bath, but that would wait. Stretching out, still half atop the fox, still panting a little, he said,

"I think you may be right, about me."

[Aurin]

Torin's ministrations might have begun while Aurin was in a liminal space, but he was painfully aware just before it ended. He had cried out, and while he wasn't crying, little drops like dew clung to lashes that seemed inordinately long in the shadows of the gloaming. His body relaxed, succumbing to the afterglow, but his mind was clear, and painfully so. He wanted to hide his face in the pillow. He wanted to shove Torin away, or jab him with elegant, nonchalant words that would hold a boundary between them. Instead, he was quiet.

He wasn't crying, not when dawn's light came creeping over the covers that Torin had only haphazardly managed to pull back over them. It just looked as though he had been crying when the light hit just right and hazel seemed both green and gold at the same time, red-rimmed.

Aurin looked raw and confused.

"Right about you?" he asked, his voice raw, too, as if that last cry had torn something out of him. But his tone was light, curious.

It was just another post-coital morning, after all. There was nothing special about it except they had been edging for a season. They had both had their releases, of course, but it wasn't the same.

"I've always been right about you," he said, a bit more his old cocksure self. He smirked toward the ceiling, considered asking if Siv might bring them breakfast in bed or something else that was stupid and deflecting. "Filthy slut. Famous enchanter. My good boy."

His arm had managed to frame Torin's shoulders and he squeezed him tightly for a moment, but a sharp gaze returned to the light-limned visage of that filthy slut, famous enchanter, and good boy. Aurin could force himself into Torin's soul the way he forced himself into his body, but normally, he preferred Torin be obedient and forthcoming.

[Torin Kilvin]

The golden boy, looking all the more golden as the first rays of the sun's rise ran over the bed and gilded his skin and the tumble of is messy hair. He grinned, content at the teasing as much as at the praise... almost.

"I'm not famous." Was his only viable objection, but he continued to answer the question. "People don't know who I am outside of Kalzasi, but I thought it would be different here."

Which was not an answer to the question. He wiggled around, finding a position they could both be comfortable, as he tried again.

"It is different here, so different. But the work isn't. They do it in ways I'm not used to, but I thought, when I got here, that they would..." He hesitated because he didn't want to speak ill of his teachers. "I grew up listening to stories about the wonders of Sol'Valen, about their runeforgers. And they are wondrous, but not in any ways that I can't understand."

He turned his head till he could see Aurin's face to gauge his reaction.

"Is that stupid? To be disappointed that I can keep up? I'm happy that I can. Happy to be learning and not feeling overwhelmed or out of my depth. I guess it feels like, maybe I am the sort of Maker you've always said I am."

He had known that he was competent, but it was one thing to know your trade and another to go where it had been practiced for thousands of years (sometimes by the same people for most of that time) and find that you could hold your own. It was like walking into the faerytale castle and finding that you, too, were a prince, or at least like, invited to the high table. The realization had come on gradually as he'd worked over the months since he'd arrived, and the measured recognition had allowed him to accept it. If someone had just come up and proclaimed him to be a miraculous talent he wouldn't have believed them, but he had been forced to prove it to his teachers and elven peers and in doing so, had proven it to himself.

[Aurin]

"Famous enough that the Dream King's own sister sought you out for a commission," he said, as unrelenting with his praise as he could be with his punishments.

But it didn't seem as though his intent was to rile up his young lover with praise even though he could and they both knew it.

"Torin. You're a master runeforger. The witches of Zaichaer are practically begging me to make you move there to work with them. Siv brought you here and I left you alone because... we wanted you to realize your worth, independent of how we feel about you. You're also as powerful with the Semblance as I am and it took you... what... less than a year to master it? People give you keys and you open doors. People give you rope and instead of hanging yourself, you climb out of the hole you were raised in and... you've lassoed a floating island to carry you away from all of us. The elves are fucking mad. They're also building from the shoulders of giants, many of them previously immortal. If anything, my guess is you're learning more of what's possible. You've also been hand selected by an upstart goddess, so yeah, I think you're going to surpass the master makers of Tavárinoikos sooner than you think."

In fact, he was going to have to ask Kala if she would be so kind as to not raise Torin up to become her divine forgemaster until Aurin was dead and gone. That way, he wouldn't lose his boy, and someone greater than him would be there to take care of the big, beautiful, stupid man.

"Humble can be good. Mistlords know that's part of why I'm bad. It anchors you. Keeps you from floating off into the clouds, becoming complacent or arrogant. But eventually you're going to have to realize the truth about yourself and your value, and how it has nothing to do with how the people that love you feel about you. You are just amazing, so fucking deal with it."

[Torin Kilvin]

Torin hadn't known exactly who the commission he'd been given was for but based on who had commissioned it and the way that the masters of the school had reacted, he knew enough to guess.

"Exactly," He started, because being given such an important job was proof to his point, but he held his tongue when Aurin continued.

"Oh." He was a little embarrassed that Sivan and Aurin had felt that they needed to do something like that. Also, it had been his idea to come to Sol'Valen to train... hadn't it? With two people who he was so aetherically tangled with, it was sometimes hard to remember who had actually brought something up. The young smith listened, a little ashamed that he was so dense that the people who knew him best had to send him to strangers to get him to realize something about himself, but it wasn't until the part about an island to carry himself away from them that he began to cling. His arms wrapped around the redhead and his calloused hands made little grasping motions at him.

"At least two years..." He murmured, trying to find something in what Aurin was saying that would make the words less true, that would make Torin more of how he had always thought of himself. "And you taught me, and Sivan, and Kala too."

"But..." There wasn't anything he could say about what was being said about him that didn't feel like it was just fighting for no reason, so he settled for, "But it looks so good on you."

Before burying his burning face into the place where his man's arm let his shoulder and squirming.

He was good at his work, no part of him wanted to deny that anymore, and he learned new magic quickly. Yes, he had the best teachers (in his opinion) but that didn't mean some of it wasn't due to his own ability. He loved learning, loved knowing, loved combining his knowing into learning new things, making up new things to know. It felt like self-indulgence and the indulgence of his friends. But maybe it could be those things and still be amazing? It felt amazing but not in the way that Aurin was saying, turning it around on him from something he did into something he was. Maybe someone could be the things that they did, become someone made of the things they wanted most.

Torin risked a peek out at the fox. Aurin was something that Torin wanted most, maybe the thing that he wanted most. So, maybe Torin could become a little bit Aurin, and that couldn't be bad.

"I'm sorry... I'm stupid." It was a little plaintive and a little amused at his own stupidity. "Thank you for teaching me."

[Aurin]

Aurin knew some of his words hadn't been spoken correctly and that Torin was taking them in directions he hadn't meant, but the result was what he wanted so he didn't interrupt things too much. It sufficed that the boy he had met was becoming a man once again; perhaps it was less a climb and more of a cyclical thing, perhaps Torin was moving up along the curve of a spring rather than climbing a ladder, coming around to a familiar place only now he was higher, could look down and see where he had been, could look up and see where he was going.

Perhaps not. Aurin wasn't bookish enough to be good at metaphors.

When Torin buried his face in his chest, he smirked. It was a knee-jerk reaction anymore, and he felt parts of himself react, though he was going to want some breakfast before they fucked again.

"You're welcome," he said, then subverted the simple response. "You're welcome, my stupid slut."

His smirk sharpened as he observed the effect his words had on Torin, sexually and otherwise. He pulled Torin in again, as if to kiss him, but instead, he bit his lower lip. It wasn't terribly hard, but hard enough to get a reaction. Then he was extricating himself, sitting up.

"C'mon, now. Let's wash up and get something to eat. Are you working today or am I fucking you today?" Of course, even if Torin had work, there would be fucking to follow. It was just the difference between a lazy, languorous day, and a day of doing business and then compacting all that need into a shorter amount of time.

[Torin Kilvin]

Torin smiled back, because this was more familiar territory, more comfortable territory, even if it made certain parts of him less comfortable in his current position.

The bite had him making a pained little sound, its withdrawal had him making another, and Aurin's further withdrawal from their tangled together position deepened it into a whine. The idea of washing and food were pleasant, but he could have either every day, and he knew that, soon, Aurin would again be something he could not have every day. He followed his man up, keeping their bodies touching even when it made moving a little awkward.

"I don't have anything specific to work on today. The commission is done, and I haven't been given anything else yet." Usually he would have been at Tavárinoikos regardless, but it was the first time he had something outside that he needed more than what was there.

"Is there anything you'd like to do, or see, while you're here? Do you have... work? Is there anyone you need to meet?" Aurin's work was more amorphous than Torin's, but that didn't mean it was any less important.

The washing room was large and contained spouts that poured water down from above, which Torin found he quite liked after a day in the forge. He had plans to have them installed in his foundry complex, for multiple reasons. A bath could be lovely, but sometimes you just wanted to be clean as quickly as possible so you could fall into bed. Also, it meant that you could much more easily assist someone else in getting clean, if the mood struck.

So, if the mood struck Torin to ensure that Aurin was exceptionally thoroughly cleaned during their ablutions, well, that was only right.

[Aurin]

Aurin padded from Torin's bedchamber to his bathroom as if he owned the place, but he also had Torin in his arm like he owned him, which he did. If Torin was renting it, then it belonged to Aurin. If he demanded Torin's aether forge, Torin would give it to him. There might be questions after the fact, but he wouldn't say no. Of course, Aurin couldn't really imagine that ever being a thing he would demand, unless it was to donate to an up-and-coming runeforger among the covens when Torin was ready to upgrade.

"Before I ambushed you with coffee, I had initiated an old friend in a Rune. He wants to travel. He's been feeding me intelligence from Silfanore for years now, but he's half-elven and wants to be somewhere he's not a second-class citizen, I guess. All was well when I left him, but I need to check in on him." Of course, Castor was in the Enclave, too, so he could pop over without any trouble at all, whether or not Torin decided he had anything to attend to other than Aurin.

In the bathroom, he leaned in to bite Torin's neck. Once again, there was no danger of breaking skin, but it was the sort of affectionate aggression that did things to both of them. Apparently, they were going to edge through the bath and breakfast, at least.

He let go of Torin and stepped into the bath as expectantly as any princess.

"Bathe me," he said, and settled into a comfortable seat therein, and then sprawling, arms along the edges, eyes—mere hazel once more—on Torin's own nude body.

"Once I'm soaking, I want you to show yourself off for me. I want to see whether you've gone soft among the elves and I have to give you a training regimen to keep your body how I like it." He didn't ask if Torin understood; he just made his requirement known. Then he lifted one long, lithe leg to rest along the edge in case his slave wanted to show fealty by kissing his foot. Eyelids drooped, but even though he wasn't yet soaking, his little smile was amused.