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Cort leaves again, with little fanfare and even less fuss than the manner in which he had arrived. The power of Khem's teleportation spell flares blue in the middle of the floor of Taliesin’s mostly empty room with Cort still as a statue in its center, and it's like watching history repeat itself. The doorframe is hard against his shoulder, its uneven bevel digging sharply into his arm, grounding like the feeling of Katy's nails in his wrist, his own fingers pulling at his hair, and he doesn't feel the need to cry. The urge is there of course, like it always is lately, but he doesn't need to. And so he doesn't. Not yet.
Cort is gone again and Harper has things to do, and Harper is the one who sent him away in the first place. Not that Cort objected. Cort digs his heels in when he doesn't agree, but there was no heat in it this time, no fight, no resistance, just a quiet kind of acceptance that sits like a cold stone in the center of Taliesin's chest, heart battering painfully against it every time it beats.
Still, if the only mark left on him is one that aches but doesn't bleed, he ought to count himself as fortunate. Maybe someone as simple and stubborn as he is can learn. Maybe after thirty years of lessons, he's finally getting what he's paid for.
The thought is sticky, makes his skin feel dirty, and so he lets it go. Cort is gone, they both have other concerns, other responsibilities. It was the right choice, a good call, and everything is fine. Everything will be fine.
He doesn't really come to until he's standing with Katy and Khem in the middle of the Xanathar's pet town deep within the mountainside, peering through the part of him where his father's blood shows most strongly, trying to piece together a profit from another poorly comported misadventure. Everything is drab, finery faded and worn like the remnants of some long lost civilization unearthed and it makes it easier to pretend that none of this is real. That he need not extend his view outside the immediate, nor care about anything beyond the next step.
He gathers options as he is wont to do, brokering a deal with the Xanathar in some half formed plan as Jarnath watches him from across the room with fear and zealous hope. He woos the beholder's pet with ridiculous promises of riches and seaweed, and on nothing more than whim and instinct convinces the pretty, magical bartender to take him home.
It's easy, because of course it is. Quirt is nice enough if utterly baffled and rightly skeptical, and it's really not his fault that Harper knows perfectly well what people see when they look at him. What they want. What he has of worth to trade, and how little it all really means to him anyway.
It's easy to play the eager youth with elves, to bring the wide-eyed, smart-mouthed ardency to the surface and wear it like a mask. He has plenty of experience with this and Quirt is just as susceptible as anyone else, even though Taliesin doubts he's lonely or in real need of companionship. He doesn't need to feel guilty that maybe it's too easy, that it works too well, that all it really costs him is a glance, a lingering touch, an impulsive kiss pressed to an unsuspecting cheek and a bold request.
It's a little bit like sleepwalking, his feet retracing steps down a path he's trod before. He doesn't have to think about it, doesn't have to control it, just follows Quirt’s lead as they move off into the darkness and lets the restless energy boil off of him. Knows it will just seem like eagerness and enthusiasm. Taliesin, in his turtle shell, doesn't have to feel much of anything at all.
It's not like it's wrong to pretend. It’s not like Quirt is his real name either.
Harper knows better than to stand too close behind when Quirt turns away to unlock his door, and Quirt knows better than to try to make Harper precede him into a pitch black room. They're charlatans and thieves but apparently polite ones. Quirt lights the lamps with a flick of his wrist, and in Harper goes like he has nothing to fear in being alone with strangers.
That's a bit true. Strangers never hurt you like friends do.
The door clicks shut and Quirt says "So," and doesn't get much further than that because Harper kisses him until he stumbles backward. It's a hollow echo of old times, positions reversed and much more careful than the clash of lips and teeth and bruising hands when Cort would trap him between the door and his body and drink him in like he was trying to drown.
Quirt allows himself to be kissed for a moment before he decides to kiss back, and Harper can feel the unspoken questions on his tongue when it slides between his lips. What are we doing here? and Is this for real? and Harper doesn't answer because it isn't like he knows.
In Arrabar, in Hlath, Taliesin couldn't bear to let anyone else touch him when Cort left, couldn't imagine that void being filled by anything that wouldn't make it worse.
That faded, over time. He remembered early lessons learned about pain, that some hurts silenced others, and it was easier to give into drink and drugs, into the pursuit of money and violence and to lose himself to all the disembodied hands on his skin he no longer associates with the anonymous entities that controlled them.
And then Katy. And then Khem. Then Shay and Bren and Bill and Vigo and Aunrae and even Jarnath sometimes, and so many others. It was... different.
And then it wasn’t.
Cort. Again. Home and away and on and off and always always leaving Taliesin behind. It's no wonder really that now if he can't feel nothing, he'd rather feel anything but this persistent ache. Anything else at all.
He's never liked this about himself. That's also never stopped him.
His body is still there, and so is Quirt, kissing it like he doesn't know whether to laugh or ask if Taliesin needs help. That's not what he's after and so he pulls away, just a little, leaning down to move his mouth against the pulse that beats rapidly against the thin skin of Quirt's throat. Misgivings or not, he doesn't tell Harper to stop, or object when his fingers seek out the little catches down the front of his shirt. Silver on blue, like tiny bells that don't make a sound, worn and fine like everything else in this place.
The ridges of sharp collar bones under his lips, the faint taste of salt on the tip of his tongue as it dips into the hollow of Quirt's throat, and a cock hard and ready under Harper's hand when it moves to cup him through his breeches.
"Steady there," Quirt says, voice rough with disuse though surely it's only been minutes, his hand covering Harper's where it rests. Not pulling him away, just making him pause.
Harper blinks up at him in the low light and rather than straighten he drops to one knee, two fingers hooked into the catches of Quirt’s belt.
"Can I?" He breathes. His voice sounds sure of itself, and when Quirt's dark eyes widen for an instant in surprise that is quickly narrowed into something like skepticism and good humor, he realizes he really does want to.
At least he doesn't not want to.
Whatever. The long, slender fingers in his hair feel good as they move against his scalp, occupying themselves with something other than slowing him down. He wastes little time; Quirt is in his hand and then in his mouth before he can say both syllables of Harper's name, stunned grip tightening before going tender.
He's that kind, then. Considerate. Holding himself still even when his thighs start to quake, refusing to chase his mouth or choke him when Harper takes him to the hilt.
It's not exactly a thing of finesse. It's even a little bit clumsy, all eagerness and reckless enthusiasm over nuance and subtlety. He can do that too, of course, it just doesn't read as what Quirt wants and Harper is only here to give the people what they want, after all. Both of his knees hit the hard surface of the uncovered stone floor and he steadies himself on Quirt's hips as Quirt's hands find his shoulders and then the nape of his neck, urging him back.
He's smiling, strained but genuine, pale cheeks flushed and pretty even in the half dark. "If you don't slow down, I'm going to-"
"It's okay," he says, maybe too quickly, and then mouths at the head of Quirt’s cock to draw attention from it. "I want you to. I want to. Can I?"
Will he? Yes. He blinks, looks up eyes wide and cajoling through his lashes the way that works every fucking time. "Please?"
"Fuck."
Good enough.
Quirt doesn't last long after that though he clearly gives it at least a parting effort, sweat on his bare chest and brow. The back of his head hits the door with a dull thunk when Harper gives up watching for working, and the noise he makes in his throat is low and gorgeous when he comes, the sound curling around Harper's half-hard cock, rekindling it's flagging interest.
The urgency isn’t there, though; he can wait or do nothing at all. Quirt's hands are in his hair again, gracious and gentle.
"You certainly don't waste time," Quirt says, and his lips are full and flushed and smiling, curious as he tips Harper's chin up and looks into his face like he's searching for some hidden clue. It seems as good a time as any to bite the thumb that traces the shape of his mouth. Quirt shivers pleasantly under his hands.
"The energy of youth," he sighs with all the relative bemusement of an elf three hundred years old, and watches with indulgent, half-lidded eyes when Harper sucks his thumb into his mouth. Its callused pad moves over the flat of his tongue before pulling free with a pop that makes Quirt's spent cock jump. He groans and laughs, low and pleasant when Harper grins up at him. "The spirit is willing, but you’ll have to give the body a moment."
That sounds as fine as anything else. Harper isn’t here to get off. Well, not only get off. "I believe I was promised diamonds."
He laughs again and tucks himself away when Harper sits back on his heels, not bothering to do up his shirt again before he offers his hands and helps Harper up. The garment hangs loose and soft off his shoulders, his body leaner and stronger than Harper would have expected for a magic barfly in billowy clothes. He's pretty in the way all elves are pretty, all fine lines and points. His skin looks like milk against his dark hair, the contrast clearer the more Harper’s eyes adjust to the dim light.
Quirt selects a bottle and two glasses from a large armoire against one wall, and watches Harper take in the room for the first time from his place still near the door. A hollow in the rock not quite a cave, it’s smaller than he would have assumed but comfortable, well appointed if faintly shabby. It feels slightly asynchronous, like the rest of this place does, as if it’s a rock in a stream and time has rushed like unchecked water around it.
It also reminds him of both Katy and Khem, treasure and strange contraptions littering every flat surface, books piled high in every chair.
“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” he says, not apologetic at all, but Harper stops him before he can move anything away.
“Leave it. It’s nice.”
That makes Quirt look oddly at him again and this time it makes him flush, accidentally genuine. The proffered wine burns his mouth and coats his throat and he’s glad for the distraction, wandering around the space like both spy and ingenue, poking into things, picking them up and putting them down. Quirt lets him, leaning thoughtfully against the countertop watching; the space is just one large room, it isn’t as if he has to let Harper out of his sight.
“You like… things?” he hazards, glass pressed against his cheek. Harper laughs.
“No.” He doesn’t. Not really. “There’s just a bed in my room. A desk. A chair. Maybe some curtains, depending on the day.”
Quirt smiles crookedly, one corner of his mouth bending upward. “What do you like, then?”
This? This is easy. Harper smiles back at him, winsome and clever, lying back uninvited on the edge of Quirt’s big soft bed and leaning up on his elbows. “Money. Liquor. Sex. You.”
It’s so overtly solicitous that it makes Quirt laugh, the sound lingering and amused. “Easy to please then.”
“Very.”
Under most circumstances it wouldn’t shock him to end up on his knees again, one way or another, but all Quirt does is bring the bottle over and sit down next to him, legs folded beneath him. Harper doesn’t know when he’d kicked off his shoes, but his narrow feet are pale against the dark velvet of the bedding beneath them and it seems somehow softer than a moment alone with a stranger should be, even one whose mouth has wandered into all the places Harper’s had.
He doesn’t say anything when he catches Harper looking, just smiles faintly and refills his cup, settled and comfortable. Harper wonders if this is how he is with all his lovers, easy and confident, or if this is something of a habit bleeding into this moment from his usual fare. Quirt seems like the sort to take a man to dinner first, and Harper isn’t quite sure how he feels about that.
It won't surprise him if he's an exception, though. He’s used to being the exception to someone’s rule.
Quirt talks to him, or tries to. The back and forth is probing but gentle, like he knows not to ask too many of his questions all at once. It doesn’t feel particularly invasive, but it’s clear that Quirt knows about as much as he does as to why Harper is here, now, in his house in the middle of the Underdark.
Harper dissembles well, but he recognizes a likeness in Quirt that could easily get him into trouble. He’s cast a net with only himself as bait just to see what he could snare; he lets himself fall back into the safety of innuendo, lest he compromise something he doesn’t yet know is important.
Quirt is a wizard, like Khem. A collector, like Katy. He has a tongue like Harper’s and the business acumen of someone with situationally flexible morals and a lot of time on his hands. Quirt is also frustrated, complacent and bored. Being a mandatory ‘guest’ of the Xanathar has tempered what once had to have been a dangerous ambition out of him, but there is still a brightness in his eyes when Harper talks to him about the world above.
He’s smart enough to be cautious, but hungry for it. Harper can use this, maybe. For what, he isn’t yet sure. So like him to gather the means without a clear end in mind.
Irresponsible, Cort chastises him from the back of his mind.
Opportunist, Harper corrects, and then wonders if he’s said something out loud. But no - the look Quirt is giving him is just the look Quirt has been giving him all night, like he’s chili paste in a hard candy shell, savoring the sweet and trying to anticipate the moment when his mouth will start to burn.
“What?” Harper asks, innocent, narrow-eyed and smiling like he thinks Quirt is laughing at him.
“Nothing,” Quirt says, after too long a moment. He drains his cup and looks away, out across the shadowed room. “I promised you diamonds, didn’t I?”
“So you keep saying.”
He’s not invested; it seems too much like a line, like something he’s heard a thousand times before. He never expects bold claims to come to much, all things considered, but even he has to stop and take a breath when Quirt puts down his glass, cracks his knuckles, and sketches a quick sigil in the air. All around them the lanterns dim as the ceiling flares with a hundred pinpricks of light, crystalline and blue and achingly familiar.
“They’re stars,” he marvels aloud, craning his neck to look, unsure of when he’d gotten to his feet and made his way to the center of the floor. “Gods, it’s- they're beautiful.”
It’s probably the most sincere thing he’s said tonight and he’s honestly too shocked to remember to twist a lie around the truth, standing with his mouth agape like a fool. It’s- well, it’s not particularly clever of him, gawking at a ceiling like a child at a magician’s trick. He gets it now; they’re just diamonds set into the rock in the patterns of constellations and the amount of effort and energy to illuminate them was likely minimal. A parlor trick and some needlessly expensive decorations, but the naked want on Quirt’s face when he turns to look hushes anything clever he might have thought to say.
He isn’t looking at Harper but at the ceiling above him, dark eyes tracing their tenuous shapes as they must have a thousand times before, constructing an approximation to fill the void left by the real thing.
The stone pit in Taliesin’s heart aches. He puts a hand to his chest on instinct and when the movement draws Quirt’s eyes to him he can’t even smile. He has to turn away or he’ll do something stupid, like cry - over spilled milk, over gems in a cavern ceiling, over somebody else’s pain, over this sucking wound inside him that he suspects will never, ever heal.
This is something that he doesn’t want Quirt to see. Not because Quirt is Quirt, but because Taliesin is Taliesin and desperately does not want to be. Not today, not ever really, but especially not right now.
But then this isn’t about him, is it? It’s not like he’s manifesting himself into Vigo’s kitchen on force of maudlin will alone, he’s working. Sort of. It’s close enough.
On desperate impulse he grabs a blanket off the back of an overstuffed and faded leather chair and spreads it out in the middle of the floor. “Come here. Come here please,” he amends with a mischievous smile when Quirt’s brow lifts, all the impetuous youth again. “And bring the bottle.”
Quirt does, because of course he does, and Harper pulls him down to the floor against his side, stretching long legs out on the blanket. Somehow it’s even more just the two of them, alone in a sea of black rock and the play of shadow off aged furniture.
Quick to take the hint, Quirt gestures and the light further dims until all that gleams is the blue glow of the false stars above. It’s imperfect, each stone point refracting to cast a scattering of stardust across the floor. Blue speckles the fair skin of his cheek in triplicate, a wistful look around his edges again until he shutters it, seeing Harper looking.
“What?”
“You’re pretty.” It’s not what he was going to say and they both know it, but Quirt huffs a little laugh and drinks and the moment passes with the sigh that slips from Harper’s mouth, deflating him until he’s flat on his back on the floor. Quirt watches him, curious and amused until he is tugged down too, side by side with the bottle between them. The darkness seems bigger with the lanterns put out, sprawling above them like an ocean with no shore.
“Do you know them?” He asks, eventually, and raises a hand to gesture at the false sky above. “The constellations.”
“I do now,” Quirt admits. “Not when I decided to put them up.” He glances at Harper, rueful and yet unapologetic at once. “I’ve had time.”
Harper has nothing to say about that, nothing disparaging at least. “I miss them too.” The words are just a quiet ripple across the surface of dark water that hides so much beneath, and rather than touch the place on his arm where the star shark elianthus swims amidst a sea of ink, he slips his fingers past the cold glass bottle and onto Quirt’s cool wrist. He stills when Harper touches him, hesitating, and then silently turns his hand palm up, slender digits splaying to allow warm, rough fingers to thread through them like a fin through the crests of waves.
Neither of them say anything about it. Not when the power of Quirt’s spell fades from bright blue to cerulean dusk, and not when Harper reaches to push the bottle away, leans up on one elbow, and finds Quirt’s mouth with his.
It would be romantic if it wasn’t sad, or maybe sad if it wasn’t romantic. Or maybe it’s both or neither and it doesn’t really matter, because they’re just two lonely people on the floor in the dark and neither of them has tried to take anything from the other.
Harper isn’t sure what he’s prepared to give until he’s prepared to give it, finding himself half unclothed across a lap of a stranger who is not quite a stranger anymore while the sky blooms with blue fire over his shoulder. He wonders what he looks like in azure, if it makes him look half as pretty as it makes Quirt, skin all aglow with an alabaster coolness that is nothing like the actual heat of him.
“Do you want-” he manages, stealing words like Harper steals kisses, arms wound about his neck.
Harper laughs, pulls back but not away. “You?” The question seems a bit ridiculous, all things considered.
Quirt’s grin is predictable, but real enough. “I wouldn’t want to assume.”
“What a gentleman.”
“This isn’t usually how I go about things, you know.”
“I knew you were a ‘dinner first’ kind of guy.”
Quirt sighs, put upon. “Sentimental in my old age.” He lifts a hand from where it’s tucked itself up the back of Harper’s shirt and makes an idle gesture almost familiar, and a little glass bottle of oil floats across the room in the palm of a spectral hand.
“Show off.”
“That’s nothing.”
“Oh really.”
There are benefits, he discovers, to magical bedfellows. It’s not that he’s impossible to surprise, just- well, he’s had his share of experiences, maybe a bit more than. Quirt isn’t even his first wizard, but all it takes is the shiver of unnaturally cold fingers down his spine and an impossibly hot tongue against his throat to make it very clear that there’s something his other erstwhile trysts have been missing.
Not that this makes it a good idea. No one ever accuses him of having those, and it’s surely not a mark of his own personal brilliance that he ends up splayed out on his back, legs spread with Quirt between them, fingers in his hair and around his own cock as a lightning storm moves up his naked thigh, controlled in the palm of a hand. It hasn’t escaped him that this is dangerous; he can almost hear Khem in the back of his mind cataloging the risks.
What is he doing? He’s just a person; against the power to alter the fucking fabric of reality, he’s nothing. It’s a fact that has been proven time and again in a number of annoying, painful, and humiliating ways and he still can’t bring himself to care. It feels good to be held, to be pleasured, to be touched and not to be haunted by the spectres of things that were and might never be again.
He lets Quirt have him on a tattered blanket right there on the floor beneath the ghosts of stars. It’s good. It doesn’t have to be more than that.
When he comes he isn’t sure whether he wants to laugh or cry, guilty at the relief or maybe merely relieved at guilt’s presence. He does neither, muffling himself against the sweat-slicked salt of Quirt’s throat as his trembling legs unhook from around slim hips and they lie back, panting, under stars that only grow fainter the longer they rest there.
And like all other good things, this too has to end; he doesn’t really know how to have it any other way. No one’s rushing him out, but it also doesn’t feel quite right to stay. Quirt doesn’t bother to dress as Harper does, but brings the lights gently back up with a wave of his hand. The stars fade like they do when dawn comes, keeping their secrets.
“Somehow I don’t feel like I have to ask if I’ll see you again,” Quirt comments, drinking the last of the wine directly from the bottle. Harper can taste it on him when he leans in for a kiss, light and straightforwardly familiar. Quirt hums thoughtfully and gives him the same crooked grin, one corner of his mouth quirking upward. “Maybe we can even keep the lights on.”
“And miss the view?” He shouldn’t have said it. Not that Quirt’s face changes, but it’s not like that means anything; that’s what masks are for. He dips his head, kisses an apology into his bare shoulder, and receives a smaller but perhaps more genuine smile for his trouble.
“You should go.”
“I should.”
“Your friends will worry.”
“They will.”
“Watch yourself.”
“Always.”
And if always means never and Quirt perfectly well knows that, neither of them say anything about it. Harper smiles over his shoulder and shuts the door, his feet casting long shadows in the glow of blue behind him.