In which Artemis helps Jarlaxle warm up.
“Your weather continues to delight and amaze.”
The two of them dripped, frozen and sodden, into the inn. Artemis clomped towards the stairs. “It is not my weather.”
The sky had opened up halfway back to town, and had not let up in the hours since. The only consolation was that at least he hadn’t had to lug a soggy corpse through the downpour. Say what you liked about Jarlaxle’s arsenal of trinkets, magical storage spaces were, Artemis was willing to concede, fairly useful.
“It certainly isn’t mine.” Jarlaxle removed his hat and gazed forlornly at the pathetic droop of the soaked feather. “We should go south again.”
“We are south.”
“Further south.”
Jarlaxle crossed to the fire and fiddled with something unseen for a moment—with a click and a snap, the hearth erupted into a crackling blaze. The welcome warmth only made the cling of Artemis’ clothes more intolerable. He toed off his boots and set them by the fire, then quickly began extricating himself from the rest of his soaked ensemble. He could feel Jarlaxle watching him, and refused to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it.
He could not ignore it when the drow put still-damp arms around his waist. A horribly wet shirt slid against his back—Jarlaxle had not yet undressed.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“In this circumstance, Artemis,” Jarlaxle kissed his spine, “you ought to say something like ‘oh, Jarlaxle, you will surely catch your death, let us get you out of those wet clothes.’”
Artemis sighed. “If you want sex, just ask for it.”
“And where would be the fun in that, abbil?”
Jarlaxle kissed along the curve of his shoulder-blade, nipped the back of his bicep—the drag of wet fabric as he pressed closer was unbearably awful. Artemis turned and caught the drow up, held his idiotic grin of a partner at arm’s length. Jarlaxle was shivering.
“If you give yourself some sort of illness from playing stupid games, do not expect me to nurse you back to health.” He roughly unfastened Jarlaxle’s shirt, cut off his smart remark with a hard look. “The second you start sneezing I am throwing you at the nearest cleric and leaving you there.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
Out of his clothes and seated before the fire, Jarlaxle still shivered in intervals. Artemis grabbed a blanket and tossed it over him, huffing an inward laugh at his scramble to arrange it in a more dignified fashion. When he was done, he held up the edge and cocked his head—Artemis sighed and went to join him. Jarlaxle pressed close with a contented hum.
After a moment he shivered again, full-body exaggerated.
“You are not still cold.”
“I am. You should warm me up before I perish from it.”
“If you perish from it, my life becomes exponentially less complicated.”
“That is a lot of words for ‘boring.’”
“You are a lot of words for ‘annoying.’”
Jarlaxle climbed into his lap and pushed his still-damp hair back from his forehead. Clever hands traced his face; brow, cheeks, chin. A thumb brushed over his lips. “Warm me up, Artemis.”
Artemis kissed him. He wound up on his back shortly thereafter, Jarlaxle atop him, the blanket tangled over their legs and not much else. The fire’s flicker warmed their skin—wandering hands and hungry mouths warmed the rest. Jarlaxle extricated lube from his hat and slid onto him with a pleased exhale. Artemis held his waist, traced the moving line of his back with a palm. They moved slow, indulgent in the fireshadow that merged them at every junction.
Jarlaxle made a noise at his ear, one he knew well enough by now—and too often they had done this, that he knew it well enough. Artemis held him closer. Jarlaxle took his hand and put it between them, to stroke and draw more well-known sounds from him until he finished with a lip-bitten cry and pressed his face to Artemis’ neck. He then deemed it necessary to whisper a litany of ridiculous filth until Artemis was forced to kiss him again to shut him up, gripping Jarlaxle’s hip tightly as he came.
The heavy drum of rain showed no sign of letting up, and the wind had grown shrill enough to whine through a crack in the window. Jarlaxle did not move off him, just lay sprawled over him as they both caught their breath, a weight more familiar than he had any right to be.
“Get off me so I can set the traps.”
“You stabbed the only threat in a five mile radius yesterday.”
“Jarlaxle—”
“Not moving,” Jarlaxle mumbled. “Kill me or learn to live with it.”
Artemis lay his arm across Jarlaxle’s back. For now, here in the warmth, he supposed he’d live with it.