Chapter Text
“You n’ the Fell Omen,” Big Boggart asks him. “How does that work, then?”
Haydn is on the outskirts of Leyndell, putting in a premium order for some boiled crab. Boggart’s exclaimed blasphemes about Marika’s chest aside, this is a familiar scenario: if Haydn has runes burning a hole in his pocket and is about to embark on something pocket-endangering, he goes on a spending spree. You can never have too much boiled crab.
Normally Boggart just makes some small talk while he’s sizzling up a large quantity of seafood, so his topic of choice this time throws Haydn for a loop. Is Boggart asking what he thinks he’s asking? Surely not. And so it’s with this unassuming care that Haydn asks, “How does what work?”
The bandit-turned-merchant flips a perfectly-seared crustacean over and says quite matter-of-factly, “The fucking.”
Haydn’s composure immediately falters, but thankfully his face-covering visor blocks it. His, ahem, involvement with Morgott is not secret, albeit discreet. However the fact that Morgott and Margit are one and the same assuredly is secret, and so by proxy that is something Haydn must steadfastly deny: “We’re not… doing that.”
Even with his face clad in steamed iron, Boggart manages to give Haydn a Look: “Mate, I know you are.” While the Tarnished is still spluttering he continues, completely blase: “But I can’t figure out how it works, he’s twice your size in all directions. I’m talking space and volume, physics. How are you fitting any of that... anywhere?”
“Boggart,” he manages to hiss at him.
“You’re not fucking him, are you? Can’t be. That would be like throwing a sausage down a hallway–”
He jabs a finger in his direction, “One more sentence and you’ll never see another rune from me again, I swear to gods.”
Where basic decency fails, the threat of lost profit does the trick. He holds his hands up, “Alright, alright, sorry. I was just asking.”
Haydn mutters darkly in reply. Sausage down a hallway, Erdtree, why’d he have to phrase it like that of all things. If not for the tantalising smell of half-cooked crab and having trekked all the way out here to obtain it, he might have already taken his business elsewhere. Cost-sunk fallacy keeps him waiting around with thinning patience.
“Is he nice?” Boggart asks, then.
Haydn ought not to engage, but the nature of the question gives him pause, and he’s never been very good at giving a cold shoulder. Only exasperation as he says, “What do you mean, is he nice?”
“Well he’s got a scary reputation and all that, hasn’t he,” he points out. “I thought he was meant to be a big angry monster, but he can’t be that bad if you’re romantercully involved. Is he a softie under all the horns or what?”
“Why are you so curious?”
“I wanna know what the appeal is.”
At this point, Haydn thinks he should probably just give up on maintaining that he is not, in fact, involved with the Fell Omen. Not that he’s going to answer the insensitive questions, but he can at least try to shut Boggart up. “He’s…” he thinks about saying big or large but thinks this will earn him some sort of bawdy comment about endowment, so he settles on: “…tall. And he has…” what is a non-suggestive thing to compliment, “…arms.”
The man frowns at him, “He’s tall and he has arms?”
Haydn gestures to absolutely no effect. “What more do you need,” he says helplessly.
Boggart rubs his chin and frowns some more, this time self-directed, and then admits, “…I guess his arms are good. Lotta muscle to ‘em, good for cuddling, now I think about it. Yeah, I can see it.”
The Tarnished gives him a pained look, “Are you planning to ask him for a cuddle?”
An easy grin, “Naw. Big Boggart doesn’t really go for anyone bigger n’ boggier than he is. Just wanted to know why you would, when half of Leyndell fancies the pants off you.”
“Do they?” he answers doubtfully. He’s fairly sure half of Leyndell hates his guts. They might be different halves, he supposes.
“Yep. Though you know I’d heard you’re romanticalling the Veiled Monarch too?” the ruffian wags a teasing finger at him, “If that’s true, naughty boy playing keepsies for two. Can’t be kissing the king and the king’s pet, that’s playing with fire right there. Or is that the draw?”
He puts a hand on his hip. “The crab is burning,” he says flatly.
Boggart looks down at the grill. “Oh shit,” he exclaims, and that, mercifully, is distraction enough.
-
Spared the flame of ruin, Leyndell is as it ever was – a mighty fortress, lonely in its resplendence, all gilded roofs and arched whitestone sparkling under the Erdtree’s radiance. A steady fall of yellow leaves fluttering in the breeze, scattered across quiet streets and dutifully swept up by the city’s quieter citizens. It does seem more populated than it once was, though maybe it’s more that they’ve stopped shutting themselves inside at Haydn’s approach; now beyond the gold-garbed guards on patrol there are errand-bound pages, perfumers plucking at inner-city gardens, and average people making an average living. If Haydn treads off his path he’ll find an orphanage just for curseborn, and the minority population who were willing to facilitate them, the once-condemned quarter being steadily renovated for their future needs. Leyndell is changing, slowly, very slowly, but the wheels are turning.
In doing so it has endeared itself to a tarnished who once thought of it quite dimly. And regarded him much the same – he’ll take Boggart’s earlier proclamations about being admired with a heavy pinch of salt, but he is at least these days more part of Leyndell than apart from it as he once was. He navigates the leaf-strewn streets with ease. Takes a meandering path so he can listen to the drift of violin music over a high wall. Climbs the steps to the Erdtree sanctuary like he’s climbed them a thousand times before. At the top he glances back over his shoulder to look upon the cityscape, and wonders at what point he stopped thinking of it as Leyndell, Royal Capital and started thinking Leyndell, Home.
Morgott is not in the palace proper but by the Erdtree, taking rest after a day of kingly duties. It seems the city barely blinked for his absence; Haydn doesn’t think anyone even knew he had gone to the Mountaintop of the Giants, let alone that he had no intention to return from that trip. Vague comments infer that Leyndell’s king had some post-mortem plans in place, but Morgott never elaborated, and Haydn never asked, lest he get Morgott thinking about his own death again. The first time was bad enough.
It’s over, he reminds himself steadily. Maliketh is untouched, Morgott is alive, the Erdtree unburned, and Haydn is for some reason still possessed of his grace. This would put them back in the same limbo as before, but now there’s somewhere new to look for answers. The Lands of Shadow, as Melina believes it to be called, warrants an extended leave from Leyndell, and so Morgott is completing the necessary work to secure the kingdom before they depart. It looks… very wearying.
Morgott is indeed wearied when Haydn finds him beneath the Erdtree, though he straightens up at the company. He’s still in Veiled Monarch guise, having just come from some meeting or another, and so it is a softer – but no less authoritarian – baritone that greets Haydn rather than the Omen’s usual rasp: “Knight. Just on time. Thy counsel I must seek.”
Haydn gives a short bow, which he supposes he doesn’t really need to do when there’s no-one else about, but Morgott’s kingly shape is extremely kingly, and commands a certain deference. He’ll blame that for the words too: “Yes, liege?”
“My court well understand that both I and the Fell Omen shall depart from Leyndell for an unspecified time,” Morgott says. Another quirk too is to keep his real identity at arm’s length, even in private conversation – he’s a lot stricter about that when he’s veiled, compared to when he is not. “They hath assured me they will keep the city running smoothly, as is their function. However. It would be prudent to appoint a steward, who would have final say on any decisions in mine absence. The lack of such is sure to cause in-fighting, but to favour one noble house over another will also cause in-fighting.”
“Do you want me to weigh in?” Shrewd politician he is not, that’s Morgott’s role. “So long as it’s not Viscount Shanehaight.”
This earns him a tch. “Oafish Tarnished, thy preferences are hardly unbiased. But thou knoweth well the court serv’st their king, but not before their own ambitions. A more neutral voice is called for.” His fingers tap against his cane – a sword re-hidden inside tree casing, and hidden again by illusionary magics. “I am told Stormveil Castle hath appointed a new Storm Lord, Lady Nepheli Loux. A fellow tarnished of thine, no less. Dost thou know her?”
Haydn blinks, surprised. “I do. Very well, actually.”
“Tell me of her.”
He scrabbles to find the words, “Well, uh, she’s – good. Morally, I mean. She has a warrior’s code of honour and she always tries to do the right thing.” And then since it seems quite pertinent, he adds, “I’ve fought alongside her a few times. There was a village of albinaurics who had been slaughtered by an Omenkiller. She helped me bring them to justice. The Fell Omen may recall the aftermath.” It’s not very subtle, but, well. Margit was there, even if Nepheli was gone by the time he arrived.
The Monarch leans forward slightly. Even beneath the heavy drape of his face-obscuring veil, a golden eye pierces Haydn as surely as any summoned dagger, “That is a weighty commendation. Thou’rt sure it was the same person?”
He nods, uncharacteristically solemn. “Her foster father emerged as the one who sent the Omenkiller. She was distraught and angered that he could do such a thing. Eventually she divorced herself from him, the Roundtable, and her own guidance. That’s when she took up at Stormveil.”
Morgott leans back again, sparing Haydn a further lancing. Instead his eye seems ponderous, “I find myself in the peculiar position of trusting a tarnished more than mine own court. But she hath also the support of venerated House Haight, and this would notably strengthen ties ‘tween Leyndell and Limgrave… I will send Margit to take measure, and ask if she would be willing to steward.”
“Nepheli would be better for Leyndell than any of the court, by a country mile,” Haydn points out with the sort of bluntness Morgott usually tuts at in court, but this time they’re in no company. “The only downside is that the court won’t like it.”
“Indeed,” Morgott sighs, but doesn’t seem too put-off by the idea. “With that, Tarnished, there is another matter for discussion.”
Haydn waits expectantly. Which then morphs into a slowly-raising eyebrow as he realises that Morgott, crisply-spoken and decisive and impatient Veiled Monarch Morgott, is hesitating. When he does speak, it’s very careful: “It hath not escaped my notice that thou hast been… exceedingly loyal, to Leyndell. And its king. As reward for leal service, it is customary for knights to be offered… a boon.”
He blinks owlishly at him, “What sort of boon?”
Morgott gestures airily. It has a touch of the this is as far as I rehearsed to it. “Few things are out of a monarch’s power to give. Request what thou wilt.”
The problem with this is that there are so very many things that Haydn wants that his mind is immediately aflurry with competing ideas. Picnic? Beach? Bathtime?? The latter he dismisses, not without woe, but Morgott is 100% going to take it in insult if Haydn suggests bathing. A picnic, he’s had one before so he can probably wrangle another. If Morgott is in an agreeable mood he needs to maximise his gain here. “Are we allowed to leave Altus? I’m not sure where I’d take you that’s nearby.”
Under the black veil, Morgott gives him a confused look, “Take me?”
“On a date,” he says blithely. “To a beach? All the big beaches are in Limgrave. I’d have to find one that doesn’t have land octopuses or shambler hoards on it…” he could just kill the hoards but it’s not going to set the mood very well. It rains a lot in Limgrave too, it might be too muddy. He taps the mouth of his helm, deep in thought. “Where’s a better beach…?”
“That – Tarnished,” Morgott manages at last, sounding somewhat strangled. “For one, no, I am not going all the way to an infested Limgrave beach. And two, that was not – I meant to grant thee a title, or a manse, of that ilk.”
Haydn is nonplussed, “What would I do with a title or a manse?” He brightens. “Unless the manse comes with Margit lounging around in it?”
Morgott throws a hand up, richly exasperated, “I should have expected thou would’st jest. I mean to give thee some manner of reward. If thou hast any want for such, a sensible one, pray name it.”
He would really love for Morgott to realise that he is not, in fact, jesting, but he has long learned to pick and choose his battles. And it seems impolite to argue with the man when he is trying to do a nice thing for him, however sternly. Haydn goes back to the drawing board, separating giddy daydreams from something he thinks Morgott will take seriously, and that will push the boundaries a little. Something comes to him, then, “I… would like to see you cast the Margit ritual.”
Morgott gives him a long, wary look. But that was expected.
“I cannot teach thee that spell,” he ventures at last. “Nor would’st observation aid. It is a specific craft, to learn thy own simulacrum would be an entirely different incantation.”
Haydn shifts his weight, “I didn’t ask to learn the spell. I would just like to… to see what it looks like. When you cast it.”
“Ah,” is murmured. Haydn swears he heard Margit’s heavy rasp in that very same syllable. But it’s gone again when Morgott’s uncertain gaze flicks back to his own, “…Hast thou no want for anything else?”
He steadfastly shakes his head. There remains plenty of things Haydn wants, but he cannot imagine many other circumstances in which he could ask for this, and there being any chance of Morgott agreeing. He’s seizing the opportunity, so to speak. He’s still half-expecting Morgott to refuse, and yet: “Then… if that is truly the boon thou would’st ask. I will oblige.” Staccato with hesitance. But an agreement nonetheless. “Come to me on the eve. Discreetly, if thou would.”
-
The guards are absent from the royal quarters. Haydn slips inside an unlocked door, to a gilded office cooled by evening hues. Morgott, Omen-shaped this time, emerges only when the door is closed and locked, as is his wont. To another he would look much the same stony visage as ever, but Haydn has learned to read those craggy features, and the trepidation currently therein. Despite it he waves Haydn through to the adjoining bedroom, and then over to one of the large stained glass windows that lines the walls. It has the same faint glow as all the other windows, outside light leaking through, but this turns out to be part of the ruse, as the window swings inwards to form a door instead. Beyond it lies a single, dim chamber.
It’s more of a medium than a small chamber, but it becomes quite small once Morgott has stepped through the hidden door to occupy the space. There’s still enough room for Haydn to slip in after him, and to look around: Leyndell’s usual fine architecture aside, the place is unadorned. The only thing of note is an elaborate spell circle that has been scored permanently into the stone floor, which glows with the gold of a holy incantation. It is the only illumination, diffuse enough to cast neither strong light nor stark shadow, instead bathing the entire room in honeyed murk. When the false window slides shut behind him, the rest of the world could as well be on the other side of the microcosm.
“…No-one is permitted here. That includes thee,” Morgott says after a moment. In such a closed space the timbre of his voice is all the more pronounced, like being in a room with a lion. Haydn’s skin prickles – not wholly from fear. Or maybe it’s the flinty stare levelled his way. “I will make exception, this once, because thou asketh. Thou may not return here without explicit permission.”
It’s a sacred space in every sense. Of course it is, it has to be, for Morgott to assume his simulacrum with ease. Haydn, divested of his helmet – and all else but his casual clothes – nods fervently. He already knows what he asked was toeing boundaries, and he’s keen not to overstep, or he can expect to be held at arm’s length.
Satisfied, Morgott motions him to settle in the far corner of the room, and himself descends to a knee upon the ritual circle. Then both knees. Then carefully bows over, tucks his tail and stretches his hands out in front of him to lie palms flat against the floor. His expression is grimly fixed; if Haydn had to guess, he’s trying not to show any fluster at being watched during what is quite a personal act. A part of Haydn does feel bad for the invasion, but not nearly so much as he is abjectly fascinated. He has never really seen this side to Morgott, after all.
He bows lower, and lower, until his forehead also touches the sigil-laden floor. The high-turned collar of his cloak obscures him, but even past that Haydn can only see tresses of white hair fallen haphazardly across a thicket of horns. His fingers twitch, and the rune circle abruptly flares with radiance; in that same breath, a whirlwind of golden motes materialises at the head of the chamber. And just as Morgott’s true body goes completely still, a second person materialises in the room.
Margit the Fell is silent, before he turns to glance askew at the watching Tarnished. Only for a moment, as his head tips away again, entirely avoidant. His voice an unsure rumble, “That is it.”
That is it. As though creating a perfect copy of yourself was anything short of genius. It’s not as though Haydn didn’t already know that was exactly what Margit was, but there’s a difference between knowing and seeing for himself, two identical people next to each other in the same room. Morgott prostrate, statuesque save for the steady rise and fall of breath, vacant. Occupying a second living body mere metres from his head. Attaining the same invulnerability that the tarnished rely on the will of a goddess to achieve.
Margit is still turned away. “Is thy curiosity satisfied?” he asks the far wall.
Haydn startles from his hypnotised awe. Looks to Margit, even if Margit won’t – or can’t – look back. “No, but it can be if you’re finished.”
The Fell typically does not accept a reprieve when offered. This is no different: “What else would’st thou ask of me?”
He glances back. Much of Morgott’s form is obscured by his oversized mantle, designed as it is to muffle his crooked body shape. “What happens to your cloak if his is removed?”
“Nothing, these clothes are part of the summon.”
“Can I remove his cloak, then?”
Margit gives a short, sharp exhale, twisting further away, if such a thing were possible. What little Haydn can see of Margit’s face is tinged darker than usual. He folds his hands in his lap and patiently waits; he figures, the worst Margit will do is say no, and that will be the end of that.
And yet, “Fine,” Margit mutters tightly. “Wretched creature. Fine, remove it.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Get this infernal curiosity out of thy system,” is growled back.
Surly permission is permission still. Haydn wastes little time in approaching the motionless Morgott. The ragged ends of his cloak are fanned out like a flower, dyed in mustard-yellow and peony-red. It’s held on by a length of hemp-rope that’s likely as long as Haydn is tall, and the thickness of his wrist. His slender fingers struggle to pick apart the fastening knot, doubly so when he can’t see what he’s doing, but perhaps fervency drives him to success. It unravels and with it, the loose sheafs of hide slide easily off Morgott’s vast form.
All it had cruelly obscured is bared to the dim light: planes upon planes of ash-grey skin, dusted with white hair that thickens to true fur in places. Long limbs, a common feature among Marika’s children, lanky despite the bulging musculature. A castle of a neck giving way to truly enormous shoulders. His gaze follows to shoulder-blades brutal enough to break another man’s bones on, then to the protrudent bumps of his spine trailing down him like a length of chain. And then, about half way down that masterpiece of a back, two protrusions covered in downy feathers, mottled white. Angelic.
Haydn very much doubts anyone has had such unfettered permission to look so long or so openly… or at least no-one for a very, very long time. He drinks and drinks in the sight, but his own feeling of being watched finally bids him to lift his head again. An amber eye meets his but briefly – Margit staring at himself being stared at – before its owner ducks his horned head again. He is, as he’d said, still wholly cloaked. It does nothing to conceal his full-body fidget.
“I think you’re very pretty,” Haydn blurts out, because he can’t not.
“I think thine eyes are defective,” Margit answers immediately. “Shoddy workmanship, to be sure.”
Haydn gives him a wistful smile. It’s not as though Margit would’ve done anything but spurn a compliment. He wishes he wouldn’t, but there are some things Haydn can say until he’s blue in the face, it won’t make Margit hear them. Deeds, not words, are the key to a Fell heart. Haydn’s fingers itch to act. “Can I touch your wings?” Or his wings, rather, but it’s well obvious enough whose wings he means.
Margit is silent, but Haydn is patient. For this, anyway. Eventually, “…Thou must stop if I tell thee to stop.”
Has Margit had partners who haven’t stopped, Haydn wonders. In a lifetime measured in centuries, it seems likely on probabilities alone. That makes it no less tragic, and Haydn is keenly desperate not to become a bad memory himself: “I’ll stop right away.”
Margit stiffly gestures for him to continue. The Tarnished does so tentatively, with plenty of room for protest, but no words come as his hand reaches across the bulk of Morgott’s bowed back. The wings are lop-sided, one sitting lower than the other, as though it was at some point broken or wrenched by an unkind hand, and never healed right. Perhaps more than once. The other is tucked high and tight and looks as though it would not fully extend as a bird’s wing would. The feathers are exceptionally delicate, a little dry from neglect, and beautiful in every possible way. Haydn’s hand stretches out, and his world shrinks, as his fingertips just barely graze the curve of the nearest wing—
“Stop,” Margit chokes out at once.
Haydn snatches his hand back. Or tries to – but something else claps around his wrist in an iron grip, grey-skinned knuckles tightened to white. He yelps.
He thinks for one mortified second that Margit told him to stop and he didn’t. That he gave the Omen cause to march over and bodily tear him away from the wing he’d been so selfishly desperate to touch. He’s about to babble frantic apologies when he realises that Margit is still all the way across the chamber, tucked against the far wall with his tail curled tight about one leg. The hand wrapped about his wrist belongs to the body still face-down against the floor, one arm twisted improbably back to snatch his own up, but otherwise as statue-still as he had always been.
“I–” Margit sounds and looks aghast, not at Haydn, but at himself. “I displaced – reacted – with the wrong – apologies. I did not mean to do that.” He glares, again not at Haydn but at the hand that is holding Haydn’s in a bone-aching squeeze, but his expression grows fitful. “It won’t let go,” he mutters, then all but wrenches himself away from the wall to close the distance, ostensibly to free Haydn manually. It’s a lurching, woozy sort of gait, which might be the natural consequence of being torn between two bodies.
In part worried Margit is about to fall on his face, and also worried he’s going to inadvertently break Morgott’s fingers to break that mindless grip, Haydn hastily waves his unbound hand at the approaching man, “It’s alright! I’ll free myself, look–” he sets about tugging the clenching fingers loose. Because Morgott’s mind is elsewhere, they are locked in place with muscle memory alone, and will not budge. He feels that this will only end in injury to someone, so he resorts to plan B, which is to lean over and kiss at the offending hand as best he can reach it. As he thought it might, it twitches slightly under his mouth. “Come on, loosen up,” he coaxes, as though it had ears to hear.
Another twitch, this time whole-body, and the hand suddenly flexes free, uncaging Haydn’s wrist. Victorious, and greatly relieved that no-one had to break anything, he looks back at Margit, “See–”
But the Fell is gone. Vanished.
Haydn blinks, then glances down. The rune circle has gone dim. Morgott is still in his prostrate position, and still has one arm twisted behind his back, but his head is now tipped to one side, such that a golden eye looks askew at Haydn with something between plaintive and pique.
His voice emerges a hoarse rasp. “I cannot hold another body if this one is being–” his eye narrows, “–tampered with.”
Haydn holds up both hands at once, “Very sorry.”
Morgott’s gaze tracks the motion – specifically, the wrist he had unconsciously grabbed. “Art thou injured?”
The Tarnished glances at the offending wrist. It’s a little sore and reddened, or grey-ened rather, but not liable to bruise. “No, I’m fine.”
“Lucky,” is groused back. He tilts his head back down and carefully spools his arm back into a sensible position, but doesn’t push himself upright just yet, still hunched over the floor and breathing into the stonework in shaky exhales. Irate, but mostly at himself. “That farce had best satisfy thy boon, Tarnished. I have not the want to tempt further disaster.”
He tilts his head, “I wouldn’t call it a farce.”
Morgott doesn’t answer him.
Sensing more drastic action might be needed here, Haydn lifts a hand and gently raps his knuckles, knock-knock, against Morgott’s bicep. Morgott gives a startled twitch at that, a confused frown, but he also displaces his arm enough that Haydn wriggles into the gap, underneath him. He puts his hand on those broad shoulders before the man flinches away altogether and urges, “How was it a farce?”
“I–” he looks torn between rearing back like a nervous horse, and being bridled into place. “I was undone at a touch,” he mutters.
“You grabbed my wrist, that’s it,” Haydn soothes him. “I pushed your boundaries.”
“Little Tarnished, I cannot think of a time when thou’rt not pushing my boundaries, right now included,” the Omen bites back, but biting is better than fleeing, so Haydn will take it. Indeed, Morgott hasn’t shoved himself away yet, still hovering unsurely over the much-smaller knight. Caught between apprehension and accusation. “Thou knew very well thy boon was no easy ask.”
“Yes,” he confesses. He did know that. “It doesn’t mean it was intended to harm. I meant what I said.”
A muted scoff, “What of any of this is pretty, fool.” Yet before Haydn can offer his insistence of all of it, he continues, “My years numbers in the hundreds, and well I look it. Thou’rt thyself young and fair. More than enough to please another eye.”
“Well, I only want to please yours,” he says simply.
There’s the distant thump of a tail thwacking against the floor, but that at least means it isn’t tucked fretfully between Morgott’s legs, so he takes it as a good sign. Good enough to embolden a certain Tarnished’s actions, as he wriggles closer. “I think you have,” he starts, “very nice arms.” At the expected quizzical look, he continues, “And hands. And good shoulders. Which is just as well, because you’re carrying all of Leyndell on them.”
Morgott gives a short exhale – exasperated, but a touch amused. A fine start.
“I think you take responsibility for things when most people would happily say ‘not my problem’. It’s very admirable. And infuriating. But admirable. I think you have a good heart, and a great mind.” After a beat he adds, “Excellent backside, too.”
There’s a haughty scoff, but it is with blunt teeth, “Thou cannot be serious for more than five seconds.”
“This is me being serious! I mean I like you inside and outside, I don’t like one in spite of the other. I like that you could physically juggle me. Like you juggle your many roles and duties, you see what I did there?” Morgott makes a needled noise and moves to cover Haydn’s mouth, but he makes evasive manoeuvres, “I like that you’re kind! Though, sometimes unkind too. The name-calling in particular.”
Morgott gives up on trying to muffle him but instead says with a singularly fond dismay, “If I call thee a clown it is because thou art one.”
“Now see, there you go again,” Haydn points out. “You call me some variant on fool so often that I feel remiss if a day goes by where you haven’t. I can only daydream about the new and creative ways you might wound me. I worry what would happen to my ego without your steadfast efforts to deflate it. One assumes I would be completely insufferable.” Throughout this exchange Morgott’s ever-guarded gaze has fallen away, barricade by barricade, until what’s left is something soft and warm and amberous. Haydn thinks, that. The boon was to see that.
Drunk on his own wild success that he is, he cannot help but ask, “Can I kiss you?”
That eye blazes under its slow blink. “No. But I must shut thy insufferable mouth up somehow, mustn’t I.”
The press of lips against his is heady, weighty, just a little endearingly clumsy. Morgott kisses like... someone who hasn’t kissed for a few hundred years, and had forgotten how good it was. Too much, too firm and brusque, then hastily corrected to overly careful, as though the Tarnished might crack like porcelain under the pressure. But they’ve no sooner parted lips when he returns to snatch the scrap of a second kiss. A third, a fourth. Oddly chaste – the difference in size means Morgott must barely move his mouth to completely cover Haydn’s – but overwhelming in their quantity. Not that Haydn is inclined to tell him to stop, but he finds himself gasping from both excitement and lack of oxygen.
Mercifully Morgott does let up at that, but only just, as though he knows just how to keep Haydn on the best side of breathless. Takes advantage of Haydn’s parted mouth to deepen their kiss, though he’s sparing with his tongue; Haydn might not feel it at all if not for the texture, sandpaper-rough, like a feline, running along his lower lip. It’s another sparkle of sensation to add to the tingle of his lips, the bright spark whenever some part of them brushes against the other. The way he occupies every inch of Haydn’s vision and further shunts away the notion of a wider world beyond these walls – leaving just Morgott, warm and heavy-bodied, smelling like holy magic and herbs, enveloping him in long limbs and spiralling horns.
Now the thing with immortal demigods, or at least this one, is that they don’t have the best grasp on the passage of time. That is to say, Morgott kisses him for ages. Until Haydn’s mouth is flushed and sore and wet with saliva, until he’s well and truly dazed. Yet even when afforded the slim opportunity to suggest that they move onto other things, or maybe get off this stone floor and onto a comfy bed, the words won’t come to him. He’s helpless to do anything except what Morgott wants, only in the present moment Morgott merely wants more of this.
So when things do move, he’s caught off-guard. Whether he is urged to part his legs or he does so of his own accord, he becomes all of a sudden aware of a Fell form filling the space. A singular thigh, big enough to nudge Haydn’s own thighs wide, firm enough to press right against his groin. He gives a high, tight sound into Morgott’s mouth, and is rewarded with a hitched breath in return. “Excited already?” is murmured against his lips and, to be honest, if Haydn wasn’t already hard, that velvety avalanche of a voice does the trick. Any sort of smart-aleck answer is completely lost on him as Morgott resumes kissing and… kneading.
This is vastly unfair. Haydn’s hands scrabble for an attempt at reciprocity, but Morgott’s private parts are completely out of his reach. Furthermore, when he thinks maybe he can stroke Morgott’s nape or ears or some other erogenous zone, an Omen hand swoops up both of his and, in one effortless motion, pins them above Haydn’s head. It’s almost over there and then. His cock jerks excitedly inside his braies, dampens them with pre. He hasn’t even taken off his trousers yet! He’s liable to embarrass himself if this keeps up.
Perhaps unwisely, he tries asking for clemency, wheezing between kisses: “Morgott – ah – please–”
“Please what, little Tarnished?” is rumbled. He lets up kissing long enough to nudge at Haydn’s neck instead and take a long, drawn-out inhale. Haydn wonders if Morgott can feel the frenetic thump of his pulse through the skin there, as it’s quite loud in his own ears. However it’s soon to be drowned out altogether by a great roiling purr. This is no cute kitty sound, but that of a big, big cat, that might just be playing with its food.
Oh no. He’s made things worse. “Please…” he says faintly, but he can’t remember what he was going to ask for. Something about keeping his dignity, but it’s already fled the room. His knees squeeze around either side of that interposing thigh, his hips cant of their own accord. His cock ruts desperately against the friction of a furred leg, through layers of clothing – a diabolical oversight that should be amended at once.
He shudders anew when Morgott does exactly that, parsing desire from that single, stammered syllable. Frees Haydn’s trapped wrists as he pulls back to pull instead at the knight’s trousers and braies in one go, wriggling them expertly down silvered legs. He’s relentless, but gives a very noticeable pause when he returns to the scene of the crime, which is to say Haydn’s cock – flushed grey-lilac, glossy with pre, and quivering with a climax not far off. By contrast, Morgott is not yet out of his sheath. Haydn remembers that this is what he was going to be embarrassed about earlier.
“It, it–” he tries to explain, excuse. “The leg thing was very good,” is what he lands on, weakly. The leg thing as done by a man whose leg is about the length and width of Haydn’s entire body, yes.
Morgott’s gaze flicks his way. Beneath the heavy brow of sheared horns his eye looks strange, until Haydn realises the pupil is blown wide and dark, an eclipse to gold-amber. With that hypnotic look and not one word, he bends down, grasps one of Haydn’s legs – fingers completely enclosing the slender limb – and presses a kiss to the inside of a metal knee. Although Haydn cannot feel that, he warms mightily at the gesture. This proves devious distraction though, as the man goes on to hoist that leg over one enormous shoulder. Haydn yelps a little as the movement bodily drags him closer to the Fell, and puts his exposed parts in prime position for Morgott to—
Lick.
“Morgott–!” His entire body shudders like the warning rattle before an earthquake. His flailing hands grasp at the only thing available to them, which is the curling edge of one of Morgott’s larger horns. Normally this would be a no-go, but Morgott is entirely preoccupied with unravelling his charge: long, slow licks up Haydn’s tortured length with a roughly-textured tongue. And the heat, Morgott runs very hot – something to do with Omen blood – and Haydn is treated to every degree of it. He can feel his self-control melting like butter. The thought that he’s about to finish when Morgott hasn’t even gotten started is sufficiently daunting that he ends up tapping frantically at the horn with an exclaimed, “Wait, wait, hold on-!”
Morgott pauses, brow raised.
Scrabbling for something that isn’t I’m about to come, he ends up saying, “Shouldn’t, shouldn’t we move to a bed? And not your ritual room?”
The other man blinks, and a certain realisation seems to cross his features. “…Ah. Yes. ‘Twould be unwise to sully here.”
Now, would he have thought about a certain Tarnished squirming under him every time he cast the simulacrum from now on, that is the question. Haydn is tickled by the thought, but he’s also distracted with battle tactics. And then even more distracted by Morgott picking him up. He gives a startled noise but it’s soon muffled by the flush of sweet heat as the Omen curls an arm the width and weight of a battering ram underneath Haydn’s backside, and scoops him straight off the floor. As Haydn spoke earlier, smothered in mirth though it was, Morgott’s physicality is only one in a list of attractive qualities, but mercy if it isn’t very, very attractive.
Haydn is carried from ritual room to adjoining bedroom like a plucked flower, laid upon soft sheets like a scattering of petals. The brief pause gave him time to wrangle his overexcitement, but Morgott pulls the shirt off him, keen to pick up where he left off, and Haydn will shortly be back in the exact same predicament. Seeking to avoid it, he hastily sits up, “Will you let me do something for you?”
But Morgott seems lukewarm on the prospect. “Mnn,” is the quite noncommittal response. “What had thou in mind?”
Truly, anything, as long as he can give Morgott something.
Would that he could say only altruism motivated him, but he is haunted by the irksome ghost of Big Boggart asking, How does that work, then? Because in many respects, it… does not work. Morgott’s manhood is still concealed save for a patch of shiny fur between his legs, but Haydn has a rough approximation of its size and, well. I’m talking space and volume, physics. Alas, no amount of wishful thinking on Haydn’s part will make the physics work.
He ventures, “Whatever you’d like. Obviously we’re a little, um, limited, but I could use my hand, or my mouth, or my thighs… I could be on top, if you wanted to try that.” He’s no sooner said it than he remembers Boggart’s other bawdy comment, though he tries very hard not to dwell on it.
Morgott’s eye averts. A little stilted as he says, “It is. Not my preference.”
Right. Yes. Of course, it wouldn’t really do anything for him. Like throwing a— nope, he’s not going to think about that. Or make Morgott feel bad for a very justified preference. He forces a bright tone, “That’s okay! What about if I start with my hands?”
“There is no need to concern thyself with that.” At the Tarnished’s imploring look, he adds stiffly, “Thou knowest mine anatomy is… ill-suited to these things. And…” a delicate gesture, “’tis disparate, unsightly. Thus I would keep it unsighted.”
As he thought, it’s not a good reason for fending off Haydn’s attention. He therefore protests, “I must ardently disagree.”
“Thou hast not seen it,” Morgott reminds him almost primly. Indeed he hasn’t – Morgott has always cloaked their intimacies in a void-like darkness, precisely to avoid baring himself. But he did quite thoroughly map it out by touch.
“Maybe I could see it and then decide?”
A huff, “Fie, I know what thy decision will be! Contentious, stubborn… fine. Thou can look, if it appeases thee.” He swings his legs onto the bed, seated at its foot. He has the bearing of a man putting up with great nuisance, but if he were truly unhappy he would have tossed Haydn out of the room already. Haydn sees some flicker of hesitance at the last moment, the body-consciousness that so rules Morgott’s intimacy… but scorn overcomes all. With a nigh-disdainful tch, he parts his legs for Haydn to see what lies between.
A lot of shaggy white fur, is the answer. Haydn shuffles closer, between those legs like parallel bridges, and carefully reaches out. He goes unstopped as he sweeps some of the strands aside, leaving slippy residue on his fingers and warmth pooling in his stomach. Parted, his fingers contact the skin, the sheath, velvety-soft and lined with dew. Haydn’s pulse jumps in his chest, and Morgott’s legs twitch, but do not close.
“So that, uh, is it normally…” that wet, he wants to say, but he finds himself completely tongue-tied. Thought-tied too, it’s difficult to think of anything beyond Morgott’s absolute siren-song of a body. He glances up to meet the other’s eye and finds it tracked on him with something like disbelief. He has a hand pressed to his own mouth, half-masking his face, but what skin Haydn can see is mottled violet. Haydn stumbles for another attempt at words, “Is it, uhm, sensitive or, would it feel good if, if…” he swallows heavily. “Can I lick it, is what I’m really asking.”
Morgott drops his fingers to reveal an incredulous mouth. His voice emerges raspy, “Why would’st thou want to?”
Haydn blinks stupidly at him. “I don’t understand the question,” he manages.
The Omen scrubs his face again, “How did I end up with a knight so perverse,” he mutters, mostly to himself. He gestures with vehemence, “I can hardly deny thy degenerate wishes, can I! Do – do as thou wilt.”
Haydn counts his many blessings. And wastes no time in diving between Morgott’s legs. Even with those shy thighs only partially parted, there’s ample room for him to wriggle between… they quiver with the very first touch of his questing tongue across that oh-so-soft seam of skin, a gasp faintly heard from above. The taste is heady, sharp, and just a little sweet, to match the thick aroma that invades his nose and befogs his mind. Very little seems to matter anymore – not even the dwindling urge of his own cock – except for Make Morgott feel good. Even his former nagging worries about whether he really can make Morgott feel good seem a distant thing now.
His tongue slips in further to that soft, sugared heat, while his hands trace the rest of it, as well as beneath it. He assumes Morgott does have testicles, since he’s a bit deep-voiced for someone who doesn’t possess them, but he’s not rightly sure where they are. Maybe internal? Morgott is obviously not too worried about anyone glimpsing them given his lack of trousers. Although he knows well enough why Morgott doesn’t wear trousers, because he’s boiling. The heat radiates off him anyway, but it feels like Haydn has his mouth pressed against a furnace. He can’t imagine being this hot-blooded and having essentially a big fur coat that he cannot take off.
In any case, no discernible sac, just the fluffed lips of his sheath. It does sort of resemble, well, a cunny, although maybe also a very neat foreskin. Haydn cannot claim to be experienced with women (or men really, just Morgott), but he hopes his obvious enthusiasm will make up for the lack of expertise. It seems sensitive anyway, eliciting huffed breaths from his charge as he roves his tongue all around the innermost fold of skin, licks his way in deeper. It’s soaked, and searingly, addictively hot.
The likeness to womanhood is artificial though – pressed in deep enough that his nose rubs against the topmost hood of the sheath, white fur tickling at his cheeks, his tongue finds something very hard. Swelling to fullness, a sluggish protrusion. Haydn lays lips on it as soon as it’s within kissing distance, a wet smchh upon the blunt cock-head. The bedsheets underneath him grow suddenly taut; he cannot see, but he realises Morgott must have the cotton clenched between his fingers.
It spurs him on. His eager tongue prods into whatever gaps it can find around the emergent cock, which proves difficult as it steadily expands to fill the space of its concealment. So too calls the need for air and he finally acquiesces, pulling back to gasp through a mouth and nose plastered in thick honey. Dazed with delight, he doesn’t even remember to look up and check that Morgott is still okay; he can feel himself being very intensely watched, and hear tight, rasping breaths from above, but nothing distressed.
He braces one hand against an impossibly enormous thigh comprised of solid muscle, trembling. Coated in dense fur that is damp with sweat, which intermingles sweetly with the air. A sharp inhale as he goes back in, but immediately bumps up against solidity; Morgott’s cock finally breaches the sheath, a grey-skinned head turned blush-violet. Haydn shudders as it mashes against his lips, parts them to make way for a bulk that swiftly plugs his mouth and makes his prised jaw twinge in warning. He’s forced to back off; even at just his cock-tip, the girth is too great to comfortably take.
Nonetheless, his efforts don’t go unrewarded, as once the head is out the rest of the shaft seems quick to follow. But then he sees a pause, as though something is snagged. There comes a pain-edged whine from its owner, the tensing of Morgott’s stomach, before a great barb slips free of the concealment. The first of many that line the Omen’s length, although this is one of the bigger ones. Haydn has touched the barbs before, but never actually seen them, what with Morgott insisting on a blinded, blissful ignorance. Now though, the light is dim, but not enough to disguise the curved shape and ruddy hue, like the horns on Morgott’s tail. If he squints, actually, they’re just a little ridged – almost more horns than barbs, but not so osseous.
Indeed, Morgott seems to remember that he has barbs-come-horns down there, his most disliked feature. A hand hastily lays upon Haydn’s narrow shoulder, “That is well enough— ahh–” cut off as the Tarnished leans in to press his lips onto the barb itself. Are they themselves sensitive? Or perhaps it’s just the act of lathing even disparate anatomy. He kisses it welcome regardless. Deepens the kiss with parted lips, and feels the bluntly-pointed tip press against his tongue.
The hand on his shoulder tightens. “Aah,” is choked out. Pained, almost, but he has more than the strength to push Haydn away. He doesn’t, so Haydn keeps going, seals his mouth over the barb with a satisfied mhh. It pinches the inside of his mouth a little, but it’s not that bad. Kind of fun to play with, and to hear Morgott say, “T…Tarnished…” as though he doesn't know whether to be delighted or mortified.
By the time he lets it go, the crimson protrusion dripping with saliva, Morgott’s cock is almost fully extended, and several more barbs are begging for similar treatment. He attends them all, until his mouth is sore from the prodding, at which point he relies more on his hands. He has to – Morgott’s shaft is longer than his forearm and so wide he can barely wrap around it, so this is the only way he’s providing any sort of reliable motion. Since he very helpfully comes with his own lubricant though, it’s a smooth up-down motion that fills the air with all manner of obscene squelching noises, and Haydn is entirely preoccupied with chasing the next note. If his own body had any demands for him, they’re long forgotten.
At some point Morgott lets go of his shoulder so he can clap a hand over his mouth again, though it barely stifles the groan-laced breaths huffed through taut fingers. His other arm is braced against the bedsheets to support his weight, but throughout the attention it shakes so much that he’s forced to drop back onto an elbow. His tail thrashes fitfully behind him, wings similarly twitching. His long body is splayed gloriously against the sheets, glistening sweat mingled amidst his fur, ribs prominent as his chest heaves with exertion. A temple marred with age, battle and most of all cruelty, much of it self-inflicted, and still he’s beautiful.
Haydn does something – he’s so dazed he doesn’t completely register if it’s his thumb pressing into just the right place, or his mouth suckling against a ridged frenulum, or simply his unadulterated zeal for all of it – and Morgott suddenly gasps a jumbled warning. His elbow slips from under him, sending that mighty torso crashing to the bed so that the mattress perilously groans and shakes. Posed at the foot of the bed, his head tips back over its edge, baring the stark lines of his throat and the mountain of his adam’s apple. Though from his own position the Tarnished is not able to admire it, mostly because he is trapped between Morgott’s squeezing thighs, and squashed up against a positively erupting cock. There’s a very real danger of death by crushing or suffocating, and Haydn has never looked forward to anything more.
Fortunately for the mood he doesn’t lose his life, and just about hears Morgott’s desperately-rasped words, “Knot, squeeze, hard–”
Aha, that must be the sudden swollen emergence at the base of Morgott’s cock, as though it was lying in wait this entire time. Haydn wraps both hands around it, though it only seems to get bigger in response to his resistance, but Morgott chokes a pained-pleasured sound and arches his back off the bed. Another rope of pearlescent spend splatters thickly across Haydn’s skin. He’s saturated in the stuff, bathed from nose to neck. His tongue darts to the corner of his mouth for a taste. Hmm, salty, kind of spicy. It’s nice, though.
He lets the knot go, maybe prematurely given the hissed inhale from the other man, but when he puts his hand back he gets a twitch that seems on the bad side of oversensitive, so he leaves it alone. He goes for smoothing down the haphazard fur along Morgott’s inner thighs, listening to the deep, panting breaths slow into something less exerted. Morgott finally, tiredly, sits back up, bolstered by the tail he inadvertently crushed beneath him earlier. Haydn, still coated, looks at him hopefully.
“Good?” he asks.
It’s difficult to quantify the look Morgott gives at his state – a flash of hungry heat overridden by consternation. “It, yes. Thou’rt – a mess. Let me…” he snatches up a corner of the rumpled sheets to take to task.
“I didn’t mind,” Haydn tells him, but neither does he protest as Morgott hurriedly wipes him clean. Lost in the soothe of being looked after, he only opens his eyes again when he feels Morgott pause. The Omen is looking down with a frown, and Haydn follows the gaze to between his own legs. His cock is soft, and damp with spend, a very modest amount compared to Morgott.
The one-eyed gaze flickers back up to him, voice dubious, “Did’st thou finish?”
“Oh. Um, yes. When you did, I gave myself a quick hand.” He can dimly recollect shoving his hand between his legs, and an orgasm that came and went without much fanfare – it seemed very secondary to the much more impressive orgasm happening in front of (and onto) him, more just to relieve the pressure really.
There is a mighty sigh. “Haydn,” Morgott says with a very put-upon patience. “I was not done with thee yet.”
He rubs his neck sheepishly, cheeks flushed. “Sorry, I couldn’t help it.” He didn’t make any especial effort to stave off his own climax, but he’s not sure he would have been able to anyway… “You did have your thighs wrapped around my head.”
It’s an underhanded tactic, but flustering Morgott into defeat does work. “Ridiculous Tarnished,” he mutters instead. “I question thy morals. But I can hardly deny thy – enthusiasm.”
Of course once he’s mildly flustered Morgott he can never quite resist escalating. “Just for future reference, is sitting on my face an option?”
As expected, Morgott whacks him with his tail, but he has a lot of soft pillows to land on.
-
Later, when they’re resting against that same castle of pillows, scrubbed clean and bereft of further expectation, Morgott says quite out of the blue, “I would discuss something mentioned earlier.” Haydn looks up at him. “Thou had mentioned being… ‘on top’. And I said it was not my preference.”
Ah, yes. Haydn feels that familiar squirm of discomfort, but it’s a silly way to feel, so he tries not to pay it any mind. “That’s alright. It was a suggestion, not a request.”
“No, I–” the Omen sighs. “I mean to clarify. The act is against my preference. Not thee specifically.” He glances over. “Thou seemed… self-conscious. Of thy stature, I assumeth. Thou should know that it is not the reason.”
“Oh,” Haydn says, a little surprised. Even before Boggart’s crass comments it had occurred to him that… well that Morgott was very large, and Haydn was very not-large, and that sex of that nature was therefore just an all-around no-go. It’s not really disappointing, because Haydn finds great appeal in Morgott’s largeness, and you can’t have that without accepting the limitations it imposes too. He wonders if maybe Morgott also keenly feels their limitation but is trying to be nice about it. Haydn thus moves to reassure him, “It’s okay if that is the reason, though.”
Morgott just shakes his head. He’s wordless then, and Haydn thinks that must be the end of it.
But then: “In past years, if I was afflicted by… periods of urge,” the Omen says, carefully, as he often is on this subject, “I would’st venture into the Shunning Grounds. Thou must understandeth, one cannot look for someone who is attractive, or clean, or… gentle. Those qualities do not exist. One looks for someone simply willing, and hopes that they do not cause harm…”
He trails off. For just a moment the air feels unspeakably heavy – the wraiths of bad memories that Haydn cannot see, but still feels.
“I am accustomed to harm,” is what he lands on at last. Quiet. “That is what I mean. When I say it is not my preference.”
Haydn looks at him with a certain realisation. He thinks about the complicated dance he always has with intimacy. He thinks quite hard about the odd angle of one of Morgott’s wings. Obviously there are plenty of other ways it could have been injured, but…
He lays a tentative hand over Morgott’s own, unable to cover it completely. The tendons twitch under his touch, but Morgott doesn’t pull away. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he returns softly. “Just know, again, it wasn’t a request, or an expectation.”
The man exhales slowly. “Aye. Although, in truth,” his expression lightens somewhat. Haydn just discerns a tinge of purple on his cheek. “For that act, thy stature… ah. Works for thee and not against. If thou graspeth my meaning.”
Haydn blinks rapidly, his face also heating, “Oh.”
He quickly waves his other hand, “A distant prospect. But. It hath crossed my mind. Keep it therefore in thine.”
Very interesting. But as Morgott says, more of a future thing. He flashes a smile, “Plenty of other fun things to subject you to between now and then.” He really was alright with it being a non-option, but Haydn feels cheered nonetheless – though it may simply be that he’s proven Boggart definitively wrong.
How does that work, then?
A pity that he can’t brag to Boggart that it works very well. And also that Morgott’s arms are, indeed, good for cuddling.