light me up

Inhale, find the magic. Hold for a heartbeat. Exhale, let it go. Inhale, find the magic, over and over and over—the exercise is designed to retrain his body to connect properly to the Weave, whilst in his now-regular sessions with Nalfein they work on untangling the deadly snarl of it coiled inside him. Vizaeth shifts in place. His knees ache. He’s been at this for over an hour tonight already and nothing feels different.

Inhale, find the magic. Exhale, what’s the point? There’s a hole in his chest where his heart’s supposed to be and all the magic in Menzoberranzan won’t fix the fact that Pharaun doesn’t want him. His throat tightens, tears threatening yet again. He grips his knees for all of five seconds before it’s too much—shaking fingers tap the ruby spider clinging to his bicep and he inhales sharply at the flash of pain; sighs at the thin stream of blood that slides down his stained arm.

He’s not supposed to use blood for magic now. Nalfein was very clear on that; use only the right school for the right spell, no more alterations. He’s been good. He hasn’t used the spider to cast, no matter how much he wants to, but he can’t take it off. It’s the last thing Pharaun gave him, apart from a failing grade in necromancy, and when the hidden fangs punch through his skin, it’s the closest he can get to Pharaun touching him. In class, it’s the closest he can get to Pharaun looking at him.

After a minute or so, he stems the flow. Lothaphyon, perched among the mess of cosmetics and scattered jewellery littering his dresser, sends burblings of concern that he ignores. She still doesn’t understand love, for all his attempts at explaining. She’s only a familiar, after all. She can’t be expected to comprehend higher emotions.

He wipes the worst of the blood off with the hem of his undershirt and settles back into position. Pointless or not, he has nothing better to do than keep trying.

Inhale, find the magic. Hold for a heartbeat—

There’s a knock at his door. He stiffens. Lothaphyon is spinning in circles, the eyeball in her ribcage rolling excitedly.

<Red boy!>

“You alive in there, Thaezyr?”

It’s very nearly the last voice he wants to hear right now.

“Fuck off.”

“Charming as ever. You going to let me in, or am I going to have to do it myself?”

Vizaeth clenches his jaw and says nothing. Then the lock clicks, Lothaphyon sends a jolt of delight at him, and Rhylfein fucking Dyrr is in his room.

“Get out.”

Rhylfein ignores him, picking his way over the piles of clothes and books and spell components strewn across the floor. The only space that’s still clean is the shrine in the corner; the obsidian statue is spotless, apart from the bloodstains in the offering bowl. A small brown spider has made a home between Lolth’s head and the wall, and it’s the only thing Vizaeth’s cared about in days.

Rhylfein doesn’t go to the shrine. Instead, he stops at the dresser, holding out a hand. Lothaphyon, the traitor, immediately noses at his outstretched fingers before scurrying up his arm to perch on his shoulder. Her excited chitters go nowhere but Vizaeth’s brain and he glares at both of them as he scrambles to his feet.

“Why are you here?”

“You said I could visit this one.” Rhylfein strokes Lothaphyon’s rat-skull with a delicate finger. “Also, I was mildly concerned you’d be a corpse.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“For one thing, you’re a fucking mess and you’re covered in blood.”

Vizaeth’s hand instinctively wraps over the armlet, his eyes flicking to the mirror. It’s blocked out, an old cloak draped over it, hiding his reflection. He couldn’t stand seeing Pharaun there—seeing almost-Pharaun, eyes smudged, lips smeared, everything collapsing under the weight of his grief. He can’t remember the last time he bothered brushing his hair, let alone braiding it.

“And for another,” Rhylfein continues, “there are rumours going around about what Master Mizzrym did. To your grades.”

He can’t help it. Vizaeth squeezes, activating the armlet with his palm, viciously pleased at the way Rhylfein starts on seeing the blood seeping out from under his hand.

“Pharaun—” his voice cracks. He swallows. “Pharaun was protecting me. Because he loves me. You can be as jealous as you like, but—”

Rhylfein pulls his hand away from the spider. In a moment he’s worked it out and taps it to a stop. “Why are you still defending him? He fucked with your grades—and I heard he fucked with your magic, too—you should be planning his execution!”

“He didn’t fuck with my magic,” Vizaeth snaps. “I did. And if I don’t fix it, I die. He wanted to stop that from happening and that’s why…that’s why he…” Tears choke him out of the lie and he presses his bloody fingers to his mouth.

“You die? Thaezyr, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Lothaphyon is making little concerned sounds, flashes of worry rattling in his skull and he can’t stand it; her noise, Rhylfein’s presence, Pharaun’s absence—with a flick of his wrist she vanishes, banished.

“You want to know what’s wrong with me?” he spits out. “My magic is broken. Tangled. Every time I cast it’s unravelling me, so now I have to learn everything from scratch while Master Do’Urden tries to untangle it before I decompose from a cantrip.”

“Shit.” Rhylfein sounds quietly horrified. “Why didn’t you say something? I could’ve—”

“I don’t need your help.” Vizaeth shoves him and he stumbles back, eyes flaring in surprise. “And I don’t need your fucking pity. So why don’t you just shut your mouth for once?”

Another shove and now he’sRhylfein’s up against the wall with Vizaeth’s hand wrapped around his throat, but there’s not a shred of fear in his eyes. Vizaeth tightens his grip, blackened nails digging in.

“Go on then, Thaezyr,” Rhylfein says, voice low. “Make me bleed.”

Vizaeth’s pulse throbs in his temples. He can’t let go and he can’t look away and whilst he’s trapped, Rhylfein takes the predator’s chance and darts his head forwards to capture Vizaeth’s mouth with his own.

Ignition. Vizaeth gasps and then his hands are knotted in Rhylfein’s hair and he’s pressing him hard against the wall as Rhylfein’s leg slides between his. He rocks his hips, chasing friction—Rhylfein rolls with him, grabbing his waist to pull him closer. Want, that insatiable animal, roars through him like a wildfire, and the only time he’s ever felt anything close to this before is when Pharaun—

He jerks away with a strangled cry.

“Don’t,” Rhylfein says, before he has a chance to speak. “Don’t even start. You don’t owe him a damn thing, least of all loyalty.”

“He loves me!” It’s not true, but he can’t let Rhylfein see that, know that. His hand strays to the armlet—tap-bleed-tap-tap-bleed.

Rhylfein grabs his wrist. “Stop it.”

“I love him. You don’t understand, no-one understands—he’ll want me again, I can make him want me, I can fix it if you just stop touching me—!”

“He doesn’t give a shit about you, Vizaeth.” Rhylfein’s fingers tighten. “Never has, never will.”

“You don’t know a fucking thing about him!”

“Neither do you.”

Rhylfein releases his wrist and steps in close. Strokes spider-light fingers along his cheek, through the smudges and the tear-tracks. Fits his palm over them. Vizaeth’s heart is one continuous beat, thrumming in his chest. Rhylfein’s whisper sends a shiver down his spine.

“Forget about Pharaun.”

“I can’t.” He can hardly form the words. “I can’t, I’m—”

“—you’re what, Thaezyr? I’ll tell you what you are: you’re obsessive and vicious and by all accounts you’re a very bad idea. But you know something?” He grabs Vizaeth’s arms and now it’s his back up against the wall, hands pinned above his head, Rhylfein’s grin an inch from his face. “I kinda like it.”

The mouth that meets his is warm and eager, devouring him with single-minded determination. Furious, Vizaeth sinks his teeth into the overconfident lips. Rhylfein moans and the sound lights a fuse at the base of his spine that replaces his thoughts with sparking heat-haze—he bites again and again, and when Rhylfein bites back, he can’t help a moan of his own.

“You can do better than that,” Rhylfein says. He grinds against Vizaeth, as hard as he is. “Come on, I told you—make me bleed.”

“Fuck you,” Vizaeth gasps out.

“That’s what I was hoping to do to you, actually, handsome. You want to fuck me, you can work for it, but I don’t think that is what you want.” He kisses along Vizaeth’s jaw, down his neck, hot mouth scorching the skin. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you don’t want me to pin you to that bed and wreck you. Let me see you lie.”

Vizaeth wrenches himself free, grabs Rhylfein’s face and hauls him back into a kiss—he can taste his smile, his laugh, his desire. It’s new. Alien. He doesn’t know it at all, not the way he knew Pharaun before they even touched, and a part of him wants to kill it now before it does any more damage. A larger part wants to feel Rhylfein’s mouth more places than just his lips.

He pushes Rhylfein back, hands fisted in the front of his dark robes—embroidery digs into his skin, black threaded demons snarling beneath his fingers. They stumble together, Rhylfein with a hand in his hair, holding him in the kiss as Vizaeth tries to find the fastenings. The style’s so archaic, all laced up the sides somehow; he can’t figure it out and growls in frustration, which makes Rhylfein laugh again, the sound slithering down his throat, wrapping around his lungs to take control of his breath.

Rhylfein starts to say something, but his foot catches on a tangle of robes and days-old shirts and they both hit the floor. Vizaeth starts to unfasten his leggings, but Rhylfein rolls them over before he gets far, and he likes that better, pinned on his back the way he’s meant to be. He reaches for his laces again, and Rhylfein catches his wrist, lifts it to his mouth to kiss it, right over the thin veins and unhidden scars. Vizaeth’s heart lurches, a painful thud behind his ribs.

“I’m not gonna fuck you on the floor when there’s a perfectly good bed two feet away,” Rhylfein says.

“What does that matter? You just want to fuck me.”

“True, but you’ll like it better on the bed.”

“And you know what I like, do you?” He tries to sneer it, but it comes out too breathless to sound anything but desperate.

“Not yet.” Rhylfein’s eyes burn into his; deep, spellbinding crimson. “But you’re going to show me.”

They arrive at the bed in a tangle of limbs and half-off clothing, fumbling and groping their way to nakedness, and by the time skin meets skin, he knows every inch of Rhylfein’s mouth; knows it, and needs now to know the rest of him in equal detail.

Rhylfein sits up, straddling his thighs, shoves the long, red tangles back from his face—and stops. Vizaeth knows exactly what he’s staring at. He fixes his gaze on the shadowed ceiling as fingers ghost over his scars.

“What did that to you?”

“Nothing.”

Rhylfein scoffs. “Fuck off was it nothing.” He traces the centre line with his thumb, up to where it splits beneath Vizaeth's pectorals. It’s a dead touch, far away pressure. “Was it Pharaun?”

“No. It doesn’t matter.”

“Viz—”

Vizaeth grabs his wrist. “Ask me again and I’ll give you one to match.”

Teeth and tongue and a starving groan—Rhylfein’s mouth crashes into his, his cock pressing hot and hard against Vizaeth’s hip. “Do you promise?” he pants out, all rough edges and fevered eyes.

And for some reason, Vizaeth says, “Yes.”

Hands and tongue move with firm purpose now, the former parting his legs to fit Rhylfein between them, the latter circling the throbbing point of his pulse. Fingers push into his mouth, and when Rhylfein says, “Suck,” Vizaeth does it without thinking. Once they’re wet they’re put to use, teasing him open—far too slow. Vizaeth smacks a heel on the small of Rhylfein’s back. He yelps in pain and surprise, glaring.

“That was my fucking kidney, you little bitch.”

“Stop playing around and fuck me already.”

“Don’t be a slut about it. You mess up my kidney function and it won’t be me you have to answer to.”

Before he can ask what that’s supposed to mean, Rhylfein is inside him. His head falls back on a moan, the stretch and burn enough to rip him apart. Rhylfein, he thinks, could break him. The idea makes him hot.

Rhylfein stills, barely halfway in—so much bigger than Vizaeth would have pictured, if he’d spent any time picturing it, which he and his lonely fingers haven’t, not for a single second. He growls in frustration. “Are you going to fuck me or not?”

“You’re a brat, Thaezyr, anyone ever tell you that?”

In reply, Vizaeth grabs a fistful of hair and yanks him into a kiss. Rhylfein’s laugh is a knife-sharp sound that carries its hunger right into his throat. He rocks his hips fully forwards and Vizaeth meets the motion—deeper, harder, he needs to feel it. He rakes his nails down Rhylfein’s back like he’s trying to skin him, and Rhylfein sucks in a sudden breath.

“Fuck. Do that again.” Vizaeth does it again. A breathless moan, right against his ear. “You better have left a mark.”

“Or what?”

That grin again, the one that keeps rendering him speechless, braindead, unsure of who or what or where he is.

“Or,” Rhylfein says, pulling almost all the way out, “I’ll have to keep fucking you until you do.”

In one sharp motion, he buries himself back inside and Vizaeth’s blood catches on fire as he moans loud enough to crack the walls. There’s no way the rest of the corridor—the rest of the floor—isn’t hearing this. He doesn’t care. Rhylfein fucks into him over and over and all Vizaeth can do is cling to his back and ride the sparking pleasure to some high, bright place he hasn’t gone before. This arrogant boy is a devouring flame; he’ll consume Vizaeth from the inside out, leave him as scorch marks and ashes. Sacrifices are meant to bleed, but on this altar they burn.

Rhylfein slows. His palm cups Vizaeth’s jaw, a thumb brushing his lips. They part of their own volition, and Vizaeth takes it into his mouth, sucking, licking at the pad, wishing Rhylfein would push it deeper, see how much he doesn’t choke. When it’s pulled away, his mouth aches, empty. Rhylfein’s staring at him again, lips curved in a lopsided smile and something in his eyes Vizaeth can’t translate.

“What?”

“Nothing, just…” He shakes his head. “Just can’t get over how pretty you look with my cock in your ass.”

“You think I’m pretty?” He’s fuck-drunk, the words excruciatingly stupid. Rhylfein chuckles.

“Yeah, Viz. You’re pretty.”

His insides twist, red lightning in his gut. He cants his hips, digging his heels in as Rhylfein picks up his former pace. He sucks a dark, biting mark into Vizaeth’s neck—it wouldn’t take much to rip his throat out. His skin’s so fragile, and Rhylfein’s already tasted his blood once. He likes to fight; he’d like it, Vizaeth’s certain, he’d like how it feels to tear a pulse free of its flesh.

It’s not long before Rhylfein’s breath quickens, his curses growing more broken, his movements shorter and sharper. “Where…where do you want…?”

Vizaeth tightens his legs.

“Inside me,” he says. “Always inside me.”

Rhylfein obliges. He locks his mouth to Vizaeth’s as he comes with a low groan, the kiss deep and messy. Vizaeth likes the sounds he makes, he decides. He wants more of that voice. Wants all of it. Rhylfein starts to pull away but Vizaeth keeps tight hold, his legs like a vice. His cock drags against Rhylfein’s stomach and he ruts into the pleasure, reduced to gasping, animal need—he’s close, so close, he just needs…just needs something…

He grabs Rhylfein’s face.

“How pretty do I look now?” he demands.

“Viz,” Rhylfein says, “you look fucking gorgeous.”

Orgasm hits with all the subtlety of a mace to the back of the head. Vizaeth clings to Rhylfein, nails and teeth sinking into whatever they can get hold of and Rhylfein is cursing, laughing, biting him back. And, as flickering pleasure disperses in twitching shivers, he realises that the entire time they’ve been fucking he’s done exactly as Rhylfein asked.

He hasn’t thought about Pharaun at all.

---

He’s expecting Rhylfein to leave as soon as he has his breath back. He doesn’t. He tangles himself around Vizaeth, demanding kisses with lazy, insistent lips. His hands wander, implying a second bout but stopping just shy of initiating one. Vizaeth lets himself touch back, exploring this strange, slim form in his bed; unmarked, unmarred by any of Menzoberranzan’s many claws. Not one scar, not one blemish, not anywhere. Rhylfein is perfect.

Perfection kisses him again, slow and languid. He’s half-hard, a pleasant ache low in his belly and he’s body-full. Awake. Like all of him is there in a way it hasn’t been since he found out about his grades.

Rhylfein sits up, stretching his arms above his head. “Well, that was fun.”

Something must show in his face, because Rhylfein leans down and this time the kiss is softer than a whisper. It makes his chest hurt.

“Don’t pout, pretty boy. We can do it again if you want.”

“I…you…”

“Think about it. Or me. Ideally with your hand in your breeches.” Rhylfein winks and they just fucked so why does that make him flush?

Rhylfein gets up to dress, and his perfection is marred, Vizaeth sees now, by dozens of scratches striping his back, some of them deep enough to have bled. He looks down at his nails—beneath the black stain are traces of skin and blood. Rhylfein’s skin. Rhylfein’s blood. He curls his fingers into his palm. What’s he supposed to do with those?

“Viz?”

He likes how Rhylfein makes his name sound, cutting it in half like that. “Yes?”

Rhylfein tugs his chin up so their lips are almost touching.

“Next time,” he purrs, “I’m going to make you scream.”

Then he’s away, darting back like a dancer, smirking, and leaves on a laugh that should be irritatingly cocky but which only makes Vizaeth want to chase after him and devour it before anyone else hears it. He runs a hand over the tangle of sheets, messy and warm—his bed’s going to smell like Rhylfein for days.

Bile rises in the back of his throat. He slaps a hand over his mouth.

What have I done?

Spreading his legs for a smile from Rhylfein Dyrr, even after berating Pharaun for doing the same when Despana bewitched him—what a treacherous hypocrite he is! If he loves Pharaun—which he does, he does, he always will, it’s carved into his soul—how could he do this him?

He gnaws at his knuckles, and something with the shape of anger cracks the shell of guilt. Rhylfein was here, is the thing. Here in his room, in his bed, on purpose. Flirted with him, chased him, wanted him—bled for him. That has to mean something. It has to, it must, unless...was this a test? Was Rhylfein a test?

And if he was, has Vizaeth passed or failed?

Hair lies scattered over the pillows, red and white, so easy to see whose is whose and doesn’t that tell him all he needs to know, that he shouldn’t have done this? He lunges forwards, ready to sweep it all away and start begging for forgiveness…then stops. His eyes dart back and forth, lips moving soundlessly as he counts and a moment later, eight long, red hairs lay across his palm. Exactly eight.

An ember of hope that tastes like Rhylfein’s smile flickers in the cold, dead muscle of his heart. He has to be careful. Last time he misunderstood the signs and ruined everything. Eight for Her blessing, or eight for a warning? He rolls the hairs into a knot, holds them to his lips; if he eats them, he’ll know. Rhylfein will change him, the way Pharaun changed him.

He doesn’t want to be Rhylfein. There’s a wanting in him, a fever he can’t douse, but what his body craves is the return of the touch that started that fire, not for it to take him over.

A blessing or a warning? He looks to his shrine, but the spider’s not in her web and Lolth’s stone lips are sealed. He rolls the knotted hair between his fingers.

Inhale, find the magic. Hold for a heartbeat. Exhale—on a tentative gesture, Lothaphyon appears in his lap. She’s already forgiven him for his abrupt dismissal earlier, and comes at once to his hand, nudging his fingers with her skull. The eye in her ribcage rolls, searching.

<Red boy?>

“Gone,” Vizaeth tells her. “Gone for now, but Lothaphyon, I need you to look after this.” Carefully, he unravels the knot and winds the strands around her delicate ribs, sets it so it’s a line of red along her spine. “Just until I know for sure, alright?”

He strokes a finger over the hair, and something inside him shivers.

“Just until I know for sure.”