barrayar | I am junking up this beautiful community with this junk

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I am junking up this beautiful community with this junk

All the other starters are so beautiful but instead I'm coming in and ruining everything with this useless post with this sad sack
Comment to this post and I will write you something

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[ It's awe-inspiring on a terrifying level. He gets a dizzying sense of how much there is, the force and the magnitude of it and how very tightly dammed up it must have been for him to have never felt a bit of it. It - probably is a very real danger over their link, all of it; lesser men could be swept away by the force of it all.

Instead, in Miles, it kindles something akin to a roaring fire. Oh, he is absolutely terrified, but exhilarated too, and - Gregor feels all that about me, he realizes abruptly, his thoughts racing about in frenzied circles. He'd thought so many times he'd ruined their relationship, taking his little selfish bits of comfort in enjoying something he was quite certain he thought Gregor would not want to touch. Wrong, clearly wrong, and Miles has never been gladder. His heart surges back up again even as his mouth has gone too dry to get out any physical words.

If Gregor dreads coming down, then Miles won't let him fall. He rises up to meet him instead, physically reaching to fist a hand in the front of Gregor's shirt even as his usual steadfast brightness ratchets right back up to maximum. No questions now, no. Even Miles is not that oblivious.

(Does he even like men? He lets his gaze drag briefly over Gregor, and decides in a heartbeat that it doesn't matter, because he likes Gregor. Especially at his most terrifying and intense, as he is now.) ]

Edited 2016-01-27 05:20 (UTC)

[He's going to have to come down eventually, Miles, and it's going to be a terrible crash once he does, splintered parts digging in everywhere.

For right now, though, the seemingly impossible happens-- not just that Miles doesn't say anything, but that he... He's reaching out and touching him in response to this, he feels with all that luminosity like he likes it. The anger vanishes so rapidly it leaves a sucking vacuum behind. In a daze, one hand comes up to hesitantly cover Miles's on his chest, and there is something like pleading and something like fear in his eyes.]

Miles? What are you...?

[ They'll ride it together if they must; Miles is sure of it, as sure as he is of anything. His fist tightens against Gregor's shirt, pulling him closer. ]

You're too damn tall. It's a menace.

[ Because Miles does not do anything by halves, even when he's coming off a bad ego trip. All or nothing. Forward momentum. (Forward momentum has never led him to grabbing the Emperor by the collar to drag him into a kiss, but. One must needs improvise.) ]

[He's caught him so off guard none of the reasons why this is a bad idea (and he has an entire inventoried list of reasons, taken out and picked over with morbid obsessiveness) seem to rise up to hamstring him. They are mysteriously vacant.

Possibly because Miles is implying he wants to kiss him and oh, God, does he want to kiss Miles, so very badly. The amount of suppressed desire he's been keeping carefully boxed up abruptly lurches upward and surges down the link, crackling.]

I thought you liked tall, [he mutters, even as he's sinking down to one knee, the chair he was sitting on clattering behind him as it's pushed away. Gregor has never looked so riveted or -- frankly heated in his life.

But he doesn't make any move to initiate it, not even with their eyes finally about level, his hands reaching out mindlessly to grab Miles around the waist (a faint thrill goes through him, incredulous) to drag him toward him. Gregor is completely incapable of being the one to jump over that line after he's spent so long hating himself for even being aware the line exists.]

Edited (positioning in the scene is what??) 2016-01-27 05:47 (UTC)

[He watches each as they talk, the picture forming quickly from these fragments. Abruptly, he stills and centers, the confusion gone and thought split cleanly from emotion entirely. An assassin.

The idea was clever if particularly afflicted with tunnel vision. A dark part of him admired the patience and the madness necessary for it, just as the other critiqued it, picking apart the weak points and ramifications. Komarr would not hold much longer than Barrayar. The Cetagandans would be no happier to have no control over that side of their wormhole than the Barrayarans did.

But that wasn't the curious part.

He folds his hands.]

And his intentions now?

[ That crackle of desire goes through Miles like an electric current, making him shiver. Miles has always had trouble saying no to people to begin with; saying no to Gregor's suddenly unguarded desire is well and truly beyond his ability to reject. Not that he cares. Hell, he wouldn't care even if it were coming out of the blue. He doesn't know what this means for Gregor - doesn't know how it feeds into his issues, or Serg and Cavilo's ghosts, but what he can do is want Gregor right back. His usual burning loyalty in a slightly different shape, edged with a crackling energy of his own.

Don't stop there, he wants to say. But he's grateful for just a moment to take in the scene, to take in Gregor in front of him. Miles had always found Gregor attractive in an aesthetic kind of way, but seeing that terrifying wave of feeling - seeing it directed towards Miles - is what turns it into something he desperately wants to touch all over. He shifts closer, leaning their foreheads together for just a moment. ]

I do like tall. [ Likes it a hell of a lot. Picturing Gregor towering over him sends another excited jolt through him, this time of his own making. ] But this is more convenient.

[ If Gregor won't cross the line, then Miles will. As he always does, kicking off into freefall without being sure what the bottom looks like. He doesn't really care at this exact second. Tightening his grip in Gregor's shirt, he leans forward to kiss him, hard. ]

Sworn to Gregor. He's ... [ "Safe" seems too strong of a word. "Defused" makes his brother sound like some mindless weapon, which is exactly what they want to get away from now. ] ... trying to figure things out from there. We all are.

[There's a distinct sense in freefall of weightlessness, of consequences and concerns being left behind on some higher vantage. Gregor is not someone who plunges himself into decisions like Miles does, and he can but follow here where he leads, rational thought left far behind.

The anticipation ratchets upward to nearly unbearable levels as Miles leans in to him, resting their foreheads together. And then he's-- he's kissing him forcefully, and somehow in all his guilty imaginings about this moment it foolishly never included how fiercely Miles goes after what he wants. Maybe because Gregor can't imagine being what he wants.

(That is a worry left above, somewhere else, to be looked at later.)

It startles a soft moan out of him, fingers tightening on Miles's waist, using that hold as leverage to keep him in place as Gregor starts to kiss back. Because the wave is still cresting through him and he returns the kiss with equal fervor, hungrily, eyes closing automatically just to feel his mouth that he'd only ever looked at before, wondering. Before long he introduces tongue, pushing his way in, dizzy enough to demand.

For these few long moments as they kiss, that is the only thing Gregor is thinking of. His mind is blank as an empty page waiting to have this memory inscribed on it, blank but for the pervasive, ringing sense of finally, and of desire catching fire piece by piece as it turns into outright lust.]

[Gregor elaborates on the specific character of the oath, as he feels Aral is going to consider it extremely pertinent information.]

Sworn sincerely and unbreakably, using my other power, to be a loyal and obedient liegeman and not to harm anyone else sworn to me, [he clarifies.] With all the privileges and protections from me due any other liege-sworn.

[He finishes in a softer tone, knowing Aral is going to pick up the significance from that that Miles's brother hadn't-- that Gregor intends to make sure he isn't abandoned to his fate, whatever it may be.]

[It's a long span of moments that Aral is silent.

Three lines of thought crackled simultaneously. The first was easiest to examine and put aside. Oath or not, an assassin flushed out was an assassin no more. A threat, perhaps, if he made himself to be one, but that was a different term entirely.

The second stretched, as it often did now, into politics. The ramification of Gregor's words and actions did more than merely protect himself and his family. More than protect this clone who had the misfortune (or fortune) of turning up before his prey unprepared... It was law. Barrayar's laws were strung together mostly on code and precedent - obscure, ridiculous and traditional at once. In the yawning hole that was any precedence on clones, it was a resounding ruling. This boy was a Barrayaran, liegesworn as a Vor would be. Barrayaran by citizenship. Vorkosigan by right.

In those simple, softer words, it was as strong a lance of protectiveness than the one he could feel blazing from Miles.

Which left... himself... Uninhibited by the bonds of grief and duty that would chain his future self, what was left was a tangle he hardly understood himself. Hope? Anger? Confusion? Repulsion?

How much does he look like Miles? Miles' own face was new to him, achingly so. But his wholehearted emotion had taken no time in wrapping around it in memorizing it, trying to fish out missing history in every line of it. God. To look like Miles without the soltoxin... Miles was right, there would have been unaccountable tortures of the body. And colder still, the mind... To create one willing to strike after all of it, to be able to pass mentally as well... He could doubt there were any happy lessons. Any unbiased ones, either.

Rejoice, Vorhalas, you've had your revenge now on both of my sons. One for each of yours. He fancied the man would weep, despite himself.

But son... His own mind hiccuped over his own thought. Is that.. person. (Another hiccup, regarded and soothed) Is he?

He can hear Cordelia plain as day, so sharp and definite that it bleeds over to Miles. "If I've lost my agency in his birth and my say in his upbringing, then by god I'll see him a future."]

A second son... [The decision was little more than a whisper. Voice stronger as he finally focuses on the other two in the room.] You haven't mentioned his name.

[He can tell without having to say anything, or even feel it across the link, that Aral has followed every nuance of that decision, so he doesn't harp on it. But Gregor does remember that he'd made an assurance to his newest liege-sworn that he'd tell the Vorkosigans to leave him alone about his name, so he verbally steps in.]

He doesn't have one. [He speaks levelly, but the characteristically melancholy cant to his expression deepens just a little.] Those were his words to me. And I know how difficult this will be for both of you, but my recommendation is not to pressure him on it. He has been... indoctrinated into a belief system that counts Vorkosigan as the vilest enemy.

You'll have to be very careful about converting him. [Though, obviously, Gregor does hope that they succeed. It pains him to see anyone else's family with a rift in it, but this one especially.]

[Thank God, really-- it gives him hope that he can handle this as necessary on a daily basis. Gregor would find a way to handle it regardless, of course, since he sees it as part of his duties as liege-lord, but that it won't be as difficult as he'd feared is one concern brushed away. And, too, it gives him hope for him as a person finding himself.

Gregor's mindscape is smooth and focused, everything neatly tucked away that he doesn't want to show. Practice combined with natural inclination toward self-control has made him good at this, and he shuffles forward the memory without any stray thoughts intervening. There's just a faint reluctance, and a wistful nostalgia.

The memory is a short one. It's more of an impression than anything-- an event that happened so often Gregor couldn't point to one specific instance of it. There's no details, just a belief of this happening. He is nine and Miles is four and they are in the part of the Residence the Vorkosigans lived in, Gregor following Aral back on one of his two hour lunches by the simple expedient of walking after him and leaving his security to scramble in his wake. The new ones took a while to feel comfortable physically moving him places, so he always took advantage of it while he could.

He says nothing in this memory: he just watches Aral go from remote and closed off, calculating and political as he always is around Gregor, to soft and paternal with aching, exquisite care. He lowers himself to his knees and lays on the floor with a tiny Miles whose entire low back and legs are encased in braces, whose eyes are alight but his mouth is closed, and Aral shows him patiently and seriously how to dissemble and rebuild some mechanical thing Gregor hadn't identified. Or maybe he's making up stories about the tiny toy soldiers, family heirlooms... He's not sure.

He'd watched this with a hollowness in him, an unfilled yearning. This is what a father is and I don't remember mine followed by a less diffuse, keener pain of missing his mother, who he does remember hazily. He's the only Vorbarra and there is no one to claim him, no one to lay on the floor with him and ruin his dignity with. And just as he's thinking this, there's a hand scruffing his hair and he starts in surprise, turning, and Cordelia's tall composed form of skirts and roan hair breaks into a smile. "How are you doing, kiddo? Want to come sit with me?" And Gregor says nothing but follows her eagerly to a table, where she sits and talks to him.

He can't remember what she ever said in those talks. He just remembers it had nothing to do with being Emperor.

Cast over this whole memory is the point of it: I'm not one of them but I'm welcome anyway. What he hopes Miles's brother can see and find for himself, if he can't bring himself to go further.

The memory fades in and out with the ghostly distance of childhood.]

[ Oh.

Mark only has certain ways to speak and to think. Certain idioms in his repertoire. It's natural: learning ways of thinking comes from observing those ways of thinking in practice, and he's been exposed to so very few. Mark speaks in, thinks in, understands the language of violence and assassination - he can read a fight, know how an enemy is going to move and how he can be subdued. That's just a way of thinking that's in his head. The language of Barrayaran politics is another one: he knows all the right terms of address for Counts and for younger sons, knows who is who in the important circles. The language of appeasement. He knows that well. The language of envy. The language of control. The language of servitude. He's been socialized into these things; he knows how the associated rituals work, how to understand them, what they mean.

He's presented with a memory that's coded in the language of family. Of warmth. Of love. Acceptance is what Mark finds in this memory, decency, kindness. Aral Vorkosigan, love in his face. Cordelia Naismith, warm and compassionate. Gregor's feelings themselves - signifying a complicated mixture of melancholy and adoration, of sorrow and warmth, loneliness mixed with happiness - are as strange as they would be in another language...A language he doesn't speak, but a language adjacent to his. Like the memories and associated emotions are in Polish instead of the Russian that Mark had been forced to learn. It feels like he ought to know what's going on, but it's strange...

He doesn't quite know how to respond to it. He doesn't quite know how to process it. The closest thing Mark has, the closest he can come to love, is envy. And so he tries to interpret this in the language and logic of envy.

Weren't you jealous of him? ]

[ He gladly parts his lips for Gregor, nipping ever so gently in return, just enough to barely catch Gregor's bottom lip when they have to draw in breath. The hand at his shirt stays there, knuckles white; his other hand reaches up to cup the side of Gregor's face. Fingers rough against Gregor's jawline, not callused (not as a Vor lord, no) but scarred in spots. Miles inches closer too, wanting proximity as much as anything else they're doing with their mouths. With Gregor down on one knee, Miles is just about comfortable, with no awkward neck craning needed or tiptoeing to get where he needs to be. (Not that he minds. But there is a certain practicality to being on the same level.)

God. Even if he weren't completely into this - and he is, no question about that - that fire would do him in. It spreads gladly to him, Miles himself all dry tinder in comparison. Ready to catch at the slightest spark, much less this inferno. Fortunately Miles is all bright flames himself. Even as it consumes him, it enriches him, making him feel fuller, more whole with Gregor there to burn with him ...

He wants, oh yes. He wants very desperately. And he can feel Gregor wanting him in return, which is the hottest damn thing about the whole thing. So much of Miles' relationship troubles are caused by - or stem from - not being sure if he's wanted or not. Surely more towards the nod, with everything. A tiny, painful flash of the young woman who'd been so terribly fascinated by Miles' physical body, but who had cared not a bit for the person Miles himself was. But Gregor drowns it out in an instant; Miles can only reel, basking in the glow of knowing for sure that Gregor wants him.

How can he say no to that? He never wants to, ever. ]

[ Miles agrees with Gregor quietly, a hum along both sides of the link. And yet ... He does very desperately want this little brother, to have him be part of the family. Only the thought that his brother might not want it in turn stops him. ]

I was thinking Mark Pierre, though. If he wants it.

Mark Pierre would be traditional. If he wants.

[It's a murmured agreement, uncertain still in its tone. His shoulders rise and drop with a large, slow breath and its release. There were no warnings from neutrally worded reports, no weeks or months to prepare or discuss. He was upstairs.]

Converting... what a term. [He offers nothing else, merely continues.]

How did you two talk him down?

[The feedback loop this generates is intoxicating. The fire is consuming; it eradicates all better judgement, eliminates doubts or second guessing from his mind. Everything has been pent up for so long-- not just his feelings for Miles but all of his feelings, everything, all of his anxieties and fears and unfulfilled longing just not to be alone. Gregor has never kissed someone he felt safe with before and it lances straight through his brain, dismantles his defenses. He can feel how receptive Miles is and he takes it as desperate, hungry encouragement, a far-off dream fulfilled. He never wants this to end.

Because when it ends, he's going to start thinking again.

Gregor impatiently pulls him closer toward him, tugging him around his upraised knee to fit in the crevice of his hip. His chest is flat against his-- an odd, jarring note rings through him, but he hastily ignores it, abstractly discomfited. Every thwarted urge rises up for competition at once, but the easiest one to do wins out, and he tears his mouth away to breathe just long enough to tug the collar of his shirt aside, to reapply his lips to the juncture of Miles's neck and shoulder in an open-mouthed kiss.

But he's reckless with the wild certainty that this is never going to happen again, and his most furtive lusts take over: Gregor sets his teeth on his flesh and sucks, hard, around the bite. Claiming.]

[There's a pause, a stillness like currents stopping as he processes that, before motion resumes.

Maybe at times. But it's an ugly feeling, envy-- it's false. Miles's life... There's a flash of him white-faced and silent at age six, too skinny even then, being forced through some new torture of physical therapy. A corresponding flash of Aral coaxing him through it. Mostly I'm relieved that he has them.

Besides, envy implies that what you have isn't enough.

Another flash: Gregor at fifteen, paralyzed and blank as some Count tries to entrap him into swearing something he doesn't understand, with what Mark probably recognizes as a panic attack building under his skin. Now Aral smoothly steps in front of him and drives the Count away with a few well-placed sharpened words.

Cordelia and Gregor, demonstrably much older, in the manicured Imperial Gardens eating lunch and speaking very quietly, wisdom in her eyes. He keeps the words indistinct again, but it's undeniable that what they're sharing is deeply personal by the cant of their body language toward each other and the distance of the guards from them.

It's enough.]

[To Gregor's mind, it's like convincing a kicked dog that you won't kick it again. It takes patience. And you have to let them make up their own mind. What he needs most is the ability to make his own decisions, to have his own control-- a feeling Gregor can sympathize with if not understand directly to that extent.

At this question, though, he merely says quietly,] I offered him a choice. I think it might have been the first time anyone did.

Edited 2016-01-28 04:53 (UTC)

[ A strange sort of laugh ripples through Miles. Not laughing at Gregor, oh no. Rather he's giddy about the whole thing, buoyed up by the blazing heat between them, beyond the point of thought much like Gregor. He leans into Gregor's guidance, tilting his head to give the man full access to the crook of Miles' neck.

He shivers, slightly, as an answering electric current goes through him and the link. It feels good, but more importantly Miles can feel that sensation of being claimed too. Thrills at it, revels in it. Gregor wants him, Gregor wants to keep him, Gregor wants to keep this. He wraps both arms loosely around Gregor's neck now, turning his face to press a kiss to Gregor's temple in return.

Murmured and breathless: ]

Your Lord Vorkosigan.

Better if you offer him options, I think. [ He murmurs, as a side note. ] Offering him all the choices at once doesn't seem to help.

[The bottom of his stomach drops out. Everything he's been ignoring, all of the swirling fears, see their opportunity and jump up and snatch at him all at once.

Gregor tears himself away and falls back to land heavily on the floor, breathing hard, his legs strewn out in front of him. Oh, God. Oh God.] What am I doing? [There is a note of thin despair thrumming through his voice, through his veins, his hands scrubbing at his face as if to scrub himself clean.

... say something I will dearly regret later... And how he regrets it. For what is rising up in a sick current is self-directed disgust flooding him, all the fire snuffed out and killed. Gregor is trying to pull himself back from Miles mentally, withdrawing all his eager contact, like packing your things into a suitcase to leave. The link is narrowing and narrowing but he can't get it off, it won't close completely, he's lost that capacity now, and the despair gains a bleak, hopeless razor's edge.

He'd tried to cut Miles off before he could feel too much of that, but it's pointless. He'd already felt so much from him. Gregor had practically manipulated him into kissing him, blasting desire at him like that. He'd taken advantage of him-- he knows he doesn't like men-- he'd been mostly drunk and in a vulnerable moment and here is Gregor thinking selfishly of himself-- there's no way Miles can honestly want him, so all that he'd been feeling from him must've been, in some way, coerced. Reflected from him, swept up along with the force of his feelings. There's nothing else it could be, with a liege-lord pressing himself on his male liege-sworn wanting to own him. His teeth on his neck are the very least of what Gregor wants to do, and he could coerce Miles all through it. He nearly had gone that far, and farther.

The roiling ugliness in him is enough for him to drown himself in. The sensation of his skin crawling with self-disgust is powerful enough as to be nearly physical.]

[ Self-obsessed Mark, though, is thinking of himself. Only really truly of himself. He sees that memory of Miles' pain, and he thinks of his own pain, the pain that had to match Miles' - physical therapy to bring up his progenitor's competence simply mirrored darkly in some sickening drug or bone-twisting brace to bring down Mark's. How can I feel sorry for him? He had doctors trying their best for him. Parents to comfort him. All I had was blank-faced handlers and my creche-mates waiting for death...

He tries to press that down - not out of concern for Gregor and his feelings, but purely because he wants to deny access to that vulnerability. Though that's not to say that he's not completely without sympathy. Certainly not. Because there are things that Mark recognizes - fear, uncertainty. Yeah. And...And to a certain extent...understanding and compassion, because that's something he's been feeling so consistently from Gregor, that he can recognize it when it comes from Lady Vorkosigan...

He swallows hard.

How can you tell when something is enough? ]

[ Very nearly physical indeed. Miles suddenly finds himself fighting a wave of nausea as the fire winks out, replaced by oppressive, horrifying darkness. If not for the link slamming mostly closed just then, he might have seriously had to fight against his stomach to keep all that wine from coming back up.

But no - the immediate trauma passes, to be replaced by shivering cold. Gregor's warmth is enough to prompt a soft, answering wail from Miles' side of the link. Torn from Miles' own razor-sharp areas, he can only bleed and bleed from the perceived rejection. Did Gregor not want him after all? After all that, had he just realized that Miles wasn't good enough for him after all?

No, he insists fiercely, squashing that particular strain of self-pity before it can even start. (The rough part bleeds, still, but it's not the point.) It all goes back to the reason why Miles had been so hesitant about his own confused feelings to begin with. That damn poisonous shadow of Serg making Gregor doubt - everything. He's sure that's what he feels now, as obscured as it may be by the shuttered link. Then, the only answer is to show Gregor the unfiltered truth. He drops carefully in front of Gregor, kneeling to the side of his emperor's legs, and reaches out to take his hand. In the same moment, he pushes what he can through his side of the link - the equivalent of an arm stuck through a barely open doorway. Even if Gregor could close it all the way, then he would hurt that tendril of Miles poking through.

And then, through that outstretched projection, Miles burns. Burns with the familiar loyalty he'd shown during that deep mind dive, but also of brilliant acceptance. Of all of Gregor, head to toe, peak to depth. There is hunger there too, a crackling desire that is absolutely not a reflection. Guilty, perhaps, to demand so much from a friend, but in the moment all Miles wants is more. And then too a little self-righteous anger. Gentler, not directed precisely at Gregor, but a strident note nonetheless. Don't I get a say in this? he says over their link, furiously bright. Who gave you the right to decide I can't want you?

Because he does, oh god he does. It's all he can do to only touch Gregor's hand instead of roving all over the rest of him all at once. ]

[He doesn't mean to-- he thinks he should keep pulling away, keep retreating-- but Gregor is so hungry for touch and reassurance after a lifetime of carefully dispensed, considerate contact that he can't bring himself to cooperate with his own better judgement. His hand spasms closed around Miles's, gripping it, and he needs that burning loyalty and acceptance as badly as plants need light to live. His whole being strains toward it automatically, the link widening slowly again in automatic welcome.

Usually, Gregor is careful to keep the real depths of his loneliness from Miles. Especially lately, since he's developed these feelings, he's kept it locked down in the corner of his mind he doesn't show him. But now it is a yawning void of desolate isolation, pierced with gratitude for those who puncture it.

He can't deny the justification behind that anger, he can't. But it's so hard to pit it against his old fears, which have had so long to entrench themselves, and have found such fertile ground in his mind, roots spread throughout. Sorry-- I'm sorry. It comes out like a gasp, with his physical breathing ragged. Not even sure what he's sorry for.

You...] I know you don't like men, [he says out loud, roughly.] And I can't-- be your test. I can't. I don't just want to hold your hand, Miles-- you don't know what I want. [The shame associated with his desires creeps upward out of that pit of loneliness, grabs hold of his throat, and is hot and thick enough to smother him.]

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I am junking up this beautiful community with this junk

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