Practice Makes Perfect
Sometimes, Murata shares too much. And sometimes, Yuuri's inquisitive nature is too controlling. This is absolutely inspired by a conversation my best friends were having in a half naked hallway party. TMI. Lots of horseback riding = better sex? Maybe Wolfram will find the time to 'inform' dear, sweet, innocent Yuuri. Haha. I've rewritten this story fourteen times. And I thank you my wondrous and merciful and epic beta-reader Obscure Omen for going through the latest end result. INNUENDOS GALORE! Wolfyuu ridiculousness if you squint but luckily not too hard. Please, please take the time to review. ::blows a kiss::
Disclaimer: If I owned KKM, Yuuri would have made a move by now. On anyone.
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It couldn't have been the lavender-scented steam curling off the bathwater making him feel so lightheaded.
And it most certainly couldn't be the masculine, blond figure smoothing a loincloth between his long, pale legs. No. Yuuri would not stare at those untouched inner thighs so daringly.
Curiosity be damned.
"Yuuri?"
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A couple hours earlier, to spur what he thought was a moment of stupidity onward, Yuuri Shibuya sank uselessly into Gwendal's chair. The tower-high stack of unmarked bill requests demanding his absolute attention blocked his only exit out of this certain hell.
Rolling his head limply to the side and letting out a pathetic whine, the Great Demon King addressed the Great Sage standing beside him and concentrating on a long scroll.
"Do you think if I disappeared for the rest of the day that anyone would be mad?"
Never removing his focus on whatever number of fancy columns he was on, Murata grinned suddenly over his cream-colored parchment, holding up a free hand and ticking up a finger. "Would you like the names in alphabetical order, Shibuya?"
"Ahhh...maybe if I just took Ao out for an hour or two...?"
"Speaking of, you've been improving on horseback given that you've never ridden before coming out here." The other boy's glasses flashed inconspicuously as his face cleared. He tilted his head back down to his scroll. "That should please Lord Von Bielefeld." At Yuuri's confused look, Murata arched a small, black eyebrow.
"...I take it you've never heard about that?"
"Heard about what?" Yuuri asked. The Great Sage's grin returned full force.
"Apparently if you can horseback professionally, it will increase your chances of becoming better in bed." Greeted by yet another blank look, he added puckishly, "It will tighten your pelvic floor muscles as well as the abdominal muscles, for example, during sexual intercourse while thrusting—"
"—How do you even know this stuff?" Yuuri's interrupted, eyes bugged out.
He dragged a trembling finger beneath the collar of his black uniform and strained the fabric away from his rapidly heating neck. "I think... I'm going to see if Conrad wants to practice catching..."
"Does he receive or do you?" Murata laughed at Yuuri as he sent an uncharacteristic glare fit for only a Demon King his way out. Months ago, that glare like that would have never appeared on his expression. Materializing immediately on the Sage's shoulder, a fur-cloaked, little blond person crossed his legs and arms, smiling cheekily.
"You of all people understand that Yuuri doesn't think Lord Weller in that regard."
The teenage shrugged. Despite the violent jerk of his shoulder, the tiny spirit remained unfazed.
"I enjoy yanking Shibuya's chain. It's too easy to rile him up."
"If what you have spoken is true, my beautiful Sage... I have ridden horses since I was a child..." Profoundly blue eyes narrowed in a come-hither look as Shinou leaned over to stroke the giant, pale cheek with the back of his jeweled hand—. "...You should find me quite practiced, after all."
Murata shook his head away from his touch (again wobbling the tiny spirit), his expression hardening into one of annoyance. "I am more than aware of the finer details of your history. And you will do well to remain aware of the fact that I have power to restrain you to your Temple if you continue to intrude upon my dreams."
As the teenager set his jaw, Shinou sighed sadly, mumbling, "...So adverse to pleasure... Impossible..."
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"...Yuuri... WIMP!"
Startled and coughing on an accidental swallow of bathwater, Yuuri spewed out the purplish, bubbly froth and snapped his previously gaping mouth shut. A nude Wolfram paused from stiffly keeping the frayed ends of his loincloth together around his privates to instead watch him rub water from his reddening eyes.
"... Why were you staring at me like that?"
"I wasn't staring!" Yuuri responded hoarsely, doing his best to appear composed. Hard to do when his eyes were on fire. What solution did they put in the hot water that stung so much? He would have to have a talk with Lady Cherie later about "helping" the servants when the Maoh needed a bath drawn in the evening.
Wolfram looked as if he wanted to protest against his protest— that wouldn't have shocked him at all— when the young soldier panicked a moment as he slipped over the leaking edge of the bathing basin, and released his hold on the loincloth, revealing to the world— his parts.
Ahhh! Now he HAD to look! Dignity be damned!
"You are staring again." Wolfram frowned at him, not reaching to retrieve the cloth and merely holding his defensive, naked stance as Yuuri modestly turned a color a couple shades away from a tomato. "You act as if you have never seen me in the baths before."
"I-It's not that... Ah... H-How long have you been horseback riding?"
Emerald green eyes didn't appear puzzled at the slightest by the question. The blond answered automatically with, "Since I was eighteen."
... Technically that meant he started when he was a little kid, right...?
Wolfram finally stepped into the hot bath, sinking into waist height and mostly covered by bubbles, and switched the undesirable subject by ordering sternly, "Come. I will wash your hair for you." Yuuri backed away on instinct, crossing his arms in a frightened motion at the determination in his companion's eyes.
"I can wash my own hair."
Behind the chamber's closed oak doors, Günter's request carried inside loudly, "I can assist you, Heika!"
"He does not need your help!"
Yuuri answered Wolfram's outraged cry with one of his own, "I don't need anyone's help! I can wash my own hair!"
The frustration boiling in the pit of Yuuri's stomach quickly dissipated into nonexistence as Wolfram's features scrunched and he let out a painful hiss through his teeth. It was a noise that distracted Yuuri from lifting himself out of the basin.
Two days ago, the Mazoku ex-prince had been thrown from a newly broken-in stallion, bruising one arm badly from elbow down and unable to move the other for twenty-four hours due either a damaged vein or nerve. When word had gotten back to Yuuri— that Wolfram had been trampled to death instead of thrown— the guards could not restrain their horror-struck King from leaving the meeting room under Gwendal's commands. He had raced down the corridors of Covenant Castle, calling for Wolfram, calling for someone.
Led by a gentle Conrad who had found staggering in the gardens ten minutes later, Yuuri had nearly collapsed into the swordsman's arms, wiping the wetness out of his eyes frantically with his sleeve just to see in the nearby courtyard— his fiancé in a sling, reading to Greta with a warm, fatherly smile.
He had never been so scared to think that Wolfram had been gone permanently from his life. And so suddenly.
Yuuri came forward slowly.
"Wolfram, do your arms still hurt?"
The soldier wrapped a hand over his arm with a bright red webbing of scratches networked with spider stands of dark bruises with some difficulty, before turning away—. "It is not bothersome to me..."
"You can barely even lift them. I can see it. Here..." Wolfram made a small, breathless noise after Yuuri reached for a translucent, orange bottle sitting at the rim of the basin and as unfamiliar, comforting hands made themselves known by stroking his scalp.
"...Wha-...What are you doing, Yuuri?"
"Shampooing your hair for you. It's not like you can reach up or anything." Slowly, Yuuri massaged the strands of soft yellow between the spaces of his fingers. He could have been mistaken but Yuuri thought he heard a very quiet "thank you" from the other boy.
Throughout the process, Wolfram began to make little whimpering noises, sometimes straining his lower lip with his teeth, biting them a blood red color. Yuuri would have stayed his meditative/oblivious state if only the other boy's body had not given a great shudder from the shoulders down and bumped himself against his companion's nakedness.
With a noisy splash, Yuuri let out an alarmed cry, swimming backwards from the blond who awkwardly blinked water out of his now stinging eyes. "What was that for, wimp? Are you trying to drown me?"
"Why did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"I don't get you!"
Getting irritated about the Demon King's voice increasing steadily to a womanly shriek rather than his normal voice, Wolfram spoke calmly, "Well, I do not 'get' you, Yuuri. First you gawk at me without clothes as if I were some harlot, and then you ask such strange questions about my past, and then you insist upon washing my hair..."
Bobbing his head back into the frothy bath, the darker-haired teenager sighed raggedly, glad that his heartbeat had began to slow. "I'm sorry for yelling. I've been a little off since I talked to Murata today," Yuuri replied directly to the suspicious look. "He told me something...embarrassing at horseback riding. I don't know if I believe him...but if you've done it long enough, you...well..."
"Well...?"
"It helps during...sex." That same flushing returned to Yuuri's cheeks as he whispered, grimacing, "...The...thrusting part..."
Not appearing peeved at all by Yuuri's candid choice of wording, Wolfram twisted his mouth thoughtfully. Yuuri couldn't decide then if it was a frown or a really adorable pout. "And this insistent gawking of yours has to do with being curious if I was sexually experienced?"
When Yuuri did not answer— could not find the courage to make genuine eye contact with his still accidental fiancé— Wolfram answered for him, advancing through the foamy purplish bathwater into Yuuri's space to set his long, pale fingers against his jaw, pinching slightly to catch the other boy's attention.
"You will have to figure that out on the wedding night," he said, breathy.
Yuuri blinked owlishly up at him, lips smashed by the blond's fingers into a crooked "O".
"... My face hurts."
Clenching his teeth hard, Wolfram released him. "You..." He climbed out of the bath, an angry, pinkish color traveling from his ears down his chest.
"...are impossible..."
"Hm?"
As Wolfram snatched up his abandoned loincloth and stormed out (leaving the doors open for the guards and Günter to peer in pityingly- and after a moment the King's adviser clutched at his face, instructing through the nosebleed that unworthy eyes should remain at their posts)— Yuuri submerged his head fully under the soap, and wished silently that it could be perhaps a bit colder.
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Wolfram must have been really mad, Yuuri decided as he lay in his oversized, blue pajamas, wiggling his toes underneath the indigo-colored sheets anxiously. Alone in bed. Normally, Greta would crawl in with him and Wolfram but she had taken a liking to her own yellow-walled bedroom across the hall.
Despite the extra blankets Conrad lent him, Yuuri wasn't getting warmer anytime soon. And he wasn't sleepy anyway.
Black eyes gazed forlornly at the darkness of the canopy above him.
It felt... wrong for trying to go to bed alone.
The mattress felt too big. He could actually spread out his arms without difficulty— and without getting smacked at rudely. Yuuri curled his legs to his chest in a fetal position, imagining with closed eyes how Wolfram would have been on his right side, flat on his back in that stupid, girly nightgown, mouth hanging wide open with light snores, the left side of his face buried in the pillows...
After a couple minutes of lying completely still, Yuuri sat up determinedly, straightening his pajama top and marching out of his bedroom. Inside the corner room down the hallway, his bed-mate (frilly, pink nightgown at all) appeared sound asleep, which didn't seem right because Wolfram was a night-mumbler as well as a snorer.
Yuuri stood over him, murmuring, "Ah... Wolfram...?"
The blond soldier wrinkled his nose, opening his green eyes at half-mast before pulling a sheet over his head. "Wimp, go back to your own room."
"It feels weird sleeping alone though..."
"That is your own problem to face... If you cannot rely on yourself, then you cannot rely on me..."
Something extremely hot and aching strained Yuuri's gut. He asked, voice tightening, "What?"
"Do not doubt that I am capable of protecting you, Yuuri, but tonight I wish to sleep alone."
"Wolfram..."
Silence followed afterward. Wolfram seemed to be done talking to him about the subject. Swallowing audibly, Yuuri held out a trembling hand over him. "I..."
The blond waited until he thought Yuuri had left the room, opening his eyes completely and lowering the sheet.
He released a pent-up cross between a snort and a dry sob. Wolfram's entire body stiffened then as his vision darkened. A shadow fell over him, and a pair of warm, thinly muscled arms trapped his body as Yuuri crawled over him. He burrowed the hard line of his nose and arches of his eyebrows into Wolfram's bare shoulder.
"I don't think I am really good at horseback riding. I don't think I will be ready yet..." Yuuri confessed while hooking his hands around his companion's back, "But I... could learn someday. Maybe... you could... teach me...?" He stared up at Wolfram, licking his lips. Something else was lurking in Yuuri's gaze, dimming out the usual naivety.
The blond had become so distracted by how Yuuri looked in that moment that he realized his lungs were beginning to hurt. Breathing would be good.
"You would have to let me get used to... the idea of your lessons. I'm not sure how I feel right now but I don't think... it would be a bad thing..." Wolfram smiled trimphantly as Yuuri trailed off from his nervous rant, and the Demon King tilted his head confused—. "Aaand...Why are you smiling like that?"
"The first lesson is keeping quiet." The teenager let out a soft, startled cry as Wolfram switched positions roughly, pinning Yuuri to the mattress below. "Then we'll move on from there."
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