i want (to be) you

Pharaun’s quarters smell like dragonsblood and parchment. Vizaeth inhales deeply as he closes the door behind him, the wards undisturbed. The living area is spacious and elegant; dark velvet couch and high-backed leather chair, blood-red rug, book-heavy shelves with glass fronts and webs of silver inlay at the joints. An incense burner shaped like a balor vomits scented smoke from its position squatted at the corner of Pharaun’s desk, which is littered with papers, stationary, and, Vizaeth notes with a sigh, a forgotten glass.

There’s a finger-width of water left, and the edge is smeared—Pharaun decorates his lips now and then, sometimes bold, sometimes subtle, and the traces cling here. With a shaking hand, Vizaeth lifts the glass and sets his mouth over the smear as exactly as he can, and swallows the water.

It’s not enough, but it’s a start. He can feel it reconfiguring his throat as it slides down, and glories at how Pharaun can change him so much with so little.

The door at the far side of the room has no wards, just a lock, quickly and quietly dealt with. Skilfully enchanted faerie fire lamps spring to life at his entry, illuminating a chamber smaller than he’d pictured but no less lavish for its size. Vizaeth runs his fingers over the vanity, dancing light as a spider over the cosmetics in their untidy rows, the silver tray of hair clips and braiding thread—stops at the brush. Pharaun’s hair tangles in it, thick and white, an abundance of discarded snarls. Vizaeth tugs free enough to wind tight around one finger, so tight it throbs.

In the mirror he catches his face, flushed to the silver-capped tips of his ears. He swipes a finger through the faintly glittering powder in one of the cosmetic pots and adds it to his own already darkened eyes. Squinting, it’s almost Pharaun looking back at him from the glass. He fastens one of the ruby clips at his temple, then, after a moment, unwinds his precious ring of hair and ties it to the clip, so that it blends with his own.

He can feel the parts of Pharaun he’s taken sinking into him, his greedy soul absorbing them the way darkness swallows light. This, he thinks, must be the way that Lolth feels when a drow dies.

In the wardrobe, he presses his face to the silken sleeve of a hanging robe, winding it around his neck as he steps inside. Satin shirts and velvet capes and lace-edged sleeves and the hard, cold edges of buttons and fastenings tangle around him, a web of Pharaun—even laundered, it all smells of him. Vizaeth rolls a loose shirt button between his fingers and with one sharp twist of his wrist it’s in his palm.

It’s silver. There’s a tiny, tiny spider engraved on it, each leg no wider than a hair.

Vizaeth swallows it.

Giddy now, he doesn’t suppress an inch of his smile as he turns to what he’s been saving for last: Pharaun’s bed.

The sheets are slightly rumpled, topped with a scattered pile of jewel toned pillows. Probably Pharaun doesn’t use it much, not with a perfectly good reverie couch here too, but he has one. He has one, and that’s perfect, because Vizaeth has fucked on a reverie couch—hasn’t everyone?—and it’s never any good.

He takes a careful seat on the edge, and slides his shaking hand over the sheets—are they still warm, or is it just his imagination? There are traces of makeup smeared on one of the pillows, stray hairs criss-crossing the fabric; Pharaun lay here last night, not a full span of Narbondel’s glow ago, and Vizaeth can’t take it any longer. He flings himself face down on the bed and draws all the sheets around him, pressing his face into the pillows. He can smell sweat, that faint trace that lingers after a too-long night of indulgent unconsciousness.

If he sleeps here, he’ll metamorphose. The thought makes him hard, and he catches himself with his hand half down his breeches and forces himself to stop. He can’t come in Pharaun’s bed, not without him here. It wouldn’t be fair.

With a heavy sigh of reluctance, Vizaeth disentangles himself and straightens out the sheets. He’s pushing his luck, really. Pharaun will be back any minute. He’s just crouching to re-lock the bedroom door when he sees the spellbook.

There’s nothing else it can be, not fat like that, bound in heavy black leather that sucks in all the light, glittering with gold runes in little stitched runs all across the cover. Vizaeth drops his lockpicks as though spellbound, and maybe he is, maybe there’s a compulsion on Pharaun’s spellbook because he’s there now, hands on the glass sealing away the shelf, and it’s not locked—it’s not locked—and Pharaun’s innermost mind is right there beneath his trembling fingers.

Some wizards treat their spellbook like a storage trunk, nothing more than a place to toss their magic until they need it. Some treat them as an encyclopaedia, strictly organised, a thing of pure function. For others they become a journal, developing ideas along with collecting spells, scribbling notes and alterations, personal thoughts, feelings, criticisms—a portrait of their owner.

Vizaeth is certain Pharaun is the latter. He’d never write anything down without comment, he has thoughts on everything. Always something to say, something to add in his confident, charming tenor. Vizaeth can almost hear him whispering encouragement as he sets the book on the desk and flips the golden clasp to lift the cover; come into my mind, Vizaeth, I want to share this with you.

Something pricks his finger, and Vizaeth knows at once he’s made a mistake. On the inside of the clasp is a tiny glass needle like a spider fang, with colourless liquid beaded at the tip. He shakes his hand out with a curse—poison, of course, Pharaun would never be so stupid as to leave his spellbook unguarded. It burns like wildfire up his arm and he knows there’s no stopping it, it’ll flood his heart, have him dead in moments.

Pharaun would have defended his magic with only the best.

Vizaeth’s body spasms and he falls against the desk, his rapidly numbing arms sweeping the spellbook and all Pharaun’s papers to the floor. His legs give out and one desperately flailing hand catches the glass—it wobbles for a moment, right on the edge, then falls and shatters just as Vizaeth himself hits the ground. He manages to roll to his back, breath shallow, and as the prickling numbness becomes a limb-locking paralysis, the door to Pharaun’s quarters clicks open.

He can blink, and he can breathe, and that’s all. No, not quite all—with the loss of movement has come a tenfold increase in sensation, but it’s a pleasant kind of agony the venom has infused him with, the kind that makes all touch a fever, sets every nerve alight.

Vizaeth realises, as slow footsteps cross towards him, that he’s hard again.

“Now, what do we have here?” Pharaun’s face appears above him, lips—black today, sharp-edged, flawless—curved in a teasing half-smile. He crouches so that his hair brushes Vizaeth’s face, the soft strands like needles scraping his skin. Though he can’t move his lips, a whimper slips from his frozen mouth. “Ah, it’s apprentice Thaezyr—sorry, Vizaeth, wasn’t it?”

Pharaun runs a finger down the bridge of his nose, and he might as well have run it down Vizaeth’s cock, for how it feels. A light tap to the tip makes his head spin.

“You won’t be able to correct me if I’m wrong for a few hours, I’m afraid. That venom is quite potent; as it should be, for how much it costs. I’m curious what you were trying to accomplish, but I suppose that answer will have to wait too. Unless…” Pharaun trails his finger over Vizaeth’s lips. His cock throbs. “Unless we play a little game, how about that? Does that sound like fun? Moan once for yes and twice for no.”

Vizaeth moans.

Pharaun’s face splits into a grin. “Excellent! I do so enjoy a bit of evening entertainment—it’s been somewhat of a rough day, I could use the relaxation. You’re very considerate, Vizaeth, I’ll give you that. ”

He vanishes from sight, though Vizaeth strains his eyes to follow. Behind and above him a clink of glass, a splash—Pharaun reappears, a glass of dark amber liquid swirling in one elegant hand, the other cupping his elbow.

“Were you trying to steal my spellbook?”

Vizaeth moans once.

“Reckless! I like it. But I notice a few disturbances in my bedroom, Vizaeth. Were you poking around in there, too?”

Another moan.

Pharaun sips his drink. Vizaeth wants more than anything to be the glass, the alcohol, to burn as he slides down Pharaun’s throat and dissolve in the hollow pit of his stomach.

“You want to fuck me,” Pharaun says, and doesn’t wait for confirmation. “This is a rather convoluted way to go about it, don’t you think?”

He sits, slowly, a comma-curl of knees balanced on one slim arm, and tips the glass to pour the last of the drink into Vizaeth’s mouth. Vizaeth can’t swallow, not properly, only half work his throat just enough to keep from choking. It’s whiskey of some kind. It burns. Pharaun wipes the remnants from his mouth with one soft thumb, then leans close to put his lips right to Vizaeth’s ear and whispers,

“You could have just asked.”

Vizaeth wants to touch him so badly his hands cramp. He wants to bury his fingers in that perfect hair, press his face to that immaculate throat, crawl into the blessed Abyss of Pharaun’s body and never come back out.

“I don’t know if that’s what you came here for.” Pharaun sets the glass aside and his hand brushes along Vizaeth’s body the way Vizaeth’s did over his dresser, spider-light fingers all the way to where his cock strains against his breeches, obvious and inelegant. “But since you’re lying here on my floor in such an enticing fashion, I can only assume it’s what you want.”

Vizaeth moans once, and Pharaun laughs.

“Now is that a yes, or do you just like what I’m doing?”

He gives Vizaeth’s cock a squeeze before leaning down to kiss his useless mouth. It’s like acid, the way his tongue burns its way inside, his fingers bruising where they tug Vizaeth’s jaw open. With an almighty effort that leaves his head churning, Vizaeth manages to press his own tongue up weakly to meet Pharaun’s lazy exploration of his mouth.

“Oh, he fights!” Pharaun says, delighted. “Keep it up—if you can move inside the hour, I can probably get my money back from the apothecary.”

Pharaun relieves him of boots and breeches, and the look on his face as he runs his hand down Vizaeth’s bare leg is approving. The venom sears burned imprints of his touch as it goes, and when his fingers curl around Vizaeth’s cock it’s enough to make every nerve ending short out at once in a symphony of overload. When the black spots clear, Pharaun’s between his legs. Vizaeth forces a moan out of his still frozen mouth—it’s a dead sound, the kind of sound a corpse would make if you fucked it. Pharaun shrugs.

“No idea what you’re on about, honestly. I’d say hold still but…well.” His smile is half apology, half mockery. “Not as if you’ve much of a choice, is it?”

It hurts. He can’t relax, can’t move, can’t do anything except hurt and turn to fire beneath Pharaun’s touch. Inside me, he’s inside me, he’s inside me!

Pharaun fucks him slow at first, slower than Vizaeth thought he would—and it stings, to have been wrong about something so vital, but it’s his own fault for not paying enough attention. His mouth at Vizaeth’s neck is equally slow. Gentle, almost. There’s teeth to the kisses, though; nips that, by virtue of the venom, tear his throat out anew with every tiny bite. After some minutes of such savaging he takes Vizaeth’s mouth once more, and his motions speed, his grip tightens, moving now with need and purpose.

He’s inside me.

Vizaeth wills his legs to move, his arms to conjure what meagre strength they possess so he can wrap every limb around Pharaun and draw him deeper. That they’re still clothed is a nightmare, every shift of fabric a scouring scrape over skin that screams to be touched. When Pharaun bites his lip, it feels as if he’s torn it off. Vizaeth’s mind races down the track of a reality where he has, and from there it’s only a half-step to Pharaun devouring him whole from the mouth down, until there’s only one of them and Vizaeth is inside him, wrapped in pieces around his heart, thinned out in the blood that courses through his veins.

He whimpers, and his dead tongue just about forms Pharaun’s name.

“Now that’s a word I like to hear,” Pharaun says. He snaps his hips, hitting hard, hitting deep. A groan slips from his mouth. “Gods, you feel good. Come here a minute.”

He takes Vizaeth’s face in his hands and kisses him, over and over, cursing into his mouth as his hips jerk and stutter until at last he buries himself deep and comes with a moan Vizaeth swallows into his soul.

Pharaun is inside him. Pharaun is still kissing him, lazily now, and Vizaeth can feel him everywhere, Pharaun is inside him.

He comes so hard he blacks out.

When he wakes up he’s on the couch, stiff-limbed with raw skin, tender and feverish, but though his head’s still swimming, he can move again. He’s fully dressed, and the thought of Pharaun touching him whilst he’s unconscious makes his heart skip a delighted beat. Across from him, Pharaun lounges in the high-backed leather chair, drumming his fingers on the arm.

“I’m curious,” he says, without preamble. “How did you get past my wards?”

“I was you,” Vizaeth tells him, surprised at how strong his voice is, compared to the rest of him. “I mimicked your magic.”

“That’s a rather neat trick. Don’t do it again.”

“Don’t mimic your magic, or don’t be you?”

Pharaun laughs like he’s told a joke. He hasn’t.

“The next time you fancy a tumble, just ask,” Pharaun says. “I can’t have you breaking into my rooms, and I especially can’t have you touching something even more lethal and dying on my rug. I’m in enough trouble with the Archmage as it is.”

Vizaeth pictures dying on Pharaun’s rug. Bleeding into it, his blood a perfect match to the fabric. The stains would never come out, not really—every time Pharaun passed the spot, Vizaeth’s veinous spirit would be crushed beneath his heel. He shifts his legs, still sensitive from the venom, and tugs his robes over his lap.

Pharaun rises, crosses the room, holds open the door. “Fun as this evening’s been, I think it’s about time you took your leave. Find some water or something—I can’t imagine the hangover from that venom is going to be particularly pleasant.”

“Yes, Master Mizzrym.”

He aches as he scurries back through the dark halls of Sorcere. He’s going to ache for a while, he thinks. That’s good, it means something’s changed—tonight was a ritual, though he didn’t plan for it to be. There’s an arcane thread between touching Pharaun’s spellbook, and Pharaun coming inside him, and now they’re bound by it, because despite the distance between them, Vizaeth can still feel Pharaun’s hands and taste his lips.

Hopefully Pharaun can still taste him as well.

Back in his room, Vizaeth squints into the mirror above his vanity, with its scattered cosmetics in untidy rows, and its silver tray of hair clips and braiding thread. In the candlelight, it’s almost Pharaun in the glass.

“That’s a rather neat trick,” he says, then clears his throat, adjusts his cadence, and tries again. “That’s a rather neat trick.”

The lingering venom puts fire beneath his fingertips as he slides a hand into his breeches. He closes his eyes and feels Pharaun at his back, breath at his ear, whispering in their joined voice.

“That’s a rather neat trick. Don’t do it again.”