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[deuceoftears]

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[reformedsinner]

"I know," Gonou says, blinking back at him with disingenuous innocence, and tugs on his hand, pulling him through the door before he leans down for a lingering kiss.

"--It makes me want to spoil you."

[deuceoftears]

Jedao opens into it like he always does, easy and artless, a deep yearning hunger paired with a bone-deep shyness of being too aggressive, that yields and yields, hoping and asking instead of pushing for more.

"I feel very spoiled," Jedao promises in a breathless moment.

[reformedsinner]

"Good," Gonou murmurs, low and intense, and pushes for a little more, kissing Jedao harder for the space of a breath before he pulls away with a scrape of teeth against his lower lip.

"May I take your shirt off?" he murmurs, and drops another kiss, a chaste little brush of lips, against the tip of Jedao's nose.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao whines softly at the hint of Gonou's teeth, which turns into a wordless muffled squawk of embarrassment at the kiss to his nose, although he doesn't try to turn away.

"Yes?" And then, after a moment, "Only if it won't hurt."

[reformedsinner]

"If it hurts I'll ask you for help," Gonou promises, sliding his hands up under the hem of Jedao's shirt until his fingers brush against skin, and working it slowly up. With a wicked flicker of a grin, he kisses Jedao's nose again, keeping the movements of his hands slow enough that it doesn't cause any sudden twinges to his still-spectacular bruises.

Any teasing effect is entirely secondary.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao huffs out a breath of exasperation at the second nose kiss, but his eyes are crinkled at the corners and he can't stop grinning.

He sways lightly into it, shivering, just letting himself feel being touched, savoring the moment. His chest is a ruin of overlapping scars that he doesn't like to think about, but that's easy to drown out, his own blood pounding in his ears, his breath coming quick and light, overwhelmingly aware of Gonou's hands.

"I love your hands," he murmurs, blush spreading to his cheeks.

[reformedsinner]

Gonou flinches, hard, and curls forward to hide his face in the soft fabric at Jedao's shoulder for a long minutes.

-- I love your hands, Gonou--

They almost overlap in his mind, in his ears, Jedao's voice and Kanan's on those words: and he's achingly aware of how much blood there is on those hands. A thousand youkai, maybe two dozen human lives. He's bathed in it.

His fingers are stark-still on Jedao's ribs as he breathes through the shock.

[deuceoftears]

"Hey," Jedao says softly, reaching forward to grip Gonou's elbows, nudging him a little towards the bed, as regrettably the most convenient furniture.

"Why don't we go sit down, okay? Have some water, maybe."

[reformedsinner]

"It's all right," Gonou mutters, and takes a deep breath; he resists the gentle nudge for a moment before letting Jedao walk him back towards the bed. "Anything but my hands?" he says at last, and folds down to sit on the mattress, looking up at Jedao as he shakes off the initial shock.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao stays standing at first, running his fingers gently and steadily through Gonou's hair.

"Mmm. I love the angles of you. Your shoulders and your eyebrows. Your collarbone, under all the bruises. I love the way your nose scrunches up when you laugh, and the way you stick your tongue out just a tiny bit sometimes when you're knitting, and the way your voice gets when you're teasing someone."

He drops a soft, try kiss on Gonou's forehead before sitting down next to him, legs touching side to side, but not reaching for anything else.

"It doesn't have to be all right. We have time."

[reformedsinner]

"I don't want it not to be okay," Gonou says quietly, "every time I trip on something."

Because it's going to happen, he suspects. And he's afraid of giving it too much weight when it happens, afraid of letting nostalgia turn into a terrible minefield where a foot put wrong derails everything.

Voice dropping almost until it's inaudible, he adds, "It's what Kanan used to say to me. So-- anything but hands is fine."

And, very carefully, he turns towards Jedao to offer a cautious, gentle kiss.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao kisses back, and he reaches out to cup Gonou's jaw, although he doesn't let himself get lost in the kiss, this time around.

"This time isn't every time, it's just this time," Jedao points out. "And if you push yourself to be with me because you want it to be okay when you're really not, I -" His voice cracks, just a little. He takes a small, fortifying breath.

"I can't handle that. You can do anything you want to me, except that."

[reformedsinner]

"It could get too heavy, if I let it," Gonou whispers to him, turning his face into Jedao's hand, and lets his eye flutter briefly shut. "I want to..."

It's hard to find the right words, and he struggles for a moment before finding, "...teach myself it doesn't have to be heavy."

His eye opens, gaze flicking over to meet Jedao's, and he manages a small smile.

"Kiss me," he says softly. "Just that, for a while. Let it be something I'm strong enough to carry."

It's something he'll always carry, he thinks. But it doesn't have to crush him, if he learns how to carry it.

[deuceoftears]

"Okay," he says softly. He kisses the corner of Gonou's mouth first, small and sweet, then settles into longer, slower kisses, with Jedao taking more control of it than he has much so far. He strokes Gonou's cheekbone with his thumb, still cupping Gonou's face as Jedao nibbles gently on his lip, kissing him deeper and then lighter and then deeper again, building an easy, quiet rhythm.

[reformedsinner]

Gonou relaxes by inches as Jedao kisses him, letting his own hands fall to rest on Jedao's hips, and returns each kiss with a yielding passion. It is making him feel better, reality clearing away ghosts. Even accounting for the stubble, Jedao doesn't kiss like Kanan had. He's steady where she had been tempestuous, gentle where she demanded.

It does help. He raises a hand, eventually, mirroring Jedao's touch by cradling his right cheek, and takes enough initiative to kiss much more deeply.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao gives him a soft hum, welcome and pleasure, when Gonou touches his face, which melts into a deep moan as the kiss changes tenor. He sways into it, his free hand finding Gonou's waist, twisting a fistful of shirt hem for something like balance as he responds in kind.

[reformedsinner]

Finally, Gonou has to break the kiss to catch his breath, looking into Jedao's eyes with his pupil blown with desire. After the first gasp, he takes another breath, slow and deliberate, testing his own feelings, probing for fragility.

Anything except that, Jedao had said, and he's taking it seriously.

"I think I am okay now," he says softly, and traces the edge of Jedao's face with his forefinger, brow to eye, cheek down to jaw. "...I've been wanting to mark your throat," he murmurs, and stretches his hand to press a thumb against the tendons of his neck. "May I?"

[deuceoftears]

They're close enough in the moment that Gonou can probably see Jedao's own eyes dilating; certainly he can feel Jedao's throat move under his hand as Jedao swallows.

"Please," he groans, barely managing to make it into a word.

[reformedsinner]

Gonou kisses the edge of his jaw, then moves down, gently anchoring his hand in Jedao's hair to tug his head back and force him to bare his throat.

The first mark he's leaving starts gentle, lips brushing the side of Jedao's neck over a tendon, before he catches the skin there between his teeth and bites down. His teeth are human again, without the dangerous razor edges of youkai fangs, so he doesn't feel the need to recalibrate the pressure he uses. Instead, he focuses on working at that spot with tongue and teeth, a soft, hungry moan escaping through the seal of his lips.

[deuceoftears]

The noise Jedao makes is a raw, hoarse shout, his whole body tensing for a moment as though electrified by it. The first sting makes him feel wild, precise, heavy and light all at the same time. His hands are clutching the back of Gonou's shirt before he knows what's happening, groaning more softly as he gets at least a little of his breath and thoughts back.

[reformedsinner]

Gonou's hand clenches on the hair between his fingers as Jedao cries out, the sound sending a jolt of arousal down his spine. He lifts his lips from Jedao's skin slowly, with a wet noise and a last flick of his tongue over the abused spot.

He glances down at it. He's actually not sure if Jedao can bruise, with his dark and slow-moving blood, but for that reaction he almost doesn't care if he really leaves a mark or not.

(He cares a little. But if Jedao doesn't, Gonou's sure he can find other ways to be possessive of him in public.)

[deuceoftears]

There's a mark for now, red and white, ghostly teeth marks, just the same way his blushes always look normal and pink, as long as the skin isn't broken. It might not even last long enough to turn into a proper bruise, but it's there. Jedao is panting, beaming, faintly reluctant to bring his head back up from the languid pose of having it tilted back.

"Do I get to nibble on your ears now, or should we go back to taking my shirt off? Lots more places to bite," he adds cheekily.

[reformedsinner]

"So there are," Gonou says with a wickedly thoughtful glance, and then, "Both our shirts, then you can find out how sensitive my ears are like this."

He pulls back, not far, and steals a kiss over the tooth marks before he reaches for his own shirt buttons. He's leaving Jedao's to him, not wanting to reawaken any of those frozen feelings by repeating the same action so soon.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao peels off his sweater and undershirt in a single motion, with a faint gulped breath and a moment of grimness, like a swimmer jumping all at once into cold water, or a child ripping off a band-aid. His chest is scene of long devastation, more scar than skin, overlapping tracks from every imaginable weapon and some impossible to identify. There are shiny square patches of old grafts, with scars both under and over them, a palimpsest of unknown wars. One nipple is gone entirely, and his belly and arms are dappled with outlying scars, like concentric rings around the bulls-eye of his heart, only intermittently targeted by poorer marksmen.

Gonou had some warning, feeling the more dramatic scars with his fingers, but he still feels nervous all over again, not precisely because he doesn't want Gonou to see, but just because it's so much.

"I don't remember any of them," he says quickly, balling up his shirt and sweater in his hands and then not sure what else to do with them, eyes fixed on Gonou's buttons. "They happened to - him. They don't hurt or anything, they're just...cosmetic."

[reformedsinner]

He'd guessed the scars would be bad, but they are worse than he had thought, a sprawling history of old pain from someone Jedao had only been made to look like. His eye widens as he takes them in, and then he abandons his shirt, unbuttoned but not yet pushed back over his shoulders, and leans in to kiss Jedao gently.

"I'm glad none of that happened to you," he breathes over Jedao's lips. "Does it bother you if I touch them?"