for whatsina_name

[travelerscurse]

It's so strange, being back.

Ishgard hasn't changed in hundreds of years, strange to think it would have changed since he'd been here last, but then, everywhere else he'd been has changed just in the time he's been there. So it's strange to be walking streets he knows from his childhood but with eyes that are so different.

Beside him, Emmanelain chatters on about the different facets of city life. He had made sure Haurchefant knew to petition his former family with as much discretion as possible. They, of course, had simply said their son had died and they were certain some fugitive from Uldah couldn't be him anyway. He hadn't expected any differently. He feels like that person is dead and he breathes on as someone wholly different anyway, but it's strange, to be being shown around the place he grew up in by a member of one of the High Houses, someone his parents would have killed for him to be friends with just a few short years earlier, as though he were a stranger to this place.

He has always been a stranger to this place.

Dressed in Gridanian fashion and tanned lightly by the sun, he doesn't expect there's anyone here who would recognize him. He'd been barely more than a ghost when he left, hardly a warrior of anything. But as they pass through the Jeweled Croizer and Emmanelain gets caught up talking to some girl he's been trying to woo, there's a sudden, strange sensation at the back of his head, something like and unlike the Echo, and he turns, eyes scanning the busy street for... something. Someone.

(For some reason, unbidden, he remembers the night of the Calamity, giant pieces of some other part of Eorzea raining from the sky..

Comments

[travelerscurse]

Gustavain hums softly in a quieter sort of pleasure when Phillip pets through his hair for a moment, a lazy, relaxed smile curving his lips.

"Hardly," he quips back, but it's quiet, and it's good to hear him say it with a lighter tone, a little scoff, than the deeper, darker thing it could have been given how this had all started. He's silent after that, at least for a moment, Phillip's fingers drawing out a low groan the moment he starts his work again.

All of the muscles are tense, even the lightest of his combat roles rely on a lot of running if nothing else, and all of it feels incredible, even moreso now that he's on the warm, soft bed. There's no reason to try to stifle the warm, low noises the massage is pulling out of him, so there's a whole litany of them, his body shifting in a lazy sort of bid for a bit of friction.

It's all very soft, clear that he's aroused and that it's sensual but not openly sexual. Except Phillip is quickly going to learn that if he digs his thumbs in along the muscle they naturally lay against if he just lays his hands on Gustavain's upper thighs, that he can get an entirely different kind of moan, deepening the higher he follows that muscle.

[whatsina_name]

It doesn't take long at all for him to find, the motion something he winds up doing just to try and get into those muscles. He grins the first time he hears what that does to Gustavain, backing off to work out the other muscles before diving back into it, alternating between that and the more sensual pleasure.

"Better?" he hums, a little teasing but undeniably warm, pleased with how he feels the reaction beneath his hands. This really should become a regular thing; maybe he'll kidnap Gustavain for a day at a time to make sure he gets some godsdamn rest...

[travelerscurse]

Each time he does it and then backs off, the reaction gets better the next time, more heated, lewder. A particularly long, hard press of his fingers sliding upwards gets a "gods" out of him that sounds more sobbed than spoken, fingers gripping harder into the pillow for a moment. But it takes a while before he finally begs,

"Please," he hasn't been holding it back, not really, he's just been waiting until he really means it, and it shows in his voice, "Please, I want--" he's not shy about asking for what he wants, normally, but another press of those fingers has the rest of the sentence splintering in his head and it leaves a pretty opening for more teasing.

(Maybe that's why he doesn't struggle to reach for the words right away, though it's not a conscious decision.)

[whatsina_name]

"Please what?" It comes out of him near automatically, as his hands slide back down his legs and then up again, pressing in to the back of his thighs, "I'm doing the best I can for your leg muscles already."

It's definitely a tease, especially as he leans down to press a little kiss to the curve of Gustavain's back, where his clothes have almost certainly gotten pushed up from his attempt at getting friction. It's a very sweet gesture, in the middle of all the rest of this.