Gwenaëlle is— he doesn’t know where she is, but he suspects either the baths or speaking with her grandfather. He lets himself into his office, then his rooms, and to find Iorveth there is just what he wanted.
His son has returned. They brought the archon back in one piece, if not united in mind and body. He is tired, tired, and clean after a week’s worth of running, but the smell of saltwater clings to his hair long after he’s washed the taste of it from his skin.
The distance between them is inconsequential after the distance between Kirkwall and Tevinter, and Thranduil cuts through it the way he ought to have walked through Minrathous’ streets, ashamed and prideful all at once. He’s not a man driven by violence, he loathes the bitterness of it in intimacy, but he grabs Iorveth half by the cheek and neck between his hands and holds him there for a kiss with the same movement he’d use to headbutt him.
His own mouth will taste stale, not even immortality can undo that, and teeth click against teeth, but this is home, and he is so, so homesick for the man and woman who are going to be very angry with— less him and more the situations he gets himself into. If they will behave like him in that, then he will behave as, at least, Gwenaëlle does, and mix the emotions in with the fucking.
Having thought ahead—something she might argue some of them do not do nearly enough—Gwenaëlle is not as far as the baths in the other tower, nor so sanguine with all that's happened that she'd have been prepared to leave either of them unattended without force involved. No, she had made swift and smart use of the crystals, and the tub (bought to accommodate Thranduil and far too large for her on her own, so: the right size) within their bedroom is already filled with both hot water and wife, behind a screen where she isn't the first thing anyone sees.
(Unlike all the other times people barge into this room.)
So: “Ah,” she says, water rushing as she moves from the middle of the tub to its edge, to lean far enough past the screen to see them, “here he is.”
It's dry, more than anything else. As much as it's never difficult to fan her temper back into flames (and doubtless he will), they had an entire sea journey back to Kirkwall together, and she hasn't anything like the capacity to simply stay angry throughout.
While he'll certainly be getting back to the topic later, after they've had their fill and felt themselves anchored again with each other, Iorveth is hardly concerned about the arguments from before. There's plenty he has to say on it, and even the stall of it is something incredibly new to him, but so is this weighty, crushing pull on him towards this man and woman. When Thranduil pulls him to his lips, Iorveth all but surges, long fingers pushing into the soft, brilliant hair he'd missed so much.
While Gwenaelle's already made herself comfortable in the tub, Iorveth waited here, leaned against the Provost's desk, with only one of his fine, expensive robes draped around his otherwise bare body. As he breathes him in, parts his lips to invite him in, Iorveth shrugs the garment off, leaving it half clinging to the desk, half pooled on the floor.
Does he really need to say that they'd missed him? Suffered through gnawing anxiety waiting for any kind of word on his well-being? Iorveth doesn't think so. Instead, he's pulling at Thranduil's clothes, prying open buttons and tugging at ties, pushing fabric from his shoulders as he kisses him like it was all his body was made to do.
Gradually, he starts to step back, tugging Thranduil along with him towards the bath as he goes.
Either of them wearing his clothes is downright cheating, a point which he would mention later if both of them weren't ghastly and likely make immediate and effective use of it. They're both absolutely wretched, and every moment away from them was agony.
Off comes the cloak, the tunic, the pants are yanked down to pool around his ankles and then stepped out of as he follows Iorveth back to the tub, taking advantage of both their nudity as soon as possible to press himself against the other elf, one arm around his waist and the other cupping the back of his head, fingers loosely carded through his hair.
He breaks the kiss, presses his forehead to Iorveth's. He gazes at him like he hung the stars, in counterpoint to the happy-to-see-you pressing against Iorveth's hip.
"You two going to drown me," he says, having figured out the ploy with the tub already. "Do I have a chance to beg pardon?"
Already pressed to the side of the tub, her arms folded on its edge, Gwenaëlle doesn't have to move much to make space for them to join her, conveniently small in a tub built to accommodate far longer limbs. She hesitates to quite reach out, pleased with them both near her but wary of putting a foot wrong into the same discomfort that soured their last tryst; as much as she'd cleared the air with Thranduil on that matter, it hadn't made her any more confident of knowing what it was he wants from them in this, and she can't help but hold back from discovering where the line is the hard way a second time.
Merciless! And spoken with a grin on his lips, as Iorveth reaches out to slip his fingers lovingly through Gwenaelle's hair, fond. Thankfully, Thranduil is a rich fuck, and the tub is a decent size to fit all of them, two tall as hell elvish men included, and Iorveth slips in next to Gwenaelle, placing a couple kisses against her bare spine, before holding his hands out to Thranduil.
"Come on. No use delaying your fate."
As if they're actually going to drown him. Pffft. The moment he's settled in, Iorveth will be adjusting until he's leaned against him, beneath an arm and tucked against his chest. This is the be a very snuggly execution.
He joins them, with a minimal degree of splashing, settling his back against the wall of the tub, and draping his arm about their waists, holding the both of them close. In a tub. That neither of them could really make a quick escape from, but it's the thought that counts.
While his fingers trace out arcane nonsense on the soft skin of Gwenalle's belly, he presses his nose to the nape of Iorveth's neck, lips against the curve of his tattoo's branching vines. It takes him a moment to come back to himself, to entwine himself back with their presences and anchor himself once more.
"I am glad neither of you were there," he says. A fingers taps against Gwenaelle's hipbone. The pirates, it seems, don't count.
Gwenaëlle relaxes most of the way into Thranduil's lap, tangling her ankles with Iorveth's, damp hair settling on her shoulders and her husband's where it turns into the curls she most often ruthlessly pulls straight. She makes a face—
“Neither of us would have come back.”
They are mouthy, the pair of them; there's a reason neither were sent to Minrathous, and probably better they weren't in any other part of Tevinter, either. Her fingers comb through his hair where it falls to the water, “Besides, I liked dramatically rescuing you. Next time I'll do it on horseback, I think.”
Widening her eyes at Iorveth: “You, too. You've the hair for damseling.”
One of them has the small-boned fineness and general ability to get herself into trouble for it, but it is a truth universally known that who has the horse is the hero, and Gwenaëlle had turned up in Tevinter waters with an entire pirate ship. Ergo.
Thranduil's lips are sweet and warm against Iorveth's skin, and he tilts his head away to invite him closer, contented smile on his scarred lips. The weeks spent on all this Tevinter bullshit, and the phylacteries before it, have been endlessly straining, and having them like this, bare and tangled together and overwhelmed in affection for one another, is such a soothing relief.
He hums a low laugh in agreement with Gwenaelle's statement, as he curls up closer to them, thighs spread on either side of Thranduil with his body snuggled close against his side, a hand on Gwenaelle's thigh wrapped around their lover's hips and the other tangled in the soaked, silver strands of Thranduil's hair.
"Oh, but I'd have left them such a pretty bloodbath before they tied me to a pike and lit me up." Iorveth practically sing-songs it, like it's spoken in romantic longing. Yes, he did want to go kind of, but no, he would not have been coming back.
Kissing along Thranduil's bare shoulder, he smiles as Gwen fantasizes about being their knight in shining armor, eventually tilting his chin up to look to Thranduil with a squint, and then to Gwen.
"That seems somewhat discriminating." Because they are elves, and elves have elf hair, and wow are you calling them damsels because they are elves, that's rude. But he's snickering too much to be believably offended.
"Not yet," Thranduil promises, moving up to the curve of his jaw, unscarred cheek to unscarred cheek. "But soon."
He is not so eager as Iorveth is to wet his hands, but he has accepted the eventuality of it. Thedas is not kind. He cannot afford the sympathies he had in Arda, the turned-cheek ignorance. He thinks of it differently, now, the spektor on Gwenaelle's doorstep that will eventually come to take her where he cannot follow, and perhaps Iorveth too.
"Mm, yes," in agreement, without Iorveth's laughter. "How rude. And what are we to do a rude woman?"
A conspiratorial glance with Iorveth, then back to Gwenaelle. He is no rake, to stare in unabashed lust (he has only known such feelings in all his time for three; he has no practice in it) but he hunted, he hungers. He can do both of those, and longing besides.
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I bought in-flight WiFi for this.
His son has returned. They brought the archon back in one piece, if not united in mind and body. He is tired, tired, and clean after a week’s worth of running, but the smell of saltwater clings to his hair long after he’s washed the taste of it from his skin.
The distance between them is inconsequential after the distance between Kirkwall and Tevinter, and Thranduil cuts through it the way he ought to have walked through Minrathous’ streets, ashamed and prideful all at once. He’s not a man driven by violence, he loathes the bitterness of it in intimacy, but he grabs Iorveth half by the cheek and neck between his hands and holds him there for a kiss with the same movement he’d use to headbutt him.
His own mouth will taste stale, not even immortality can undo that, and teeth click against teeth, but this is home, and he is so, so homesick for the man and woman who are going to be very angry with— less him and more the situations he gets himself into. If they will behave like him in that, then he will behave as, at least, Gwenaëlle does, and mix the emotions in with the fucking.
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(Unlike all the other times people barge into this room.)
So: “Ah,” she says, water rushing as she moves from the middle of the tub to its edge, to lean far enough past the screen to see them, “here he is.”
It's dry, more than anything else. As much as it's never difficult to fan her temper back into flames (and doubtless he will), they had an entire sea journey back to Kirkwall together, and she hasn't anything like the capacity to simply stay angry throughout.
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While Gwenaelle's already made herself comfortable in the tub, Iorveth waited here, leaned against the Provost's desk, with only one of his fine, expensive robes draped around his otherwise bare body. As he breathes him in, parts his lips to invite him in, Iorveth shrugs the garment off, leaving it half clinging to the desk, half pooled on the floor.
Does he really need to say that they'd missed him? Suffered through gnawing anxiety waiting for any kind of word on his well-being? Iorveth doesn't think so. Instead, he's pulling at Thranduil's clothes, prying open buttons and tugging at ties, pushing fabric from his shoulders as he kisses him like it was all his body was made to do.
Gradually, he starts to step back, tugging Thranduil along with him towards the bath as he goes.
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Off comes the cloak, the tunic, the pants are yanked down to pool around his ankles and then stepped out of as he follows Iorveth back to the tub, taking advantage of both their nudity as soon as possible to press himself against the other elf, one arm around his waist and the other cupping the back of his head, fingers loosely carded through his hair.
He breaks the kiss, presses his forehead to Iorveth's. He gazes at him like he hung the stars, in counterpoint to the happy-to-see-you pressing against Iorveth's hip.
"You two going to drown me," he says, having figured out the ploy with the tub already. "Do I have a chance to beg pardon?"
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But she did miss them, the nearness—
“No,” she says, tart. “You don't.”
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Merciless! And spoken with a grin on his lips, as Iorveth reaches out to slip his fingers lovingly through Gwenaelle's hair, fond. Thankfully, Thranduil is a rich fuck, and the tub is a decent size to fit all of them, two tall as hell elvish men included, and Iorveth slips in next to Gwenaelle, placing a couple kisses against her bare spine, before holding his hands out to Thranduil.
"Come on. No use delaying your fate."
As if they're actually going to drown him. Pffft. The moment he's settled in, Iorveth will be adjusting until he's leaned against him, beneath an arm and tucked against his chest. This is the be a very snuggly execution.
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While his fingers trace out arcane nonsense on the soft skin of Gwenalle's belly, he presses his nose to the nape of Iorveth's neck, lips against the curve of his tattoo's branching vines. It takes him a moment to come back to himself, to entwine himself back with their presences and anchor himself once more.
"I am glad neither of you were there," he says. A fingers taps against Gwenaelle's hipbone. The pirates, it seems, don't count.
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“Neither of us would have come back.”
They are mouthy, the pair of them; there's a reason neither were sent to Minrathous, and probably better they weren't in any other part of Tevinter, either. Her fingers comb through his hair where it falls to the water, “Besides, I liked dramatically rescuing you. Next time I'll do it on horseback, I think.”
Widening her eyes at Iorveth: “You, too. You've the hair for damseling.”
One of them has the small-boned fineness and general ability to get herself into trouble for it, but it is a truth universally known that who has the horse is the hero, and Gwenaëlle had turned up in Tevinter waters with an entire pirate ship. Ergo.
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He hums a low laugh in agreement with Gwenaelle's statement, as he curls up closer to them, thighs spread on either side of Thranduil with his body snuggled close against his side, a hand on Gwenaelle's thigh wrapped around their lover's hips and the other tangled in the soaked, silver strands of Thranduil's hair.
"Oh, but I'd have left them such a pretty bloodbath before they tied me to a pike and lit me up." Iorveth practically sing-songs it, like it's spoken in romantic longing. Yes, he did want to go kind of, but no, he would not have been coming back.
Kissing along Thranduil's bare shoulder, he smiles as Gwen fantasizes about being their knight in shining armor, eventually tilting his chin up to look to Thranduil with a squint, and then to Gwen.
"That seems somewhat discriminating." Because they are elves, and elves have elf hair, and wow are you calling them damsels because they are elves, that's rude. But he's snickering too much to be believably offended.
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He is not so eager as Iorveth is to wet his hands, but he has accepted the eventuality of it. Thedas is not kind. He cannot afford the sympathies he had in Arda, the turned-cheek ignorance. He thinks of it differently, now, the spektor on Gwenaelle's doorstep that will eventually come to take her where he cannot follow, and perhaps Iorveth too.
"Mm, yes," in agreement, without Iorveth's laughter. "How rude. And what are we to do a rude woman?"
A conspiratorial glance with Iorveth, then back to Gwenaelle. He is no rake, to stare in unabashed lust (he has only known such feelings in all his time for three; he has no practice in it) but he hunted, he hungers. He can do both of those, and longing besides.