By the end of Tary’s tale of woe Vex is in mild hysterics, despite her solemn promise to listen quietly and show respect to her best friend and housemate.
“Oh, darling!” She dashes tears of mirth from her eyes with her sleeve, and squeezes Tary’s hand sympathetically. They’re out in the garden, the two of them sitting in the lime tree arbor, Doty 2.0 standing nearby composing a poem about the night sky—or at least taking very detailed notes as he gazes up at it.
“I thought you weren’t going to laugh,” Tary huffs. “You promised.”
“That was before I knew you got your dick stuck in a robot.”
“Vex’ahlia, a Baroness shouldn’t be so crude.”
“Forget that... did you fix him? You must have fixed him. I don’t remember seeing a giant phallus when we first met him.” She glances over at Doty 2.0, who is placidly scribbling away, oblivious to the swarm of small biting insects hovering around his head, attracted to the glow of his eyes.
“I fixed him before I left my father’s house. It took most of the three days, but I wasn’t leaving without him.”
Vex sighs and slings her arm around his shoulders. They’re sitting on a wooden swinging bench that Pike’s great-great-grandfather made for Vex as a housewarming present. “Did your father not show any change of heart during the three days?”
“He did not. He locked himself away in his office and refused to talk to the family until I was gone. My mother begged with him through the door. My sister just sneered at me and told me to pack faster.”
“Oh, Tary.” Her tone implies families can be real shitbags.
In the seven or so months they’ve been living together Vex has told him a lot about her younger life, and Tary’s glad that he reciprocated. It seems like the right thing for good friends to do. Even if she did laugh.
“Didn’t you tell us that you were only twenty when it happened?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was still so inexperienced in my mid-twenties.”
Vex gurgles laughter. “Darling, you’re twenty-nine now and we know you’re inexperienced.”
Tary can’t even pretend to be offended. He knows he’s not as—ah—prolifically versed in the arts of physical love as the others. Beyond Lawrence, he can’t imagine having a sexual interest in any other man.
It’s something that he and Keyleth can talk about, at least. Not her sexual attraction to Lawrence, of course, because she has never met him. But her lack of sexual interest in general. And they don’t really talk about it so much as Keyleth might ask him of one man or another, “Do you think he’s handsome?”, Tary will answer with a yes or a no, and then they’ll go right back to whatever else it was they were discussing, comfortable with their mutual indifference.
He nurses a small attraction to Percival, but knows that the woman currently leaning against him, pushing at the ground with her bare toes to make the bench swing creakily, would have words to say to him about that, and most of them would be don’t.
(Don’t try it again. Don’t get that drunk again. Don’t get him that drunk again. Don’t let me catch you two dry-humping in the workshop again. Don’t let me stand there in the doorway, jaw ajar, uncomfortable and yet aroused by the sight of my lover’s dexterous hands gripping your shapely ass as you grind against him, the two of you kissing sloppily with the smell of whiskey on the air. Don’t let the two of you realize I’m there and turn to give me that guilty look. And especially don’t hold out a hand toward me as though inviting me to join you—no, I know you’re not that way inclined, Tary, although the thought of being caught between your strong, manly body and Percy’s lithe, lean body is so appealing—)
“Whatever you think I’m thinking, I’m not,” Vex says, pinching his earlobe.
“Ow. What are you thinking, then?”
“Do you ever lend him out?”
“Vex’ahlia! My dear little elf girl, if you think I’ve modified Doty 2.0 in the same misguided way as the Taryon of yesteryear did, then you’re gravely mistaken. Besides, I wouldn’t want to impugn Percival’s honor.”
“I’m sure he’d live.”
“Besides, Doty only listens to me.”
“I wasn’t interested in him for his listening abilities.”
“Vex! No!”
Vex laughs and flicks his ear, standing up. “All right, all right. Don’t stay out here too long, daydreamer. It’s getting late.”
“Doesn’t that make me a nightdreamer?” Tary counters.
“Good night, Taryon.” And she’s off to the back entrance of the house—small mansion, really—that they share. Tary wonders briefly, as he often does, why she doesn’t live up at Whitestone Castle, but then remembers, as he always does, just how much Vex values her independence.
He lingers in the garden long enough to see the lamps go on in the training arena at the top of the mansion. Covered with a semi-opaque glass dome—one pane of which is still cracked from a Grog-and-Pike mishap—it’s full of bars and ladders and ropes rather than punching bags and free weights, except if Grog makes an improvised free weight out of a gnome cleric.
Vex is a shadow ascending one of the ladders then leaping for a trapeze. A second shadow at floor level is Percival, acting as her spotter. He’d better do a good job of it, because if Vex hurts herself from something as stupid as a twenty-foot fall off a tightrope due to her spotter being too preoccupied with the physics of gun ballistics rather than the physics of the woman swinging over his head, Tary’s going to go up there and put Percy’s head through one of the windows.
Well. He’d have to get Doty to do it, but the thought is what counts.
“Doty?” He’s never been able to call him Doty 2.0 to his face. He doesn’t want Doty feeling like a mere replacement for someone beloved lost to him.
“Tary,” Doty responds.
“Let’s go to bed.”
“Tary.”
The two of them walk inside. Tary’s quarters are on the ground floor: bathroom off the bedroom, bedroom off the study, and workshop access from the study through a short passage with solid doors at either end due to the fact that this is the second workshop at this address and they keep finding bits of the old one in the most unlikely places.
He locks the study door and the bedroom door behind himself.
After Tary bathes and dries his hair, Doty brushes it out patiently, saying “Tary” every ten strokes to keep count. Tary marvels at the nuance in his voice. Although he can only speak one word—such are the limitations of the magical spell—it seems to him that his name comes out of Doty’s mouth with a wide range of tones and degrees of emotion.
He leans back against Doty as Doty runs the brush through his hair. Doty is still cool to the touch—he hasn’t figured out a substitute skin yet, and heating the metal directly has predictably terrible results—but is comfortingly solid.
When Tary’s hair is done he feels loose-limbed, almost floating away, anchored only by one particularly demanding part of his body. He has a solution for that, and he refuses to feel guilty about shading the truth with Vex. After all, he didn’t make the same modifications to Doty 2.0.
“Doty, kneel for me, please.”
“Tary,” Doty replies obligingly, going to his knees beside the bed, between Tary’s spread thighs.
Tary fits the rubber sheath within Doty’s mouth, fussing until it’s just so, aware of the supreme awkwardness that would result if Doty suffers fluid damage again around anyone who knows his secret tale. He flips open the small panel behind Doty’s ear and presses a button, checking the seal on the sheath and locking Doty’s jaw open. Perfect. A few more adjustments and Doty’s head is bowed to where Tary needs it most right now.
“Doty?”
“Tary?” The word is garbled thanks to Doty’s parted lips and the sheath in his mouth, but Tary likes to think that his tone is eager to please.
Inclinations, Leverage, Pullulation (Tary/Doty, Tary/Lawrence, NC-17) 3/3
“Oh, darling!” She dashes tears of mirth from her eyes with her sleeve, and squeezes Tary’s hand sympathetically. They’re out in the garden, the two of them sitting in the lime tree arbor, Doty 2.0 standing nearby composing a poem about the night sky—or at least taking very detailed notes as he gazes up at it.
“I thought you weren’t going to laugh,” Tary huffs. “You promised.”
“That was before I knew you got your dick stuck in a robot.”
“Vex’ahlia, a Baroness shouldn’t be so crude.”
“Forget that... did you fix him? You must have fixed him. I don’t remember seeing a giant phallus when we first met him.” She glances over at Doty 2.0, who is placidly scribbling away, oblivious to the swarm of small biting insects hovering around his head, attracted to the glow of his eyes.
“I fixed him before I left my father’s house. It took most of the three days, but I wasn’t leaving without him.”
Vex sighs and slings her arm around his shoulders. They’re sitting on a wooden swinging bench that Pike’s great-great-grandfather made for Vex as a housewarming present. “Did your father not show any change of heart during the three days?”
“He did not. He locked himself away in his office and refused to talk to the family until I was gone. My mother begged with him through the door. My sister just sneered at me and told me to pack faster.”
“Oh, Tary.” Her tone implies families can be real shitbags.
In the seven or so months they’ve been living together Vex has told him a lot about her younger life, and Tary’s glad that he reciprocated. It seems like the right thing for good friends to do. Even if she did laugh.
“Didn’t you tell us that you were only twenty when it happened?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was still so inexperienced in my mid-twenties.”
Vex gurgles laughter. “Darling, you’re twenty-nine now and we know you’re inexperienced.”
Tary can’t even pretend to be offended. He knows he’s not as—ah—prolifically versed in the arts of physical love as the others. Beyond Lawrence, he can’t imagine having a sexual interest in any other man.
It’s something that he and Keyleth can talk about, at least. Not her sexual attraction to Lawrence, of course, because she has never met him. But her lack of sexual interest in general. And they don’t really talk about it so much as Keyleth might ask him of one man or another, “Do you think he’s handsome?”, Tary will answer with a yes or a no, and then they’ll go right back to whatever else it was they were discussing, comfortable with their mutual indifference.
He nurses a small attraction to Percival, but knows that the woman currently leaning against him, pushing at the ground with her bare toes to make the bench swing creakily, would have words to say to him about that, and most of them would be don’t.
(Don’t try it again. Don’t get that drunk again. Don’t get him that drunk again. Don’t let me catch you two dry-humping in the workshop again. Don’t let me stand there in the doorway, jaw ajar, uncomfortable and yet aroused by the sight of my lover’s dexterous hands gripping your shapely ass as you grind against him, the two of you kissing sloppily with the smell of whiskey on the air. Don’t let the two of you realize I’m there and turn to give me that guilty look. And especially don’t hold out a hand toward me as though inviting me to join you—no, I know you’re not that way inclined, Tary, although the thought of being caught between your strong, manly body and Percy’s lithe, lean body is so appealing—)
“Whatever you think I’m thinking, I’m not,” Vex says, pinching his earlobe.
“Ow. What are you thinking, then?”
“Do you ever lend him out?”
“Vex’ahlia! My dear little elf girl, if you think I’ve modified Doty 2.0 in the same misguided way as the Taryon of yesteryear did, then you’re gravely mistaken. Besides, I wouldn’t want to impugn Percival’s honor.”
“I’m sure he’d live.”
“Besides, Doty only listens to me.”
“I wasn’t interested in him for his listening abilities.”
“Vex! No!”
Vex laughs and flicks his ear, standing up. “All right, all right. Don’t stay out here too long, daydreamer. It’s getting late.”
“Doesn’t that make me a nightdreamer?” Tary counters.
“Good night, Taryon.” And she’s off to the back entrance of the house—small mansion, really—that they share. Tary wonders briefly, as he often does, why she doesn’t live up at Whitestone Castle, but then remembers, as he always does, just how much Vex values her independence.
He lingers in the garden long enough to see the lamps go on in the training arena at the top of the mansion. Covered with a semi-opaque glass dome—one pane of which is still cracked from a Grog-and-Pike mishap—it’s full of bars and ladders and ropes rather than punching bags and free weights, except if Grog makes an improvised free weight out of a gnome cleric.
Vex is a shadow ascending one of the ladders then leaping for a trapeze. A second shadow at floor level is Percival, acting as her spotter. He’d better do a good job of it, because if Vex hurts herself from something as stupid as a twenty-foot fall off a tightrope due to her spotter being too preoccupied with the physics of gun ballistics rather than the physics of the woman swinging over his head, Tary’s going to go up there and put Percy’s head through one of the windows.
Well. He’d have to get Doty to do it, but the thought is what counts.
“Doty?” He’s never been able to call him Doty 2.0 to his face. He doesn’t want Doty feeling like a mere replacement for someone beloved lost to him.
“Tary,” Doty responds.
“Let’s go to bed.”
“Tary.”
The two of them walk inside. Tary’s quarters are on the ground floor: bathroom off the bedroom, bedroom off the study, and workshop access from the study through a short passage with solid doors at either end due to the fact that this is the second workshop at this address and they keep finding bits of the old one in the most unlikely places.
He locks the study door and the bedroom door behind himself.
After Tary bathes and dries his hair, Doty brushes it out patiently, saying “Tary” every ten strokes to keep count. Tary marvels at the nuance in his voice. Although he can only speak one word—such are the limitations of the magical spell—it seems to him that his name comes out of Doty’s mouth with a wide range of tones and degrees of emotion.
He leans back against Doty as Doty runs the brush through his hair. Doty is still cool to the touch—he hasn’t figured out a substitute skin yet, and heating the metal directly has predictably terrible results—but is comfortingly solid.
When Tary’s hair is done he feels loose-limbed, almost floating away, anchored only by one particularly demanding part of his body. He has a solution for that, and he refuses to feel guilty about shading the truth with Vex. After all, he didn’t make the same modifications to Doty 2.0.
“Doty, kneel for me, please.”
“Tary,” Doty replies obligingly, going to his knees beside the bed, between Tary’s spread thighs.
Tary fits the rubber sheath within Doty’s mouth, fussing until it’s just so, aware of the supreme awkwardness that would result if Doty suffers fluid damage again around anyone who knows his secret tale. He flips open the small panel behind Doty’s ear and presses a button, checking the seal on the sheath and locking Doty’s jaw open. Perfect. A few more adjustments and Doty’s head is bowed to where Tary needs it most right now.
“Doty?”
“Tary?” The word is garbled thanks to Doty’s parted lips and the sheath in his mouth, but Tary likes to think that his tone is eager to please.
“Take me down.”