Call and Response (Azzy)

[Cathaline]

It was over.

In theory.

There were things happening in Newt's mind which had been happening, intermittently or constantly, for six months now. All Jafask had done was tear down his carefully-constructed walls and let the pain flood back in, shining, resplendent, brutal. It was gone again now but so were six months of kindness, compassion, friendship and rebuilding, and it left him hollow and used up tonight.

Going to the sands had been a bad choice. He'd done it for Letorin. He'd done it for Kalesk. He hadn't been thinking enough to figure on doing it for himself, doing what was best for himself, because this was Newt's biggest secret - people looked at him and saw someone socially inept and narcissistic but they didn't see that he was anything but selfish. He never did anything just for himself. He did it for science or for the few friends he could manage to get and keep. In retrospect his life was an endless array of bad choices which had all led him to the sands.

Would it always be like this? Every time he walked out there, would he end up with his heart torn out? He'd been clinging to the fact that he could re-Impress, especially since Newsk hadn't fully bonded to him before he was brutally torn away. But maybe he could never be Inrahim, maybe he could never be Sebolaren, maybe it just wasn't in him to attract somebody else. He was a shining target for the wrath of confused babies who just wanted to cut through the murk and find their glowing perfect matches.

And the worst part was that he'd put that target on Letorin's back. Somehow. Still didn't understand how. But Jafask had made that perfectly clear.

As soon as the healers had suggested he should leave Letorin's side, he'd gone. There was so much to worry about tonight that it was easy to dodge the healers, and he knew exactly where he was going, dodging through twisted tunnels until he found the weyr he was searching for and barged in. L'xon was probably asleep but Newt didn't care, he didn't care, he just immediately started talking because there were just enough people in the barracks and on patrol that this was the only place he could talk, fretful, restless, half on the ledge.

"I am sick," he burst out, not knowing who was listening, L'xon or Halventh or maybe a pet or maybe nothing but stone walls. "I am sick, you know that? Newtollen, what is wrong with your brain, that little bastard ripped it to shreds and all you want is to go say, hi, little bastard, what's up, you're really pretty and I want to know how your mind ticks, how do you work, what are you thinking about, and how did you do it, Jafask, how could you reach into me and say one word and transport me? One word, just one word, am I always going to be like this? Am I always going to be a panic attack waiting to happen? Is it safe for me to have people who like me? Is it safe for me to be here, is it safe for me to be? He's an iron, they're supposed to be nice. But so are browns! So are browns. It's amazing to me that we try to divide them, that we try to say 'here is what reds are like, here is what golds are like' when it's not like you can say it about humans. He broke my glasses. They broke my eyes and my mind and my heart, so what's left of me, just a collection of scars. That's it. Nothing else. Scars and legs to walk away. But I can't walk away. I want to meet him. I want to show up at their lesson tomorrow, like I do for Yhimere, and say, hi, Rask, thanks for the memories. Hi, Jafask, I do not thank you for the memories, but let's get together for klah sometime, and maybe you can tell me how you work. I'll let you pick apart my brain if I can just get into yours - I would let him, I would let him into me again I would do that in a second and in a heartbeat and I would do it because I am so beyond crazy but the thing is, the thing really is - I always have been. The really amazing thing is that this is not new. It's just that I can't hide it anymore."

[Azhdarchid]

The humming of strange, persistent summer creatures drifted across the eastern wall of the Bowl. They moved between the bell-cups of flowering weeds that hid from dragonfire in the crags of the rock, and flashed the occasional tail-light. Here I am. Too tiny to matter in your schemes, and you too great and wretched to matter in mine. Sometimes the wind blew right, and the echoing groans and snores of dragons yielded to the one-note chorus of insects.

"...I am sick, you know that? Newtollen, what is wrong with your brain, that little bastard ripped it to shreds..."

L'xon had been climbing onto his bed, one knee up against the mattress, but he froze like a cat at the sound. He blinked hard, and began searching helplessly around his dark room- one eye at least, the other now under incidental pampering from the pack of bandages the healers had molded from cheek to brow. He had closed his glows, but moonslight still reached in for him and gilded his legs in silver. He eased off the bed and felt his way to his open wardrobe, from which he pulled out a narrow robe. It was geared more to Weyrling than rider. He hadn't needed a robe in a long time in this isolated weyr, nearly a hundred dragonlengths from ground and without any occupied neighbors. He could feel the sleeves sticking around his bicep. He glanced down, then pulled on a pair of light cloth trousers as well.

Almost on his toes as an autumnal chill spread under his bare feet, he exited his sanctum and confronted the intruder. He had to jog past the semicoiled length of Halventh. Weary of an evening spent relaxing Ablath, the blue had already fallen asleep. But as the Candidate's heart bled on, he sighed, and L'xon touched the side of his cavernous ribcage to quiet him.

Then he was on Newt. Almost toe-to-toe with the pushy, babbling reject. There were no doors or locks in the weyrs, so it was technically the wrong way to think on it. But L'xon found a dull comfort in his regime of routine and having it interrupted left him nerveshot. He grabbed Newtollen's shoulder and dragged him deeper into the weyr, further from spying moonslight. Then he initiated a paradox, in that he cracked open the amber eye of a glowbasket he used for late night oiling sessions. The basket had filter paper pressed in-between the spores and the glass, giving it its warmer tint. It was not a grand light, but it wrote his silhouette sharp under the robe and gave him the portrait of his speaker's face.

It was very hard not to push on his standard line of questioning when faced with a miscreant. L'xon had been drilled on how guilt scored men's faces and voices. Each short word, each hesitation and grimace had meaning; but Newtollen had skipped inquiry in his opening remarks. He reveled in the crime of existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, L'xon shoved his brain through what was actually being said. What he had to say. To what end...

"Kalesk demanded that you stay," he said. "I asked the Candidatemaster after Rask- Kalesk looked at me," he added spontaneously, suddenly recalling clearly the red eyes of the queen upon him. "She must have known what would happen, but she still thought you would be worthless removed. That recovery would be impossible. To a wher, this was the kinder fate." He held up his hands, lest curiosity attack. "She spoke to Jasmine, not me." The rider sighed, a lot like his dragon did in his sleep, slow. "Everyone was thinking you were special. Not mad, but special. And you're talking now. You're concerned now. You're not withering away somewhere, though that is what the Candidatemasters are going to think when they find you missing."

He swallowed, a moistening for a speech he would ever be too reluctant to give. "What would you have done had I not been here?"

[Cathaline]

Newt was pliable, boneless, broken as L'xon guided him wherever he wanted to go - deeper into the weyr, into the darkness. And then, let there be light. Newt blinked in the amber glow, staring up into L'xon's searching eyes. Eye? Eyes. Hesitantly, he reached up to brush the tips of his fingers over the coarse fabric of the bandage. He'd remembered that Jafask went into the stands. He remembered looking back. Wasn't that why he was here? Part of why he was here. The other part, maybe, was that L'xon was a good listener, and the things he said were worth listening to, which was not the case with everyone. Not the case with most people. Admittedly part of the reason Newt had so few friends was because so many people were boring and not stimulating and -

He let out a quavering sigh. L'xon's face was wounded, slashed. Newt's was empty, his glasses gone. He could see without them, that was not the issue. The issue was that even clothed, he felt naked. The air on his eyeballs and the lack of any glinting barrier between himself and the world. It made him feel odd at the best of times. Tonight, after a visceral reminder of the eye Newsk had lost, it set alarm bells ringing, bells that had not stopped jangling since they smashed to bits under Rask's vicious foot.

His voice trailed off and he let L'xon speak and didn't even try to interrupt him. Shards, he was tired, tired and wired, running on fumes. Maybe it was the lack of spectacles or maybe the lack of mental barricades, but emotion flickered across his face even more brilliantly and obviously than it usually did. A twitch of his lips here, a narrowing of the eyes there. Happiness, she wanted him to stay! Confusion, why did she think he should stay? Surprised pleasure, L'xon asked about him, cared enough to ask. Lips parting slightly, thinking of something to say to that, forcibly holding it back. A cringe at the thought of being worthless, a bitter twist of the lips, a roll of the eyes at impossible recovery. Kinder fate was like throwing a stone into a still pond, ripples flowing out in every muscle. He blinked fast at special, looked down at his shaky hands, cast an eye over the bandages peeking out beneath his rolled-up sleeve.

L'xon asked a question, and a normal person would have answered, let the rest of it go. Newt was not a normal person. He had been storing up his comments, deliberately, letting his quiet friend say what he needed to say, and his response poured out in a torrent. "Kind, kind. It was kind, do you think I would have forgiven anyone who dragged me off those sands? Do you think I didn't want it, L'xon? This is what you befriended, this is what Audren and Kalenna and Kalesk and Inrahim and everybody are all fighting to save, I would have died before I walked off those sands, even when I was thinking I shouldn't be there, even when I was the one saying I should go. Is that special? Is it? Is there something special that I know - " He choked and put a hand over his mouth for a moment before he said, muffled, "Is it special or mad, do you think, that I would do it again, a hundred times. I would do it again. Got Letorin mauled, he's in a drugged-out haze in the infirmary. Got my glasses broken, my parents are going to have to pay to replace them, and they are not cheap or easy to come by. Didn't accomplish a sharding thing - except I got new scars and I got to be there and I got to see what that gorgeous little monster is capable of."

Letting his hand fall, he continued, "They won't notice me. Nobody came out of it unscathed, nobody. Thirty candidates and a bunch of weyrlings and wherlings stuffed into the infirmary - they won't notice me missing, and there is power in invisibility. You wouldn't think it, would you, the way I talk, but I do know it. I stalk them, observe them. Never let them know I'm there. I can. I want to."

Finally he came to the actual question, and his fingers drummed a fast tattoo on his thigh. For a second he stared into space, and then snapped his gaze back to the bluerider's. "Talked," Newt said. "Talked myself hoarse, talked until I cried, waited, hoped, collapsed in on myself like a castle made of sand. Talking, I talk. I talk, therefore I am. As long as I can talk - I'll be all right. It helps, though. When somebody is listening."

[Azhdarchid]

The bluerider caught the Candidate's hand at the wrist before it could traverse the swath of bandages. His grip shifted, thumb sliding along the center of Newtollen's palm. A glance at the searing the Sands had given the boy, and L'xon let him go. None of it, front or back, had been enough to warrant more than whatever herb rinse was currently popular among the greenshirts. Halventh stirred behind Newt as the Candidate's mouth continued to motor, and the sickles of the dragon's claws flexed in the glowlight like golden scythes. Then he turned his paws over to gain purchase on the stone carpeting and issued his neck toward the conversation.

As Newt finished the latest flood, L'xon hinted at a smile. But he was tired too. It was in his eyes and the settling of his brow, more than whatever mirth he had found in Newtollen's confessions.

"Nobody came out unscathed, and yet you are personally responsible for that other boy's injuries, and that is because of Jafask's action with you as inspiration." Though his tone had a little of Halventh's humor in it, he was struck by clear memory of hands clutched together, a tie whose roots he could not fathom. "What you don't see, maybe because you are too close and too fascinated, is that he was doing it to everyone. It was Jafask's game the entire time. He must be a sensitive one." Halventh's nose tipped against Newt's hip, and the blue exhaled a puff of cinnamon against the Candidate's ribs. In the process of getting up, he had blocked the weyr exit, and now he drew his muzzle across his guest's back. Rumbling, the dragon laid his head down aside the Candidate, not quite touching. A dinnerplate-sized eye flushed iridescence over a hill of pearly blue facets, the glowbasket arrested a hundred times in miniature.

L'xon reached down to cup the velvety nose of his dragon under one hand. "He sought people out like a Searchdragon, but just used what he found to get off. He came at me about you. It's probably the only reason he paid you mind. But I am not going to blame myself for Letorin." On this point the rider was very firm, even if the implication was or you, either. "It was all Jafask."

He released Halventh's snout, and the dragon's inner lids blinked upwards in slow pleasure. L'xon applied the same hand, the same sort of touch, to Newtollen's shoulder. "You are under the Weyr's protection." He had the rest of his statement prepared, but hesitated, a little flummoxed at the idea of Newt's parents, that he had not just stepped out from behind a tree and existed. And that he was young enough that his parents still mattered. "And the Weyr cares for its own. Your specs come back as easy as a dragonrider's word. There's not a Mark to be found in it. Seeing as we do have a number of the beasts hanging around as well, fittings and adjustments are a ride away."

The bluerider glanced at his dragon, then back at Newtollen's undressed face. It was fascinating the way he guessed a marauding wheret was fascinating to Newt. "Is it that you're happy you went despite everything, and you don't want to be? Or are you scared that this is the only kind of experience that is going to approach happiness for you anymore? You know, it is not like you Impress and then there is nothing but bliss afterwards. Dragon or wher. Life, rider or not, is...always at your throat. Always unfair. Always painful. You don't get to hold happiness in your hand for the rest of your life. It's just something that happens to you sometimes, and you try to make the most of it."

A sharp breath indicated the blond had surprised himself, and his brown eyes blinking rapidly and finding the floor were little help. His introspections were usually intensely private, not worth public circumspection. Pursing his lips, he ducked his face closer to Newtollen's, then pulled it back uncertainly, watching the Candidate's pupils. "You know, unless the specs were a showy thing only. Lordy stuff. Can you see?"

[Cathaline]

Newt tried to grasp L'xon's hand, but the bluerider just wanted to look at the scorched skin. Not terrible, this time, not really. Under his trousers there were marks on his knees, his legs. Under his shirt, there were marks on his back - but none of that skin had touched the sand bare, like his hands had, however briefly. He let L'xon let go, though he itched to have the touch back. He hadn't been holding Letorin's hand at the moment of truth and pain. He wished he had, though he did not know which of them he wanted to comfort more.

Halventh was awake and moving, and Newt slid his eyes toward the beast, a little tense, though he had no reason to be. He just didn't think he could bear it if anything tried to worm inside his head tonight. Nobody was going to drill into his skull for a long, long time - at least not without his continued consent. Demand, even. "He came at you because of me," Newt said quietly, stricken. "Oh, L'xon, he came at you because of me. He saw me right off and he looked at us - and then he came back - " He inhaled sharply and scrubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. "He said he wanted to mark me where it would hurt me and he picked the two of you. He never would have touched Letorin if not for me. I'm sure of it. Is that self-absorbed, do you think? Is that narcissism? That's got to be narcissism, like, to a classical extent."

Halventh's touches had been appreciated, and Newt sagged a bit under L'xon's hand, every muscle straining toward him. He wanted embraces and comfort and the only people who might want to give them to him were busy, or doped up, or new wherlings, or... "You think it'll be that simple?" he whispered. "I mean, if I were like Yhimere..."

This required serious thought, and Newt's brow furrowed. L'xon was looking at him, and Newt stared back, blinking. After a minute, he shook his head like that would clear it and responded, "It's just that...it used to be so ordered in here." He reached up to tap his temple. "You might not think so 'cause of the stream of consciousness thing and the general demeanor and whatnot, but I knew where everything was, how it felt, how I ticked. I had all my walls, all my compartments, everything locked down safe and sound. And now there's none of that. No locks or bars or security. Anything touches me and it lights me on fire. I would be happy if I wasn't broken like this. I would be happy if I could trust my own mind again. I used to beg for voices in my head, you know? I used to be so desperate to hear them, and I still think it's so beautiful, so fascinating, but now they speak and every muscle tenses, my jaw locks, and half the time I am saying to myself don't scream Newt don't scream don't scream the poor handler is staring at you for the love of Faranth do not start screaming. He barely said one word, my Newsk. His name. And Jafask said his name and I was there again, and - how can I live like this? How can I be myself like this when my own brain is liquefying? I thought time would make it better, and I thought it was and then I meet one cruel wher and it's all undone, and maybe even worse than it was. So yes, I'm scared. I'm scared I can't be happy because I'm scared this might be permanent. And people say take some time, they say take all the time you need, but I'm afraid that if I start running I will never stop. Walking off the sands is giving in. I can't do it, L'xon, I can't. If I do, I am lost. And I don't care how many people I hurt, including but not limited to myself. And I don't know what that makes me. Besides a real asshole, that is."

He shut his mouth on you are so pretty when you surprise yourself, you should talk more, I would like to hear your genuine stream of consciousness sometime, I bet it is beautiful and instead he said, getting control of his tone, "I was a Harper, you know. When I was a child. I used to read in the archives, all the time, day and night. And my mother used to say, you'll ruin your eyes like that, Newt, you'll ruin your eyes reading in the dark - I was always a creature of the night, I think, I just didn't understand it then. So one nameday I asked for some specs so I could get used to them before my eyes got ruined, which I thought was inevitable. And then I met them, and everything changed, and I wasn't reading in the dark anymore, and I never ruined my eyes, but I got used to them, the specs. To seeing the world through unnecessary lenses. An affectation, but one that's as much a part of me as these." He gestured to the scars on his palms. "I don't know how to do without them. I feel wrong. But lately I feel wrong in my marrow - I guess I just want them back because I would like something about this to feel good."

[Azhdarchid]

Nar-what? L'xon was losing hope at engaging with the Candidate on an intellectual level. His hand rubbed idle circles against the shoulder in its grasp. The immediate contradiction of his depiction of the events did not speak well either. Newtollen was going to believe what he wanted. Strong was what Jasmine had called him. Strong, or determined, or obsessed. The Candidate barreled through all of the bluerider's thoughtfully placed obstacles.

In a way it was insulting. He had spent so many turns learning the trade of deescalation, whether it was with drunks or petty thieves or new widows. Guards specialized in not drawing their swords. But tonight it wasn't working. And Newt kept pushing on him. He could see the lilt in the lad's body. Toward him. The married man. Halventh lifted his head to look at something outside, incidentally sliding the flank of his neck against the backs of the Candidate's legs. It would stagger him forward easily as a sudden gust.

"We are all harpers when we are children," L'xon reflected. Some more than others. He could see himself speaking to Newt on his father, not the second but the first. An intellectual match for anyone, a snake who had never looked duty in the eye, and a man who was at this moment probably readying himself for another push at the Mastery not of only harpers, but of Pern's politics entire. That he shared his saturate blondness and downdrawn nose with a nameless bluerider at the Weyr of exiles couldn't be that much of a mark against his good name.

And the truth was, they were all snakes. Just as sure as happiness was a bird passing by in a wingbeat and not a sun that ever shined. His strange vision passed as Candidate was pushed into him. "You shut up now, Newt," he heard himself order. Then both his hands had contact with the failure, collecting against the fabric shielding his back. Maybe he couldn't be as congenial about it as Jasmine or Yuri- his fingertips dug against the boy's skin -but it was the right thing to do. The acceptable alternative to another verbal joust.

Now he had to just keep from breaking like his father had and-

It is alright.

The injection of warmth into his forcibly objective analysis ran up L'xon's spine, private as always, betrayed by little more than the flash of draconic contact in his eyes. But Halventh left him stamped with that damning conclusion, cooking in it. A reminder that he did not make any decision in the void anymore. How could Newtollen possibly feel, having just touched that potential before it was burnt away. It hurt to consider, and he pushed against the broken body. Madness. Newt had been right about that part. No wonder he sought anything to feel good.

Separating far enough to find the bare, handsome face of the victim, he said, "I can take you myself."

[Cathaline]

Newt's legs were already shaky after a long hatching, both from soreness and from exhaustion; he could not have resisted Halventh even if he had seen it coming, even if he had want to. He gave a startled little "oof" when the pressure rocked him forward, and grabbed at L'xon's robe to steady himself. He breathed in deep, huffed the air out, and repeated to himself a mantra he had learned several months ago. Straight, married, dragonrider. It changed from day to day which of these was the most relevant. Tonight, with the dragon right there and an epicly failed hatching lying tattered in recent memory, it was the third.

Oh, Newt. Even if he wanted you, you'd ruin your Candidacy, and that would ruin you.

"Shutting up now," he said, his voice a little muffled, and then the bluerider's arms were around him. Newt wavered, then accepted, and repeated it to himself again. He had friends, friends were good, friends were great. It was okay to have crushes on your friends, you just didn't act on them like a sharding lovesick doofus, right? It was even okay to have crushes on your straight, married, dragonriding friends, as long as you did nothing and said nothing and shut up, now, when your tongue was loose with sleep deprivation and trauma, when you were not entirely in the realm of your own control.

Tentatively, he pressed his forehead into L'xon's collarbone, and his grasping fingers slacked a little on the fabric. So this was nice. This was what he wanted. This was awesome -

L'xon pushed away, a little, and Newt looked up at him, bewilderment evident in his dark eyes. His mouth opened when L'xon said that, and all that came out was a baffled, high, "What?"

A few seconds later he got it, and said, "Oh, oh. You mean for the specs. Yeah, sure. You can take me. I'd like that. I'd love for you to take me. Yes. That would be awesome. Thanks, man. You are way too nice to me. I'm sorry I kind of just wandered into your home and started screeching. Oh, man, I can't believe I did that, what was I thinking - shutting up again. Sorry. Thanks."

[Azhdarchid]

Trying to decide: how long could he survive on this memory? How many turns could he pass this time? It dried his throat thinking on it. And then Newt started chatting again, starting on a cry of disbelief and progressing into some amorphous babbling of gratitude, nervous, and twisting downward into apology. L'xon turned his head to look over the Candidate's face, solitary visible eye gazing darkly at the boy.

Just this one night would Newtollen be invisible, if he believed the description. No, he could invent time. He could take Newt flying. There were no eyes in the deep inland south, just cool waters and soft beds of earth. But there were limits even a dragon could not pierce. If he sent Newt home now, would he go back to the infirmary? Would his burnt hand seal with that other boy's again? Halventh's tail coiled on itself in his peripheral view, a tightening snake. Yes, L'xon was nice. No one ever had a thing to say against him because he was kind to everyone, never objected, never coveted.

"I don't want to be nice anymore," he murmured, staring at the broken chatterbox opposite him, words barely counting under Newt's. The Candidate could have read his lips, maybe.

Just try it, Halventh assured him. So, between the words started and screeching, the dragonrider tucked his head to one side and quieted the boy under his mouth. At first it was just contact, static teasing his nerves, and his wide eye blinked hard, seeing right through the object of his new attention. He released, moistening his lips and turning his head a little more to the right. His hand rose and clasped the frame of Newt's jaw, where he could feel the shade of stubble marking a young man. And from there it was only greed, his eyes closing as he engaged the Candidate's lips, nose pressing into his cheek. His hand migrated in grabs to the short brown hair at the back of his target's head. His other arm went around Newt's side, fingers digging at his back, trying to reel him in. L'xon was sorry; he said so in a "mmph" of pang-riddled pleasure.

But it wasn't like he could help Newt free. Faranth, his insides boiled wherever they united through their clothes. A wife, hundreds upon hundreds of Flights, and twenty-five Turns later he was still a selfish first-timer. Still sloppy, too. He had not touched anyone without Halventh's influence since he'd first come to Dalibor. It was not true that in his detachment, he ignored his wife. In fact he tried very hard to make her happy. What he'd lacked, though, was something Newt took the brunt of now, something raw and embarrassing that would have been impossible without Halventh there to steady him. And Newtollen had nothing on his side, the rider thought faintly under everything else. He was trying to fill an empty vessel. How old was he? It was a teasing thought at first, but then implication caught up to him and L'xon tried to surface from what he'd started, to the safe and familiar cold of guilt.

[Cathaline]

For a second, Newt was completely confused. Well, he thought. This is a new and very interesting way of making people shut up. Does he not realise what his lips are for? I should tell him before he does something really stupid. And then L'xon was doing something really stupid by kissing him properly, and Newt made a desperate, longing sound into his mouth.

A better person would have disengaged immediately. A better person would probably not have ended up in this position in the first place. Newt was not a better person, though he wanted to become one, and at the moment the only truth his ragged mind could grasp was that beneath all the nopes there was actually a yes and L'xon was saying yes with his wet mouth and clutching fingers and strong arms, he was saying yes to a question Newt had not even asked.

He was not allowed to apologise, not for this. After the initial shock, Newt gave up, gave in, and chased the high. He was clumsy too, but deeply enthusiastic, and his fingers curled back into L'xon's robe, tugging him closer. Their lips burned, and Newt parted his a little, for once not to speak but simply to invite, though invitation would turn into demand pretty shortly if unaccepted. Unbonded, yes. Empty, no.

Or at least, he did not intend to be for very much longer.

He made a sound that was half please and half pure desire, and let go of L'xon's robe only so he could slide his hands beneath it, scarred palms finding contact with skin, the rise of a ribcage under his touch. He could have said any number of a thousand things, come on and did you know all this time or did you know just now or are you just taking a chance and are you aware that your dragon is literally two feet behind us, is that kosher - but he didn't say any of them because in order to speak he would have to take his mouth off of L'xon's and he was unwilling to do that unless somebody's mouth was going to be somewhere else that was just as interesting, if not more so.

Inexperience led to oxygen deprivation, and when Newt pulled back to take a quick breath, he enacted one of his jumbled tangle of thoughts by pouncing again, his lips finding L'xon's throat and pressing down over the beat of his pulse.

[Azhdarchid]

L'xon's escape cut short as the soft, warm instruments of a real-life vampire clutched his throat. Lips opening, eyes closing as if his face were meeting its counterpart, he eked out a breath of "Shells..." His knees bent as if to give way, and he had to shift his feet to counter the tendency. His fingers were still in Newtollen's hair, but his fist had loosed to a pathetic shadow of control. Now it was Newt holding him, and the placement of his own hands was hardly as clear as the scars rubbing into his chest. Halventh hissed lowly behind them, his great body shuffling and slithering against the walls and floor of his weyr, though he never seemed to go anywhere.

He thought Newt was going to sting him once. But when the sucking mouth stayed, and the wet bead of the Candidate's tongue-point began scribing him, L'xon required a harder oath, and Halventh's background sibilation spiked into a growl. "Shards!" This was immediately reconciled with a faint "It's alright, it's alright," though it wasn't clear who the intended audience was. He became aware, as he panted under Newt's hands, that this was not purely grab and take. It was a negotiation too. The muscular hitches in his abdomen forecasted his next anxious attempt, but it was not as if this game had winners and losers.

Bearing forward against the Candidate, he reciprocated the under-shirt slide, for a moment. Whatever plans he'd had for elaboration flew out of mind once he actually touched the shredded surface of one pectoral. His hand shifted back from the strange texture, briefly silhouetted by the stretched fabric of Newt's tunic. Just a palmswidth more to the center and he would be touching whatever the healers had planted over Jafask's heartwound. He knew this, but...

Needed to see it.

"Yes, it affects him too," he whispered in Newt's air as he leaned over his shoulder. Then he caught the arch of the lad's earlobe between his teeth. Maybe that would keep him contained till Lex had wrapped up a couple handfuls of his tunic in preparation for stripping it off. "I know you were going to ask," he said between his artfully grit teeth. "He's a blu-" But Newtollen did not accept those kinds of explanations did he. "He's sensitive."

And L'xon so easily distracted. One of his hands abandoned the shirt for what he could see with his head over Newt's shoulder: the join of his back and his legs, something he had to feel through the Candidate's trousers to really visualize as Newt's back was away from the glowbasket. He started at the hip, as if innocent, but then, rearward.

[Cathaline]

Some people might have been bothered by having a giant dragon slithering around behind their awesome makeout session. Newt rather liked it; being around dragonkin was familiar, and he could take Halventh better than most, right now. Besides, the blue was an integral part of L'xon, and Newt of all people certainly understood what that meant. They could be halfway round the world and Halventh would still be a part of it, and he'd pretty much shoved Newt into L'xon's arms, so clearly he approved.

Nobody else would, and Newt understood all the reasons why, but at the moment he did not care. Sure, he cared about not getting caught, but beyond that, it didn't matter. He was clearly not Impressing anytime soon and he knew better than to fall into a pattern and continue it if he was ever fit to attract a wher, so. No harm, no foul.

He could practically taste the way L'xon's pulse throbbed under his skin, and his tongue traced across the artery - or maybe it was a vein, human anatomy was not his particular interest. He wouldn't bite, but he did suck, and he jumped a little when Halventh growled behind him. Was a bit of a tongue bath really enough to make the object of his affections react that strongly?

To be fair, Newt was probably even weaker at the knees and even more susceptible, so. He'd just happened to get there first.

Of course, he noticed the way L'xon pulled back on touching his scars. The bluerider had seen almost every inch of Newt's skin in the clear jungle pool, but touching was a totally different story. Newt made a pathetic whimpering sound into the crook of L'xon's neck, sorrow and guilt and apology and need. He knew he was wrecked, every inch of his body and every inch of his soul, and for a second he'd dared to hope that someone might overlook it, might not mind, at least for a little while.

Who in the void was him? Oh, Halventh. He'd let his thoughts drift, though a minute ago they had indeed been going in precisely that direction. All thought short circuited at the rough nip of teeth, and he said, "Oh wow" and grabbed at the first available thing that might give him some balance, which happened to be L'xon's hips. "Umm. Sensitive, yeah. He's awesome. He's cool. I'm very - "

Very what, no one would ever know, the word didn't even make it to the speech processing center of Newt's brain (ha! as if he had one) before he was being touched again, and another whimper turned into a moan, and he said the one word that was on his mind now. And a lot more after that because: Newt. "Bed. Now. Or else. I'm definitely going to fall down, here. Because you're amazing. Did you know that? You should know that, and I - this is really tight - " For his hands had slid up L'xon's sides, and he made a momentary effort to slip the robe off his shoulders only to find it caught on his biceps. His brow furrowed, and he said, "You should not wear this, it doesn't fit you. Did you know?"

[Azhdarchid]

L'xon was in the act of grasping and releasing, by now with both hands behind Newtollen's back, playing out his own little fascination, when the Candidate made his demand. He lifted his head away from the pinkened earlobe, and raised his hands off their quarry. He suspended his fingers off the trouser cloth, as if he might return to his work, but ultimately returned both arms to his sides. The rider shrugged one shoulder at a time back into the sleeves Newt had dragged down, but also undid the robe belt the Candidate had neglected in his effort.

He looked through the dark at his home, his safest space. Dragon-guarded.

"How many times before this...?" he wondered aloud without looking at the boy he addressed. "I-" Shouldn't. But Newt had been plying him well. All those whimpering pleas doubled as lines of evidence. It wasn't just flesh-on-flesh, but restraint from devastation. Newt was insistently needy: letting him go was as painful as keeping him. L'xon shut his eyes as he pulled his robe back straight, and tightened and tied the belt knot in silence.

Then he shut the amber glowbasket to a sliver and walked inward, seeking the inner cavern archway in the stripe of light that remained. He did not hold Newt's hand or guide him in by a fatherly hand to the shoulder, but he did look back as he bent down to open the basket on the nightstand. This one had no paper, and gilded the bed in the typical blue-green of its contents. Still bent, he looked away from Newt and rubbed his hand across his inner thigh.

He couldn't stay that way, and when he straightened up he took a single limping step out to the side of the bed. He turned his back on the mattress and the unfussed arrangement of Summer sheets, resting the backs of his legs on the frame but not sitting back or lying down. He planted his hands on the mattress top, in demonstration. "Just lean on it," he said. See? A safe solution for weak knees.

[Cathaline]

Newt blinked at the unfinished question. "How many times what? I mean, never. When would I have the time?" But he had nothing but time tonight, time for whatever L'xon wanted to give him, and in return Newt was quite willing to offer up everything. A meagre sacrifice for a benevolent god, but that was faith for you. Faith and lust.

He blinked a few times when L'xon tied his belt again, and gave Halventh a helpless look, a tip of his chin, can you fix this, what did I do wrong, this isn't flightsex, we don't have to rut on the floor, right? But the thoughts would almost certainly go unheard - Halventh was not the sort of dragon to have a poke in minds that did not belong to him, and Newt's brain was a mess. Even he wasn't sure what he was thinking anymore, half the time. He always had half a dozen subroutines running beneath the surface, but now it was all knotted up.

"Did I...?" He followed doggedly, not touching, wanting answers so he could fix this and make it happen and make it good. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, and he struggled to find something to say that would not make it worse - it was a testament to how he felt that he even tried, rather than shooting off the first thing that came to mind and letting the chips fall where they may. Few indeed got the benefit of Newt's restraint, particularly when the very last thing he wanted was any kind of restraint at all, including that provided by laces and ties and, particularly, belts.

His eyes widened at the invitation, and of course he had to ask, "Who's gonna do the leaning and who is gonna do the leaning into?" He quirked an eyebrow, and then burst out laughing at his own silly innuendo, and leaned forward to kiss the bluerider again. Nearly chaste for about two seconds, and then hotter, harder, his tongue seeking entrance.

[Azhdarchid]

Newt was wrong. Halventh had been brushing up against him ever since he acquired proximity. Some of it was unconscious, the effect of pure lack of distance. Dragon communication, advanced as it was, retained a physical element. Why else would the dragons congregate in Weyrs? Why would dragons that could never lay eggs bother Flying? Flights could be handshakes and hellos. Newtollen was saying hello, and though in a crowded Sands he could be overlooked for not being quite Halventh's flavor, here he was a wellspring. Not easy to navigate, but not a void.

Didn't mean the dragon had an answer for him though. His head dropped after the Candidate as the Candidate in turn pursued his rider. Halventh jetted out a breath through his nose at Newtollen's back, a hot puff like the crop to a racing runner's haunch. Then he twisted his body toward the glow left open by a smile-shaped margin. Raising his claws, he tried to engage with the small handle on the basket surface, knocking up a metallic clatter and grumbling at the device till an errant swipe finally knocked it shut. Halventh's jeweled eyes twinkled in the dark, and he laid down on his side, not to sleep but to keep his concentration off supporting his weight. Unlike humans he did not abhor the stone, and rubbed his neck against its cooling face, opening his jaws and kicking at the air with his hindleg when Newt moved against his rider again.

Unsteadied by the laughter- every time Newt did it, or when he smiled, L'xon started feeling ten turns younger -the bluerider was not in a good position to rebuke the mouth on his. His legs were pressed between the Candidate and the bedframe and he had to adjust his feet slightly further apart, to make room. He pointed off to his right at the empty stretch of frame, where it was supposed to have been Newt that was sandwiched, then the same hand joined its partner in seizing the bottom of the shirt he'd been working on earlier. Never, Newt had said, and the reasoning had Lex smiling behind his busied lips. This was dangerous: it let the younger man in, and then all he could taste were determined explorations. And he was returning, Faranth he was, a doomed man who could only do what he was supposed to do with women with a broken Candidate instead. It was just...easy to forget his guest was shattered when he was plunging in like that, laughing, and pushing.

L'xon lifted the shirt off, even if it meant Newt had to part from him for a moment. The rider joined their mouths again before he had the fabric completely off, restraining Newt's arms behind his back (all he had to do was twist at the wrists and break free). Standing forward, L'xon exploited the binding to kiss himself out of the corner- and to not kiss at all, soon after.

"When I was still at Fort, in the barracks, once, another one of the guard boys climbed into my bunk. He did this to me." He lifted his chin at Newt's lips. "Had to keep quiet because everybody else was still sleeping around us. The little 'snake: I was so close to sleep it was easy to pass as a dream. Then a sevenday after, my parents engaged me to my wife." His eye left Newt's face, the blond tilting his head to look down the Candidate's exposed chest. Taking it in again. He even let go of one of the shirt sleeves so he could touch the spot he had drawn away from before. His fingers spread against the scars and muscle, depressing the skin. His thumb wrote a few experimental halos, the bluerider squinting in scrutiny at the effect. He reached for the center of the bare display, but his fingers stopped just off the bandage glued there. "But this was all he did. He was content to leave afterwards," he suggested.

[Cathaline]

Lex could push Newt up against anything he wanted to push Newt up against, but he would have to be a lot quicker off the mark than that. Virgin yes, blushing no. This was a surprise because straight-married-dragonrider, but it was something he'd been longing for and dreaming about since that day in the jungle, despite knowing it was something he couldn't have. And if he could - even for one night, one night when even the most stern of Candidatemasters would probably give him a pass if they ever found out, one night when there might be no further opportunity for several turns - then he was going to take what was on offer.

No one could ever accuse him of being shy.

He would have obligingly swapped places except that Lex's hands were on his shirt again, so for a moment, Newt stayed exactly where he was. He smiled back against curved lips and slid their tongues together, shuddering at the lightning shiver that trailed down his spine to earth itself somewhere behind his navel.

Fortunately, the shirt sleeves - his, anyway, Lex's were still too sharding tight - were loose enough that the fabric didn't catch on the swathe of bandages on his arm, and when Lex made his escape, Newt shifted and turned, backing up to the bed and finding balance with his fingertips. Awkwardly, he started trying to pluck the last of the fabric off of his caught wrists, his dark eyes wide as he listened to Lex's story.

Not straight, and one of those marriages, like a fall of dominoes. Okay, two dominoes. Newt took in a little breath when Lex touched him, and finally managed to free his arms, dropping his tunic carelessly on the floor. His body was a vast labyrinth of memories, inked onto his skin by vicious claws and teeth. He reached up to push his fingers through blond hair, his hand settling at the nap of L'xon's neck, thumb caressing along the column of his spine where it met his fascinating brain - fascinating because he hid so much of it behind that calm, nice, good exterior. But there were secrets in there, too.

"Do you want me to leave afterwards?" he asked. "I don't want to. I don't have to." From the perspective of "wow what an illicit affair this is can you even imagine if we got caught," it was in his best interests to get back to the barracks as soon as possible, in case someone, doing rounds, realised he was neither there nor in the infirmary and began to worry that he had gone off to do something reckless and self-destructive. He knew that, he knew he should be not only content to leave after, but eager to do so, to preserve his candidacy.

But he offered anyway. "I can stay," he whispered. "If you'd like it. Or I can go. I don't...I'm still offering." Lex could take physical pleasure if that was what he wanted, and Newt would love it, but there was more here too. Or there could be, someday, when things were not quite this complicated. Someday when he had his wher. If he was ever well enough to get one. Maybe it was funny on some level that Newt could not interact with humans on a level which made anyone want to have him until he could not interact with whers safely. One or the other, never both, never everything. Hopefully it didn't have to be like that, in the long run.

[Azhdarchid]

Newtollen had refused the bait of the story. He was still here. The way L'xon wanted him. Almost on the bed was not in the bed, so traditionally speaking...he could not be bedded. Nothing was going perverse. His jaw set at the questions, and he did not answer but to begin untying the Candidate's archenemy from the front of his robe. He cast the tabs away to the sides, then reached for the robe collar with both hands and spread it open, off his shoulders. Tight or not, the dragonrider had little trouble dragging the sleeves down as he stood before his offering, revealing a spate of relatively clean muscle. Aside from his face, he had the tie around his right palm and wrist where Jafask had bitten and clawed, but the rest of his story was nothing so blatant as Newt's.

"It was a gift from a friend," he said as he shed the robe to the floor. His stomach contracted anxiously as he reached for the waist of his trousers, and his hand shook in hesitation. He reached for the Candidate instead, grabbing him forward for another swift lacing of tongues. Then L'xon seized the fabric riding Newt's hips and disrobed the rest of him with no catch at all. He stepped one toe onto the remains of the trousers so the boy could step out of them, then kicked them out of his way.

He was already looking at what he wanted, eyes downcast as if in shame, some color traveling his cheeks as he contemplated previous sightings. He had remembered them all of course, the pestilent biting insects of memories. Usually they came around at night, or if he was unlucky in the morning when he had just woken. Newt had not been the only imagined party. Sometimes the dreams were old, old.

But tonight it was real. Aware of his staring, the rider grabbed Newtollen's brown hair, pressing in through another locking of lips where he led with confidence. The whole texture of the Candidate was open to him, and he ended up restraining that marred body for longer than he'd intended. He tried to drink it in all at once. When he did let go, it was to lay his palms flat just below Newt's shoulders, head ducking to kiss not the scandalous throat but the rise of the collarbone. Bending his knees, he started ferreting out the soft clearings in the lattice of wounds. Kissing out from the sternum, he glanced up through his yellow bangs at Newt's face as he tentatively pressed his lips to one of the chapped ravines too. Somehow he did not expect all of this Candidate's pleasures were purely physical.

His knees touched the bedside rug, and he sank his weight back on them a moment, holding Newt at the back of his thigh and his hip as he breathed, and stared. Trying to remember what his wife used to do. Trying to remember how his hands had worked, only...this would be different in execution. He moistened his lips for another kiss, and pulled Newt forward.

[Cathaline]

Newt wanted nothing but perversity, please and thank you. What about this situation was not perverse by virtually any standards known to man? But he could wait for it. He could be good and patient and let L'xon move at his own pace. He'd picked up, from the story and some of the body language, that L'xon, despite his turns as a bluerider at a Weyr, still struggled with this sort of attraction - it was new to him, because he'd had a wife he had not wanted. But it wasn't new to Newt. Acting on it might be, but he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't known. He'd read all the records and understood at a young age that some people were like that, and that it was more permissible in Weyrs, and it had simply never occurred to him to be ashamed of it. There were so many more pressing issues people could take exception to, like his loud, brash voice and his infatuation with whers, and he wasn't especially flirty, so nobody really knew in order to attack him for it. And so he had never learned fear.

His eyes drank the rider's muscles in hungrily, naked appreciation on his bare features, not hiding it the way he had in the jungle. His hands skated along L'xon's abdomen again, up his torso, slid over his shoulders, and Newt welcomed him back for another kiss, whispering into his mouth, "Were you aware that you're gorgeous?" Gorgeous even with the bandages marring his body. Perfection.

He made a rather clumsy attempt to help shuck his trousers, and ended up just getting in the way. L'xon totally knew how to do this. It was probably flightlust experience, though, the ability to get people out of their leathers as rapidly as possible. He cocked his head at the way Lex was looking, but just as he reached out to take the rider's face between his palms and opened his mouth to start saying something that might or might not be useful, he was claimed again and melted into it, into the heat of skin.

Heat and solidness, pleasure flaring into his brain, coarsing along and lighting up neurons that had, lately, been dulled by depression. Newt could still feel, and after all this, it came as a shock. He made a frankly indecent sound when Lex moved lower, his eyelids fluttering, and carded his fingers through straw-colored hair. "Ngggh. Yes. Okay. Yes. Let's. Come here - I - " Wasn't begging for it. Some would have, but Newt wanted everything and that included lips on every inch, every puckered scar, every strange ridge and ravine, every hard rise of bone under skin. "I," he started again at last, his voice raw and rough. If he had been wearing glasses they would have been askew, and perhaps, if he was being a total cliche, fogged up. But he wasn't, he was open and yielding, and -

His knees buckled when Lex kissed him again, and he managed to catch himself just on the edge of the bed, half-sitting and half holding himself up with one hand, the other grasping Lex's hair to steady himself. He tried not to pull but possibly had already failed, and said hoarsely, "Sorry - oh, shards - " And tipped his head back, eyelids falling shut. He could not possibly care less about embarrassment or inexperience on either end, just that this kept happening, at all times, forever.

[Azhdarchid]

Eventually L'xon did forget his traditions, and pushed Newt onto the bed. But by then he had already drained all those little sorrows from the Candidate. Just after, barely giving himself room to breathe, he hugged one of Newt's scored legs and heaved him from his half-seat onto his back across the covers. Maybe it was the dark, but he couldn't sense much now from the boy. He couldn't help that he had ended up latching on soon after his first assessing taps, that he had abruptly discovered the source of a lifetime of unformed nuances and could not bear to part with it.

It was Newtollen that ended, not him. But it was still a marker, bringing him back to the real world. What had he just done? He got up, a long shadow before the glowbasket, one arm outstretched and balancing fingertips where Newt's had been. The other hand was rubbing the bandages over his cheek, massaging the sore stitching beneath. His chest heaved as if from a hard ride, aside from the intermittent heavy swallow. It took him another minute, but he grasped and removed his pants. Then he got one knee up on the bed, climbing in after the Candidate. The line of his back had misted with sweat, and he sat with his thighs carefully askew, bending one knee and resting his arm along it. He stared across the room, through the archway at the shriveled patterns of moonslight that had made it over the crags of Halventh's wings.

The dragon was the same as him: breathing deeply, quiet, in a kind of stupor. But L'xon's trance abated as he watched the silver light glide over the wind drum of Halventh's ribcage. The rare slide of whispering wood echoed in the weyr chamber, and he rifled through the drawer contents of the nightstand. Unlike the hides and inks collected on his desk, there was nothing clear about the organization of the drawer. The random slices of dried, unfinished water satchel straps and the clinking tabs of unused small slates might be interpreted as playing to obfuscation. L'xon's lazy pawing gave the semblance of disuse, a forgotten index, but after a few seconds he very precisely tipped up a dishrag in the back corner and pulled out a frosted glass pot with a translucent semiliquid inside.

He nudged the drawer closed with his knuckles, and laid the pot on the covers between himself and Newt. The lid had a hinge so it wouldn't open till it was unpinned by busy hands. It wasn't completely full, though no one had been in this bed before besides the owner. His Flight business, some of it near-legendary by now, took him to every weyr but here. He did know he was gorgeous. Halventh was. It was almost the same. And Halventh knew he was gorgeous every day of his life.

"The nose is not for everyone," the bluerider mumbled to himself, very low, still keeping secrets even as he turned back to the boy. Maybe despite all his purposeful delay, his hesitations had only cost a bare minute, and Newtollen was still devastated. His own body blocked the light from betraying the Candidate's face. L'xon noticed one portion of his own shadow yearning out and rested his hand over it, then pivoted a little more toward his charge. Maybe it had settled there, one step further than that of the night thief all those turns ago. He reached for the Candidate with his free fingers. Maybe-

[Cathaline]

Newt had always wanted to fly, like most of the population of Pern, but he had never wanted to soar.

He dreamed of jolting half-flight, gliding through heavy air low to the ground. He dreamed of taking something stunted and malformed and turning it into vital beauty; he dreamed of effort and triumph, he dreamed of endless changes. A dragonrider learned to fly once. A wherhandler learned to fly a thousand times and every time was a new victory, a new way to prize struggle and determination over nature. Nature said they shouldn't, nature said they should accept a fate as walkers, as cleanup crew. And some of them challenged nature and destiny and all the rules and said, I will fly anyway, and you cannot stop me now.

He'd accepted many rides on dragonback. A couple of times he'd been fortunate enough to cajole a handler into letting a wher take a passenger - he was slight enough that with the biggest ones, it was possible. Newsk never would have been big enough to carry him. The odds were very good that any wher he did Impress would not be big enough, because Newt was not a kid anymore, and the biggest ones were extremely rare. But he could do something better, he could ride a mind where he could not ride a back, and truly understand what it meant to them to fight gravity.

This was not wherflight, halting and difficult. Maybe with a different partner it would have been, but L'xon was a dragonrider. It was still a fight, though, a fight against endings, and a fight against gravity, because ascension always required that. A fight against lungs that could not seem to contain enough oxygen and a brain foggy and light with lack of blood, desperately needed elsewhere, it seemed. Everywhere tingled like every inch of him was wired directly into some central core in his nervous system, but Newt was mostly only aware of the places they touched, some hot and wet, some dryer, skin pulling against skin as Lex held him close and kept him upright largely by virtue of sort of being in the way if Newt happened to fall down.

He did fall, eventually, because that was what happened when you flew. You could only go up so high before you had to plummet, and he was dazed and wrung out when he collapsed back across the covers, his marked chest heaving as his body reminded him that it existed, that he was more than a beating heart wired into one organ, and that it would please like to share some of this wonderful thing called air, and what the hell was he doing, thinking about depriving himself of air again. But he was. Thinking about it. He managed to focus on L'xon's lips and if he had been a little less boneless he would have reached out, but as it was, it took all his strength to wriggle until his head found the pillow.

"Oh-kay," he mumbled at last, lifting his head enough to follow L'xon's progress through the drawer. Newt had some idea what that meant, and his heart, far from settling down now, just renewed its pounding. The pot hit the bedclothes and Newt pushed himself up on one elbow, still delirious, still shuddering with aftershocks from hitting the ground at terminal velocity, but he was nearly nineteen and incorrigible and there would be time for relaxation when they were completely finished.

He'd never been one to give up easy.

"What?" he asked when Lex said something, and reached toward him, and met fingers grasping at his. He gave a quick tug, pushed himself upright in a fast surge, and captured Lex's lips with his own. The hunger had gone, replaced by a slow, sated desire, a thrum in his veins rather than a throb. He couldn't maintain semi-uprightness for very long, and his arm stole around the rider's shoulders, dragging him down to Newt's precious ground level as he settled back. He moved languidly, shifting his foot to drag his bare toes along Lex's thigh.

He meant to be totally suave and stuff, but when he reached for the pot and tried to flip it open, it did not work. His brow furrowed, and after a moment he broke the kiss and turned his head, craning his neck to try to see past their shadows. "What is this - why is it - oh." He flicked the latch open with his thumbnail and said, pleased with himself, "Got it. Awesome." Awesome was not a suave word, and he grinned a bit to himself, sheepish, and kissed Lex again.

But then, that was what Lex had invited into his bed, right? Newt, who it seemed required a complete shutdown of his mental processes via total devastation (in the good way) for him to just stop talking. Except he hadn't stopped talking, he just hadn't been aware of the whimpers and moans and half-sentences spilling from his lips that whole time. He was aware of the words now, though, bubbling beneath the surface, but none of them could do the situation justice, so he just breathed, "I want you."

[Azhdarchid]

Doubt, which had a nasty tendency to build when he was upright, vanished as he came down on top of the Candidate's body. He pushed on the mattress with one arm, giving their faces enough room for him to turn his, finding new ways to grapple with the lips constantly pushed on him. Words, no matter how long they persisted in his mind, surfaced as groans against a foreign tongue. As much as he was engrossed with Newtollen's capture of him, he was also trapped elsewhere, between his own body weight and Newt's. No amount of shifting his legs made it right, just exercised the friction till he could barely breathe.

Newtollen rescued him, briefly, with a separation. L'xon tried to shake it off with a laugh, but laughing hurt too in its own way, and then Newt was back on him and Newt said the wrong thing.

A jolt fired through him, unpossessed of any strings or relevance to anything else. Halventh snarled and to keep himself from reciprocating the call, L'xon caught one of his knuckles in his teeth. Then he realized he had a body beneath him, and seized on Newt's neck instead. The dragon was still rattling outside, and played inspiration for that final vengeful maneuver. Exquisite as all his lifesblood flowing out through a wound in a single throb, it was nonetheless unwanted. Those words had been so wicked and desperately wrong, the smart guy had probably planned them.

"Damnit." As the last of his control flooded out uselessly across the canvas, L'xon dropped his face into the pillow, shutting his eyes tight.

"I'm sorry Newt" were the first words out when he managed to stop burrowing into the pillow cover and the pile of down it protected. Under his hoarseness, the rider managed incredulity: "Why is it so fast? It's never been that fast with women. Why-" And at this point he suddenly remembered that despite the moment's brief sway over him like some life-changing epiphany, he could in fact repeat the experience. He wouldn't even die or be punished for it. L'xon closed his mouth, looking down at Newtollen before he solemnly reached for the opened pot. The few minutes he spent working doubled as an opportunity for more kissing practice, and an extensive, lip-to-skin examination of arms, stomach, and especially chest. Then, during a routine flirting of tongues, it suddenly wasn't L'xon's hand anymore. And the Candidate finally got the fruit of the night.

Lex thought it could almost be construed as a good thing. If it made Newt forget Jafask for a while, maybe. If it made him forget Newsk- that had a blasphemic tang, but the wheret had never completed its bond. It almost, in his mind, did not have a right to him. Promised to another, he thought as he claimed the boy, though it might have been Halventh, who was with him throughout. But L'xon also knew he would seek any justification for this. He could barely stop. So his assessment of the situation rapidly became irrelevant.

[Cathaline]

Newt snorted with laughter at L'xon's despair, once he figured out it was not directed at the whole situation, but at just one part of it. "Because life is not fair," he said. "But we can always do it again. In a minute. Or tomorrow. Or - "

He lifted his hand to skim the pad of his thumb along L'xon's mouth, along kiss-bruised lips. "You called me Newt," he murmured. "I liked it." As far as he'd gathered from their friendship, Lex was one of those people who clung to the formality of his full name, even though Newt didn't like it, even though he told everyone he met to please just call him Newt. But L'xon could say it, and say it at a moment when his brain couldn't possibly be working fast or properly, and it warmed Newt to the core. "I like you," he added. "I think that's pretty obvious. And - " And you like me, he started, but he let it go because maybe that was presumptuous and he was trying so hard to be good.

Newt's naked eyes brightened when Lex reached for the pot anyway, and he said, "Yes, please," and there was no way on Pern he was going to fight it. Wrong for so many reasons, and needed so much justification just to exist, but worth the mental acrobatics, worth the brief clench of his stomach muscles at the unfamiliarity of it, worth the occasional spikes of pain when he twisted against the covers in pleasure and rubbed his bandages against them (and pain for other reasons, but that was pain barely noticed, pain welcomed in, pain desired).

It turned out that he was still a talker and apparently their earlier activities had been some kind of fluke on the mouth-to-brain connection front because he couldn't seem to stop, even when he was desperately winded, only when his mouth was busy elsewhere, on the occasions when their lips met or when he managed to wrest control away for a few moments and touch tongue to neck and shoulder and jaw. Fortunately he was not babbling scientifically or talking about whers, for once, just a whole lot of swearing and pleading and praise, that's it you're good shards you're wonderful please I want please please don't stop please.

When he was utterly spent, he touched Lex's face, caressing his work-callused fingers (so not a Harper anymore) along the rise of his cheekbone, and stared at him with huge dark eyes. He hummed to himself a little, his gaze skating from eye contact down to Lex's mouth again, and he claimed those lips once more. Slower now, and sweeter, pliant and without the edges of demand.

[Azhdarchid]

"Was that good?"

In fact it was a rhetorical question, that might even approach the level of tease, especially when he pushed on Newt afterwards. And the way he spoke it between kisses, imitating the Candidate's previous husky inquiries. He liked that he had gotten that mouth to talk about something other than monsters.

The dragonrider and Candidate were bound to have different definitions of spent. L'xon was not only attached to a dragon, and thus subject to the winged lust that demanded several peaks to fully shake the beast's summons, but that dragon was healthy male, which meant it was more than a seasonal sport. And of course the drake in question was Halventh. False starts aside, endurance was a fact of life for their kind.

But for now he could match the pace of the Candidate, whose edge had been aptly taken off. Lex's thoughts might have been elsewhere, and he might occasionally make a full-bodied taunt against his kissing partner, but otherwise he could behave. Besides, there was something that could be said for kissing too. That was how it all started, hadn't it? Using his jaw, he turned Newt's face aside so he could kiss his way up it, lips closing on the bare space the arm of his glasses would have guarded before he went to the ear. The one he had bitten. This time he just used his tongue.

"Tomorrow is a Thread day," he mused to his captive audience, both his arms behind Newtollen's back, one hand content to wrap over his shoulder and the other grasping the back of his head. He started running one finger down the Candidate's neck, at a juncture Newt might find familiar. "But the day after. I'll take you." L'xon wasn't smiling, but his voice had gone just a little sly. Just a little opened up to possibility.

He sat back on his knees, parting from Newt, the cruelest of men breathing slowly by the dim light, various parts of him shiny from exertion. His eyes turned down, surveying the damage. His yellow hair hung around his face as he bent towards it. "I like you too," he said as he kneaded with his fingers into pale thighs and other places, probed for bruising. "You don't need to worry." To his relief, everything looked right. There was some suppressed Weyrling training floating around in his brain, and it was satisfied with the appearance. "Though I can't imagine what made you...start picking on me in the first place." Actually it was all still looking like an invitation. Maybe even moreso than before, with all the mess. He started to get drawn, then bit back on the impulse with a chuckle.

L'xon laid his bandaged palm over a pair of scars. "What did you do?" he scolded. Asked uselessly. Another rhetorical. He grabbed ahold of each leg, and started turning the Candidate over. A few turns of tossing and catching firestone made it an easy process. He used his grip to drag Newt onto his knees. "You just keep letting them in."

***

Different definitions.

If he was going to violate the rules and his own morality, he might as well do it more than once.

The moons were apical in the night sky and the Weyr much quieter by the time he finally sat up without the immediate impulse to pin Newt down again. Halventh had taken to rumbling achingly where it was no longer prudent to trumpet and clamor. L'xon held his moment of clarity, then fell back against the pillows. He could barely pick up the glass pot, his fingers oily with the contents, but he managed to get it over atop the nighttable. He had a water satchel on it somewhere, but languid reaching did not find it, so he went parched.

"You need to wash and go back to the Barracks. Halventh can-" But he laid the back of his hand up against his forehead. "No. You need to walk back on your own." He might have had dreams of claiming he'd found the Candidate disheveled, but it did not pass his own suspension of disbelief. And while he did not have the experience, he could imagine what the task was demanding of its victim. "Sorry. The bath is there..." But even as he said it, L'xon abandoned weariness to sit up on the edge of the bed, getting to his feet. He used the rag from the drawer to wipe off his fingers, then held out his hand. "Come on. I'll show you where the glowbaskets are hanging."

As he walked into the weyr's little subtunnel to its magma-heated baths, he continued, "They will know you're missing by now, from bed-checks. Tell them you took a walk and you feel better now." The dragonrider sniffed, in full ignorance of his company, "They can blame the wherhandlers for all I care." The washroom was further away than in some weyrs, and even worse: there were other tunnels that emptied into it besides the one they walked out of.

But all the weyrs around L'xon's were empty right now.

"The water 's fresh. And always hot. Get in," he ordered in perfunctory harmony, then turned back for his weyr. "I need to get something."

You do not want me to call Waroth in the morning anymore?[/i] Halventh asked as he walked back up the cool pathway. L'xon's shoulderblades tightened together.

Not yet, he replied softly, like whispering would avoid the reality of the words. Yuri is the one we need to talk to anyway. In the dragon's half of the weyr, Halventh twitched his tail, lashing his tongue out of his jaws as he watched the empty Bowl outside. The dragon was almost licking his lips.

If you talk to Jasmine or Nimara, they will not necessarily know that it is a Wher Candidate, he chirped. L'xon knew it was hard for Halventh to take any of this seriously. He never grasped the gravity of human morals. And besides that, he had a poor grasp of humanity in general, and how certain binaries were important to his rider. He once stated that the physical difference between Aylina and Newtollen was that Aylina was yellow on top.

Thank you for your contribution.

You are welcome. Halventh's words sparkled. The blue turned his eye on the inner weyr as L'xon swept into it, chittering under his breath at the urgency with which his rider moved to the bedside table. L'xon picked up the pot of frosted glass and was halfway back out when he noticed the observer. He didn't stop.

It's almost empty anyway. I should wash it out.

[Cathaline]

"Was it good," Newt repeated, incredulous and smirking. "I don't know, L'xon, was I not begging enough for you? 'Cause I can beg more. Pleeeease," he mimicked himself, a drawn-out drawl, and kissed him again. "I can describe it if you'd like. In glorious detail, probably."

It became increasingly obvious that the dragonrider was nowhere near done, and Newt considered his own anatomy. Sore in several places, but the tiredness didn't go to the bone, not yet. Yeah, he could go again. Maybe another time after that. He just needed a minute to breathe, and L'xon seemed willing to give him that - more or less, in between kisses. At last he offered hopefully, "I could describe it loads better if I were to have more experience to draw on. You know?"

He shuddered at the touch on the back of his neck, his eyes half-lidding, and purred, "Take me to get my glasses, you mean." His eyes blinked open again, and he stared solemnly for a moment before he tipped L'xon an enormous wink and whispered, "And then maybe take me other places. Maybe take me repeatedly...to other places." They trusted L'xon with him, they wouldn't be alarmed, and as long as Newt was careful, as long as he paid no further illicit visits to the weyr, as long as he made sure to let other dragonriders ferry him or give him flying lessons...

Was he really considering this? Making it a long-term thing, not calling it off for the duration of his candidacy and wherlinghood? It would ruin his life if it got out - at least his life at Dalibor, and Newt wanted to be here more than anywhere else in the world. It wouldn't do much for Lex's reputation either. But it was fun and hot and wonderful and Newt wasn't stupid, he wasn't. If he Impressed it would be over for eighteen months, or until he graduated, whichever - he wouldn't risk his wher, his second wher, on mere human relations. Candidacy prohibitions were about two things. One, not getting into the habit, so that the habit did not have to be broken when an infant was involved - but again, not a problem for Newt. And two, no pregnancies, so female candidates did not have to be pulled from the sands and both sexes did not have to be distracted by baby humans when they should be thinking about baby dragons. Definitely not a problem here. So. Basically.

Basically he was terrible, and Audren and Kalenna and everybody else ought to be sorry they were being so kind to him, since he repaid that kindness with flagrant violations of the rules. But at least he was knowingly terrible. Right?

He made a little mewling sound when L'xon pulled away, and watched as the rider touched him, examined him. He glowed at being liked, and snorted at the comment. "Picking on you. Because you're sweet. Because you listen to me and because the things you say are valuable. Because I would give anything to find out how your mind ticks and I am deeply curious about the things you reveal. Because you're sexy. Because - "

He squeaked at being turned over, and found balance, gripping the bedclothes and glancing back over his shoulder. "I like to let things in," he said, flirty, not very coy.

*

Newt made a muffled sound into the pillow. Needed to get back to the barracks. Right. Okay. So they were done. Part of him was sorry, the part that knew how rare these encounters had to be. Part of him relieved because he was soooo sated, this time. Of course he'd been sated every time and still found some strength to keep at it, so his body's protests were next to useless, thanks.

"Walk," he repeated. Yes. Right. Walking. This was a thing. A thing Newt could do. A thing he'd been doing for, what, eighteen turns now? Walking. As soon as he tried to get up his muscles twanged, and he held up a finger, gathering himself before he slung his legs out of bed. "Oh, Faranth. Unnnngh. Do you even know - " He bit it off and passed a hand over his sweaty brow, and managed to get upright, his legs quivering. The ache went deep and there was a sharp pain right at the small of his back, but nothing that rang alarm bells. It felt pretty natural for what they'd been doing. It just made walking tough.

He staggered after L'xon, briefly considered faceplanting into the pool, suspected this would result in a cracked skull, and steeled himself for the inevitable difficulty of crouching. "Yes, okay. You go get your thing. Go right now," he ordered, and stubbornly waited until the object of his affection was out of sight before he did the necessary, pathetic acrobatics to get himself into the water. The heat dragged the pain from his muscles, and now the real trouble was in not falling asleep and drowning himself. But it did make him feel better, and he began to cheerfully think that perhaps he could walk into the barracks looking like he'd just been on a long sojourn, and not doing harsher exercises.

Cheerful...he hadn't expected to come out of this night feeling cheerful. Letorin and half the other candidates were still in the infirmary, he was still hurt himself, what had happened remained past. But the present was better, and the future was...if not bright...at least not looking quite so bad. As long as no suspicions were raised, maybe things could be okay. Sex was not a balm for the soul, but it was a clever distraction from the darkness.

He looked up when L'xon returned and said, "You know, I feel really good. Like, everything hurts, but in a good way? And my brain's not..." He made a vague gesture in the direction of his head. "And they won't make us do chores tomorrow, so I can sleep forever. And then maybe go see the wherlings before their lessons tomorrow night. That would be fun. And then..." He zeroed in on the pot in L'xon's hand and said, "You are sharding insatiable, do you know that? I don't even know, man. Get in here."

[Azhdarchid]

L'xon entered the zone of regretful reconsideration as he walked back down the hallway, alone. He grimaced down at the pot, increasingly concerned about the conspicuous way it sat in his hand. So he shielded it awkwardly with his other arm, entered the washroom, and was promptly called on his excess by the boy in the bath. At first the bluerider drew his arm a little tighter, to better block the object from view, but he gave up as he reached the round lip of the bathing pool.

"It was probably too much for one night," he said as he set the pot down on the edge and let himself into the water. His teeth grit at the sting of heat before his hide settled with the waters, feeling out the bottom of the irregularly shaped bowl with his feet. "Your first," he added, with a shake of his blond head. His first too, in a way. He headed over to the Candidate and began cupping water to run over his dark hair, trying to invent a way to express that in words. "It was just new to me, and I liked it, and..." But there wasn't a poetic conclusion. That drowning in the bedroom was apparently what happened when something was new to L'xon, and he liked it. And it hadn't been fair to try and make up for a decade of missed opportunities using one innocent Candidate who had stepped too close to the fire.

But the promise of Newt's begging left little room for the more righteous step. "Too much," he repeated. "My thought was: you'll get clean either way." He streamed his fingers down through the brown hair he'd been washing, using both hands to grip the back of the Candidate's head so he could nudge it up for a modest kiss on the brow. "You know I will not be able to do much to secure you a ride beyond the one favor. You will have to figure it out on your own."

The bluerider's arms fell back to his sides, and he stood close to but apart from Newtollen. Again, they were their own people. "I cannot appear to show favor to any particular Candidate..." He blinked. "Oh, shells. Braele." He shut his eyes and sighed. "I never even said anything to her, in the infirmary- I skipped the feast. I never even had Halventh send our greetings." Opening his eyes to consider his contextless dialogue partner, he added, "She was Halventh's Candidate. She Impressed one of the...uh...a-hah...well, one of the hatchlings."

He frowned, and took to pinching the broken bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. It was then he noticed the erratic dripping of extra water onto his chest, and followed the drops up to the soaked bandaging over his hand. The swaddling over his face had gotten rain-speckled too. This was all clear punishment for his mistreatment not of Newt, but of that unsung new burgundyrider. He started unraveling the ruined bandage on his hand and wrist. There was a bin of fresh ones beside the tub, clean and dry. He would make use of them later, but for now, he exposed.

Save that cloth vice obscuring half his face and half his thoughts. "I'll try," he promised. "But most of the time, you will still have to find your own reasons to keep yourself ready for the one that will come for you."

[Cathaline]

Newt cocked his head, listening, and shut his eyes when L'xon decided to go domestic on him and run water over his head. "Well, it was new to me," he said. "And I liked it. And if it had been too much, I would've said so. You know that, right? Like, you could tell how much I was enjoying it? No such thing as too much. I don't do anything by halves. If I'm going to be in this, which apparently I so am, then I'm in it, all the way. But I'd still say no, if I didn't want to - if I was tired, or if it hurt. But it didn't. Not until it was over."

He had enough wherewithal to consider the impact of this statement and continue talking. "I mean - it hurt when it was over because my body is like, shame on you, Newt, you should have kept going forever and I could've seen my way clear to letting you keep feeling brilliant. It doesn't hurt on the inside. Like - " He licked his lips free of the water coursing over them, and blinked his eyes back open, giving L'xon an earnest look. "You're afraid for me. I know that. Everybody is. And I just think you should know that it wasn't like - I wasn't just using you to fill the void. And I'm not falling to pieces now, or anything. It doesn't have to be...it shouldn't be about that. You know? Do you know?"

Considering the bluerider's mistake, Newt said reasonably, "You can congratulate her tomorrow. She was probably tired, and hurting. We all were. She won't even have noticed and you can definitely claim you wanted to give her space with her new bond and her new room and her new Weyrlingmaster and everything."

He focused on L'xon's hand, and once the wet bandages were discarded, he gently took the bluerider's wrist, examining the gash. Claw-made, not a knife wound. The edges were different; Newt was an expert on cuts and scars. He tipped L'xon's hand away and interlaced their fingers for a moment, not quite bringing their palms together, not against an open wound. Just looking at the small gap between their markings, the tattoos that Lex had never wanted and Newt would die without.

"I'm not throwing away my candidacy on this," he said quietly. "But you already knew that. You know me. I'll find ways...as often as I can. I already started thinking about it. Is it just me or is it even hotter that it's illegal?" He glanced up from under the fall of dark hair at L'xon's half-covered face, and added, "It's just me, isn't it? Or do you secretly like the sneaking? There's so much in there that I want, you know. Just as much as I want what's out here."

Newt leaned in again and stole one more kiss, nearly chaste. L'xon was not allowed to think he was the thief here, because it simply was not true. "You were not too much for me," he repeated, and gave L'xon a lazy smile. "Though I may be too much for you to handle. We'll see. I will try epicly hard to never start babbling about whers in bed."