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While the many rooms and many beds of their residence in Argentholm are a rare luxury on this pilgrimage, Jornir finds himself hesitating at the top of the stairs. He can’t keep his little family contained and safe if they’re sleeping separately. They aren’t setting a watch. If they’re attacked in the night, it will take precious seconds for them to find each other, or they could be overwhelmed individually without the combined strength to which they’ve become accustomed–
“You’re thinkin’ too hard,” Queenie tells him, and he drops his shoulders.
“I do not think it wise to sleep in different rooms.”
“These beds aren’t like the ones in Ogreton. Barnabos is barely gonna fit into one. I don’t know what you’re gonna do. We can’t pile up like we did then.”
Jornir stares down the hall. She’s right, of course, but it doesn’t make the thought easier to stomach.
She looks at him in that way she does from time to time, like she’s tracking something in deep snow. She takes his hand. “You want me to keep you company?”
“Yes.” It comes out of him before he can filter the urgency.
“And do you want me to… help you get out of your head a little?”
He looks at her. Small and kind and so much more certain of herself than him in this moment. He says, “Yes. Please.”
She smiles and walks him down the hall.
Queenie is definitely applying an even softer touch than the last several times they’ve done this, and he’s equal parts embarrassed and grateful. The sounds of the city grate on the sides of his skull and they can’t keep the windows open lest the smell of many creatures living in close quarters drift in. The mattress is nice, but it doesn’t make up for the discomfort, doesn’t make him feel like this is an acceptable tradeoff for the open sky and his friends held close against the cold.
Queenie directs him through disrobing to his waist. The way she tells him to do it is exactly the way he usually does, and he’s relieved at the familiarity. He leans his tusks against the wall next to the bed. He hangs his cloak on a hook near the door. He places his boots next to her much smaller ones.
“C’mere,” she says, and tosses one more log onto the fire before sitting on the bed. Jornir goes to her like a man possessed.
She’s left room for him to sit beside her, but she doesn’t pat like she wants him to, and he hesitates.
“Wherever you want, sweetheart,” she says.
He exhales and kneels before her.
Immediately, her hands are in his hair, unclasping and unraveling his braids one by one. He closes his eyes and focuses on his breath. She’s careful with him, never allowing stray hair into his face, never pulling too hard. She waits to touch him directly until he’s swaying towards her hands like a sapling, and then she simply holds his cheeks, rubbing at his fur with her thumbs and allowing him to set the pressure. Slowly, the noises from outside quiet in his mind, the tension in his back and shoulders bleeds out, and his desire to make a single decision for himself fades into the background.
As with the other times, Queenie can see it on him somehow, and she says, “There you are. That better?” And, when he looks up at her, “Hi, baby.”
He tries to summon words and finds none. Instead, he puts his hands on the bed on either side of her, and when she nods, wraps his arms around her waist and places his head on her lap. She resumes petting his hair, this time combing her fingers through it with no pretense, and quietly hums the melody of something he doesn’t recognize. (He might know the song if she sang it correctly; she’s not very good, but it soothes him, and that in and of itself feels like a revelation if he thinks about it too long, so he doesn’t.)
It’s so easy to drift like that, body heavy and mind soaked in a hot spring, cradled and kept. She pulls his thoughts apart like fraying threads with every pass of her hands. He notes distantly that he’s purring—it’s been some time since he did that. The muscle is straining already and he knows his throat will be sore tomorrow. He doesn’t mind now, though. Queenie has expressed that she likes it when he purrs.
When her petting devolves into scratching along his scalp, behind his ears, down his neck, he begins vocalizing his enjoyment without thought. Small noises on rushes of air as his skin tingles. For several minutes she works the small dip at the back of his skull and it makes him begin to squirm and shift, rumbling the way he knows she likes, and without pausing she pulls him up into a kiss.
Her mouth is small and he currently has no initiative at all, so he relishes her habit of directing this, holding his jaw between her hands and angling him how she pleases, licking into his mouth when she chooses, nibbling at his lip as little or as much as she wants. Her hands drift gradually closer together. She softens her grip to give him a gentler parting kiss, then thumbs at his bottom lip. He opens his mouth and lets her do what she will—this is a strategy that has worked out spectacularly for him in the past.
She rubs along his lip, over his molars, his tongue, then hooks her thumb over his bottom teeth and wobbles his head gently. He allows her to move him, eyes closed, panting a little though he isn’t sure why.
“Look at me, Jornir,” she says.
He blinks several times before he can get his vision to focus, but it does. She’s looking at him like he’s precious. He lowers his eyes.
“Uh uh, I don’t think so. Up here.” He does. “You wanna go further tonight? Because I can get you changed for sleepin’ and we can go to bed and cuddle, or we can postpone that a little bit. I need a solid answer whenever you’re ready to talk and then afterwards you don’t gotta say anything else if you don’t want. Okay, hun?”
He nods absently. Her thumb stays in his mouth and he closes his lips around it. Her other hand returns to his hair. He does his best to think.
He’s not tired, exactly. The thought of bedding down is pleasant, tempting, but so is the smell he’s becoming aware of, her familiar arousal. He’s not sure about himself, but that’s often the case, and won’t change his answer tonight regardless. He wants to be useful to her, to be needed and able to do as he’s asked. At times like these, very little brings him more comfort than that.
He nods again, more present now that he’s looking forward to something, but she removes her thumb from his mouth and says, “Out loud, sweetheart.”
“I would. I would like to.”
“You’d like to go further?”
“Yes.”
She holds his face, and he closes his eyes happily. “You want me to touch you?”
He pauses, then shrugs with one shoulder. The pressure of her hands takes precedence.
She says, “Alright, hun. Let me know if it’s a yes later, okay? Can you do that for me?”
He nods.
“Thank you, Jornir. That’s my good boy.”
It’s like lightning through every nerve, star-bright and tingling, and he bites his lip with a small noise. She presses a smile to his cheek.
“Yeah, you’ve been needin’ this, huh. Poor baby. Don’t you worry, I gotcha.” She rubs along his cheekbones and he only purrs. She says, “I’ve got somethin’ new to try if you feel up for it. You feel up for somethin’ new?”
Through his misty thoughts, he considers it. Not if it’s a process, no, not if it’s a task he has to learn or a complicated instruction to follow, but she knows that. Every previous novelty of that nature has been discussed when he’s clear of mind. He can indicate his displeasure in any number of ways and she’ll return to routine. Also, he can feel the claustrophobia of the city begin to creep in every time he loses focus on her touch. Perhaps a small element of unfamiliarity will help. He nods.
She stands and kisses his head. “Alright. You put your pretty head down and stay. I’ll be right back.”
He lays his head on the mattress and watches her. She digs through several pockets of her pack, scattering things around on the floor until she looks up and sees him watching, and then she puts everything away. The mess wouldn’t have bothered him until the morning, but something in his chest warms at the consideration. At last she pulls out a length of ribbon—Ogreton, he remembers, a last-minute whim for the purposes of repairing and decorating, since the ogres no longer had the fine motor skills to do anything with it. It’s perhaps an inch thick and deep purple. He recalls thinking it was a waste of space in her pack at first, but then she cut off a section of it to tie Daisy’s hair back and he softened to it.
“Hold your hair up for me,” she says, and he gathers his hair into one hand so that she can most easily tie it. Instead, she kisses his shoulder and winds the ribbon around his neck. She tightens it until he can feel it with every breath, with every swallow. She says, “This okay, baby?”
He nods weakly, breathlessly. She ties it.
“There. I did a cute little bow. You can let go of your hair now, hun. That good? Not too tight? Good. You tell me if it bothers you, Jornir.” She walks around him and sits on the bed again. “Oh, look at you. That is a sight for sore eyes.” She takes him by the chin and turns his head this way and that. “It’s a good color on you, too. Pretty as can be. You like it?”
He tries to nod again, and the slight but inescapable pressure on his throat knocks the air out of him, and she coos at him when he whimpers.
“We need to use it more often, then. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you quite this out of it. I know Taishie’d like it.”
The mere mention of Taishen makes Jornir’s face burn, but he can’t hide the way his hips shift, nor the strangled hum that comes out of him. He has a distant, unreachable thought about how he dislikes the distance, that Taishen is in another room somewhere where Jornir can’t see him or protect him, that Taishen should be here with him and Queenie, and then his mind catches up to her actual words and his face only burns hotter.
As always, Queenie looks knowingly at him. “One of these days I’ll get the chance to tie up his hands and put a nice ribbon around your neck and let you get your mouth all over him until he cries. Would you like that?” He moans, and her sly expression doesn’t change. “Thought so. ‘Fraid I’m all we’ve got right now, though. And I can’t fit your cock in me like he can. We can, however, put that pretty mouth to good use.”
He tries to calm his breathing while she undresses. He wants to help, wants to undo her buttons and her ties for her, wants to kiss every inch of fur he reveals, but she hasn’t told him to get on the bed or touch her yet, so he kneels on the floor and watches her with pleading eyes. She takes the time to lay out all of her clothes on a chair. There’s a distinct sway to her hips when she walks, and Jornir wants to put his hands there, wants to hold her to him. She pets his cheek as she passes him to get back on the bed. He sits in wait, quiet and trembling, until she’s propped up on a large-for-her pillow with her legs braced wide.
He swallows. She says, “Okay, baby, c’mere,” and it’s all he can do not to slam some part of himself into the bedframe as he obeys.
She doesn’t hesitate to take him by the hair and pull him first into a kiss, letting him get his hands under him, then pushes him down. He resists the pressure just enough to press his face into her chest and her belly as he goes, breathing her in, delighting in the friction of their fur. He drags his cheek across her thigh when he reaches it, and she laughs at him. He nearly smiles.
“That’s right, honey, you take what you need. And then you get to it.”
He kisses the place where his cheek had been and then lowers his head as ordered.
“That’s a good boy,” Queenie says. His mouth is consistently in-fucking-credible, but especially now for some reason, after everything they’ve gone through in the last week or so. She lets her legs fall a little further open and sighs. She’s needed this, too. Not quite as bad as him, if the shudder that runs through him at the “good boy” is any indicator, but still pretty bad.
He doesn’t rush, possibly can’t in this state, but he’s messy, letting his chin get soaked, getting several locks of hair wet before she tucks them behind his ear, seemingly drooling a little, even, and a small part of her is kinda concerned about it and the rest of her absolutely cannot give a shit. She’s got her firbolg shamelessly and enthusiastically burying his face in her cunt and she’s going to enjoy herself.
“Shit, that’s good, good boy,” she says when he drags his half-rough tongue over her clit, and he focuses on it, obedient little thing that he is. “Such a good boy. Look at you, holy hells, sweetheart. So pretty. Yeah? You like when I compliment you, don’t you. I know, baby. You can make noise. It’s okay.”
He hums low in his chest and it catches in his throat, grating the rest of the way out. He sounds like Taishen does after moaning for hours on end. Fucked-out, winded, a little broken. Luckily, Queenie specializes in putting her boys back together from that state, and she sinks her hands into his hair to guide him so that he doesn’t have to think about it for a while, even though he’s talented. He hums a little louder and she gasps at the sensation. Gods, even out of his lovely mind he’s good.
“Use your hands, hun,” she says, and tilts his head to the side so that she can watch him process the words, figure out how to move his limbs, shove two fingers between his shiny-slick lips for a minute, and then work one into her, gentle like a lover, steady like a doctor. One of the many things she loves about him.
He’s in-fucking-credible at this, too; she adores Taishen to bits, but his claws can make things difficult and he’s used to his reptilian plumbing, so there’s some technical learning to be done still. That’s just fine by her. He’s an eager student and she loves to teach. But it’s also nice when she can get a little pampered by someone who already has the knowledge and the anatomy, and in 300-some years of wandering around being beautiful and understanding humanoid bodies, Jornir picked up this particular skill. All that rune-risting fine motor control and characteristic patient focus, all of whatever headspace he falls into on nights like these, pooling on his fingertips and pressed into her. He thrusts upward in rolling, consistent flicks of his wrist and Queenie arches her back so her feet don’t kick out.
Jornir works the second finger in, diligent and methodical, and his cute face keeps alternating between lucid concentration and absolutely lost bliss, correlating with the accuracy of his tongue on her clit. She gives his hair a little pull whenever he drifts too far and it always draws small, ragged sounds out of him. She grinds her hips up into his mouth and his hand, and he passively lets her, never losing his angle. It helps that he’s putting a little weight on her—both a comfort and a limitation on how badly she could throw off his rhythm.
“That’s my good boy,” she says, and is a touch surprised to hear herself, how strained she sounds. They haven’t been going that long, and she’s held out for insane stints when she’s working toward a separate goal like ruining someone else, but whatever’s gotten to him tonight must be in her too. She lets herself get a bit louder, a bit less articulate, devolving into “like that” and “fuck yes” and the ever-present “good boy.” She can see Jornir’s hips shifting restlessly against the mattress and wishes for the thousandth time that their size disparity didn’t limit them so much in this area.
But she’s not Queenie March for nothing. She’s got his amazing fingers and his amazing mouth, and she can give him the next best thing to a wet hole tonight: the kind of dirty talk that breaks him.
“I see you humpin’ the bed, Jornir,” she says, and he moans quietly. Good. “Don’t be embarrassed, baby, you deserve it. There you go. Good boy. Y’know, if Taishie were here I bet he’d love to take care of that for you.”
She monitors him carefully, and when he moans again and shows no signs of overthinking, she lets out a breath and pulls his hair harder.
“Yeah? You’d like that? I wouldn’t let him do anything about it till we were done. You know I love watchin’ him squirm. How about that tyin’ his hands, huh? You seemed to like that idea. I could tie his hands and we could do this right next to him, listen to him complain, let him get nice and wet the way he does. I might get a little selfish. I’d keep your mouth right fuckin’ here. Come on, sweetheart, I didn’t say you could muffle those noises, let me hear ‘em. That’s a good boy. You think you could keep bein’ good for all that? Let me use your mouth as long as I want, then work up Taishie until I say you can have him?”
Jornir doesn’t lift his head to respond because she’s wrapped her legs around it, but the rumble that comes out of him feels like affirmation, as does a vicious swipe of his tongue.
“Fuck, that’s– of course you’d be good. Look at you. No way you couldn’t be. I’d wait till you had him cryin’ and beggin’, and I mean the beggin’ where he forgets that you make any decisions and starts addressin’ just me. I love when he does that. Then I’d let you fuck him.”
It surprises her, given how often they talk about this sort of thing and how much of it they’ve actually managed to find time to do, how quickly she works herself up. None of her carefully built resistance, not tonight. One second she’s thinking about Taishen with his hands all tangled in leather, moaning and crying into a pillow while Jornir lets out a couple hours’ worth of teasing on him, and the next she’s arching hard and kneading her hands in Jornir’s soft hair, shaking through her first orgasm in… some time. Jornir, ever obedient, works her through it until she drags his head away, at which point he holds his wet hand awkwardly in the air and looks at her, panting.
“Well, clean it up,” she says, a little shakier and more breathless than she intended, but he puts his fingers in his mouth and sucks on them anyway, because he’s a very good boy.
When she asks if he wants to be touched, he gives her his half-shrug again. When she asks if he wants her to take the ribbon off, he flinches. Not overtly, not more than he ever does, but enough that she about-faces and tells him to sit tight while she wets a rag to clean off his face. When she gets back, he’s kneeling on the floor again, and she’s able to actually tilt his head up to wipe him down.
“Hey, honey,” she says when he blinks up at her, dazed and trusting. She smiles and kisses his forehead. “That feel better? Mhm. You lay down, I’ll be with you in a sec.”
She grabs her undershirt—she can wash it tomorrow—and doesn’t really feel the need for anything else, given the three-tiered shields of the door, the blanket, and the firbolg. She tosses it on and returns to him.
As expected, he’s in the fetal position with his hands tucked close to his chest, and she makes herself comfortable on her side with his head nestled snug in the curve of her body. He puts one big hand on her back to keep her there. Her fingers are magnetically attracted to his gorgeous hair, messy from her enthusiasm, and she makes herself useful combing it back and out of his face since she was the one who fucked it up. It’s only fair.
He sighs into her fur, and whatever tension was left in him dissipates. It occurs to her that she doesn’t even see him this relaxed out in the woods, though that’s probably on account of all the stupid shit that can happen in the woods. She resolves to drag Taishen in here with them tomorrow night. They’ll fit on the bed somehow.
Jornir falls asleep first. Queenie runs one finger idly along the ribbon around his neck, listens to him breathe, and keeps watch for him as long as she can.