Unfounded insecuritues

[moonshadows]

My first hint that Broll had arrived in Nighthaven was when burly arms wrapped around me from behind and his voice breathed my name into my ear, a quiet prayer that made me shiver.

“Broll,” I murmured, feeling my body respond to his touch. Despite myself, I leaned back against his chest.

“I thought I could intercept you in Astranaar,” he said, shifting to hold me more comfortably, “and we could travel to Moonglade together, but I must have missed you.” He buried his nose in my hair, breathing in my scent, and I could feel hardness at my back. “I missed you,” he repeated, softer.

“Mmm, before we continue this greeting, maybe we should go someplace more private.”

“An excellent idea,” he purred, releasing me only to shift into nightsaber and rub against my leg.

Laughing, I mounted him and held on as he ran for the smaller house I kept in Moonglade. “Is this a suggestion?” I asked wickedly as we slipped inside.

“I know you favor nightsaber,” he countered, whiskers forward.

Suddenly, the memory of seeing those woman practically throwing themselves at him rushed back, along with the sharp sting of jealousy and the hot rush of shame. He wasn’t mine. I’d had a child with him, yes. We enjoyed each other’s company, yes. But he’d sworn lifelong love to the mother of his first child, and my heart was permanently inhabited by my brother-buck. Even though I couldn’t promise the kind of devotion that might convince him to put aside his vow, the thought of sharing him with another woman had hurt a surprising amount.

I dropped to my knees and took his feline head between my hands. “I favor you,” I whispered, throat tight.

“Kayne…” Broll shifted into his own body and pulled me against his chest, where I nuzzled his beard and tried not to cry. “What’s wrong?”

“I saw you in Astranaar,” I whimpered, wetting his beard with tears anyway. “I didn’t want…didn’t want to interrupt if…if…”

“You saw me surrounded by common does lifting their tails,” he said somberly. “Kayne-doe, don’t you understand? That’s why I wanted to meet you there.” Gently, he caressed my cheek. “I was hoping that, seeing me with you, they would realize they have nothing that could possibly interest me. I am very glad indeed to hear that you favor me, because I favor you.”

Sniffling, feeling small and foolish, I said, “You do?”

“Kayne-doe, you are the only woman to have shared my bed since my wife died. If ever I allow my vow to rest with her spirit, it will be for you. You have given me hope, helped me to find my place in the world, and made me a part of your family. What other woman could compare with you? You are a child of nature and a daughter of the White Lady. You have seen darkness unimaginable, and yet your heart remains full of light. You took a broken man and made him whole, loving and generous enough to share with him everything that was yours, and yet you still give freely of yourself for the good of Azeroth. If I live ten thousand years, I don’t think I could measure up to even half of what you’ve done. Yes, you silly thing, I favor you. I would be a greater fool than should be allowed to live if I did not.” Lifting my chin gently, he laid a kiss on the tip of my nose before pressing his lips lightly to mine. “I think we ruined the mood for the kind of greeting I had planned, but I’m not opposed to honeyed tea and cuddles. Does that sound good to you?”

Mutely, I nodded. My heart was too full of jumbled emotions for me to trust that any words would make it out intact should I open my mouth.

“Good.” Broll scooped me up easily and carried me to the broad window-seat, where he set me down and kissed my forehead. “You stay put, I’m making the tea. Illidan’s out shopping, I presume?”

I nodded again, still not trusting my voice.

“Poor Kayne-doe,” he murmured, stroking my hair. “Let me set the mugs and put the water on, and you can cry into my beard, and then we’ll have tea and cuddles.”

This time, I managed to scrunch my nose up at how well he knew me. He laughed and kissed my nose before slipping into the kitchen. A minute or two later he came back and sat in the corner of the window-seat, arms open. I half-fell, half-crawled into his familiar strong embrace, nuzzled his soft and fluffy beard, and let the tangled emotions spill out in the form of incoherent sobbing while he murmured reassurance and stroked my hair. When I had wound down to jagged breathing, he kissed my forehead and vanished into the kitchen just long enough to come back with tea. Together, we sat on the window-seat and sipped, his arm around me and my head often on his shoulder.

“Feeling better?” he asked when we had finished.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “Thank you. I’m sorry about the snot in your beard.”

“I expected we’d need to wash,” Broll said dryly. “I didn’t think it would be for this reason, but I’m not sorry it happened. I think this was a conversation we needed to have.” He stared into his empty mug for a minute, then said, “We’re a herd above the greater herd. That’s why no other man has caught your attention, isn’t it?”

I wrinkled my nose. “It feels so elitist to say, but yes. There are so many things Illidan and I do that we just take for granted, but which are completely outside the average person’s experiences. I guess in the back of my mind there’s always a little voice whispering that it wouldn’t be fair to inflict our insanity on a normal person.” I grinned at him apologetically. “That and, well, I told Illidan long ago that any man who wanted to share my life had better be prepared to share me with him, because he comes first.”

“Not always,” Broll protested, lips twitching as he tried to hold back a smile. “I’d say you come first at least a third of the time. And another third of the time, it’s me.”

Laughing, I smacked his shoulder. “You know what I mean!”

“I do,” he soothed. “And I’ll make you a promise, if you make me one. I promise,” he said steadily, seeing my curiosity, “that I shall take no woman but you to my bed, if you will promise that no man but me will grace yours.”

“What about Illidan?”

He quirked one eyebrow at me. “What about my hand?”

“Point taken,” I laughed. “Okay, I promise. Thank you,” I added softly. “I didn’t realize how much your favor meant to me until I saw the possibility that I might not have it.”

Broll leaned over, arm still around my waist, and lipped at my ear. “What do you think,” he whispered, “of skinny-dipping in Lake Elune’ara until we’re chilled to the bone?”

I shivered at the feel of his breath, my body remembering the greeting we’d almost had. “Mmm, and then warming each other on the shore? I think it sounds…delicious.”

“You can meet us there if you like, Illidan,” he whispered.

And spoil the romantic scene? Silently, he snorted his amused rejection of that idea. No. Go, have lots of fun, and give me plenty of time to make something nice for the two of you.

“He declines,” I relayed, “on the grounds of wanting to show off by making something fancy for dinner.”

“His loss,” Broll said cheerfully as he hopped down and stretched.

How many men, I wondered, would so calmly include their lover’s sibling when planning a tryst?

“No,” I said slowly as I stood up. “His loss is my loss. My gain is his gain.”

Broll shot me a curious look as he held the door for me. “What does he gain from this, then?”

“The knowledge that his twin isn’t secretly tying herself in knots wondering about her lover’s other lovers,” I said dryly as I mounted his deer form. “I’m ten thousand years old, how are you better at this than I am?”

“I’ve got experience, Kayne-doe.”

He hesitated mid-stride, as if the idea had also just occurred to him that having had and lost his wife and first daughter had been horrible, yes, but the experiences had also prepared him for me, and for Cassari. I took the thought further: I refused to cast the spell that would let me look through Illidan’s eyes because having that power over me was the counter-weight that balanced out my being the dominant twin and kept us equals. With my greater age, power, and experience in so many other aspects of life, what would make Broll my equal except being wiser in the ways of the heart? Had each of those other three antlered druids been intended as mates for me, only to break fatally under the pressure of the expectations laid on them? I thought about three hundred years of conversations with my father in which he’d never mentioned having a thero’shan with antlers. Had he secretly hoped that we would fall in love, and deliberately kept us from meeting while my reputation would still have crushed Broll’s ego just by existing – only to watch as his pupil swore lifelong love to another woman and lost her? I decided not to ask. Whatever Dad’s intentions had been, this was now between me, and Broll, and Illidan. It was no one else’s business how our unique relationship developed, and I vowed right there that I would let things happen as they happened. Broll had all the relationship experience; I would be content to let him lead me in this.

A bunching of muscle was my only warning; lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed Broll leaving the path and heading for a place where he could leap straight into the deep water. Midair, my stomach climbing into my throat and the thought flashing through my mind that we’d brought no spare clothes, I called upon the Seal and felt Broll do the same. Back to belly we arced through the air and dove cleanly into the water to shoot down, down into the dusky depths, our undulating forms mirror images of each other. Seal form isn’t often used in conjunction with other people, and we discovered that we didn’t know how to communicate with each other. After several minutes of chase-play, however, we made very good progress on communicating at least one thing.

I did wonder, as we flopped around on a rock protruding from the surface of the lake, if we were the first to use it for that purpose. We figured out the positioning eventually, and Illidan’s quiet comment afterwards of Well, that was new seemed to sum things up. When we’d caught our breath and the rock had dried somewhat, we shifted back and stripped. Then, in a moment of wisdom, we took owl form and flew our clothes to a location on the shore where they wouldn’t be surrounded by water.

Without the comfort of seal form, the water was chilly enough to make us whoop and jump, splashing each other and laughing like the most mature and responsible adults ever. Eventually, we got around to making sure Broll’s beard was free of my dried snot, although that brought us into close enough contact that leaving the water sounded like a very good idea.

“You’re going to have to warm me up before I can warm you up,” he warned as we stood dripping on the shore, squeezing water out of our hair. “I’m so chilled I think it’s sucked itself up into my belly.”

“Oh? Let me see if I can lure it out,” I teased, dropping to my knees in front of him. “Here, penis,” I called softly, making clucking sounds as I would to a nightsaber cub. “Come on out, don’t be shy.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing that with a straight face,” he said.

I cupped my hands around his groin and breathed into them. His breath sucked in sharply. I stretched my tongue out, lapping, gently pulling him towards my lips until I could take him into my mouth, and that breath came back out with a groan as warm blood rushed to shake the chill from his member. I swirled and sucked lightly as I pulled back, and he twitched as he left my mouth with a soft pop.

“Are you warm now?” I asked coyly as I stood up.

He pulled me against his chest, one hand at the back of my head, the other burning on my hip. When he claimed my mouth, I submitted readily, pressing as much of my flesh against his as I could. His member blazed between us, and several heated moments later I realized that I had one leg curled around his thigh as though trying to climb him, my arms around his neck, only his embrace keeping me steady as I stood tip-toe on one foot.

“You’re going to need to let go if you want me to be able to do anything,” he murmured into my neck. “I can’t hold you up and lay you on the ground at the same time.”

“Spoilsport,” I teased, but I unwound my leg from his.

“That will do,” he said lightly, one foot moving forward between my legs.

Those bear-powerful arms of his tightened as he slowly went down on one knee, then leaned forward to place me gently on my back. Instead of getting up, he moved his hands to either side of me and lavished warmth of his own on my cold-peaked nipples. I grabbed his antlers at the base and pulled his head back up to mine, and he took the hint. Sometime during that long kiss he positioned himself, because I broke it with a gasp as he sheathed himself smoothly inside me.

“Broll,” I moaned, knowing it would spur him on, and I was not disappointed.

“Kayne,” he breathed, moving inside me.

I could feel him tremble as he made love to me, feel the iron of hard-won control guiding his movements. His desire hadn’t faded at all from the moment he’d whispered that he’d missed me, but he was holding himself back. When the first stirrings gathered at the base of my spine, I whispered his name as a warning. He moaned and redoubled his efforts, and the next time his name left my lips it was a plea to not stop. He grunted, stopped mid-thrust, then pushed me over the edge with two quick thrusts. I called his name and let out a broken gasp, and he buried himself to the hilt and cried out as he released that iron control.

“My White Doe,” he murmured into my neck, rolling over and pulling me to lay half-on him.

“My Bear Stag,” I breathed, nuzzling his damp beard.

“Mmm.”

For a handful of minutes we lay there, floating on afterglow. Then he chuckled.

“You never did it as a seal?”

“Illidan can’t take seal form.”

Broll half-sat up to look at me. “You mean to say I found something you and Illidan haven’t done? Really?”

“Really,” I laughed. “You took my seal-virginity.”

“I don’t know about taking. You seemed pretty eager to give it up.”

“You know plenty about taking,” I said in mock-outrage.

“True.” He grinned unrepentantly. “I just don’t know much about taking in seal-form. We may need to practice that more. Later.”

Yes, Illidan said smugly. Later. Now drag that stag of yours back here and feed him until he’s too full for anything but cuddles and naps.

“Illidan says dinner is ready.”

“Your lips are twitching,” Broll pointed out. “What else did he say?”

“It’s not what he said, it’s how he said it.”

“You’re evading,” he teased as we stood, stretched and began to re-clothe ourselves.

I rolled my eyes and mounted his deer form. “He thinks we’re cute together.”

Broll snorted. “Awfully bold coming from a man whose nightsaber form looks like an overgrown cub wearing pajamas.”

It takes a big man to be cute, Illidan teased in mock-affront. Broll’s burly enough to be cute without anyone daring to mock him for it.

And what about you, brother-buck? You’re not exactly a mountain of muscle.

My ‘big’ is in my pants, he retorted.

“What’d he say now?” Broll asked as I snickered.

“He said it takes a big man to be cute.”

There was silence as he thought that through. “As I recall,” he said mildly, “the last time we had occasion to compare, I out-measured him.”

That’s a lie, sister-doe!

“I’m not getting in the middle of this argument,” I told both of them.

“But Kayne,” Broll said sweetly, “you’re the only one who’s been around both of us enough to settle it.”

He’s right, sister-doe.

“Fine,” I sighed. “Broll, Illidan is longer.”

Hah!

“But Illidan, Broll is thicker.”

“Hah!”

“And until either of you can take the other to the hilt without gagging, I’m the bigger stag, and I’ll hear no more on this topic. Understood?”

Silence from both of them. I resisted the urge to cover my face with my hands.

“If you’re contemplating how to broach the subject with each other, you can discuss it when you compare who’s the bigger glutton. In the meantime, I threw down a dominance challenge.”

Understood, Illidan said promptly. You’re the dominant one, you know that.

“I know my place in the herd,” Broll said cheerfully. “It’s beneath you. Or sometimes on top of you, depending on how you want to do it.”

Behind my eyes, Illidan laughed. In front of us, he opened the door. “Come in, you two. Dinner’s ready.”

I feel that heavy thought, brother-buck. Say it.

“Broll.” A hand on his shoulder stopped the druid just inside the door. “If my presence is keeping you from letting your vow rest…” He trailed off, swallowing a lump of fear and shame.

“Illidan, no.” Broll embraced my twin roughly. “No, you’re not in the way. You’re part of Kayne. If I were going to let a little thing like her twin stop me from doing anything with her, Cassari’s childhood would have been much less pleasant for everyone. If anything, I worry that I’m getting between you two. No, you silly thing. You’re my friend as much as she is, and I’m not going to abandon either of you for anything.”

Blinking rapidly, Illidan returned the hug. “Thank you,” he whispered. As they parted, he offered Broll a weak smile. “Unfounded insecurity seems to be a thing we share,” he half-apologized.

Broll grabbed Illidan’s head firmly and planted a kiss on his forehead, then ruffled his hair and gave him a one-armed shoulder hug. “I won’t say it’s unfounded on your end,” he said, pulling me in to make it a group hug. “Not with what you’ve been through. You told me once to shoehorn myself into Kayne’s heart as her friend-”

You did? When was this?

Back while your baby doe was teething. I meant it, too.

“-and I did, but that doesn’t mean I want to evict you. I don’t want you feeling left out,” he finished quietly. “You’re important to Kayne, and she is important to me, so that makes you important to me. Are there any more insecurities that need to be aired?”

I laughed at his mock-challenge. “I think I’m fine.”

“Nope. You neatly pulled them all out and killed them,” Illidan said sheepishly.

“Good.” Broll gave us another hug, then let go. “I’m starving.”

Laughing, we followed Illidan into the den where we all fed each other delicious morsels until none of us felt like doing anything more strenuous than purring. Three nightsabers on the rug, half-flopped over on each other, we did just that.