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Things were absolutely not supposed to go this way.
The plan was, in short, for Black Sapphire to just accompany the Princess and her Knight, with maybe a few soldiers stationed nearby as what he’d originally thought to be unnecessary backup, as they went to deal with a nearby hostile Cake Monster attack. As unenthusiastic as he was about this entire situation, he supposed he could play nice.
It helped that, while he certainly maintained his belief that Pure Vanilla’s insistence on rehabilitation was naive and idiotic at best, even if it seemed to be effective thus far on Master Shadow Milk, he was ever so slightly remorseful about what lies had been spread about Princess, to his own surprise. She had an energy around her, less obsessive and mischievous than Candy Apple’s, of course, her being much more mature than his obnoxious ally, but loud and passionate enough to still strike that familiarity within him, and she seemed to have that effect on most people that met her. Just like her Grandmother, apparently.
What also helped, of course, was how enjoyable her retainer was to tease. Even if that retainer had proven to not quite enjoy his presence, and just reacted with near paranoid hostility to any of Black Sapphire’s attempts to smooth talk his way into a less rocky situation.
Unfortunately, none of that really mattered right now. While that was the idea they came here with, to deal with the rising threat before it could really kick off, the way things ended up going was certainly anything but according to plan. It turned out that the Cake Monsters had taken over a fort that apparently even Princess didn’t know was there despite its size, and they used that fort to their full advantage to ambush their little group.
Which was how Black Sapphire found himself slung over Knight’s shoulder like a sack of jellybeans, much to his annoyance. Princess was somewhere, he remembered telling her to try and call for that backup, as it was only a little while behind them, but he hadn’t seen her since then, especially during the fight that broke out, and given how panicked Knight was, he probably hadn’t either.
That was fine, he knew damn well that she could handle herself, and if they were lucky then she really had managed to escape to go get backup despite how much she stupidly insisted to try fighting them off here, something about ‘refusing to leave behind a friend in need’, so she wasn’t his worry. If she got hurt, then he supposed Knight would just kill him for letting that happen, as if it was his fault, but he had confidence that she wouldn’t be harmed.
Black Sapphire would be more insulted at the undignified way Knight was carrying him than worried about Princess’ location, to be honest for once, if it wasn’t for the hordes of cake hounds they were trapped in this fort with. Hordes of cake hounds that were actively chasing them, actually.
While he couldn’t be grateful for much in his current situation, Black Sapphire found himself suddenly intensely thankful for Knight’s near unrivalled speed.
It was that speed that allowed them to very temporarily catch their breath, to lose their pursuers, though it wouldn’t be for long. Knight slowed down to a stop in an empty corridor, and Black Sapphire wasted absolutely no time in squirming his way out of Knight’s grasp.
This wasn’t going to work. If they just kept running, eventually the beasts would figure out they could just start flanking their sides.
What they needed to do was hide. And they had to hide quickly, because he could hear the sound of so many footsteps honing in on them, fast.
Knight seemed to hear the same thing, and was probably just about to protest his decision to release himself from Knight’s grip, when Black Sapphire spotted a storage closet just a bit further down the hall.
It’d have to do.
He grabbed Knight’s wrist, and pulled him forward towards that closet as quickly as he could. The armour certainly made the task more difficult, but adrenaline was one hell of an effective force, and he managed to get them in the rather cramped space and to lock the door, shutting them inside.
“Black Sapphire, what—“ Knight began, and quickly Black Sapphire leaned forwards, covering the shorter man’s mouth with his hand and shaking his head rapidly in response.
The steps outside got louder and louder, and Knight seemed to understand and froze, making even his breathing quieter as they waited for the angered monsters outside to either leave or to find them.
There was a muffled sound of growls and barks outside, something that was speech in their language but utterly incomprehensible to Black Sapphire’s ears, before the sound of a crowd dispersing reached their ears and assumedly, the cake hounds began to search for them throughout the fort.
It took a few minutes before Knight’s sigh of relief, after Black Sapphire had removed his hand from his mouth of course. He seemed to relax a bit, although he still stayed wound up tight and entirely on edge which, given how he seemed to act, was probably his neutral state anyway, before he began to reach for the door handle.
Black Sapphire grabbed his hand and forced it against the wall of the closet, a gesture that surprised even himself with its force and urgency, pretty much completely pinning the man beneath him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? We need to get out of there and keep searching for Her Highness!” Knight whisper-yelled at him, trying to shuffle out of the position he was in but failing due to the lack of space. This thing was barely wide enough for them to have a bit of air between them, though not enough for them to comfortably place their legs anywhere with how they had to avoid the luckily very few things on the floor, and that wasn’t even mentioning the uncomfortably low ceiling. There was no way Knight could flip this situation over either, with one of his arms pinned and the other that he could use to free himself still grabbing onto something nearby from when he was shoved into the closet and with seemingly no intent to move from that spot.
Black Sapphire grinned, though it wasn’t a playful thing. “You know that if you go back out there, you’ll probably die way before you ever find out where the Princess is, don’t you? There’s hundreds of those things roaming around, and you can’t run forever. They’ll corner you eventually.”
“All the more reason to get out of this closet! If she’s still out there with all those brutes, she's doomed!” Knight said, not moving out of the hold or even using his free hand to shove Black Sapphire off, he could definitely do it with how much stronger he was physically, but looking defiant and leaning a bit further towards Black Sapphire.
It was a stupid idea. Knight seemed to know it, too, with how he didn’t try further to move away, but it was still so idiotic that Black Sapphire couldn’t help but quietly laugh a little, enjoying how Knight’s face scrunched up in anger. It was a very cute look on him. “She can handle herself, and I told her to go grab some backup a while ago, before the gates shut. If we’re lucky, then she’ll have gotten there by now and will be on her way to bail us out of this.”
Knight glared up at him. “And if we’re not?”
“Well then we’re probably doomed as well, so you won’t have to worry about your job or anything. Starvation would get us if the cake hounds didn’t.” He replied with a shrug, keeping his voice low and hoping that Knight got the memo to at least be a bit quieter when speaking. “I’m not gonna stop you if you want to go out there and get yourself killed, though. You can decide for yourself whether you want Princess to come back to your corpse or to us in this closet.”
There was a beat of silence before Knight sighed again, frustrated but not truly protesting. When he spoke, he was still a smidge too loud. “So, what, we just stay here waiting until we can bail? We barely have the space to breathe!”
A wolfish grin was still adorning Black Sapphire’s face while he chuckled, “Now you’re getting it. Besides, if I could survive you picking me up and carrying me in such a disgraceful manner, then you can handle being trapped in here with me. We have oxygen, and it’s certainly better than being hauled around this place over your shoulder.”
“Eh- Would you rather I had left you to the literal wolves there? I had no better way to carry you!”
Black Sapphire huffed, unimpressed. “Oh please, Knight. I can name several carries that would have been preferable to me having to deal with feeling your armour press into me as you ran at a speed so high I thought I’d be nauseous at the start.”
Knight rose closer to his face, blue eyes piercing and strangely attractive in their anger. “Well, forgive me for not wanting to see someone die in front of me for no reason. I’ll run slower when saving your life next time!” He said, nearly a yell and Black Sapphire almost covered Knight’s mouth with his hand again.
“Quiet down. If they hear us, we’re both done for, and while I don’t know about you, I’d rather prefer to get back to the kingdom alive.” Knight huffed, still not leaning back against the wall again but looking away and breaking the eye contact that had, admittedly, been rather thrilling. Just like the last time this happened, when the inverse was true and Black Sapphire was the one pinned.
This was quite the odd situation to be in, maybe. Noticing that made it feel a bit more tense, made him notice just how much Knight’s rising to meet his glare had pushed them against each other, how easy it would be to properly pin the other properly to that wall and lean in just a little further. Or maybe flip the positions and have himself in Knight’s position.
Knight was looking back at him again now. A bit curious, maybe, and certainly less angry, but still not saying anything as he simply observed Black Sapphire. “Is there something on my face?” Knight said, not truly annoyed by the sounds of it.
“Why would there be?” Black Sapphire replied, quickly forcing his eyes away from where they had been locked on the other’s lips as he tried to figure out what to do with the sudden feel of a shift in the atmosphere.
“You were staring at my face for a few minutes there. Ran out of quips, or are you just finally starting to be a bit more tolerable?” He scowled, and Black Sapphire just rolled his eyes and decided, in that moment, to just press a little further. See if this tension was just a him thing.
In response, Knight didn’t move much. He didn’t lean back, away from this, but the hand that wasn’t pinned let go of the thing it was holding into, coming to rest by Knight’s side. “Tolerable? Such high praise, my oh my.”
“Ohh, you—“ Knight began, volume slowly rising again. Did this man have no sense of volume control, or was this just what happened when he was worked up and tense? Either way, he couldn’t be sure whether this was Knight reciprocating the weird tension in the room or if he was just like this all the time, Further testing needed. “Just answer the damn question!”
Black Sapphire finally grabbed that other hand and pushed it against the wall. “Be. Quiet.” He practically growled, “I’m a radio host, talking is my literal job, and yet I seem to have the common sense to keep my mouth shut and voice quiet when we’re still hiding from danger where you do not. Are you really that dense?”
Knight seemed to go deadly still, silent, and pinned up against that wall with a definite flush on his face. His eyes were wide for a second before they settled into a glare. That tension was fully mutual, then, good to know.
He was going to say something, perhaps tease the man in front of him for his reaction, when very suddenly, Knight surged forwards and yanked Black Sapphire down by the cravat, silencing both himself and Black Sapphire with a kiss.
Black Sapphire froze, unsure of how to react. Of all the strange things that happened in this cramped closet, he did not expect Knight to be the one to break that strange tension. It wasn’t unwelcome, of course, he had been wanting to do this since they’d first been in this position (albeit it was reversed then), but it still shocked him.
It was apparently a few too many seconds of inaction, for Knight began to pull back and Black Sapphire, admittedly, panicked a little. Not wanting to let this chance go to waste, he quickly wrapped his arms around Knight’s back, reciprocating the kiss and letting himself relax.
His lips were soft, despite the quite frankly aggressive nature of the kiss. Knight seemed more comfortable now that Black Sapphire had begun to kiss back, at least, and moved his now freed hand up to tangle in Black Sapphire’s hair. His lips, near greedy in their mix of eagerness and desperation, pressed into Knight’s, and when they had to part for air he made sure to keep their bodies as close as possible.
Knight’s face was completely flushed, that defiance turned into an exhilarated looking surprise. As if he himself wasn’t even aware of why or how he’d started that. What a pleasing sight. His breathing was rapid, trying to regain breath he hadn’t had while their lips were interlocked, but Black Sapphire couldn’t really judge. He could feel that his own breathing was similarly rushed.
“Well,“ Black Sapphire began, desperately trying to make himself seem a bit more confident than how he felt, “I certainly wasn’t expecting that. I wonder what the public would think if they knew the retainer to the Hollyberrian Royal Princess had kissed the one responsible for an attempted stain on her reputation inside of a cramped storage closet. How scandalous of us.”
He was going to say more, especially with how Knight’s eyes widened and his face flushed more, but then there were heavy footsteps outside and then Knight was leaning their bodies forward, though this time with enough strength to make Black Sapphire stumble back towards the opposite wall. And then suddenly the tables were turned, and Knight had him pinned for the second time since his arrival to the kingdom. But he kept his grip on Black Sapphire firm, still making himself intimidating despite the height difference, before he spoke.
“Shut it.”
Finally, he surged forwards to reinitiate that kiss.
It was less desperate this time, more focused on probably keeping them both silent as the hordes of Cake Hounds stampeded through the hallways, but it was still certainly not something Black Sapphire would complain about. This time, instead of a need to press their lips against each other and get rid of that tension that had been sort of in the air since their first experience like this, it was more of an exploration. Knight seemed content to take the lead and Black Sapphire didn’t see the harm in letting him, slightly more comfortable in this configuration than he had been in their previous one.
That didn’t stop him from getting an admittedly rather wicked idea, as he used one of his fangs to bite down slightly on Knight’s lip. The other pulled back at that, and for air of course, glaring at Black Sapphire but not saying anything due to the still echoing footsteps outside. Footsteps that sounded more like groups of armour rushing past than Cake Hounds, actually.
Knight didn’t seem to care that much. He leaned back in, and so Black Sapphire let them return to what they were doing. Knight didn’t seem to mind any other bites at least, but kept them both locked in as many kisses as it took for the sounds to finally stop, only taking short breaths for air.
When he pulled away for the final time, stepping back and more towards the wall on his side of the closet, Black Sapphire quickly used the opportunity to ensure his clothes and hair were still presentable, but otherwise spent it similar to Knight, who was listening intently to ensure all the steps were cleared out.
They were not, but the familiar clack of heels rushing down a corridor made Black Sapphire realise who exactly was back in the fort, assumedly with that back-up if the armoured footsteps they’d heard earlier was any indication.
“Kniiiight? Black Sapphireeee? You in here?” called Princess’ worried voice, growing closer to the closet.
Immediately, with total disregard for how flustered he still looked, Knight rushed forwards and unlocked the door, relief obvious in his movements. “Your Highness! You’re safe!” He said, leaving Black Sapphire to push himself up from the wall as he went to greet Princess.
“Knight! Thank goodness, nobody could find you after I brought the backup, I almost thought you crumbled!” She said, shaking him slightly by the shoulders. “Do not worry me like that! Oh- but where’s Black Sapphire?”
On cue, he cleared his throat, stepping out of the closet as she gasped. “I’m right here, Princess. How painfully rude of you, to forget me like that.”
She scoffed, and Knight whirled on him with a glare. “I’m being nearly saint-like compared to you, Black Sapphire! How dare!” While she was clearly angered at least a little, she didn’t seem really hurt by his playful jab, recognising it for what it was and striking back.
Once again striking that familiarity to a certain girl he knew.
A girl that was supposed to be on that backup team, actually.
He tried to ask a question, only to be interrupted for the second time in the past few minutes, this time by to the answer to his question. There was a loud crash and the sound of devious giggling, and Black Sapphire felt himself sigh out of annoyance already. “Candy Apple.”
“Erm… We should probably check on her and the rest, shouldn’t we?” Knight said, looking nervously in the direction of the noise.
Princess nodded, gripping her staff in her hands and turning towards Knight and Black Sapphire as if to say something encouraging. But her gaze landed on Knight’s lip, and the slight bit of blood from, assumedly, the puncture wound that first bite had inflicted on him. And then it landed on Black Sapphire and her eyes widened, coming to a realisation as to what they’d been doing in that closet. “Ah! You two catch up when you’re ready, get yourselves presentable.” The pair of them tensed, but she just waved as she ran down the corridor. “Take your time!”
Knight’s shock turned into a glare aimed at him, scandalised, and Black Sapphire couldn’t stop himself from cackling. “Well, we’re quite lucky it was her that caught us and nobody else, or else my own scandal would be my next topic of discussion!”
“I- You-“ Knight spluttered, face turning cherry red, before he just looked away and took a deep breath. “We’ll talk about that later. We’re not just going to like- ignore that. But we should really hurry after her.”
“Right.” Black Sapphire agreed, after he calmed his laughter down a little. “And you should probably get something for that bite when we do. Off we go?”
Though he was still embarrassed, Knight nodded and rushed off at a pace that was easier to keep up with, and Black Sapphire followed as he internally dreaded what Candy Apple had done this time.
That was sure to be an interesting conversation, when it came around.