The growl is low and full and vibrates through the market stall and the bread merchant’s smile freezes and his sample tray tilts and a roll falls off the edge and Lethe catches it.
"He’s friendly," Lethe says to the bread merchant with the bright, apologetic smile of someone who has been making excuses for dangerous creatures his entire professional life. "We’d love four rolls, please. And one of those fig pastries. And he’s sorry about the growling. Aren’t you sorry about the growling."
Zazyrus is not sorry about the growling.
He buys the rolls. And the fig pastry. And a second fig pastry that Lethe didn’t ask for, because Lethe’s eyes lingered on the tray and Zazyrus noticed and the noticing has become a thing he does now, a constant, background process of tracking what the boy wants and providing it before the boy thinks to ask.
They walk through the market. Lethe’s hand in his. Zazyrus’s tail hooked through Lethe’s belt loop, possessive and unsubtle, a point of contact that saysminein a language that requires no translation. Lethe doesn’t unhook it. His cheeks are pink. His mouth curves around a bite of fig pastry and the crumbs catch on his lower lip and Zazyrus watches the crumbs and the lip and the pink cheeks and the warm hand in his and thinks that the world outside the pit is loud and bright and confusing and the best thing that has ever happened to him.
***
They are in the room above the tavern that Lethe charmed out of the innkeeper for half the usual rate. The room is small and clean and has a bed and a window that looks onto the street and a door with a lock that Lethe checked twice and Zazyrus checked three times.
Lethe is applying salve to the wound on Zazyrus’s shoulder. The bolt hole is healing well, the edges pink and clean, and Lethe’s fingers work the salve into the skin with the clinical efficiency that Zazyrus knows as well as his own heartbeat. The boy’s face is close. His breath is warm on Zazyrus’s skin. His brow is furrowed in concentration.
Zazyrus turns his head.
He catches Lethe’s wrist.
Lethe’s hands still. His eyes lift. His pulse jumps against Zazyrus’s fingers, a quick, startled acceleration that Zazyrus feels through the thin skin of his wrist.
Zazyrus presses his mouth to the inside of Lethe’s wrist. Open and slow. Right over the pulse point. The heartbeat hammers against his lips, rapid and alive, and Zazyrus tastes the salt of his skin and the faint trace of salve and the warmth beneath.
"What are you doing," Lethe says. His voice is not steady. It is the least steady Zazyrus has heard it outside of the cage, outside of the dark, outside of the moments when Lethe’s composure cracks and the want shows through.
"Appreciating."
Said the way one states a fact. Obviously. As though the answer is self-evident and the question is endearing.
Lethe goes crimson. The blush spreads from his cheeks to his ears to his neck, vivid and immediate, and he does not pull away. His fingers curl against Zazyrus’s jaw, an involuntary response, and his lips part and his eyes darken.
Zazyrus’s mouth traces up. From wrist to the crook of his elbow, a slow path along the inside of his forearm, his lipspressing open against the skin, tasting the faint salt of sweat and the clean warmth beneath. Lethe’s head tips back. His lips part further. His fingers tighten on Zazyrus’s shoulder.
Zazyrus maps the path from elbow to the sleeve of his shirt with his mouth, each kiss deliberate, each press lingering, and his free hand finds Lethe’s hip and rests there, warm and heavy, and Lethe’s breath is coming in short, quick pulls that he is not bothering to control.
"More," Lethe says. Quiet. Certain. Permission and request in a single word.
Zazyrus pulls him into his lap.
Lethe comes willingly, settling across his thighs, his legs parting around Zazyrus’s hips, and the position is familiar from the cage but different here, in this room, on this bed, with the window open and the street noise below and the unlocked door and the freedom to choose this without the walls closing in. Zazyrus buries his face in Lethe’s neck and breathes him in and it takes every ounce of will he has to slow down, to be careful, to let Lethe set the pace.
Because Lethe deserves pace. Lethe deserves to be the one who says when and how and more andthereandyesandplease.Zazyrus will worship at whatever altar Lethe allows him. He will follow where the boy leads because the boy has earned the leading, six years of having choice removed and the restoration of it is sacred and Zazyrus will not take a single step that Lethe does not take first.
Lethe takes the steps.
His hands find the hem of Zazyrus’s shirt and pull it over his head and his mouth finds the place where the marking curls over his collarbone and his lips are warm and deliberate and his hands roam, learning the topography of the body he mapped as a healer and is now reclaiming as something else. His fingers trace the markings. His mouth follows. He is unhurried andthorough and the attention he pays to each scar, each ridge, each sensitive place, is the attention of someone who knows this body intimately and is choosing to know it differently.
"Touch me back," Lethe murmurs against his skin. "I want you to touch me back."
Zazyrus’s hands find him.
They span his waist. They travel his ribs. They pull his shirt over his head and find the pale, freckled skin beneath and Zazyrus’s mouth finds his throat and his collarbone and the hollow behind his ear and against his skin, rough and reverent: "Beautiful. You’re so beautiful. Let me—"
Lethe arches into him. His fingers slide into Zazyrus’s hair, gripping the base of his horns, and Zazyrus’s voice cracks apart into a groan that comes from somewhere primal and ancient and undeniable.
Lethe leads. He guides Zazyrus’s hands where he wants them. He tells him more and there and slower and his voice is wrecked and breathless and honest and Zazyrus follows every instruction with the devoted precision of a creature who would dismantle the world to give this boy what he wants. Lethe works himself open with his own fingers because Zazyrus’s claws will not allow it, and Zazyrus watches with an expression of such focused, devastated want that Lethe flushes from his hairline to his navel and does not look away.
When Lethe sinks onto him, Zazyrus’s vision whites.
