A/N: Y'all get out your erasers, cuz we're retconning the shit out of this storyline. Having Dal shit out a baby was dumb, and we don't tolerate dumb 'round here anymore (she says, knowing that she'll probably think that this is dumb in two years). After this I guess I'll have to update the second chapter of Crossing Borders, too, because new timing.
Also, this chapter starts out raunchy as hell, like Rated-M-for-sex raunchy (she says, refusing to change the story rating for this piece of a chapter). Because backstory is important, to go along with that new timing. And also because I don't think I've ever written a straight lemon before and I wanna branch out, even if this doesn't really count. If you don't wanna read the raunch, I'll start and the sexy part with ..~.. so you'll know where to skip to.
This is gonna be great.
..~..
"You're so sensitive like this," Marcurio breathes in between kisses, the smirk that doesn't have time to appear on his face resting in his tone.
"Stop teasing me," it comes out in a whisper, and she tries to push her thighs together, but the Imperial holds her right where she is. "Marc—"
Her whimpered demand is cut short, and turned into a shriek, when he bites the inside of her thigh. She has to press a hand over her mouth as he begins to suck a bruise into the soft flesh there, especially because he's keeping her almost entirely still with very little effort. When he finally pulls back, lapping the flat of his tongue over the dark purple mark, the breath she lets out shakes. "... I don't like this."
"You don't? I do." He presses his lips against a spot a bit further up her thigh, and she tenses in anticipation. "See? Sensitive. And I'm stronger than you now."
Dal's response is grumbled under her breath. "Not a good thing."
"It is, you'll see," Marc murmurs, peppering more kisses along the Dunmer's thighs. "Gods, you're so soft…"
"Stop," she whines, the teasing pecks that land everywhere except where she really wants them driving her up the wall, but then the Imperial finally lowers his head, sliding his hands up both of her legs, and he kisses her.
A gasp passes through her lips, and her fingers slip down encouragingly into his hair almost on their own. Amber eyes flick up to her face, a cheeky smirk dancing in them, before they close and Marcurio focuses on the task at hand—it's all gentle kisses, and warm swirls or flicks of tongue, and occasionally his lips close around her and he sucks and her eyes damn near roll back in her head. Her skin's all gone to gooseflesh, every inch of it chilling over and tingling, except that tiny spot between her legs where Marc is focusing his attention. That stays very, very warm.
Dalamus opens her eyes, which is actually really fucking hard to do right now, and the tingles surge over her skin at the sight of her husband's head bobbing between her legs. She wishes she could watch, could see as well as feel the way his mouth moves on her below that patch of white hair, but feeling is doing a spectacular job on its own. There's a damp patch in the covers under her ass that she's sure is her doing, and when Marcurio makes a low, rumbling, delicious noise against her skin she knows she's about to do a lot more doing.
"Marc," she gasps, tugging gently but insistently at his hair, "Marc, I'm—!"
Dal doesn't even manage to get the rest of the sentence out; the words die on her lips at the way his arms immediately tighten around her legs, and he tucks in with renewed vigor.
She comes embarrassingly fast.
But she doesn't have time to be embarrassed about it; her eyes squeeze shut, and everything after that is pure bliss… the tingles return a hundredfold, dancing over her skin as everything inside her sinks, like she's falling. Marc keeps going, but gently, drawing the sensation out a little longer with each lick.
When her body finally stops trembling she opens her eyes and lets out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. She can feel her pulse everywhere, like the base of her skull and her arms and her knees and, most importantly, between her legs. At her glance down she sees her husband gazing back up at her with awestruck eyes.
"I love you," he says dreamily, turning his head to kiss her thigh. "That was amazing to watch."
"I've never come like that in my life," she murmurs back, a little amazed herself.
Marcurio chuckles, wiggling his fingers at her. "Women."
He crawls up her body, settling between her legs, and trails kisses upwards as he goes. "Still hate this body?" he asks when they're face to face, his forehead resting on hers.
"It's still something I'll have to get used to," she answers, because coming with her entire body is nice, but there are other things in life. "But I can't say I'm unhappy right now."
"I'll take that," Marc murmurs it right as their lips meet, and Dalamus' hands come up to frame his face on both sides. The kiss is soft, and deep, and he feels more than hears her let out a little hum when she tastes herself on his tongue. He reaches back with his free hand, the one not holding him up, and draws her thigh up along the side of his body. Her heel presses into the small of his back as he kisses down her neck, burying his face in her shoulder, and with a tilt of his hips, slips inside her.
And he immediately has to pause, because it's been a long time since he was last inside a woman.
His groan is muffled by Dal's skin, and his toes dig into the bedsheets. He'd thought she was soft on the outside, but inside? Inside she's like silk, and warm, and wet, and so, so tight.
"Gods—" he chokes out, and the hand not holding her leg tightens in the sheets near their heads. Dalamus, in turn, lets out a sharp breath into his shoulder, and when he pulls back to look she's staring up at him, eyes wide with wonder. "... Okay?" it's all he can get out right now, but the cautious concern in his voice is apparent.
Her response is a little nod, and Marcurio is pulled back down on top of her body when her heel presses insistently into his back. "I know that's not all you've got," she murmurs it so close that her lips touch his ear, arms sliding around his shoulders and pulling him in close. "I want it all."
He comes embarrassingly fast.
Not at that moment, but not very long after, because, apparently, he can't handle himself inside a vagina. And he does have time to be embarrassed; he's still rocking his hips into hers, halfway through a groan against her neck, when the realization hits him. His eyes snap open and he shoots upright, the last waves of pleasure ignored in lieu of trying to come up with an explanation for the nonsense that just transpired because that is not how this was supposed to go!
Dal has a hand over her mouth, obviously trying to hold in a laugh, and her eyes are dancing with the ridicule she won't verbalize.
He holds up a finger, mouth opening to say something, anything, but all that comes out is, "... Don't."
The laugh escapes, and Marc falls backwards onto the bottom half of the bed with a groan, burying his face in his hands. Dalamus sits up to chase him, still laughing as she tries to get her words out, "No—Marc, I—I'm so sorry—it's okay, really!"
"It's not okay," he grumbles, refusing to move his hands even as she tugs at his arms. "I'm better than that, and you know it."
"I know, love, I know," the laughing has stopped, at least, and he finally lets her pull one hand from his face. "But we do have all night for you to do better."
..~..
Marcurio rolls over onto his side, pulling the covers up and over his shoulder, and it takes his sleep-addled brain a moment, but he realizes that he's alone in bed. The dip that Dal's body had occupied is cool; he'd been out of bed for a while, why? The Dunmer rarely ever gets up in the middle of the night.
Rubbing at an eye and arching his back in a stretch, Marc gets out of bed, keeping the sheets wrapped around his body in the cooler nighttime air as he makes his way out of the bedroom. "Dal?"
What he gets in reply is a weak groan from under the stairs, and the concern that spikes through his nerves sends him rushing down those stairs to get to the Dragonborn. Dalamus is curled around a bucket, his face an ashen blue-gray, and he'd tossed his hair up over his shoulder just in time to get it out of the way. He takes a few deep breaths, looks up to see what the fuss is all about, but the quick movement of his head sends him right back to retching into the bucket.
"Baby, what's wrong?" Marcurio asks gently, settling beside him, and both of his hands are already glowing golden when he reaches out to brush the damp white locks out of his face.
"I don't know," the silverhead murmurs, spitting out a sour gob of saliva. He tips his head over into the Imperial's glowing hand, the magic curling into his skin and settling his roiling stomach… for a few seconds, because the sensation returns again with a vengeance, and he barely has time to get his face into the bucket before he's throwing up the last of the contents of his stomach.
Marc tries to offer the other hand, reaching out to touch the other side of the Dunmer's face, but he jerks back. "Stop, that just makes it worse."
"Sorry," the mage mutters, and he kills the flow of magicka to his fingers, but keeps them where they are, gently supporting his husband's head. "What did we eat last night? Was there something wrong with the goat roast? I'll have to have a conversation with Anoriath—"
"No, it's not the goat," Dal interrupts, "This has been happening for the last few days."
"Days? What do you mean, 'days'? How many days?" The words all come out at once, spurred by a fresh wave of anxiety that courses through Marcurio's veins like ice.
The silverhead frowns, thinking, "Since Middas."
"Middas? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought I could just wait for it to pass, don't worry about it."
"But Dal—"
"I'm fine," the Dunmer says, his voice ringing with finality… or, it would have, if it didn't shake a little at the end of that sentence.
"If you say so."
The words have barely passed his lips when Dalamus leans for the bucket again.
…
Despite the early start to their day, Marc is up a bit after sunrise.
He gets out of bed with a yawn, stretching his arms over his head, and pulls on a pair of pants before heading down the stairs. Breakfast is cheese and butter on a slice of bread, warmed over the coals of the dying fire and inhaled with half a bottle of mead leftover from last night. After that he shaves away three days' worth of beard, which continues to grow in way too fast and way too thick despite the fact that he's cut his facial hair the exact same way for the last fifteen years. The patch below his lip is nice and neat when he's finished.
It's approaching noon by the time he's gotten into his work in the alchemy lab, boiling down a portion of dragon's tongue nectar for a customer's order of a salve, and crushing a few different herbs while the liquid reduces. He's smearing it into a paste on the table when Dal finally descends the stairs above him, and he's happy to leave it alone for a moment to go meet him.
"Well, good morning," Marcurio quips teasingly as the Dunmer hits the bottom of the stairs, and it catches him in the middle of the yawn, so it takes him a moment to respond.
"Morning," he mumbles back, and leans in for a quick kiss.
"Feeling any better?"
Dalamus shrugs, swallowing just to see how it feels. "I'm okay. It usually gets better a little later in the day."
"I made cheese toast earlier this morning, do you want some?"
"No, thanks," he doesn't even have to take a whiff of the thick, savory scent of melted cheese that still lingers to feel his stomach clench nauseously. "I'll eat something at Jorrvaskr. There should be some new work coming through, if you're up for a trip."
"I'm always up for a trip. Just let me know when." Marc's eyes narrow at the face his husband makes, the heavy bob of the knot in his navy throat. He'd caught that.
They kiss again before Dal leaves, and the mage returns to his work. He takes his time carefully finishing, packaging, and delivering the items he'd made as per the orders he'd received. Fralia Grey-Mane, the customer who'd ordered the dragon's tongue salve, kisses him on the cheek when he takes it to her stand at the market. "It's good for my hands," she explains, already rubbing a bit between her gnarled fingers. "Keeps the old bones from aching."
When Marcurio gets back home he settles in front of the fire pit, drawing magicka up to his fingertips, and begins to attempt the telekinesis spell he's still trying to get the hang of. It's slow going but he's actually got the cooking pot up a few inches when Dalamus comes marching into the house, a wrinkled sheet of paper in his hand and a grin on his face. Needless to say, the mage's concentration shatters and the pot clatters rudely back into its holder.
"Oh—!" he takes pause, hand hovering just beyond his lips, "Sorry…"
"No, fuck it, I'm done," Marc growls, pushing the chair he's in away from the fire with his feet and stuffing his painfully-tingling fingertips under both armpits. His eyes are closed, an attempt to ward off the headache he knows is coming, but he hears the door close, and footsteps crossing the room, and then there's an elf straddling his lap, knees pressed in between his thighs and the arms of the chair.
"You'll get it," the Dunmer says gently, leaning in to give the mage a kiss on the cheek. The skin under his lips is shaved smooth; there's a hum of delight and another kiss. "You shaved."
Marcurio wraps his arms around the other's waist, pulling him close. "I shaved this morning, you didn't notice then?"
"I was exhausted," is Dal's excuse, and he's sticking to it.
"So, what was on the thing?"
"Hm?" he sits up, then remembers what Marc's talking about, and pulls the folded sheet out of a pocket on his thigh. "Oh, right. Some bandits stole an amulet from the wrong person, apparently. Want to go with me to get it back?"
The Imperial lets out an indifferent grunt, reaching out to tilt the paper so he can read it. "That's what you were so excited about?"
A blue finger comes pointing right in the middle of the sentence he's reading, and he follows its direction. It stops right over the word 'Rift'. "Let's go see some friends, while we're in the neighborhood."
"When do we leave?"
…
The sun is blazing a dying gold when they cross the bridge into Ivarstead. They'd gotten off to a slow start—Dalamus had taken a short nap after their late lunch, and the still-unnamed horse hadn't been especially keen to slip and slide down the icy paths in the southernmost part of their journey—but they do get there in one piece, and before nightfall at that.
The Vilemyr Inn is quaint and warm and full of friendly patrons. Marcurio pays for the room, a tight little spot in the corner with no door, while his husband makes friends, and said husband is about three seconds away from diving headfirst into a drinking competition before the Imperial steps in, reminding said husband that it's not a particularly good idea after the events of this morning. Said husband does a little bit of grumbling, privately, and then a lot of grandstanding, publicly, declaring that next time he'll drink his opponent under the table, no question. Marc just rolls his eyes and drags him along to bed for a good night's rest.
But any hopes Dal has of getting a good night's rest are dashed when he wakes up to his organs protesting their place inside his body.
He turns away from his place at his husband's back with a low groan, taking little sips of air into lungs that feel like they couldn't sustain a full breath if they tried, as he tries to get himself seated on the floor beside the bed as quietly as possible. The revelry out around the hearth has ended, leaving him hyperventilating on the ground in the dark red glow by himself, alone with his fear and the gasping sounds of him just trying to get enough oxygen to deal with the pain.
"Nn… Dal?"
He gasps, and it hurts, and his voice is like the groan of a door hinge when he tries answering. "Yeah?"
"Dal?" He sounds a lot more awake this time. Fuck. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Dalamus tries his damndest to sound remotely normal, but he can barely get enough air in to speak and everything between his heart and his dick is one solid mass of complaint.
"Dalamus." the other's voice is right behind his head, and he finally gives in, clutching his stomach with a desperate whimper. It's too hard to focus on both convincing the Imperial to go back to sleep and breathing.
"It hurts…"
It should be amazing to witness, the way Marcurio leaps out of bed to kneel in front of his husband, but Dal isn't looking. He's dying, and his eyes don't want to open. He does sense when the mage settles in front of him, and there are hands are all over his body, insistently looking for the problem.
"What is it, what happened?" Marc is whisper-yelling at him and all he's trying to do is breathe. The concern is appreciated but if he pushes his stomach in like that again, they're going to fight.
"Nothing happened, it just hurts," it's a low whine, and he presses his hands into his thighs just to make his body feel something other than this awful cramping.
"What hurts?"
"Everything."
There's heat flooding down his throat that he doesn't know what to do with; usually he's able to force it away, but that's not something he can manage at the moment. It feels wrong to just let the sensation sit, neither using it nor pushing it away, but he doesn't have to worry about it for long because there are hands on him. One is cupping the side of his face and the other rests right above his navel and Gods bless Marcurio for the calm spell he casts.
"Hey, hey," the mage murmurs gently, his thumb brushing over a brow creased in pain. "Breathe for me, okay? Just breathe."
Dalamus breathes, and it's such a relief to actually fill his lungs with air for once. The calm settles on him like a blanket, quieting his panicked breathing and teasing the cramp apart like a knot. His eyes open and all he sees is the concern scrawled across the mage's face; why couldn't he have kept quiet? Their bags are piled in the corner, really not all that far away—he should have crawled over there and used some of the potions he hoards, instead of waking the Imperial up.
Marc is breathing with him, taking in deep lungfuls of air as if to remind him how it's done. When he's satisfied that the Dunmer hasn't forgotten how air works he lifts both hands to that still-pale face, meeting red eyes in the glow of the coals out on the hearth. "Are you okay?"
"Mhm," he hums in response, suddenly overcome with exhaustion.
There's a pause as the mage takes a long look at him, then a tiny little sigh. "Come on, let's get back to bed."
…
The rest of the night goes without incident, and Marcurio wakes to the sun shining through the slats in the roof onto his face. The bed, of course, is empty, but that's not a surprise; instead of asking himself stupid questions the Imperial just gathers their things and turns to leave.
"Your elf friend is outside," Wilhelm grunts as he passes, without looking up from the bar as he wipes away at the flagon in his hands. "You just missed him. He was looking a little green around the gills."
Well that means Dal couldn't have gone far. Marc thanks the barkeep, dropping an extra bit of coin on the counter, and heads outside. He literally takes three steps, just enough to exit the inn's porch, before he's graced with the delightful sound of his husband retching up his dinner into the river.
"So are you going to tell me what's going on?" the Imperial huffs as he stands, swishing river water around his mouth and spitting a final time.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, you've been throwing up every morning for days—your words," he feels the need to tack that part on there when the Dunmer opens his mouth, surely to disagree, "And you won't talk about what the reason could be. Have you started doing skooma or something?"
That deserves a laugh, apparently, because one explodes out of Dalamus, a single bark of disbelief. "No, Marcurio, I'm not doing skooma."
Marcurio crosses his arms. "Then what else have you been doing? Because this isn't normal. I'd say you were pregnant if it were possible, but it isn't, so what's the next best guess? What was that last night?"
"Just a stomachache, I guess," Dal shrugs; he's already tired of having this conversation, because there's nothing for him to add. Better to just let it pass and move on with their lives.
But, of course, he just can't have nice things. "That was not a stomachache."
He huffs. "Well I don't know what it was any more than you do."
"That's fine," there's a pause, and the Dunmer thinks he's gotten away with dropping the subject. He's taken two or three steps up the path, on the way to get the horse, when Marc continues, "We're going to see the healers at the temple when we get to Riften."
And his voice actually does ring with finality, no shaking involved.
"For what?" Dalamus groans it, turning around to face him again with all the patience of an unhappy toddler.
"What do you mean, 'for what'? When's the last time your dinner came out your ass and not back up your throat?"
"I'm sick, I don't doubt that! But I don't need to fix it immediately; there is the option to let it run its course."
"But what if you're not sick?" Marcurio's voice drops suddenly, and the shock of it flows over Dal in a wave of goosebumps. "If you were sick I would have been able to heal you yesterday. What if something bad happened, Dal? Like a… a curse, or some kind of poisoning? Did you think about that?"
"That's ridiculous, I haven't done anything that would get me cursed. You should know that, you've been everywhere I've been." But he looks away, his own voice dropping, because no, he hadn't thought about that.
"Well, neither of us have another idea, so we're going to see someone who can give us a better idea."
"Give me until we get back home, at least." it isn't supposed to sound like a question, but he's come to terms with begging by the time he's gotten all the words out. "If I'm not better by then—"
"Absolutely not," Marc walks all over the bargain he didn't even know how to finish, with a firm voice that leaves absolutely no room for argument. "We are going while we're in Riften, and if you'd stop arguing with me we might make it by nightfall."
Dalamus opens his mouth, trying one more time to plead his case, but the glare the mage levels at him dares him to even try. Instead he just sighs, and throws his hands up in the air. "Fine. I'll go get the damn horse."
…
A/N: God, this chapter became such a monster. I had NO intention of it getting this huge, and also I was supposed to upload this shit like 2 weeks ago, and I'm sorry. I'm immediately gonna hop on the next half of the chapter because I'm on a roll. I love this new version of things.
Back with the other half as soon as I can. xo