Title: The Ribbon and the Ring 30/?

Author: Seraphim Grace
Archive: if you want it ask, I just like to know where they are. http://seraphim-grace. Always appreciated and replied to.
Rating: 18 (This is an open rating so I don't have to worry).
Pairings: 1x2
Warnings: Angst. Some gore. Some incredibly bad French. 3x4 lemon this chapter

Notes: AU, and features necromancy.

Emithi moved her court to Dathyl of the Jetties at the repeated bequest of both Tobin and Josian, she had a large townhouse in the suburbs of Ashton. It was a small palace as these things were measured but large enough for a lady of her stature. Although in her close household she was Emithi and she was very much mother to all who crossed her path and sometimes a wanton woman who teased and flirted, outside of it she was the Bishop of Amitre with all that that entailed. "You," she said pushing Trowa's hair back to reveal his face, "you shall be my page," then she grinned, "and listen to everything that the people tell me and tell me the truth of it, and you," she turned to Quatre will be my fool and wait on me and my pleasure."

"I can't allow it," Danev said, "the boy is crippled with headaches, if he was to attend you he might collapse, it is bad for his health and I will not allow it." He stood up to his full height before the Bishop, for in such things Emithi was the bishop and not the woman with her name, a mere chattel with barely a name to commend him and lands that he was unable to claim for himself. "There is a much better doctor than me in Dramathen, he might be able to cure the boy's headaches, I ask leave to bring him there."

They were settled in the city and Trowa found himself busy with small tasks that allowed him into places that a guest of the bishop could not attend. Emithi had understood that he might quickly bore of the life of a young noble, because it seemed that they were feckless and did little until late afternoon where they wandered the streets in bright colours and bullied and bluffed about the town before falling into one of the city's many brothels until dawn when they rolled home full of liquor and perfumed oils.

The pages often worked much harder than Emithi worked Trowa, he carried messages and was given small favours for his effort, the smiles of older ladies and the kisses of maidens. He soon discovered Dathyl was a lusty town. He heard rumours and allegiances all of which he gladly passed back to Emithi or her seneschal, a dusty old man with a sharp tongue and a lingering eye.

His evenings he spent with the lady Calydon, she was not one for the perfumed bowers of most of the ladies, but the scents that lingered in her hair were those of leather and steel. Sometimes she welcomed him into her bed and sometimes she found a quiet corner for them to clash with swords. She fascinated him, like deadly things are wont to do, and often he felt his fingertips lingering on the terrible scar on her back of which she would not speak. Like Emithi she would push back his bangs to stare into his eyes, "you are too handsome," she'd laugh, "to hide behind all that hair, now come at me, if you're man enough." Sometimes the sparring ended in kisses, sometimes in blows. But if she tore his livery, as sometimes she did, Emithi replaced it with nary a question as to why. Within a few weeks Trowa had found himself slipped into a comfortable life and had no intention to change it.

"I'm to go to Dramathen." Quatre said one morning, Emithi had put the two of them into the same bed, a wide affair piled high with furs and soft sheets, Quatre curled up in the corner with a stuffed fur bundled up in his arms and it was not like sharing the bed at all. He was sprawled out, as much as he could with such a tiny frame, in the bed like he had been debauched with a pink flush to his cheeks and chest. "Danev is to take me to see the princess, apparently she will be able to cure my headaches."

"Where is Dramathen?" Trowa asked.

"To the north, it is the capital of the empire." Quatre said, "Duo said that he'd been there and that the people were nice enough, but this princess is apparently some great doctor according to Danev." He scratched at his chest without a thought of how he might look or that he might be watched, "and she will know how to fix my headaches and then I can come back and actually be good for something other than fainting."

Trowa said nothing.

"I don't know if you're to come with me, but I'm to go at the end of the week, Danev has booked a carriage and everything. I'm to check some things with Sir Cameron, which means seeing Wufei, who won't want to be separated from his books given half a chance." He sat up, his skin had a transparent sheen to it in the thin light that came through the curtains and a for a long moment Trowa wondered what his skin would taste like, of how such soft looking skin would feel under his fingers but then he thought of Calydon's lips which were like slices of poisoned fruit and her skin which was like soft butter tanned leather and Quatre no longer held an interest for him because he did not maintain that same sense that he might lash out at any moment and kill him. Any lust he had for Quatre in that moment was fleeting. It seemed Quatre could tell, because he twisted in such a way that the lines of his ribs were on show and the bowl of his hips and a few wisps of silvery blonde pubic hair.

The wave of lust that rolled over Trowa surprised him because he had not thought that Quatre attracted him that way. He had no compunctions over where his hungers found him, male or female he didn't care, he had sampled both, but he was attached to Calydon, though he was loathe to call it love. Quatre lolled back on the bed revealing the bowl of his stomach, "I will probably be in Dramathen for a long time, Danev said it will be several weeks just to travel there, even with the weather so clement." He stretched hollowing out the skin beneath his ribs and across his stomach and Trowa felt his mouth water, part of him wondered if Quatre knew exactly what it was that he was doing. Trowa stepped up and fastened the latch on the door. If Quatre had been so kind as to offer who was he to refuse such a gift.

When he woke Trowa was bone-driven and tired, he was slick with sweat and dried semen, and his hair had been swept back from his face so as not to disturb him.

Folded on the pillow was a note which he picked up by slightly turning and then settling back into the well of his own body heat, his body was heavy and slack. He wasn't sure how many times he and Quatre had fucked, his body ached, and the room stunk of sex. He opened the page. "My dearest Trowa, my apologies for using you this way, but I would not travel to Dramathen without something with which to remember you. I do not know when I will return but I hoped that you would feel my lust for you. I won't hold out hope that there will be more than this, but thank you.

Yours, Quatre."