Griff slipped up beside Mal to take a turn carrying the old boy, calling to the other two not-quite-dogs who were bounding just out of sight, leaves crunching under their enormous paws: “Rooster! Wally! Not too far now!” Then he turned to Mal, pulling Whiskey up onto his own shoulders as he thought about Wynnie.
Thrallkeld was just over a week’s ride away on a fast horse. Not distant enough to explain the time this errand was taking her, even if Renaud was as dangerous as Mal said and making a move on him would have required some months of carefulobservation. “And if she’s not?” he asked, louder than usual, since he didn’t have a hand free to sign.
Mal leaned against a tree for a moment, catching his breath and sipping some of the tea Griff had made from his canteen. “Then we’ll go after her,” he said without hesitation. “Because she’s Wynnie.”
Just then, the younger dogs decided to circle back and see what was keeping their humans.
Calling them dogs was, perhaps, a generous term, but it had been generous of Mal to try to buy them in the first place, and Griff knew what they were meant to be. The excitable, stubby-winged, knockoff rabbit hounds were huge, and more like cats than dogs in that they didn’t seem to particularly heed either Griff or Mal or care about pleasing them in the slightest.
At least they seemed to enjoy catching coneys.
And eating Mal’s belt.
They were, like Griff and Mal, a work in progress.
By the time the two men were covered in sweat and practically swimming in their clothes anyway, Griff called a halt to the hunting for the day with five plump rabbits to fix for supper, a feast for themselves and the dogs. They made camp near a pond where they could bathe and then see to the cooking.
As the pups splashed and Whiskey took a nap while pretending to guard their packs, having thoroughly overexerted himself while being carried all day, Griff pulled out a couple of small wooden sailboats he’d made and they raced them across the cool, dark water.
Mal won, of course, because Mal always cheated at boats, but Griff pulled the thief’s body fully against his own in the chill and kissed him until he was sure he was winning too.
And when Griff swept Mal off his feet and carried him back to camp, there was no protest at all from the younger man at such treatment. Only laughter, arms thrown carelessly around Griff’s neck, and hands tangled in his long hair, Mal’s body relaxing as Griff carried the weight of him.
As the light began to rapidly fade, Griff banked up a fire, and all three dogs gathered to watch as Mal sliced up the meat and Griff got it roasting over the flames. While they waited for it to cook, Mal leaned back against him, dagger still in hand, and showed Griff how he could balance the point of it perfectly on the tip of his index finger.
“Show-off,” Griff growled against his ear.
Mal’s lips parted as he made a telltale noise in answer, and then he smiled. And did the trick again.
Despite the cooler air, a few fireflies appeared in the dimness, diving and doing tricks of their own as the men ate, talking about their week and the dogs’ antics, and then set up their tent. Given the deepening chill of the nights lately, it would help to have the weatherproofed, oil-slicked canvas blocking out the cold.
After supper, Griff made hot herbal tea, and they lingered at the fireside for a while with Whiskey and the two near-pups, one of which had gotten ahold of a pair of pants stuffed in the top of a pack and was shredding them without a hint of shame.
The men joked and laughed and howled at the moon, the dogs joining in like a pack of wild things, until something in the distance howled back. Coyote, probably. Though Griff’s maul was within reach, just in case.
“Seems like our new pups could be good for business,” Griff teased, though his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking of the way the murky water of the Mire seemed to sparkle whenever Mal smiled or laughed, and wishing he had bottled some.
“Business? What’s that again?” Mal breathed as he adjusted the black scarf around Griff’s neck, using it to tug him toward the inviting warmth of their tent at last. “The moon is out, we’re the only two for miles around, and all I can think of are all the things I want to do with you tonight.”
If there was one thing Griff had learned since setting out for the Mire, it was how to listen to Mal like Mal was learning tolisten to him—his words and looks and silences, like the way he held Griff’s eyes as Griff went to light the candle in the glass jar they used as a lantern.
Abandoning the task, he gathered Mal into his arms instead, knowing what Mal was going to say before he even said it, because he had read it so plainly on his face and in the light pressure of the fingers stroking along his cheek.
“Griff, will you … fuck me tonight?” Mal asked softly, eyes on his prize. “I’m ready. I want you to have me, any way you want.”
The words themselves didn’t have to be delicate to carry so much more than their simplest meaning. Mal was holding open a heavy door just for him, no knives or armor to defend this most vulnerable of positions. Offering himself almost like a proposal, or as close as someone who despised the institution of marriage was likely to get.
For Mal, this was everything, given freely to the one he trusted most.
Griff pulled him closer, and as he pressed his lips to the other man’s in answer, he was suddenly sixteen again and in a too-small sweater. But instead of crying over the emptiness, he reveled in how the sweater was hugging him back tight.
Mal’s hand slid into Griff’s hair.
Now Griff was nineteen again, and instead of drinking himself to death to conjure visions of Mal to his cold, empty room in Stormveil, he was saddling up a horse to go after the Mal he already had. One who was brash and flawed and perfectly meant for him.
He was here in the Wyrmwood, and maybe he couldn’t undo those old mistakes, as Mal had said with surety many times—but he wasn’t who he used to be, and neither was Mal. They were two saplings still growing, but now growing together, limbs stretching toward each other like they were the sun.
He tugged Mal into his lap with care, smiling at the changes in the other man’s breathing as he slid his hands under Mal’s shirt and started to kiss his neck with growing enthusiasm for what was to come.
