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cosmictapestry · 11 months

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C7 and B16? The Agonies spa service combo

C7. bathing together

and

B16. massage

enough sexiness. Horrors and Agonies ahoy. and some sexiness. and the single saddest most Unwell entity to have ever existed. amen

@pratchettfan87 says that there are hot springs outside the castle and i say hell yeah there are

prompt list + fills here

The pressures of Lord Morpheus's position are harder on him now than they were before his imprisonment.

At first Lucienne hoped he just needed to readjust to managing his storm and his realm all at once, and that once he did the vacant exhaustion in his eyes would become less common. This has not been the case. Instead he seems to grow wearier, more distant when he drifts.

He talks to her, at least. He holds her hand in quiet stolen moments, loves her well in their shared chambers, comes to her when her own dreamscape runs dark. She wants to think she's helping. But though he becomes softer with her, more honest and forthcoming, his wounded existence drains him, leaves him spread thin and so, so tired.

She finds him in his throne room, staring up at the shifting stained glass windows. They seem cloudy today, the shapes indistinct and the light dim. His upturned face is bathed in the opaque gold cast from the jagged image of a star who had gone mad. He turns his head to look at her, and he blinks several times before he recognizes her. "Lucienne."

Today Lucienne is lonely, and she is stressed from the noise and the bustle of her rebuilt realm, and she is tense in mind and body, and she trusts him when she trusts nothing else. He frowns and his eyes flicker over her face, and he doesn't move, but his focus sharpens. "How can I help?"

"I've not been to the hot springs since you rebuilt them," she says.

Lord Morpheus stands there awkwardly still, and he looks away from her. "You deserve to rest, Lucienne," he says softly. "You certainly don't need my permission."

Instead of answering, she holds her hand out to him from across the expanse of the throne room. He stares at it, and he appears conflicted, and sad, and scared, and like he is as close to collapsing as he is to accepting any offer to bridge the gap between himself and someone who loves him. She waits for him to make his choice.

Finally he takes a step that echoes through his great hall, and then another, approaching her with all the caution of some once-bitten prey animal. She has bitten him before, to be fair. He stops in front of her and he stares down at her hand, impassive marble expression running with fault lines. His hand shakes when he raises it to hers.

Lucienne clasps that shaking hand in both her own and watches his jaw shift and his eyes brim with tears. His shoulders shake, too, his black cloak shivering with the motion. "I apologize," he whispers. "You do not want my company today."

She dips her head, tries to catch his gaze as it drifts from her. "You've decided that, have you?" she teases, her thumb tracing the sharp ridges of his knuckles. "I don't get a say?"

He flinches. "I didn't say that," too quickly, breath rapid, shivering intensifying, his eyes snap to hers. "I did not—you misunderstand—"

"Dream," she interrupts, startled, squeezing that ice-cold hand. "A joke, my lord."

He does not respond, he just stares, wide-eyed and terrified of her, of harming her or being harmed by her or something he is seeing that is not her at all. "My lord," Lucienne whispers. "My lord, come with me. Rest with me. I want you to. I am asking you to."

She watches as this calms him, steadies him, and he breathes, and the panic slowly drains from him, leaves him bowed and yielding. She holds his hand until he nods his head almost imperceptibly.

She closes her eyes, and when she opens them they are no longer in the throne room—they are in a cavernous grotto, its granite walls silvery pink and sparkling by the light of the sun gleaming through the open roof of the cave. Mosses and flowers and ferns bloom over the cliff face and cascade down to obscure the edges of a clear blue pool.

Lucienne and her lord stand at the bank of the pool, soft sand sloping down to the water's edge. Sweet-smelling steam rises in curls from the pool and the flowers that take root around it bow inward and sway languidly in its swirling eddies.

He leans into her now, the privacy or the heat or her patience cutting through his resistance. His forehead bumps hers, his hand cradled close to her chest, his shivers palpable in her own bones. There's an undercurrent of desperation in this soft moment, his eager acceptance of distraction, her need to set aside the past hundred years like they never happened. "May I take your clothes?"

Lucienne raises one hand to his face, pets his cheek, and he leans into it. "You may." Her garments melt away into silky sand and then into nothing. His free hand spreads across her lower back, holding her close to him. "Will you be able to undress?"

He thinks about it, and she kisses him to tell him it's alright, that he doesn't have to answer or know or make a decision if he can't. "Not right now," he manages eventually, when her lips have left his red and slick. "Later, perhaps." He swallows hard, breathes heavy between them. "I want to touch you. You feel real."

She does not know what it means for him that something might feel real. He is the king of all that is not real. And he is mad with it. "Touch me, then," and she moves his hand in her grasp to her breast and feels it trembling there. "As much as you need. I'm here."

His arm wraps around her back and he pulls her to his chest, embraces her, crushes her close, breathes harsh and unsteady in her ear. She' wishes he wouldn't wait until he is hanging by a thread to ask for a hug. She breathes in the scent of his skin, presses herself all along the line of his body, lets him stay there and shake—and she feels better, at least, because her home is solid in her arms and they are together.

Lord Morpheus pulls away before he's warmed, his eyes downcast, his expression drawn and uncertain until she kisses him again. "Whatever you need," she whispers against his lips. "Tell me, love."

He finds it easier to show her, as he often does, and he helps her to sit on a fluffy towel he's manifested under her feet, and he disappears momentarily from her view. She is left gazing at the sunlit haze above the water, obscuring blue water amongst pale pink stone and dark green foliage. She feels his hand on her shoulder, then the back of her neck, and finally she feels him sit behind her on the rise, his legs politely crossed.

His hands when they touch her are cold and trembling, but the oil on them is warm, and it smells sharp and sweet, and he pauses with the softest pressure on her shoulder blades. "Is this alright?"

All at once Lucienne is painfully aware of the tension in her back and neck and the grinding clench of her jaw. His thumbs rub smooth circles either side of her spine. "Not quite what I came to you for," she teases as though she isn't close to melting just from what he's giving her.

"You came to me because you feel alone." He leans forward and presses his lips to the back of her head. "Alone and weary from the burdens I've saddled you with."

"You misremember," she tells him gently, patiently, when her irritation fizzles as quickly as it kindles. "I have chosen every burden I've ever known. You have not."

This is not something Lord Morpheus can acknowledge if he hopes to remain in control of everything inside him, and so he ignores it. His hands shake harder. "Regardless," he whispers. "Let me help you. Please."

Lucienne would be a fool to argue when his clever hands begin to knead her shoulders, softly unwinding her tension, making her head drop forward in bliss. His palms run down either side of her spine, his long fingers sink into the plushness of her hips, draw back up and then down again, working softness into her frame. The strain in her back melts away under his attention.

The air is warm and wet and the sweat that gathers on her skin mingles with the oil, eases his movements, makes even the deepest pressure on her shoulders and lower back glide sweet and smooth, and she feels like she's floating in the pool already.

She realizes she's making some fairly obscene noises when he makes a sound in response, a comforting little shush that seems to jolt through her. Gods, his hands—on her neck now, then her upper arms, pulling her back against his chest so he can kiss her temple, stroking down her biceps. He shifts behind her, and he stills, again uncertain, and she guesses what the problem is, and she scoots back into him until she feels him hard against her arse.

With the unspoken permission he uncurls his legs, straightens them out on either side of her to accommodate the spread of her hips, pressed close to him. He does not move against her, just resumes his attentions, though without access to her back he's just stroking her now, feeling her skin, breathing hot on her ear. That's fine—she doesn't think she could feel much more jellylike than she does.

Lucienne tips her head back on his shoulder, exposing her throat for him. He kisses along the underside of her jaw, and his hands roam back to where she put them in the first place, cupping her breasts all slick and soft and cool, thumbing over her nipples, and Lucienne glances down to see the way her flesh spills between his fingers, the rich darkness of her skin worshiped by the pale of his own. Her head falls back again, and he gives her an approving groan, lavving his tongue over the hinge of her jaw.

She lifts an arm up behind her to wind through his hair, stroke it while he mouths over her hot skin. She is boneless, slouched, weak against her lord, sighing and whispering moans to him, encouraging him to pinch and grip at her until her spine is arching, hips pitching up, legs rubbing together in luxuriant delight, asking for his hands somewhere else in all but words.

"There you are," Lord Morpheus whispers, and his left hand abandons her breast, runs down the length of her body to touch between her legs. Lucienne sighs and stretches and mumbles lax encouragement that he takes in stride. He rubs her clit with three slick fingers, draws those fingers down, slips the middle inside her. "You are so beautiful," he tells her, choked, his teeth on her shoulder now. "Lucienne. My Lucienne."

She's practically purring, rocking up into his hand, fingers clenched in his hair. He buries his face against her neck now, mouthing up her throat, right hand tweaking her nipple in time with the drag of his finger inside her, the others tapping her folds, palm grinding on her clit. She is disembodied, wholly so, reduced to the warmth of her structureless frame held together by his hands.

He draws it out, doesn't give her more than that one finger—and it seems like he's just feeling her, inside and out, stroking where she's softest and warmest, and she's feeling him too, every slow deliberate slide building her up to a slow, burning orgasm that leaves her utterly nerveless in his arms.

Her lord kisses her face and pets her shaking thighs while she comes down, sweet approving hums and praise from his soft lips. She is still not quite in her body, and it takes long moments for her to return. She notices that his shivering has died down to a faint tremor, and his chest has warmed, and his erection prods her arse.

She endures it for several minutes more, relishing in his hands and the warmth of their realm, the release and the affirmation she's been seeking that has now encompassed her entirely. Then she sits up, and he makes a protesting noise as she stands, hands steadying her legs when she immediately stumbles.

As soon as she's stable Lucienne holds her hands out, pulls him to his feet, then stretches up to kiss him. "Help me wash up?"

Lord Morpheus glances over her shoulder at the spring, then back to her, and down to his clothes, soft black trousers and long-sleeved shirt since they left the throne room. His feet are bare, white toes buried in the pink sand, black-painted nails peeking through. "You don't need to undress," Lucienne reminds him.

Her lord swallows several times, and there's a crease on his brow that means he is going to be extraordinarily honest with her about something that is confusing him. These things are usually difficult for him to articulate and painful for her to hear. "I fantasized about this, when I was imprisoned," he says, and he cannot look at her, or at her face at all. "Hot water and being touched. It was my most desperate fantasy, the most pleasant feeling I could imagine, when not feeling became unbearable. It was all I thought about for months at a time. It was all I wanted."

Lucienne does not say anything because she is preoccupied trying to conceptualize that, the depths of the torment he's alluding to, the absence of anything at all but memory of pleasant sensation. Her silence makes him flinch and begin to pull away, though he allows himself to be held fast by her hands squeezing his. "I apologize," he says quickly, "I know it is—strange—"

"It is not strange," Lucienne interrupts with more fire than she anticipates. "Please do not think it is strange."

He stares at her now, wide-eyed, bewildered, but something on her face must ensnare him, because he tilts his head and doesn't try to pull away again.

"Let me give it to you," Lucienne says, and she runs her hands up his sleeves, feels him shiver in the wake of her touch. She searches his eyes and all the fractured glass of his expression, weariness and terror and confusion anchored to his bones. "You can have it now, my lord. You can have your bath and, and someone to hold you." His eyes well with tears. "You are home and you are safe and you are with me. You can have this."

Lord Morpheus is silent, and his throat works, and his eyes dart like he's fighting for his life inside his own head—too accurate a turn of phrase, and for her own sanity Lucienne resolves not to use it again. His shirt melts away all at once under her hands, leaves her touching soft skin that trembles, very nearly crawls, and he flinches. Lucienne is still, and she is silent, and he breathes, and his trousers disappear too, and he is bare and beautiful before her.

She takes his hands. She pulls him with her, her eyes on his all the while, and the first touch of hot water on her heel is so shocking she gasps a little. She ducks her head to watch the clear blue swirling around her ankles with her next step, and it feels better than she imagined it would. There was no hot water in all her lord's long absence. It brings tears to her eyes, and she smiles up at him, and he stares at her.

One more step back brings his toes to the water's edge. He is shaking quite violently again, and he is soft against his thigh, and a shudder runs through him at the first touch on his skin. "Good," Lucienne whispers, and she squeezes his hands, and she draws him forward into the water.

Lord Morpheus is crying by the time they are waist-deep, silent tears running down pale cheeks that have begun to pink in the heat. "Wait," he tugs on her hands to still her. "A moment, please."

Her thumbs stroke his knuckles. "How do you feel?"

"It's good," his voice is low, hoarse, his shoulders hunched high and stiff.

Lucienne knows him well, and she knows he didn't have to ask her to know she wanted what she always wants from him in their encounters—she wants him to feel as though his body of dreamstuff were mortal, and so he does. "Too good?"

"A moment, please," he confirms, and his eyes slip closed, and they stand there together in the water, and they breathe until he is calm, and then she leads him deeper.

At the far end of the pool the water laps at the top of Lucienne's breasts. She sinks down, submerges herself to the neck, and he follows, like he has lost the wherewithal to do anything but follow her lead, the way he always gets when his function is especially cruel and her hand is especially soft. His hazy eyes drift shut, and his breath heaves out of him, and he does not look like he's enjoying himself at all.

Lucienne pets his cheek, wipes his tears away with the hot water, cups his face while he fights for control of his overwhelm. "It's only water," she teases him to feel his breath, hot and wet on a tearful laugh. "You're alright, my lord."

"Safe with you," he mumbles, and Lucienne gasps, and she kisses him, and the hand not on his face wraps around the back of his neck, pulls him close. Her fingers twine up through his hair, tug it until his mouth opens to her and everywhere they touch is hot and wet. He moans with the slide of her tongue, shivers and keens when she moves to mouth at his jawline. "Lucienne."

"Relax, love," Lucienne whispers. "You're allowed to have this."

Lord Morpheus sobs, and he trembles, and he relaxes all at once, strings cut, resistance shattered. He curls into her, his head falling against hers, one hand deep in his hair, the other stroking broad circles over his back. That is all she does—she touches him, the way that melts him, soft pressure, no intention to harm him or leave him or trick him or humiliate him or anything he might convince himself she wants to do.

Through the almost-pain he clings to her, the rapture of his own fulfilled fantasy forced through the pinhole of what he allows himself. "Thank you," he whispers as though she's doing anything at all, as though he is not her lover asking her for the simplest of intimacies. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Lucienne shushes him, and she cries for him the way he hates, but he does not notice.

#it's so so so long i couldn't find where i wanted to stop #anyway. ouch and fuck and argh #cause of death: trying to be thematically consistent in my fucking smut drabbles #the sandman #dream of the endless #lucienne the librarian #lucid dreaming #morphienne #minors dni #x

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