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athelstan,
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{from here}

Sin leads Athelstan outside, hand in hand. The sun has just set and the first stars are coming out. Sin draws him gently to an out of the way corner where the grass is soft and there's a view of the sky over the lake. "Here, lay down with me."

He stretches out on the grass, his white blouse riding up to reveal creamy flesh framed by his low slung jeans.

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"What's it like?" he asks quietly. "To be as free as you are?"

"Liberating, and terrifying. Wild and wonderful and sometimes too painfully for words. Like all life, it can be glorious and devastating, sometimes in the same breath. And its all I've known since I was sixteen."

"You've never wanted to settle down? Pick a person - or a place, even - and stick with that?"

"I've never tried. I can stay a year sometimes. If the fancy strikes me or the wind is in the south. But when the call comes, I follow." He looks down at his hands and the soft ridges of scar tissue on his inner right wrist. "I don't do well if I can't."

Athelstan follows his eyes then reaches out, fingers hovering just above the scars.

"You did that when you couldn't?" he asks quietly.

"Iceland, last year. I got caught by bad weather and the coming winter. Three months trapped in a small town with no way out. Thankfully a friend understand what I was suffering and found ways to distract me. He give me these." He touches the piercings through his nipples. "And others. They act like an addict's rubber band when I need them to."

"May I touch?" He'll understand if Sin says no. "You can tug on the piercings if it gets too much?"

"Please, be my guest." Sin rolls onto his back, leaving his chest open to Athelstan's touch.

"More or less. I have heavier jewellery that I can change out when I need it. They provide a kind of constant low level stimulation that distracts me."

He'll move on to Sin's chest in due time, but first he lifts his wrist in delicate fingers.

"The people in the town weren't diverting for you?"

Sin hadn't realised Athelstan's meant his scars but let's him touch and see without complain. Three even cuts, each deeper that the last, scars almost silver in the moonlight.

"I knew no-one there, I was just passing through when the storm hit and closer the roads for the winter."

"The Icelanders are a gentle, pragmatic people. They readily accept eccentricities but are not always quick to engage with those outside their idea of normal. They keep themselves to themselves, preferring a stability communities like that must need to survive."

"Olaf was... an exception to that rule, not that you would have known it from the outside."

Edited 2015-07-20 00:35 (UTC)

He raises the scarred wrist towards his lips, slowly, giving Sin time to pull it away.

"Olaf was who did the piercings?"

Sin doesn't pull away, his eyes fluttering with a warm sigh as Athelstan's lips brush the spot.

He hums an affirmative. "He made his living as a builder but his passion was for body modifications and photography. He took the most amazing series of studies of me during those months. I'm told he sold three to the Tate Modern."

"Maybe you've helped him, then", Athelstan suggests. "It's hard to make money from art, but if they're buying from him, he's made his name."

"I hope so. I don't think I would have seen the sun again without his intervention."

"And what a waste that would have been", Athelstan murmurs, and lets go of Sinric's wrist to move closer to him.

"Everything happens for a reason. Beginnings and ends." He pulls Athelstan close and kisses him. "You know you're the first person I've told that story to."

"Not even Ragnar?"

He presses a kiss to Sinric's jaw.

He shakes his head and strokes Athelstan's hair, head tilted back to offer Athelstan his throat. "He hasn't asked and I haven't told. Ragnar is a wonderful, caring man. For all he might come across as a scoundrel, he likes to protect people, more than he lets on. If he knew, he'd want to shelter and protect me. And I'd end up hating him for it."

Edited 2015-07-20 03:30 (UTC)

That lovely throat is very tempting, and for once he doesn't resist.

"Because he'd want to keep you with him?"

Sin nods, moaning softly as Athelstan kisses his neck. "I can't be kept. I won't be kept, not again."

He pauses, lips still on Sin's neck, then asks very gently, "Again?"

"I was owned once. Never again."

"Nobody should be owned", he says with uncommon fierceness. "Not ever."

Sin guides him up to look him in the eye before kissing him slowly and deeply. "Thank you."

When the kiss ends, he makes a sort of 'think nothing of it' gesture.

"Look what you've done for me."

He still can't quite verbalise the fact that he's gay - or bi? Who knows, he certainly doesn't yet - but they've made a start.