Disclaimer: Adult language and themes and feelz.
Temple of All Dooms - Xanadu Weyr (A.k.a. F'yr's homestead)
…which will maybe get a desc someday, but isn't especially relevant to this scene.
At least the sex is still good. Strange though it may seem, with words proving a fraught avenue for F'yr to express his feelings for the man tucked into his arms, he uses what isn't complicated to do so. True, it's easier for V'ro to derive his own meanings rather than take the ones F'yr intends, but how many times have they gone round in a circle only to arrive at the frustrating impasse of not being able to resolve the few critical differences between them now? Many. But F'yr hasn't given up (and hasn't grown less selfish).
So here they are again, in post-expression embrace, F'yr's arms flexed to keep V'ro with him a little longer. "I want to take a trip together." The words come softly, maybe touched with a little preparation to be turned down. After all, a trip together might imply some significant time spend talking more than touching, although fairly it would be likely to include time with both. "I miss being with you. Doing things together." He's shifting then so that he can lean up over the greenrider and look down at him, one hand moving to trace the line of his jaw.
—
If the sex wasn't good, V'ro probably wouldn't keep letting it happen since that's about the only positive thing he's getting out of all of this at this point. He's probably put up some sort of protest about continuing, granted, but F'yr is very pretty and V'ro is very stupid. "You really think a trip, together, sounds like a good idea?" It's pretty obvious that the greenrider is not of the same mind there, but he looks up at F'yr when the bronzerider leans over him all the same.
—
"I really think trying something different is a good idea," F'yr doesn't exactly answer the question in quite the way he was probably expected to. There's a touch of a sigh because the bronzerider is aware how close to the usual impasse territory this treads, but he dares anyway. "I want more with you, more of you." Of course, he does; he's selfish. "I love this, I love you," really, if he had to number them in order of importance it would come 'you,' then sex if the choice were just among the two.
"Maybe we'll go and be miserable and fight the whole time. But maybe we'd go and just have a good time. I think I can manage talking about all the things we can't agree about and just— have fun together." He's not exactly trapping V'ro there, but he is moving from tracing jaw to brushing his ear before drawing down the side of his neck. "I feel like doing nothing is making this slip away just as much as trying to talk about it, so let's try, Khav, let's try to do something different." He makes it sound possible; maybe it is.
—
V'ro sighs, too, and he doesn't answer right away. But if he had an easy time saying no to the bronzerider, they wouldn't be having a post-coital conversation right now to begin with. "Whether we talk about it or not, you're still gonna wish you—" He cuts himself off before he starts sounding emotional, clenching his jaw into submission before he says instead, "Fine. Whatever. But if we don't both have fun, maybe we need to talk about whether we should still even be doing this." The greenrider makes a vague gesture to everything that happened here recently.
—
Yes, good choices do seem to be always somewhat scarce when this pair is in proximity to one another, but who likes making good choices anyway? It hurts so good? F'yr manages not to perpetuate the back and forth pattern of sighs, although it's a near thing. He does not ask for an end to the sentence that was cut off, which might be telling in of itself, but what he does do is shift more so he can sit up and then reach to draw V'ro up into his arms, into his lap, intending to get the greenrider's back to his chest, legs sprawling around him along with arms that pull him into an embrace. "Thank you," is soft and so are F'yr's lips against V'ro's throat, kisses pressed and trailing slowly out over his lover's shoulder.
Bravely, He does add after a few of those kisses, "We can talk about that, if you want to." Will it go any better than previous attempts? The ones where they talk themselves in circles and then fuck to feel something other than the heartache it gives them both? At least at this moment, he's not necessarily meaning an immediate conversation judging by the way his hand is trailing lightly up and down one of V'ro's triceps. "We'll find somewhere fun to go." He hopes, he believes. It's unrelated when in a few moments more of stroking down that arm to move along his side, "I'm thinking about visiting home sometime." And in case V'ro hasn't been tracking, "I haven't been since I came to the Weyr," so just a matter of, oh, ABOUT FIVE TURNS. No big deal.
—
"No," he doesn't want to talk about It. He'd probably like to avoid talking about It ever again. But the touching and kissing is apparently just fine. When F'yr speaks again, V'ro seems just a little confused by the idea that the bronzerider visiting 'home' would be somewhere fun until he realizes that isn't what he meant. "This is your home, isn't it?" Considering the greenrider has been estranged from his family for quite a long time, he might not quite understand why F'yr would want to visit where he came from.
—
That observation, in fact, draws a brief grimace from F'yr and then a press of his face into V'ro's shoulder. As he pulls back, it's with something of a sigh and he's shifting so he can straddle his lover and look down at him, hands spreading fingers across the slighter man's chest and drawing patterns while he sorts words. "This is my home." That doesn't take long because it is deeply true. "I told myself after I impressed this was my home. Before I impressed, even. I wasn't ever going to belong back there, I just didn't know it until I was here." There's silence that omits something he could have said. But he doesn't not say it entirely, "A big part of that was you, you know?"
His hands drag down to V'ro's abdomen and then he's shifting back a little to let his hands slide further, to palm over parts more intimate, with a gentle testing to see if there's been enough time that things aren't so tender. "I never needed to know someone the way I needed to know you. I never needed to kiss someone the way I needed to kiss you." Something soft there, wistful, maybe tinged with a kind of concern, for all the openness of what he's sharing - because what he shares is precious to him, and it's hard to open that to whatever might come, given their often tumultuous conversations.
"There's unfinished business where I was born. They wanted me to come, for laying Daro to rest," he can talk about it now, these many turns later without flinching. "And I couldn't go. I couldn't trust my ability to keep Glorioth's impulses from devastating the farm." It's a really reasonable fear, honestly. "And we weren't even betweening when it happened. They didn't understand how my dragon could be more important than my brother, my best friend." There's a trouble look from the bronzerider and he trails off, but his hands don't, not if V'ro didn't want them to.
—
V'ro looks up at F'yr as though he's the most important person in all of Pern to him. And it's, frankly, disgustingly likely that it's the truth of it. By the time the bronzerider mentions that the greenrider is part of why and how this is home, V'ro has emotional tears in his eyes and his breaths are coming deep, maybe a little too fast.
It's fortunate, for him, that F'yr moves on to talk about affairs that V'ro can think more clearly about, even if he doesn't seem at all inclined to keep the other man from touching him anywhere he thinks to touch him. He settles his hands on F'yr's thighs as he takes a steadying breath. "If I can help, I'll do whatever I can, yeah? It's gonna be okay, baby."
—
F'yr probably doesn't miss that there are tears, but stopping might seem unwise in the moment, so he doesn't. That doesn't mean that he doesn't seek to gather the greenrider in, shifting to sitting, shifting V'ro to sitting, tugging him into his lap one facing the other so his arms can wrap around the greenrider's slenderer frame in an intimate embrace that is probably as much for one's comfort as the other. These words are often fraught between them, but he dares them now, "I love you, Khav," his face turning the small distance up to look into green eyes, blue eyes touched with sadness but no lack of love, and maybe the sadness isn't even because of them so much this time.
"I know you think I don't need you, but I do." Then it's really F'yr's turn to become emotional, suddenly hugging fiercely tight, his face pressing to V'ro's neck. "I do," he repeats, softer, voice thicker before he's kissing the man's neck. "Part of me doesn't want to go at all." He murmurs, sharing more, maybe because it hasn't gone sideways yet in doing so. "Part of me just wants to get it over with. My mum doesn't want me to come. My da has been telling me for over a turn to give her more time, to let her come 'round. I don't think it will ever happen and I'm starting to forget their faces."
Something about that scares him, scares him in a way that makes him hold tighter to the man in his arms, the man who played a critical role in making him recognize home. Then F'yr shifting seeking V'ro's lips, seeking to bury all these complicated and hard feelings in something easier, something more straightforward at least for a few moments of intense connection that is still there, even through everything.
—
V'ro hasn't had a chance to make words happen before F'yr's lips are stealing whatever he might have tried to say. And he eagerly lets those lips hold his attention as long as the bronzerider wants, because he knows too well what it feels like to forget the faces of one's family, and it's difficult to know what to say to this man at the best of times.
When the kiss breaks, though, V'ro draws his head back to look at F'yr, to really look at that beautiful face that's only more beautiful because he loves the man it's attached to so inadvisably much. "If it's something you need to do for you, you should go. You can leave whenever you need to, yeah?" One of the perks of being a dragonrider.
"Or don't go. Whatever you need to do. I love you, Fyr. So fucking much. I'm not always sure it's a good idea, but I'll always be here for you." The greenrider leans back in, but not for a kiss. He only wraps his arms tight around the other man, tucking his head in against F'yr's cheek.
—
"It is," might be a little muffled because F'yr is tucking his head against V'ro, too, his mouth pressed ever so slightly to the greenrider's neck because if no one can see his face, it's safe to be as affected by all of this - not just the family stuff, but by the deep relief of being able to share something real with V'ro without it backfiring horribly, and perhaps even helping to put at least one stitch of mending into the rift that's been growing between them. He holds his lover tightly in his arms through that hug, lingering there in the offered embrace.
Maybe because he's already dared the words once, he doesn't dare try to deliver them a second time, just letting his thereness convey the continued truth of his feelings for V'ro. "Thank you." It's a soft murmur, but audible, and a heavy breath later sees him shifting to slightly lighter a thing. "Maybe I should shave." He didn't arrive at the Weyr with his broody-bronzer beard, nor did he keep his hair cropped short. "Grow my hair out a little," he even adds. "Maybe it'd be less of a shock for them." Sure, F'yr. Shaving and growing out your hair to look a little more familiar when you've become even more cut and muscular and, you know, attached to AN ENORMOUS DRAGON WHOSE NAME IS GLORIOTH will totally help your family normalize things during your visit.
—
The greenrider pulls himself back to look at F'yr with wide eyes when the bronzerider mentions shaving as though there were such a thing as blasphemy on Pern. But he doesn't outright say he doesn't like the idea. Does he have to after that reaction? "If you're going to go through with all the… feelings of going back, you should go as the man you are, baby. You don't need to be the man they want you to be anymore. Just be you, and let them deal with it." If only V'ro could take his own advice and deal more gracefully with F'yr just being who he is. But he's trying.
—
DOESN'T HE?? It's not like F'yr is the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to some things. This time, however, maybe he did get it, because his lips quirk just a little, at the look V'ro made a point of pulling back to give him. "I couldn't be that man even if I wanted to try. I don't. That…" He trails off a moment, marshaling words that explain complex things adequately. "That person was more their ideas manifest than a real person. I was who I thought I was expected to be, who I thought I should be with the hand I'd been dealt. But that… being defined by those things, those ideas… they were never really me. What was real was my sense of responsibility, of duty, my love for my family, or the ideas I had of them I suppose." He gives a little shrug as his meandering words find themselves adding just one too many levels of complexity to give attention to just this moment.
What he wants to say now is something that comes with one of his hands curling along V'ro's jaw, thumb brushing his cheek. "The person you know is real. I know I'm not… I'm not always what you wish I am, but…" He's real. He's honest. His brow furrows as if perhaps not sure what he was hoping for it to count for, or how to finish the rest, so he leaves it with another little helpless shrug.
—
V'ro might look vaguely disappointed there for a moment, to be reminded that they're just kind of clinging to something intangible between them, but he tries to lean in closer where F'yr can't look at his dumb, expressive face. "Who I want doesn't matter. You just be who you need to be. And I'll be whoever I end up being." He'll figure it out one of these days. But for right now he'll just be happy to be the one in the big bronzerider's arms.
—
In a way, F'yr would want to apologize for the harm caused by the fact that he doesn't refute V'ro's assertion that who he wants doesn't matter, but because there's a part of him that might wish to disagree, but there's no part of him that can. So in the face of suddenly finding their way back here after things had been going so well, if only for a few minutes, he's keeping V'ro in his embrace for a moment, two moments longer, then pressing a face into his hair to kiss his head and murmur a soft, "I love you, Khav." He doesn't wait for a response before offering, "Something to drink before I show you again just how much?" Because they may be able to consistently fuck things up between them with words, but their bodies do pretty well at being simpatico.