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Something wrenched painfully in Náli’s chest, and he laid his fingers over Mattias’s lips, stilling them.

He was, by necessity, thanks to a lifetime of strange and potentially cataclysmic responsibility, self-centered. His own needs and wants seemed so big, and so dire, that it was hard to imagine anyone else feeling things as acutely as he did. But he was just a boy under the mantle he carried, after all; and Mattias, the pain shining clear in his eyes, needed and wanted just as badly. Hurt just as much.

Náli laid his other hand on Mattias’s chest and felt the rapid drumbeat of his heart beneath flesh and bone and muscle, a sharp tattoo that matched his own. He took a deep breath. “All right. All right, all right. I – will you show me, then?” He reached for Mattias’s hand and pried it off his hip, placed it in his own lap. “If you’ve had practice, then I should have some, too. Will you show me what they taught you? Matti?”

The nickname he tacked on for effect; it felt a bit like cheating, but it had the desired outcome. An unsteady breath shivered past parted lips before Mattias wet them and settled, shoulders dropping, tension bleeding out of him. He smoothed his hand back and forth over Náli’s half-hard cock, rasping the linen of the nightshirt against sensitive skin, an almost absent gesture as he reached to tuck Náli’s hair behind his ear with the other hand.

It was so much, even that touch, and Náli bit back a sound very like a whimper.

“All right,” Mattias echoed, fingers sliding down a silken lock of hair, following it to Náli’s chest, moving to pluck at the laces of his shirt. He wet his lips again, and his hand kept moving, side to side, side to side, as the other pulled the laces loose, down and across, down and across, fabric slowly parting over his galloping heart. “Do you want to know what it was like?” Fingertips teased over chill-bumped skin as the shirt opened, and opened. “Do you want me to tell you how it went? Or do you–”

“Yes,” Náli gasped out, surprising himself, and Mattias, too, if the quirk of his brows was anything to go by. Jealous though he was, he wanted to know; curiosity pulsed wild inside him, anticipation electric in his toes and fingers, heat pooling low in his belly as his cock stiffened under the relentless petting of Mattias’s hand.

“All right,” Mattias said again, pupils gone wide, voice gone low and rough-edged. “First…” With a flick of his fingers, he sent the unlaced shirt slithering down off Náli’s arms. It fell in a puddle around his hips, leaving all but his cock and the tops of his thighs uncovered. Gooseflesh pebbled his arms and chest – and then he shivered as Mattias pressed the whole, hot width of his hand into his sternum and pushed. “Danski laid me down like this.”

Náli fell back against the pillows, looking up at Mattias kneeling between his legs.

“And Darri,” Mattias continued, “stretched out beside me and kissed me” – he petted across Náli’s chest, tweaking his nipples with teasing plucks of finger and thumb – “while Danski touched me.”

Náli imagined it, the three of them, Darri’s lean cheeks flecked with pale stubble, his mouth slotted against Mattias’s, the sound soft and wet, while Danski stroked the planes of Mattias’s chest just as Mattias stroked him now.

“Hm. What do you think? Do you want a kiss?” His hand slid down Náli’s stomach, fingers tracing the grooves between his abdominals. “Or do you want me to do what Danski did?”

“Gods–” His chest heaved as if he’d been running, his pulse dizzying in his ears. “Both – I – touch me. Like he did.”

Mattias murmured a low, approving sound, hooked his fingers in the nightshirt and drew it down his hips and off his legs; Náli nearly kicked him in the face in his haste to assist, and earned a chuckle for it. “I don’t think I was as eager as you.” He tossed the shirt over his shoulder, and then Náli was naked beneath his gaze – a gaze that raked him head to toe in a way it never had when he was carried into the well. “At least…not at first.”

Mattias shifted back so he could lean down and press a kiss just below Náli’s navel.

“Blerg,” Náli said, intelligently, and felt Mattias’s laugh vibrate all through his belly and hips. He gripped the bedclothes tight, panting, and said, “Are you going to–”

And, oh, yes he was. He most definitely was. Mattias licked a stripe all the way up the underside of his cock and he bit down on a moan. Nothing had any right to feel that good – but then he kept licking, dropping kisses down his shaft; gripped the base and sucked the head into his mouth.

Hunkering down with elbows braced on the mattress, Mattias settled in to try and suck his very soul through his cock and Náli went to pieces. He gripped the sheets, and then the back of Mattias’s head, as it bobbed, the wet-hot suction of his mouth driving a host of embarrassing sounds out of Náli’s mouth. It was all he could do not to buck up into him and choke him.

He couldn’t last. No one had ever touched him there, let alone sucked him with relentless precision. “Matti – Ma – hah! I’m – oh.” He came with a strangled shout, one hand pressed to the back of Mattias’s neck, the other flying to his own mouth so he could bite down hard on his knuckles rather than wake the whole Keep.

Pleasure hit him like a gut punch and knocked every single thought from his head. He was dimly aware of his stomach clenching and his legs kicking, but mostly it was just the bright burst of climax, far more powerful than any he’d managed alone beneath his covers at night.

When he came back to himself, it was to Mattias smiling above him, rubbing the tension from the insides of his thighs, his gaze softly smug. Náli realized he was making a series of low, wounded, utterly embarrassing noises, and choked them down with a gasp. One hand was pressed to his forehead, the other slapped across his stomach where his own, warm spend had landed. He made a face and peeled them both loose.

“Well,” he huffed, “that was–”

“Gorgeous.”

“I was going to say ‘mortifying,’ but I like your assessment…better. Gods. I feel – I feel like I’ve – run a race.”

“Bit more strenuous than performing solo once you blow the candles out, eh?”

Náli managed to narrow his gaze. “How do you – know about – that?”

Mattias went momentarily stoic. “A Dead Guard captain makes it his business to know–” The rest of his sentence dissolved into laughter when Náli shoved his foot in his face. “All right. I guessed.” He captured said foot in both hands and lowered it back to the mattress, smug again. “I was right, though, wasn’t I?”

“Don’t be an ass. I changed my mind: I want kisses now.”

Mattias smiled and leaned down to oblige him. His tongue, Náli noted with a jolt, tasted of something unfamiliar – me, he thought, with a fresh, wild thrill at the idea. That had in fact happened; he hadn’t dreamed it, and the evidence was slightly salty in Mattias’s mouth.

“I’ve also changed my mind,” he continued, a little breathless, still, when Mattias pulled back a fraction, “about hearing about you with – them. For now, anyway.” He did want to hear it, truthfully, squirmed not-unpleasantly inside when he recalled what little Mattias had said so far. But not now.