The Wildness Within

Escalation 1

AN: Ash is all easy going until suddenly he's very pushy.

*

'It's been how long, and you still remember to make your letters look like that?' Ash said, eyebrows rising, whistling low under his breath. 'Damn, I'd take up the business of hand-crafted engagement cards and thank you notes and shit if I could write like this.'

Gwyn's ears burned. He looked down again at the parchment and felt awkward, eventually cleaning off the quill and looking over at the cold one – Augus – who was watching them both quietly. Augus hadn't really stopped watching Gwyn, even after their talk, even after Gwyn felt the urge to escape as a less urgent burden.

Don't let me escape you.

He shuddered to think about the things he'd said. Augus had a way of making him feel stripped bare, and he didn't even use knives like Efnisien did. But instead of begging Augus to stop, he'd said things he never thought to hear in his own voice. The cold one took them all in his stride, like he expected every word. Which was why it shocked him every time to remember that Augus didn't really know what he was doing either. Augus could get nervous, and Gwyn sometimes felt he was around a wild, skittish stallion, and he would never tell Augus that, because everyone knew waterhorses took grave offence at being compared to livestock.

Fingers touched the back of his neck and Gwyn twitched, looking up at Ash.

'Easy,' Ash said. 'Just getting a closer look.'

Gwyn nodded. Ash's fingers curled gently on his nape.

Ash's fingernails were always blunt. It was only skin on skin, and Gwyn flicked a glance over to Augus to see what he thought.

Augus settled more comfortably on the couch, and his lips turned into a smirk. He had a laziness in his gaze that meant he'd noticed what Ash had done.

Gwyn shifted again, touching the parchment nervously. Ash was leaning over him, standing behind his chair at the table, every part of him confidently in Gwyn's space like he had a right to be there. And Gwyn didn't have the heart to tell him that he didn't, even if it made Gwyn's breathing come faster. Ash wasn't even doing anything. Just a combination of that glamour and his touch, and Gwyn felt like he was unravelling.

Augus was watching.

'He's fine, Ash,' Augus said, his voice low.

'Yeah?' Ash murmured, fingers trailing up and rubbing at the base of Gwyn's skull. 'This fine, puppy?'

When Ash had returned a few hours ago from hunting and digesting his true prey, Gwyn had expected...to be lying down on his bed again sometimes, curled up like a puppy. He hadn't expected this.

He stared down, focused on the little fibrous soft edges of parchment against his fingers. The hardness of the chair itself, and how strange it felt to be sitting at a table again for any length of time. He had the cuff around his right wrist, but not his left, because he didn't like the way the leather caught at the table while he tried to shape the loops and lines that he'd learned so long ago it seemed like a dream to recall them.

Other details filtered through without his permission. The scent of Ash, muddier and siltier than Augus', had the faintest touch of alcohol to it. Spirits, not hops. Ash's fingers were a little rough at the tips, and now Gwyn wondered if he ever played guitar or some stringed instrument, and now that he imagined it, he felt like it must be true. That was the kind of thing Ash would do. He could hear the steady drip of water from Ash's hair muffling into his shirt, or onto the floor. Could even hear the slow rise and fall of Ash's breathing, feel his t-shirt brushing the back of the chair.