The Merry Men Masquerade

7. Double-Edged

It helped that the sex was great.

"What can I say," Ronan grinned up at her. "I find my head is at its clearest when it's between your legs."

Tony shoved his face so he was looking away from her, but she was snickering. "It's a good thing your mouth is so pretty," she said. "What comes out of it is vile."

It was as good as a yes. Ronan hummed, satisfied. It had been so long since he'd been with anybody, it was no wonder he was so tightly-strung. This had to be what he needed.

The sound of voices started up inside - the others were home. The arson troupe would be departing soon. "Want me to braid your hair?" Ronan offered.

Tony ran her fingers through Ronan's bangs one last time, toying with the white tuft, before dropping her hands - another yes. So Ronan crawled behind her to comb through her curtain of black, distracting himself with the familiarity of it.

The back door pushed open, and two heads poked out.

"You guys hungry?" said Felix. "We've got meat!"

"Mitch and I have been ironing out the details," said Vito. He didn't so much as look at Ronan, which was pretty impressive, considering how close behind Tony he was. "We need to catch you up."

"I'm busy," said Tony, very seriously.

"Can't that wait a minute?"

"No, but you sure can."

Vito heaved a long-suffering sigh but ducked back inside. Felix watched him leave, then turned back to Ronan and Tony. "Can I do one?"

Ronan looked mournfully at his progress. "I've already started-"

"Come on, then," Tony said, shaking Ronan's hands off. "You'd better make them even."

Felix scurried over and plopped down, leaning cross-legged into Ronan's side, and Ronan couldn't even be bothered as he undid his work and started parting Tony's hair down the middle.

𓃦𓃦𓃦

If Ronan had spent the better part of the last hour pacing, that was his own business.

Bandit had stuck around for a while, lingering in the yard after her companions had lifted off with Vito, Tony, and Mitch on their backs. Once Ronan had banned Felix from giving her more snacks and nobody had made any move to get on her back, she'd quickly grown bored and taken off, and Felix had sulked inside to nap soon after.

For the entire time the horses had been there, Amir hadn't moved more than four short steps from the front door. He seemed to find them amusing from a distance ("You seriously named your pegasi Bandit, Devil, and Rogue?" "Shut up, we were young"), but he grayed whenever they were within earshot, like they might somehow hear his unfavorable thoughts and whisk him into the sky for the fun of dropping him a hundred meters.

With Bandit and Felix gone and Amir doing little more now than sit on the grass and watch him pace, Ronan had inevitably filled the quiet with a mental list of tonight's worst possible outcomes. He occiped himself now with ranking them; Vito and Tony's deaths were naturally the top item, but there was a toss-up for second place between Mitch's death and Vito singeing off his hair.

"Can I ask you something?" Amir spoke up after an hour had passed. Ronan didn't stop his pacing, but looked over to let Amir know he was listening. "When we were at the blacksmith's today, we heard talk of a festival, but when I asked about it, everyone got, er . . ."

"Weird?" Ronan supplied.

"Very weird. They all looked at Vito, and he just told me not to bother, but it seemed- loaded, somehow?"