Set the table for three pt II

[Thomas]

One of the things Thomas most enjoyed about Zilrud's company was the other man's propensity for silence. The man spoke, but he did not fill the air when he had nothing to say. This was Thomas' default compulsion from years of entertaining others with words, but Zilrud did not seem to care one way or the other if Thomas chattered at him, so it empowered the lordling to save his breath.

He enjoyed listening to Zilrud, and it was only eclipsed by his enjoyment of watching the giant engage with what was evidently his first Griscian high tea. Thomas did not miss the surprise on the angular green face when he'd try a tea cookie and found it to be better than expected. A secret of civilization was that butter and sugar made things quite palatable even to those who generally preferred other fare. He had evidently not hated cream or tea, either.

Thomas did not attempt to contain his amusement in how Zilrud chose to consume his tea. "Usually, my friend, it is sipped. The cup was not made for men with such strong hands as yours, but that's not a problem. For daintier fellows like myself, we can make a loop with our thumb and index finger, like this," he demonstrated, turning his hand to show Zilrud. "For others, though, this is impractical. In that you simply pinch the handle between your thumb and index finger, instead, like so," he adjusted his grip and showed Zilrud. "I don't bring this up because it matters, particularly. Moreso because I think tea is better enjoyed in sips rather than gulps, and it's hard to sip from a cup you are worried about crushing in your fist."

Thomas finished off his own tea and set it back in the saucer silently. No errant clinks or clatters for this man, something he was a bit proud of even though he knew it signified nothing.

"I think, Zilrud, that you are worried about me more than you ought to be, and that we are in agreement about what is to happen here: I will leave. It will hurt. I assure you, I will recover. Loss, sadness, and tragedy are part of life. This did not work out as I had thought. A man made lofty promises to me and then did not deliver. I have heard such promises before, and have also been the one to make and then break them. It's unfortunate, but it is part of life." He managed a weak smile, "my hope is that one day, this is not true for me."

He looked Zilrud in the face. "One thing I have realized this year is that someone can seem to be a very good man, a very earnest and sincere man, and --" it was Thomas' turn to be frustrated. He didn't know how to express this thought. "Well, I suppose it's that perceived goodness does not matter. I think in the future I need a man who is sincere, who does not over promise, and who says what he means." He raised his eyebrows slightly and smiled at Zilrud before turning his attention back to his food.

The warrior was no dummy, so Thomas felt that he was being reasonably clear about his intentions.

[Zilrud]

Thomas setting the example of what it was meant to look like and exemplified the proper etiquette of drinking tea had Zilrud confused. The Orkhai could understand sipping something if it was far too hot just to toss down your throat. Orkhai may have been uncivilized to some people, but they also did not enjoy walking around with blistered tongues in pain as their flesh fixed itself… Well, most of them did not.

The glowing red eyes watched the gestures of the forefinger and the thumb given in both examples as he looked back to his now emptied teacup. If the tea was not scalding or boiling, then what was the point of sipping it instead of just drinking it.” The fine delicacies of tea and teatime were obviously lost upon the Ork. Either way, he watched until Thomas was placing the cup back in the saucer without a noise.

Thankfully, Thomas had moved away from the intricacies of manners and sipped tea onto what mattered more to the Orkhai, which was the other’s well-being and his livelihood. Mentioning he worried more than he ought to earn another raise of a green brow as he looked to the other, allowing him to finish. Turning just slightly, he looked at Thomas as he spoke. The deeper Orkish voice was gravelly, deep in his throat. “If making promises and breaking them brings hurt, loss, sadness, and everything else… And Little One keeps doing it… Why keep repeating the cycle? Break it. Change what you look for. Take what you want.”

That raised brow from before had slowly begun to come down as he thought on the rest of the words that Thomas had shared with him, having him lift his gaze off to look to a further away wall. “Actions are louder than words. Take it at face value, and make them prove what they want. Words are…” He was about to insult words and speak, but as he thought about it, he was coming to realize that they were talking, communicating right then and there.

“Break the cycle, Thomas. Do not take what lowest of what someone gives you when someone else can give you more when the time is right.”

Zilrud had been practicing his common in private. Hearing Thomas speaking so eloquently had made him want to try a little bit harder at it, especially with not always referring to himself as Zilrud or Thomas as Little One. Either way, tilting his head over and down, he looked away for a moment, glanced back to Thomas, and reached over, his hand resting atop Thomas’s head. His nails began to dig into the other’s scalp, gently scratching and massaging at it, no matter if he leaned over awkwardly or not.

[Thomas]

Actions speak louder than words. Take what you want. Show me what you want. Of the many meanings Thomas could have taken from what Zilrud said, This is what Thomas perceived.

"I'm to show my feelings, and to go after what I wish for? Very well," Thomas said, and got up from the table.

The intricacies of the dining table ensured that he and Zilrud were roughly the same height when both seated at it, so that they could both eat comfortably without one of them having the tabletop hit them far too high or far too low. This position reverted to normal when Thomas stood by Zilrud's place setting, the one meant for Taelian. He echoed Zilrud's posture from earlier, leaning in so that their heads were close to each other, but he didn't take Zilrud's perspective. Instead, he turned toward the orkhai, and kissed him on the cheek.

He didn't want to do anything more forward, or hungrier. Even in expressing himself, he was restrained. This was partially because he as not entirely certain how to approach Zilrud's mouth. He'd seen those teeth crunch through bone. A full on oscular affront that was unwelcome might end up with him missing part of his face. Up close, Zilrud smelled fantastic: earthy, strong, a bit musky, and like sweat, but not unpleasantly so. It was as though the orkhai's intensity made his body react as though he were always coming back from a hard day's work. Thomas found it intoxicating.

"I want you, Zilrud. It's not just traveling together, or getting on the road, or remembering who I am. It's you."

[Zilrud]

Why was Thomas repeating what he had said? Zilrud had given Thomas life advice. Seize things in life that he wanted. The Ork had been talking in terms of opportunities in adventure and life accomplishments. He had not counted on the man standing up from his seat at the table and moving around it to find himself near Zilrud. A perk of his brow and he began to turn to look to Thomas, curious as to what the boy could be thinking. Before he could turn or allow his thoughts to go down that path, the warmth from the other coming into his personal space had brows rising, but he had not been expecting what happened next.

The press of the other’s lips against his cheek had the Ork locking himself in place. Nothing moved, not even Zilrud’s chest moved to take a breath, although steadily, the thickening of the artery in his neck began to grow and expand with the lack of oxygen that he had taken in. It had been a long time since someone’s lips had been on his body and had not been taken advantage of him. The sensation was foreign, and he slid his gaze away from Thomas. His teeth clicking within his mouth could be heard as sharp teeth ground against one another.

The words, coupled with the gesture, had the Orkhai frozen, and only when his words finished did the Ork’s chest begin to rise with air as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. A rage began to bubble deep in the Ork’s hard-muscled belly. The hand that was resting on the edge of the table’s nails pressed against the finished edge and scraped down, the sound of his claw etching into the wood. Growling, he remained stationary as he seemed to be processing the cheek kiss from Thomas.

…Suddenly, the Orkhai was upright, standing on his own two feet. The sudden movement kicked back the set he had been in and knocked it over. Muscular flesh contorted as Thomas’ shirt, the white cotton bunching up in his hand as the force behind the arm’s fist colliding into Thomas’s chest would propel the man backward. Clenching his fist tighter, the Orkhai lifted Thomas from the ground, hauled the man to the nearest wall, and forcefully pressed him into it, a crack of the wood signaling the intent of force behind it. Pinning the man off his feet against the wall, the Orkhai’s face neared Thomas’s as a snarl pulled his lips up, and there was a single strand of saliva that ran along one of his tusks, down across a part of his lower lip.

“…Do not tempt me, Little One.”

The voice carried a threatening growl, growing deeper as his face was practically against Thomas’s, the glow in the red eyes growing more intense by the second.

“This is your mate’s home. I will not defile what is rightfully his by being selfish!”

Curiously, the angrier that Zilrud became, the more fluent he became in Common, and less thinking was put into what he was trying to say. But that was not the worst part of the interaction.

As he made his threat and reasoning for the threat, the Orkhai’s lips began to peel back, and his deadly rows of teeth began to part, showing the heated, saliva-soaked innards of his mouth. But at that moment, the Orkhai’s tongue slid from between his green lips and caught at Thomas’s chin, and stroked up, dipping in along the male’s lips, up across his nose, the edge of his tongue flexing against the other’s mouth and again at his nose. As saliva dripped from the end of his tongue, leaving a trail behind, the tongue slipped across one of Thomas’s cheeks and off the side of his face.

Once his tongue had finished its stroke across his face, the Orkhai paused, allowing the flavor of the other’s flesh to linger on his tongue. And for a brief moment, a shiver ran down the Ork’s spine, forcing his eyes to close and continued to hold him in place.

[Thomas]

Thomas was no stranger to dangerous situations. He had first been held at knife point when he was eleven. He'd been mugged so many times in his adolescence that he lost count. He just had a system when someone demanded his money or his life.

Still, he never stopped having what was in his mind a healthy aversion to conflict, and he never lost his instinct to flee in the face of danger. So he cringed when he sensed the change in Zilrud and held his hands up in a defensive posture of surrender when he was slammed into the wall. The blow knocked the breath out of him, and he gasped in a breath, his eyes watering.

Still, he could tell Zilrud was interested. He was not telling Thomas not to presume or not to overstep. He was instead saying that Thomas was tempting him to do something dishonorable. Thomas didn't bother explaining that he was allowed to fuck whoever he wished, because this was a Rienese marriage and Wendall was off with a lover of his right now, and that Taelian was as well. Zilrud would just be puzzled by this, or pity Thomas, but still insist that the marriage should mean something in this respect. So instead, he smiled through the tears at the big green man holding him against the wall of his manor house whom he'd improbably grown quite fond of.

"I do not mean to tempt you to do something you do not wish to do, Zilrud. I just wish you to know that I wish to do it, too. If you do not feel it would be proper for us to proceed, I do not understand, but I respect it. But just know that if you would have me, I would gladly kiss you again, even if it meant being slammed into a wall a second time."

[Zilrud]

With Thomas’s body lifted and pressed against the wall, the Orkhai’s glowing red eyes grew brighter and fiercer as the human began to talk to try and figure a way out of the situation. It was what humans did, did they not? They would always do something, and if it were not well accepted, they would try and talk their way out of whatever situation they had encountered and expect the other party to bear their words and neglect their feelings. So, as Thomas was speaking of not intending to tempt Zilrud into anything, it had only pushed the Orkhai further along that path of feeling the deep-rooted emotion.

The words spoken were being pulled apart, jumbled in the Orkhai’s head, and turned into a bigger mess than needed. He was having difficulty concentrating on the baser meaning of the words for a straightforward fact, which Zilrud, of course, did not vocalize. The rumbling growl grew louder, the noise’s base having a broader, deeper foundation than typical for the Orkhai. With the fiery hot gaze glaring into the other’s eyes, the silence had been eliminated with the growl, but what came next, Thomas would feel it, perhaps more than the momentary fear or emotion he was feeling at the moment.

Zilrud was not a man of many words when it helped him. He was the perfect personification of the age-old adage, actions spoke louder than words. So, at that moment, that had a potential ending for Thomas to end with his throat ripped open and the Orkhai swallowing every droplet of blood flowing from the slowly dying heart, beating its last dregs of the life-giving crimson nectar flowing through Thomas’s arteries, Zilrud acted.

Before Zilrud realized what he had done, the human would feel warm, leathery lips pressing against his softer, pinker ones. The large green head had tilted just enough to allow the different positions to bring their lips together. His mouth was large enough to pull human bones into it and crunch them down, but for that moment, his lips pursed to meet Thomas’s own. And while his lips endeavored to press against the other’s, a single tusk dug in against Thomas’s cheek. Zilrud had made sure, in that split-second, that his tusk would not gore the boy and, instead, dimpled his softer flesh as he kissed him.

As the rumbling growl lifted, from his chest, through his throat, and into his mouth, both tooth and tusk, as well as his lips, vibrated just the slightest as the sounds of sharp claws pricking their tips into the soft linen of the shirt that Thomas had worn could be heard. Zilrud’s clenched fist had tightened so much that the edges of his knuckles began to turn a lighter green as each claw tip pierced the soft fabric, the Orkhai’s lips pulled back, and the following action, and the next, came without thought.

The larger head pulled back and leaned to the side quickly, and just as soon as the leathery lips had found, softer, sharp, flesh-shearing teeth found their purchase against a portion of bared flesh along Thomas’s neck. The Orkhai was hungry. It was a hunger not many others could understand and what truly made Zilrud a potential monster walking among humans. With teeth sinking in against the softer flesh, threatening to tear it, the Orkhai thought about it. He was thinking of sinking his teeth in completely, severing the other’s carotid, swallowing down the blood that would gush over his face and throat. The pure joy he would feel, the rush the scent of blood would give him, was near euphoric to imagine.

In those most impure thoughts, green eyelids closed over his eyes as his fist, pinning Thomas, relaxed enough to open into a wider spread hand, holding against the man’s chest. The holes that had been made in the fabric would give quick glimpses to the unmarred flesh beneath until something urged the Orkhai on. The desire to sheer the man’s meat grew more desirous to Zilrud, and as his teeth scissored just enough against Thomas’s neck, his tongue slathered over the morsel he was tempted to rip from its host, devouring it with possibly a quick chew and a swallow. Once more, the sound of tearing could be heard. This time, the claws dragged downward as Orkhai’s other hand came to support Thomas. The claws stroked down, as an angle, from Thomas’s left pectoral, down across his sternum, and towards his right set of obliques.

In the wake of the nails shredding the fabric, exposing more of Thomas’s flesh, it was also growing slick and wet. Along with the change in texture, the previously white fabric was growing crimson in some places. The scent of blood permeating the air caused Zilrud’s nostrils to flare. With a forced pull, teeth scraping but not drawing blood, leaving an abrasion of red against the pink flesh, he looked down at the crimson staining the cotton along the other’s chest, and saliva dripped from his hungering maw. From over his lower lip, the clear saliva dripped in a single strand, teetering for a moment as the near bungee-like connection to the Orkhai’s lower lip pulled taut before snapping, the remnant of drool falling to soak into the chest of the garment the Ork was wearing.

A thought ran through his mind, an idea solely in his original tongue; Mor’Drub had connected deep within Zilrud to make him want something. He had grown too comfortable in those moments. Whatever sense of humanity he had taken into his code of honor had been shed for the briefest moments, and the Orkhai brute many would know him to be had reared its head. It was a simple fact. He wanted to rip Thomas open and taste his insides.

Suddenly, it was like a snap of the fingers. The snap sent a chill running up the monster’s spine, and he realized what he had done. Still holding Thomas to the wall, the abrasion(s) to the boy’s neck and the bleeding from his chest could be seen. The scent of intoxicating blood could be smelt, and he realized what he had begun to do. The hand holding Thomas up had released him, and Zilrud took a step backward, looking at the results of his momentary lapse in realizing Thomas was a softer, more fragile being than a fellow Orkhai. In two quick actions, he had drawn his blood, nearly chewed through his neck, and wanted to devour him in the most primal, bestial sense of the definition.

The ferocity in the eyes bled away nearly as quickly as the crimson took to Thomas’s shredded front of his white shirt. Taking a few steps back, it was a sobering realization to the Orkhai of what he had done. As leathery brows attempted to knit together, red orbs turned from murderous, hungering, and ferocious to pensive and even sad.

“I.. W-w… Wa…”

Irritation and annoyance came across his face as his head was jumbled, his mind was not wholly one of a single mindset, and he was having difficulty finding words to communicate. So instead of trying to talk, he glared at the floor in his self-reprimanding thoughts before the little Lordling.

[Thomas]

Zilrud was kissing him. He was being kissed, not too gently, but kissed nonetheless, by Zilrud. It felt the way he had idly imagined it might: fierce, exciting, with a hint of actual danger.

Thomas' breathing quickened. This was it. They were going to fuck. He knew that could mean something quite intense from men like Zilrud, and the fact that the green warrior made most men he'd been with look like toy versions of the real thing made him excited for what was going to come next. He was not concerned at all about if he could take it. The orkhai's claws tore his shirt, and Thomas noted that if they were going to do this often, he was either going to have to spend a lot of time wearing very little, or get better at sewing.

Then, the attention continued, and excitement turned to trepidation. Zilrud's claws, which Thomas had known intellectually could be quite sharp, shredded his shirt, then his flesh. For a minute, Thomas thought it might be time to activate his panic button and actually use his magic, but Zilrud mastered himself before that was necessary. He put Thomas down and backed away, stammering and breathing hard.

Thomas was doing the same. It had been a while since a man he'd been with frightened him this much. Taelian was a big man, and a violent one, at times, but he kept that strictly out of his romantic affairs. His previous lovers tended more to the large and gentle type, as well, with one notable exception shortly after he'd found himself out on his own.

He looked up at Zilrud. "You okay?" He asked.

Maybe it was a silly question. He was the one bleeding, but he was a few bandages and some times away from being good as new. Zilrud was the one who looked stricken. It did not take a genius to have some sense of what the big man was thinking.

"I'm okay, Zilrud. It was intense, but I enjoyed myself. You surprised me, but I'm not horrified."

He unbuttoned what remained of his shirt. Between the blood stains and the rips, it was safe to say this was bound for the rag pile, if the Rienese even bothered with such things. "I'm afraid I may need some patching up, though. It wouldn't do to bleed on the carpet," he said, making light of the situation.

The implicit message he hoped was clear: I'm not scared of you. You're not a monster.

[Zilrud]

Thomas may not have thought he was a monster, but everyone else did. As Thomas reassured Zilrud that he was okay, Zil’s red gaze lowered down to look to his fingers. There were traces of white cloth and crimson staining both a few of the nail tips and the green fingertips. Each finger flexed slightly as he felt the blood congealing and drying over his fingers, and he looked back at the human. He was bleeding, and it was not merely a simple scratch. The centerless red eyes lingered on Thomas’s face for a silent moment. Grunting, the Orkhai turned his head and began to make his way for the door. There was no stopping him as he pulled it open. The door jamb groaned under the force the door had been pulled ajar with.

After the sounds of Zilrud stepping away down the hall could be heard, there was a muffled Hey! Release me! Who do you think you are? After what sounded like a struggle and a slight commotion of cloth, one of the staff of the house was shoved through the doorway. The staff, a male, was shoved into the room holding a sleeveless garment, the same sleeveless garment that Zilrud had been wearing. This way, the staff could find Thomas and take care of him. It probably looked like a bad scene to come into. A chair knocked over a disturbed set of teacups and snacks, a lightly damaged wall, and a bleeding Lordling with a shredded garment.

The staff in the house quickly moved out of Zilrud’s way as the front doors to the exquisite house, the house he had been a guest of, the one he had rehabilitated in. As the doors pulled open, the Orkhai walked out into the weather, regardless of how cold it was or how unwelcoming it was to remain outside. Zilrud kept the shorts he had been wearing but had ditched the shirt, which had been given to the staff who hopefully would be tending to the Lordling.

In his steps away from the door, the muscles in his back were tense, especially in his shoulders, and his fists were clenched. The Orkhai needed to get out. He needed to breathe. He had been stuck inside for far too long, and it had shown. It was clear as day on Thomas’s body. Nearing the perimeter of the estate, Zilrud paused to glance over his right shoulder towards the house. Thomas would be fine, and he knew that. And he was sure that two things would happen once the husband found out something had happened. The husband would be proven correct, and then Thomas would be cared for.

Zilrud needed to do his own caring. Snorting, his head turned back forward, and his footsteps took him off the estate and toward the tree line. It was not Rokhan, but the wilderness was the wilderness.

[Thomas]

Thomas snorted slightly when a harried servant appeared in the study. He'd heard the scuffle in hall and could surmise what had happened.

"I'm fine," he hastened to reassure. "I could use some bandaging up, though, if you would be so good."

As the servant scurried off in search of a Hollow to bring medical supplies, Thomas stood awkwardly in the room, bare chest reacting to the chill that penetrated even the insulated room in his manor house. Once his wounds had been cleaned and dressed and a fresh shirt provided, he felt more himself. Of Zilrud, there was no sign.

While this was vexing, he assumed the orkhai needed to clear his head after what happened, and Thomas decided not to begrudge him that. The cowardly part of his brain kept wondering what would have happened if the orkhai had bit him instead of kissing him, or had sunk his claws in properly instead of just nicking him. He hadn't, though. What if Taelian punched a hole through his sternum with his augmented strength? For that matter, what if Wendall, by any measure much bigger and much stronger than Thomas, held him down and choked him until he asphyxiated? That Zilrud was larger than him and a physical danger to him was not new and not news; most of Thomas' partners could hurt him if they wished. The way to be safe was to be with men who wouldn't seriously hurt him, because he was only a man, and he was not a warrior. He had accepted his relative fragility at a young age, and had not sought to alter himself to make himself more durable.

He was, as Zilrud was so fond of saying, quite soft. Still, there were benefits to being soft.

He had the staff prepare a meal heavy on bloody meat for Zilrud's return and leave it in a heated chafing dish covered in a cloche. It would be warm upon the man's return. For his part, he settled back into the Study once it had been cleaned, and attended to his paperwork. Just because Wendall wasn't around didn't mean he should slack off. It just made it worse when he had to catch up.

[Zilrud]

The time away had been spent curbing the bloodlust that had taken over his instinctual and baser needs. By the time he had even thought to return, the sun had gone down, the night air had grown colder, and the animals that went bump in the night had begun going bump in the night. None of that had mattered to Zilrud because before he had chosen to approach the perimeter of the home, he had paused within eyeshot of the manse and merely stared at it in silence. There were too many thoughts in his head regarding what had transpired that had made him leave earlier in the day. And in that silence, the glowing red eyes were squinted, the occasional growl dying at a stunted reverberation against his closed lips.

Before it grew too late into the earlier hours of the morning, just before the night would find its halfway mark, the Orkhai had decided to return to the home, albeit with caution. He did not know if anyone would be there to meet him with violence or if he was not allowed back on the property. Even if he could not stay, he at least owed the little Lord a farewell of some kind. And so, as he approached the main door(s), he would find there was nobody to stop him. With the darkness of night as his saving grace, it was also difficult to tell the state the Orkhai was in. Pausing at the main door, he thought about trying the polite thing and knocking, but instead attempted the door to find it was unlocked.

Pulling at the door, Zilrud noted nobody was there to stop him. The door had been left unlocked. For the briefest of moments, Zilrud’s gaze fell to the handle, but instead, pressed inside, rather than thinking any further on it. Quietly and carefully, even for an Orkhai, the door was closed behind him, and those menacing eyes in the darkness peered this way and then that before he slowly made his way through the home. Taking care not to bump into anything or step too loudly, he would take a chance and glance into the room the incident had happened in, only to see everything had been cleaned up. The wall had been repaired, the table was set straight, and there was a scent of cleanliness in it, which he attributed to cleaning any blood that had been left behind.

Grunting to himself, the Orkhai made his way back to his room to find there were still banked coals in the hearth, which had him pause. They had intended on his return, as foolish as that idea seemed to the Orkhai. It was quickly forgotten as something else had caught his attention. The Ork smelt it before he actually saw it. With a slow turn of his head, he saw there had been some food settled there and kept warm; he quickly uncovered to find seared blue venison, which instantly made his mouth water. Hot or not, Zilrud plucked up the plate/platter his food was on and meandered over toward the hearth, where he stopped and glanced around, looking for something he did not see. Another grunt and, unceremoniously, the shorts-covered backside planted to the floor as the Ork’s thickly muscled legs laid out with the outer sides of his legs resting against the floor with his bare feet almost touching at their soles. In the dim glow of the room, Zilrud plucked up a chunk of the meat and quickly shoveled it into his mouth, shearing it with his teeth and fistful of meat. On the plate, he was also happy to see some potatoes that had been cooked just enough.

Also, the horror show that had become Zilrud could be seen in that dim glow. There was congealed, caked-on slickness that stained the brilliantly blue sapphire coloring across his chest and face. His hands were both also stained in a darkened crimson, and the blood dripped down from his face across his chest. It was clear Zilrud had found himself into some kind of… Trouble. Regardless of the trouble or signs of trouble that were painted across his body, he was content, sitting in front of the banked coals and enjoying the meat and potatoes that were left for him, almost grunting a groan every other swallow of his food.