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and fic!
And Swordspoint fic, in case anyone who cares isn't on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
_riverside:
http://community.livejournal.com/_riverside/10479.html
TITLE: Beauty
AUTHOR:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rm
PAIRING: Richard/Alec
RATING: PG
NOTES: Swordspoint
DISCLAIMER: These lovely characters belong, of course, to Ellen Kushner
Richard has the most beautiful thighs Alec has ever seen, and Alec has seen a great deal of flesh. For all his confidence, for all the ways in which he gently chides Alec for being poor at accepting both praise and lust, Richard is clearly discomforted by his friend's admiration.
You're so beautiful, Alec says, rubbing his face against Richard's calf, a kiss to the ankle before moving up, before twisting his face first against the muscles of outer thigh, then inner.
When Alec does this, Richard pets his hair absently and tries to encourage him to lie back on the bed with him, but what Alec wants to do, Alec is going to do, and this sort of thing is hardly worth the battle. He does wish the scholar wouldn't though, as pleasant as the tingle of Alec's skin before shaving is against flesh that simply isn't ever touched enough. But in recognizing the beauty of others, Alec often forgets about his own, and he simply doesn't understand that Richard has never chosen for a moment to look like this.
It frustrates the swordsman that Alec doesn't see that he's not quite tall enough, that he's built just a hair too solidly, and that his muscles are asymmetrical no matter how often he works to be certain he can fight with either arm. Richard knows, simply, that he is merely designed to do what he does -- maintain his own life at the expense of others through the instrument of the sword. If he weren't so practical about it, if it hadn't been such a ridiculous accident that he was ever trained with a blade, he would thank the heavens that he found a task to which his imperfect form is so well suited. He remembers thinking when he was younger, when he first picked up a sword -- not a practice weapon, but a real one -- that he hoped the sword was thankful too.
Just as Richard doesn't carry his weapon for vanity as the nobles on the Hill do, he doesn't carry his body for such either. It is merely the price the sword demands, and Richard believes, fundamentally, in considering it a price, no matter what Alec, cooing anddesirous, has to say about it.
It was something between a joke and a convenience that Richard was first put in front of a swordsmaster. My boys should have someone to practice with beyond than each other, the noble who had always been kind had told him. Later, after the master had realized Richard would surpass those well-born children in a way that would surely end his lessons and insisted he only work with his unfavoured hand in their presence, he explained the truth of his training. He's worried the younger will kill the older over the title, and after that Richard hadn't really been able to look at any of them the same way again, and eventually it was why he left for the city.
In the mornings he drilled with the right with the other boys. In the evenings, he ran back for more lessons, this time with the left, for the development of the hand he was never supposed to favour; an ill-omen that only a peasant woman wouldn't think to eradicate, he'd been told. When there were other students present, Richard remembers they would all watch each other with jealous and wide eyes. At home, his mother would be asleep by the fire and there would be food left as well as the strange trinkets of her world, which always seemed to have borders he could never quite share or conquer.
Why are you so beautiful? Alec asks it softly, puffs of air skittering along Richard's limbs, unless Alec is drunk. Then the question is more of a whine.
Efficient, Richard corrects sometimes, smiling, knowing Alec will disagree, will tell him about how he fights, how he fucks.
Too good to be efficient, his delicate creature will say, and it's usually enough to get him to climb back up to the top of the bed for kisses and similar delights.
Other times, it's utilitarian and Alec will tease him for so many syllables and then grow quiet and say low and serious, For yourself. Not for others. Richard will have to soothe him then, sitting up to pull the scholar into his arms. People hire me, Alec, they don't use me, I promise.
It's why you don't do weddings! Alec always laughs at his own joke then, and Richard is always glad for that mood to be lightened, and so he never says, No, that's because they're boring. But it is why i don't teach.
_riverside:http://community.livejournal.com/_riverside/10479.html
TITLE: Beauty
AUTHOR:
rmPAIRING: Richard/Alec
RATING: PG
NOTES: Swordspoint
DISCLAIMER: These lovely characters belong, of course, to Ellen Kushner
Richard has the most beautiful thighs Alec has ever seen, and Alec has seen a great deal of flesh. For all his confidence, for all the ways in which he gently chides Alec for being poor at accepting both praise and lust, Richard is clearly discomforted by his friend's admiration.
You're so beautiful, Alec says, rubbing his face against Richard's calf, a kiss to the ankle before moving up, before twisting his face first against the muscles of outer thigh, then inner.
When Alec does this, Richard pets his hair absently and tries to encourage him to lie back on the bed with him, but what Alec wants to do, Alec is going to do, and this sort of thing is hardly worth the battle. He does wish the scholar wouldn't though, as pleasant as the tingle of Alec's skin before shaving is against flesh that simply isn't ever touched enough. But in recognizing the beauty of others, Alec often forgets about his own, and he simply doesn't understand that Richard has never chosen for a moment to look like this.
It frustrates the swordsman that Alec doesn't see that he's not quite tall enough, that he's built just a hair too solidly, and that his muscles are asymmetrical no matter how often he works to be certain he can fight with either arm. Richard knows, simply, that he is merely designed to do what he does -- maintain his own life at the expense of others through the instrument of the sword. If he weren't so practical about it, if it hadn't been such a ridiculous accident that he was ever trained with a blade, he would thank the heavens that he found a task to which his imperfect form is so well suited. He remembers thinking when he was younger, when he first picked up a sword -- not a practice weapon, but a real one -- that he hoped the sword was thankful too.
Just as Richard doesn't carry his weapon for vanity as the nobles on the Hill do, he doesn't carry his body for such either. It is merely the price the sword demands, and Richard believes, fundamentally, in considering it a price, no matter what Alec, cooing anddesirous, has to say about it.
It was something between a joke and a convenience that Richard was first put in front of a swordsmaster. My boys should have someone to practice with beyond than each other, the noble who had always been kind had told him. Later, after the master had realized Richard would surpass those well-born children in a way that would surely end his lessons and insisted he only work with his unfavoured hand in their presence, he explained the truth of his training. He's worried the younger will kill the older over the title, and after that Richard hadn't really been able to look at any of them the same way again, and eventually it was why he left for the city.
In the mornings he drilled with the right with the other boys. In the evenings, he ran back for more lessons, this time with the left, for the development of the hand he was never supposed to favour; an ill-omen that only a peasant woman wouldn't think to eradicate, he'd been told. When there were other students present, Richard remembers they would all watch each other with jealous and wide eyes. At home, his mother would be asleep by the fire and there would be food left as well as the strange trinkets of her world, which always seemed to have borders he could never quite share or conquer.
Why are you so beautiful? Alec asks it softly, puffs of air skittering along Richard's limbs, unless Alec is drunk. Then the question is more of a whine.
Efficient, Richard corrects sometimes, smiling, knowing Alec will disagree, will tell him about how he fights, how he fucks.
Too good to be efficient, his delicate creature will say, and it's usually enough to get him to climb back up to the top of the bed for kisses and similar delights.
Other times, it's utilitarian and Alec will tease him for so many syllables and then grow quiet and say low and serious, For yourself. Not for others. Richard will have to soothe him then, sitting up to pull the scholar into his arms. People hire me, Alec, they don't use me, I promise.
It's why you don't do weddings! Alec always laughs at his own joke then, and Richard is always glad for that mood to be lightened, and so he never says, No, that's because they're boring. But it is why i don't teach.