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In the house of God, Feyd encountered an angel.
The boy’s eyes were a lurid green, almost sickly, like the bruise which sprawled over Feyd’s cheek: the result of this particularly nasty right hook that connected with his face a week ago. He was conscious of the blemish now, standing amidst the stained glass and shiny walnut pews, feeling it prickle beneath the gaze of the stranger before him. It was evidence written blatantly across his face, a diseased symptom of trouble.
“Ah, you must be Feyd! Welcome, welcome. We’re so pleased to have you. Did you have an alright time getting here? They say it’s the hottest day of the week.”
Next to the boy was a tall man, posture held incredibly straight, his hair the same dark shade of brown. The lines creasing the corners of his eyes displayed his age. “You may call me Reverend Atreides, and this here is Paul, one of our associate pastors. He’ll be your guide on this journey.”
Guide seemed like a strong word, considering Paul offered no introduction of his own. No trite welcomes nor nice-to-meet-yous, his hand kept firmly at his side as if melded to the cloth, instead of outstretched in a friendly shake. The action, or lack thereof, struck a dissonant chord in the song and dance of Feyd’s life, left a measure of silence within the constant melody of I’ve heard a lot about you, accented by flashy smiles and even flashier accessories (designer watch tucked under the sleeve of a uniform, earrings worth ten grand dropped haphazardly on his bedside table) that surrounded him at all times.
Funny, considering Paul nailed the part of ass-kisser better than Feyd’s schoolmates, what with those demanding eyes, that dewy skin, mouth scrunched into a pout, ringlets framing his face. Aside from his status as a literal church boy, him swallowed by the fabric of his dress shirt resembled the rare scholarship kid skulking around campus, stack of books in hand and meekness written in their face. And yet, something about the glint in his eyes was oddly reminiscent of Piter, assistant to Feyd’s uncle. Less smarmy, but observant.
Not that observation would help him much if he ever attended Imperium Academy. The image made Feyd stifle a laugh. What would become of curly-haired Paul cavorting amongst his pack of friends, heirs set to inherit the world? Likely answer: shoulder-checked at every stairwell, forced to fetch the contents of his bag from the tiered fountain, watching parties from the window of his dorm. Sheep would be more at home alongside wolves.
Snippets of the Reverend’s words went in one ear and out the other as Feyd adjusted the rings he wore on his left hand, thumb and forefinger fiddling with silver bands. The familiar shape of a coiled snake, then a hawk’s sharp beak greeted his skin. There wasn’t any point in listening; he knew why he was here, and the why sounded suspiciously like my uncle’s a trustee. It was leagues above expulsion, he supposed, but regardless--weighing the hit to his family’s reputation against having a no-name recite bible scriptures to him for an hour, Feyd was truly stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Perhaps most frustrating of all, Paul simply stared at him throughout the speech, refusing to break eye contact despite the inches of height Feyd had on him. Expectancy reflected back at him within two green mirrors, jewels that Feyd wanted to gouge out of their sockets, if only to ease this torture, out of his element and doomed to death by boredom. When Paul’s attention did eventually shift, it was towards the ink flickering on the underside of Feyd’s forearm, the beginnings of a blade caught in thorns peeking out from his jacket sleeve. At this earnest curiosity, everything needling Feyd came to a head.
“Ever seen a tattoo before?” He snapped.
A soft smile touched pink lips, and infuriatingly, incomprehensibly, Paul shook his head. This was plain a confession as any, an admission of weakness that any other person Feyd had met would attempt to conceal. But here it was, undisguised yet unabashed, somehow mocking him while simultaneously placing the ball in his court. What kind of guy had never seen something benign as a tattoo? Preposterous.
A too-loud laugh sounded from Reverend Atreides beside them, and Feyd bit the inside of his cheek, his surely clever response interrupted. “Alright, alright. I’ve kept you both long enough. I’ll let you boys get acquainted.”
The Reverend clapped Paul lightly on the shoulder, then strode off through the row of pews, taking a sharp turn at the leftmost corner and disappearing from view. Feyd watched the man leave with anticipation clawing at his spine, the feeling competing with a sudden, surprisingly childish urge to reach out and plead for him to stay. If only to prolong the preamble, to prevent Paul and him from being left alone together.
His right hand found its way around his other wrist, digging in hard, and the burst of pain along the bone there quelled his momentary lapse in judgment. The quicker he went along with it, the quicker this whole ordeal would be over.
“Follow me,” Paul said, not so much a request as it was a demand. Quiet, calm, but still, a demand. His voice was honey-smooth, with a quivering lilt at the ends; Feyd thought of tiny things with furry hides stuffed into burrows, swallowed the spit pooling in his mouth.
Flashing a gritted smile and the most begrudging nod he could muster, Feyd turned on his heel and followed Paul. With only his eyes at first, tailing the long line of his spine--pale skin peeking out from curly wisps of hair--he cataloged both pressure points at the base of Paul’s skull. Next came the crisp, neatly-pressed black shirt hanging from Paul’s shoulders, tucked precisely below the waistband of his khakis, and Feyd tracked the cinch of fabric there. Petty satisfaction filled his chest at sighting a forgotten corner poking out above Paul’s belt, along with the impulse to tug it free, taunt him for revealing an imperfection.
At last, Feyd’s staring brought him to the flash of white at Paul’s ankles, socks so long they probably ended somewhere around Paul’s calves beneath those beige pants. Eyes rolling, Feyd imagined putting forth his own ankle and hooking it around Paul’s, watching the boy crash to the floor with an indignant splutter. However appetizing, the image was ruined by the threat of real punishment looming overhead: his second semester half-aborted, a diploma revoked, him held back another year. It made Feyd swallow down an abrupt wave of dread, drive his feet forwards, forwards, forwards, until he caught up to Paul and was truly following him in step, eyes boring into the back of his head, breath scattering down the nape of his neck.
Paul didn’t react.
They shuffled down the main hall, Feyd squinting through the harsh sun filtering in through the windows, Paul looking over his shoulder every few steps. Summer had already begun to seep into spring, its signature lurid yellow crawling over the white walls of the church, highlighting the cracks of religious paintings set in ribbed golden frames. Something of a heat wave was approaching the area, one set to hit in a mere couple of days if the report was meant to be believed.
Feyd had warred with that knowledge in the morning, debating whether to leave his jacket in his dorms after classes, but finally settled on not suffering more exposure to the sun than necessary. That decision was coming in handy now--the afternoon glare was so bright that he could barely make out which scenes the artwork was depicting, only that they were done in that uncanny medieval style he’d learned to avoid during the countless museum visits his uncle had insisted upon over the years to ‘culture him’. He could almost find the irony funny.
Several likely Madonnas and a Jesus later, they were still walking. If there was a God out there, then Paul would have hurried the hell up already, but alas, his trusty guide had steered them into a corridor branching off to the right, and a separate concrete stairwell a further ways down. The air was thick and dense when they reached the bottom of the steps, and Feyd was dividing his thoughts between calculating how this stalling would eat into their hour together or if he should just tackle Paul, consequences be damned, when Paul twisted in place and gave him a look.
“You should take that off,” he murmured, motioning airily to the sleeve of Feyd’s jacket. The beginnings of another hallway stretched out ahead of them, with Feyd noting what seemed to be thin doors, and thereby thin rooms, lining the plaster white wall behind where Paul stood. Shadows danced across Paul’s face, sunlight streaks stirring his hair.
Feyd felt his mouth twist. “Aren’t you going to show me to our room?”
“That’s what I’m doing. There’s no air conditioning down here.”
Presumptuous little bastard, wasn’t he? And one to talk; Paul was wearing a longsleeve. “I’ll keep it on, thanks. Let’s just get moving again.”
“Fine by me, it’s just down the hall.” A meager smile returned to Paul’s expression, but Feyd didn’t miss how the bridge of his nose wrinkled at the thanks, nor the way his shoulders shrugged in a too-casual ‘whatever’ at being brushed off.
As Paul spun to face forwards, the unkempt corner of his shirt made a reappearance, its sharp black triangular point jutting so tantalizingly out of place that Feyd leaned over and let his thumb drag absentmindedly over the small of his back, before gathering the fabric between that and his index. In an instant, Paul had arched at the contact, his hand pressed to Feyd’s behind his back, crimson flush rising above his collar. His hand was cold, like Feyd was grasping at a statue.
Paul’s face was angled slightly towards Feyd, though mostly to the floor, all composure wrung right out of him at even the slightest pressure, the tiniest touch. A single green eye glared back at Feyd between curly strands of brown hair, Paul’s shoulders brought up tight to his neck. He took an audible breath.
“What are you doing?”
“Your shirt’s untucked in the back,” Feyd answered peachily, voice dripping with sugar. When he loosened the corner fully with a measured tug, Paul tilted slightly backwards with it, and his hand behind him twitched, swatted at Feyd’s own after a violent pause.
“Thank… thank you for letting me know.” Slowly, Paul’s shoulders lowered, resuming their regular positioning. All that posh and attitude just for him to get jumpy at a little closeness, the suggestion that he wasn’t so pristine and perfect and couldn't simply turn his nose up at him for the crime of some roughhousing. One step, then another--and Paul had put extra distance between Feyd and himself, striding down the hallway without looking back.
That was how they continued down the barren bottom floor. Paul’s shirt was left rumpled around his waist, he was perhaps too unnerved to fix it properly, while Feyd paid more attention to that glaring inconsistency than he did the way they were going. Only when Paul stopped firm in his tracks and Feyd nearly rammed into him did he realize they had arrived at their destination.
Clearing his throat, Paul glanced at Feyd before gripping the knob of the worn wooden door before them, swinging it open with a small grunt. “This is it.”
Feyd trailed in behind him, eyes darting around the room he’d be stuck inside for the next… what, forty-five or so minutes? Fuck, he was losing track already. The sight was nothing short of discouraging: a dull white interior like the rest of the church, though considerably less tidy. The paint job was peeling at the corners, exposing the graying wood of the ceiling and walls, with one single window across from where they stood in the doorway. It was barely any bigger than his dorm room, and certainly in worse condition. Were it not for the two metal folding chairs set up to face each other in the center, the room would be utterly empty.
“After you,” Paul said primly, his expression an inscrutable mask as he extended a hand to the left chair. That mask soon crinkled into something reproachful when Feyd slid into the chair and frowned at the hot metal, throwing his arm over the backing. The door slammed unceremoniously shut as Feyd leaned so far back in his seat that the front legs left the ground.
“Could you at least try to take this seriously?”
Paul’s brow was visibly furrowed, crossing over to the chair across from Feyd and resting his hand on the back. He looked like a little prince posing for a royal portrait, elbow bent at a ninety degree angle, severe and expecting Feyd to listen, to bow and beg for forgiveness at Paul deigning to grace him with his presence. Always expecting.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Feyd groused, feeling the hard floor push against his foot as he stretched out his leg, head cocked to the side. “And I am taking it seriously.”
“Thou shall not lie,” Paul shot back flatly, removing his hand from the chair backing. “One of the ten commandments.”
“Oh, yes, of course. Is that the first lesson you’re going to give me? Be a good, honest boy so I don’t get anybody hurt?”
Paul’s lip twitched. To Feyd’s immense delight, he chose then to tuck in his shirt. There was some awkward rustling of the fabric behind him; his jaw worked in frustration and Feyd traced the flexing line of his throat with his eyes.
“So you admit you hurt people.”
“You make it sound like I--”
“You admit you’re violent, out of control, and you need to be disciplined.”
“It’s a fucking fighting club, for God’s sake. You go there for exactly that!”
Eyes widened then immediately narrowed, Paul looked more affronted at Feyd’s employment of colorful language than he did at the existence of a fighting club at the Academy. Therefore, the administration had informed him of everything after all like Feyd had assumed, and this was only surefire confirmation of the fact.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain,” Paul quoted once more, teeth gritted as he smoothed his khakis, took the seat in front of him, back straightened more rigidly than ever.
“I’m very sorry.” Tone flat, Feyd returned Paul’s accusatory gaze. Neither of them spoke for a moment, Paul pursing his lips and pointedly looking out the window at the thicket of trees beyond the glass; Feyd wiping at the sweat forming around his collar because, shit, maybe it was starting to get hot in here. There was another strangely warm sensation creeping up his neck, realization taking hold of him as the pair lapsed into silence.
They were truly alone now. For better or for worse.
In fairness, Paul seemed aware of this too, eyelashes grazing the slope of his cheek as he looked down, like shame had actually kicked in. He appeared positively ethereal here, sunlight turning his ringlets chestnut, porcelain skin awash with gold, the only mismatch being his troubled expression on full display.
“Why don’t,” Paul sighed, his previous fervor seemingly drained out of him, “why don’t you tell me how everything involving Giedi Prime began?”
Feyd sucked on his bottom lip, propping up one leg over the other. The boy really did know more than he let on. “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not doing this with you.”
Baffled, Paul’s brow furrowed again as he squinted at Feyd, as if he couldn’t for the life of him comprehend why Feyd wasn’t tripping over his feet to wash himself clean of any so-called sins.
“You are here to improve yourself. To learn the way of our Lord and reject the wicked distractions placed in front of you, lest you lose yourself to temptation forever. You have such a bright future ahead of you.” Paul’s eyes were filled with morose disappointment, and Feyd felt his chest swell with annoyance so acute that he had to take a slow and deliberate breath to release the pressure there.
“Don’t give me that, acting like you’re such an adult.”
“I’m a year older than you, Feyd.”
“So what, you’re nineteen? That doesn’t mean you know any better than I do.”
“I would argue otherwise, considering the circumstances.”
If only to shut him up, Feyd threw his hands up in the air. “Look, it’s not like I have the club’s history memorized. I entered Giedi as a Freshman, that’s all. And it’s invite only.”
He watched Paul digest this surface-level information, expression morphing into one of distaste, before Paul crossed his arms and tapped his foot, signaling he wanted to hear more. Feyd decided to humor him.
“My uncle suggested I accept it.” A half-lie. It wasn’t so much a suggestion as it was a requirement for his future position, his future life. There had been a keen understanding between Feyd’s uncle and himself that if he, the younger, secondary son, were to ever dream of taking over the company, he’d have to prove he could surpass his brother in any and all ways possible. And for a while he’d grasped that possibility tight, felt it tangible in his hands. Now his hold had loosened, but enduring this necessary indignity was how he would sink his teeth back into glory, hold it between his jaws and never let go. “It turned out to be fun, so I kept going back, ‘n climbed up the ranks while I was at it.”
“…Fun,” Paul said, pronouncing the word like it was a foreign concept. “A boy was injured. What about that could possibly be fun?”
And herein lay the root of Feyd’s problem. He was confined to a miniscule, dilapidated room on a perfectly good Friday afternoon, chained to the most uptight pretty boy he’d ever had the displeasure of meeting--for no fault of his own, really. Blame it on his bitch of an opponent who had broken the first rule of Giedi Prime, squealed when knives were added to the equation and when a piece of him was subtracted from it.
The PR disaster the Academy would have been saddled with had the story broke was of astronomical proportions: the double if not triple impact of harboring an underground fighting ring, and the wounds one of their precious students had suffered, it all might have been enough to wipe their funding extinct for a couple years, at least until the whole thing blew over.
Alas, Feyd’s uncle and the weakling’s parents had reached an agreement, trading a pretty penny for snug, secure silence. Then it was up to Feyd to pick up the pieces, sentenced to monthly meetings with an official from the church an hour away for the whole duration of his second semester.
“Injuries are par for the course, everybody knows what they’re signing up for. It’s the competition that’s fun,” Feyd murmured, voice dropping to a low edge.
“Regardless, you find enacting violence… enjoyable.” Paul’s face did a funny thing when he said that, like he wasn’t quite sure of what was leaving his mouth.
“And what if I do, hm?”
Not for the first time, silence overtook them both.
The sun came and went from when they had started talking, the brunt of its glow now filtering over where Paul sat, who was apparently content with baking underneath its heat. The same couldn’t be said for Feyd. The poor air circulation was taking its toll, the inside of his jacket sleeves were sticking slick to his arms, the sensation of sweat riding the fabric of his flesh, staining it with an invisible, indelible heaviness. It collected at the underside of his nose, his jaw, wetting and welding to his skin. Scalding, scalding, burning. The notion made Feyd want to take a shower, scrub all his skin off, though it merely manifested in him wiping at his brow with the back of his hand.
No matter if they had to sit here, with their mouths clamped shut for the remaining twenty minutes, in this demented sweatbox of a room that Feyd was sure was this poorly maintained for purely interrogative purposes (if not for the fact that the school had already done a thorough investigation into the incident). He would do it. Nothing good or productive could come from actually engaging with the softhearted drivel Paul would prattle on and on about. The niceties and upstanding rules most people played life by were simply that, niceties, weak excuses they told themselves to shy away from the wrestle for power, greatness, domination. Religion was the pinnacle of such, spouting idyllic romanticisms to placate the public while those with actual ambition dirtied their hands and did what mattered, seized control. Put simply, his uncle would not be where he was today if their family bible was ever more than an attractive centerpiece on the guest room’s coffee table.
So if sweat was starting to sting his eyes, so be it. If sunlight hit Paul’s eyes at the precise angle to reveal unknown flecks of blue within his irises, his disapproval palpable yet withdrawn, the scent of nerves and hesitation mingling with something else in the air, so be it.
But eventually, heat clung to more than just Feyd’s scalp, infesting each gap between skin and clothing, every wrinkle of every piece of fabric layered over his body, the space between Paul and himself as Paul stared unwaveringly into his eyes, no diversions or distractions or dismissals to keep them apart. When it came time for Feyd to give an inch, shifting for what felt like the first time in hours to shed his jacket, Paul predictably took a mile, gaze trailing down the newly-revealed swath of skin that stretched from Feyd’s shoulders to his inked wrists. A few more minutes of Paul straightening in his seat, angling his head to the left, right, glancing from Feyd’s face to his forearms and back again, and Feyd had to scoff--it was becoming pathetic. Wordlessly, after basking in Paul’s display of childish inquisitiveness, he held his arms up in an exaggerated flourish.
The movement satisfied Paul temporarily. With all the drive of a starving man, his blue-green eyes roved over the blade and thorns on Feyd’s left, the snarling gryphon coiled around Feyd’s right. Both were done in varying shades of monotone black and white, Feyd’s birthday gift to himself after winning his first championship of the new year. Now his last championship, it occurred to him, as Giedi Prime would certainly be out of commission until long after his graduation, if it were ever to be reinstated in secret at all. What a shame, losing such a beautifully efficient system. Pruning out the unfit and praising the strong, an inner circle of politics to complement the ones already at play in their education, their daily existence.
It was then that Paul spoke, spilling the hurried mumble of something Feyd barely caught, and he blinked back to reality, arms still aloft and Paul canted infinitesimally closer towards him. For a fleeting, startling second, Feyd felt more exposed than he had been so far in their entire encounter. There it was. Paul was looking through him, somewhere past his eyes, no longer captivated by the obvious patterns decorating his forearms.
Gradually, Feyd let his hands settle back by his sides. “What did you say?”
Paul bristled at the question, as though Feyd was the one who had broken their unspoken vow of silence by acknowledging his slip-up. Another pang of quietude.
Then Paul cracked.
“How did you get that bruise?” he blurted out, morbid curiosity rearing its pretty head once more. While his expression remained passive, the fidgeting of his hands with the cuff of his sleeve gave the true extent of his interest away.
“I told you, I’m not doing this. And you already know why,” Feyd retorted.
Pillowy flesh crumpled, and Paul worked his bottom lip between his teeth, looking as though that question was the most salacious thing that had ever graced his lips. “No really, how ?”
Feyd blinked. Paul seemed to sharpen into focus with the movement, a relief transmuted into flesh and blood before his eyes, ivory white flushing pink, glowing with life. It was minute, but for a second, a ghost of ruinous hunger had played across Paul’s face, settling into his eyes. Then either the sun shifted in the sky or something passed the window, and he returned to shadow, complexion still tinged by color. A shiver rode through Feyd’s body before he got ahold of himself, leaned forwards in his seat.
“You actually want to know?”
It was difficult for him to tear his eyes away from the column of Paul’s throat as it bobbed in a swallow, then even worse--the boy wet his lips, nodding: “Yes.”
Slowly, Feyd drew himself up onto his feet, peering through the semi-darkness, waiting for any further elaboration, protest, backpedaling. But Paul merely watched him from where he sat, the whites of his eyes glittering, hands now still in his lap. Mouth parted ever so slightly; he thought he could see Paul’s silhouette shift with each measured intake of breath. Still, if Paul wasn’t going to drop it, he should get what was coming to him.
“It was in a fight,” Feyd began, stating the obvious, his voice feather-light, smooth and controlled.
Again, the outline of Paul shifted, teetering on the edge of his chair. The smell of sweat tinged Feyd’s nostrils, and he had to remind himself to breathe deep, humidity cloying his skin more than ever. Light came down in slivers again from the window, scattering blocks of sun and shadow across Paul’s features as Feyd approached. It gave the impression of him perched behind bars, while his expression only exacerbated the likeness--he searched Feyd’s eyes as if judgment lay there.
Following the trail of perspiration over Paul’s jaw, Feyd continued: “I knew it'd be over soon. I’d already pinned the guy twice, and he was bleeding like crazy from his nose.”
Miming the stuff smeared across his face, he took another step closer, noticing the hitch of Paul’s chest while it rose, collapsed, rose, collapsed. Paul’s gaze moved alongside Feyd’s hand brushing his upper lip, then stopped, fixated on that dip of skin. The room felt warm, so warm that the being in front of Feyd subtly warped and twisted, syrupy from heat, an angel dripping in hellfire. Sweat trickled into his eyes.
“It was messy. I mean, just red, red everywhere down his face. If I’m being honest, I probably broke it.” Feyd’s tone sharpened slightly, his teeth clipping over the words. His mouth tasted of metal.
The memory resurfaced fresh, rusting as he spoke: cartilage splintering against the brunt of his knee, blood splattering his black joggers, the scuffed concrete floor. The impact, the pain itself was definite. But when Feyd tried to recall his opponent, a battered face belonging to Paul stared back up at him instead, purple blooming below his eye, sanguine liquid spilling from his nose, pale ridge screwed gloriously out of place.
Ahead of him, Paul’s eyes fluttered shut, as if picturing the same thing, and Feyd imagined them rolled back, the green gone and vanished, past the horizon blurring pain and pleasure. “He was breathing all weird too, like the blood was clogging his nose, or getting caught in his throat.”
At that moment, the swell of Paul’s throat bobbed again, and Feyd wanted to slap his palm over his mouth, wanted to witness him vie for air, hear that trembling rattle until the eventual swallow. Paul would look obscene dirtied up, he thought, years of good, honest behavior shattered in an instant, curls tangled in Feyd’s fingers, tongue out to receive bloody droplets. Another step closer. Paul had opened his eyes by now, squinting somewhat through streams of sunlight, though his green-yellow irises glittered all the same, dusting a golden richness beneath his otherwise pale cheeks, a boy incensed and aflame from within.
“I thought he was gonna choke, that’s how it’d end. Blood dripping down his chin and all over his mouth. But they had me lay off of him for a bit, said I’d get fouled if I tried anything funny, and we circled each other again.”
The telltale shimmer of sweat lit up every harsh angle defining Paul’s seraphic visage, want smoldering from each incandescent pore, a want that Feyd couldn’t quite grasp, unlike the slim wrists that made their way into his bed every so often, a want that he couldn’t quite read, drastically different from the plush heat written across girls’ bodies when folded into his mattress. Regardless, there it shined, palpable yet abstract. A few guesses littered Feyd’s mind.
Want, perhaps, for shedding his sterile upbringing like a second skin and indulging in base violence, for baptizing himself in blood, the mortal impulse to hurt and maim. Then again, the way Paul was looking at him--vehemently, virulently aroused, like all his desires had been made material--could not be thrust aside. There was a good chance that he was unaware of his own bodily reaction, repression and repentance pressing his hands together in daily prayer, pressing his thighs together at night when the roiling fire became too great to extinguish.
And normally, Feyd would leave it at that. It wasn’t his job to pity, to teach, to be an experiment. Where his interests lay had been sorted into two categories to combat the monotonous semesters spent at boarding school.
Girls were an easy, sure thing, smooth shaved skin and curved in all the right places, pliable and malleable in the palm of his hand. But sometimes, he tired of their gentle allure, how they shied from the slightest pain, flitted to him because of the gossip and the danger and to satisfy their self-imposed, inane dares of taking a wild beast.
That was when Feyd sought out boys; romps filled with teeth and claws. They granted him the intensity he craved, albeit at intermittent intervals, while he was still burning off his high from being in the ring or being passed a bottle.
Paul disrupted this world order.
An utter anomaly: prim and pert like a girl, neck tall and swan-thin, though the crest of his throat above his clerical collar betrayed his sex. But the view of his Adam’s apple alone was not what sent shivers rolling down Feyd’s spine. Beyond that, it was the apparent aspect of sin, that which hung around Paul like the after-image of a halo, belied by his sweet face and innocent teachings.
“I guess he still had some fight left.” Mouth dry, voice hoarse, Feyd took one last step. “‘Cause he ended up decking me. Right here.”
Jabbing a finger at the bilious discoloration on his cheek was all it took to earn a shaky sigh from Paul. They were less than an arm’s length apart now; from this angle, Feyd was privy to every little shift in his divine expression. Green eyes widened, taking in the damage, then slid into a half-lidded leer, a look bashful and brutal in its nature.
How unusual--the girls he hit up fawned over his injuries whenever it piqued their interest, tripping over themselves to play nurse or wish him a speedy recovery. As for the boys, they weren’t around long enough to check. But Paul? He looked as though he’d beg to drive his thumb into the tender, blotchy skin there, and push.
“Yeah, it hurt, that’s for sure. You should have seen me the next few days, the bottom of my eye was so swollen I couldn’t see straight.”
They were playing a dangerous game here. Feyd recognized that much, watching Paul’s hand twitch, a dead giveaway of his intentions. Perhaps that was why neither of them startled when his fingers shot towards Feyd’s face, and even less so when Feyd clenched his own around the pointed bone jutting from Paul’s wrist, trapping it mid-air.
And there it was again on Paul’s face, expectancy evident in his hooded lids, his upturned mouth, the way his hand went immediately limp in Feyd’s grip like an animal playing dead. Just for kicks. Just to see what would happen. Feyd’s blood ran cold, then hot, then both all at once.
Fucking creep , Feyd wanted to spit. Wanted to watch saliva hit Paul’s skin and drip down, down, down, some combination of cleansed and dirty, if only to catch him off guard, make him dumb and stupid and agreeable. Stop looking at me like that. Stop smiling like that.
Instead, what ripped itself free from his mouth was: “You wanna know what I did next?”
Paul’s hand flexed in his hold, an involuntary spasm at the words. Where their limbs met was a slick, sweaty tangle of sharp nails and soft flesh, and Feyd’s hand crawled upwards to press against the meat of Paul’s palm. There, Feyd was met with the steady pulse of Paul’s heart, his own pounding along to the beat, head throbbing with something red, angry, and hot, an insatiable thrill like fighting, fucking, freefall.
It was along the press of his thumb that the moment seemed to stretch, the blood-thrum where his skin met Paul’s warping, melting together in sound and sense until they were slivers away from snapping in two, scraping teeth.
Then it broke, and the moment slipped away.
“I bit his ear clean off.”
Hot, salty droplets hit Feyd’s skin, shaken loose from the slope of his jaw. The words were a release, almost orgasmic in their nature, both confession and boastful exaggeration, forced from Feyd’s throat as though their positions had been flipped and Paul was the one wringing him breathless. No, it was false. Feyd had only taken a piecemeal chunk out of his opponent’s earlobe before the ref and three others had wrestled him into a chokehold. But he felt victorious anyhow, feverish from being cooped up in a sweltering room, ego swollen from the rush of getting away with a blatant lie, prepared to scare Paul off like all the rest.
Except things didn’t quite turn out that way. Rather, slender fingers gripped the nape of Feyd’s neck, nails searing pinpricks into wan flesh, and Paul brought Feyd down to his level.
Warm, exultant, the words tumbled out of Paul’s mouth with no semblance of control. “See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
Satisfaction rang clear and triumphant from each breathy syllable, hot puffs of air ghosting Feyd’s ear, worming inside his eardrums, reverberating against the blood pumping there. Any closer, and Feyd would be pressed into the crook of Paul’s neck. Would taste his slick sweat instead of scenting it, would feel the flames of his heat rather than smoke curling off his body. For some godforsaken reason, that thought came before Feyd’s realization that he had done it, he had gone and talked about Giedi Prime after all.
Paul’s lips grazed his earlobe, this beautiful, bloodcurdling mimic, as if teeth were about to follow, clamping down on nerves, tissue, cartilage, and tearing.
In an instinctual, instantaneous effort, Feyd reeled back at the contact. An electric tingle shot through his temples, blazing by him so fast that Feyd dizzied, clapped a palm to his ear, staggering backwards. He was fine. He was whole.
His breaths went uneven, silent but heaving how they did when he dragged out a performance, when the lights above the ring had begun to spin and Feyd knew he had to end it soon. Jagged smile stitched across his face, Paul simply looked back at him, eyes darkened: deep, ruinous. Like he hadn’t just kissed Feyd’s ear, or shredded it apart, or done something equally maddening or unprofessional or repulsive.
There was nothing past logic to it, surely; a nauseating scare tactic, one he thought a holy man would be incapable of. Feyd stood corrected, more pressing matters bombarding his mind—the room was burning him alive, heat snaking up his spine, his neck. He only had a limited amount of time before it incinerated to a crisp with everything and everyone inside it.
“You little fucking freak,” Feyd snarled, something rash, vile, constricting his airway tight. And without thinking, he cracked his knuckles against Paul’s cheek.
The sound echoed.
The returning blow was scorching.
All the fury, the displaced fear whirling inside of Feyd, flattened down into a blank sheet of shock, wiping his face slack. Paul… struck him back. Actually struck him.
Paul was standing up. Back politely straight, one hand at his side and the other poised at the end of its arc, shaky yet resolute. Paul’s expression flashed between wide-eyed surprise and a foggy, unbridled glee, unidentifiable emotion crumpling his forehead, his mouth dropping open. Deep pink shimmered where Feyd had punched him.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps y--”
Then he was on Paul. A whirlwind of movement, hands strangling the unruly curls at the nape of his neck, thumbs digging into his rigid jawline, and his teeth snagging on Paul’s lower lip so ferociously that Feyd suddenly wasn’t sure what he was trying to do, kiss or consume or silence him.
“You on the right cheek, turn to them the oth--” Paul gasped between breaths, forcing words out amidst the slick squelch of saliva and skin. It made Feyd’s blood run hotter, this notion that Paul was somehow a better person than him, absolved of all wrongdoing and not a hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite, incisors scraping Feyd’s tongue, mouth latched to his own.
“Shut up,” he gasped in return, driving Paul backwards, the metal chair Paul had been sitting on toppling to the side with a clatter. “Shut the fuck up, Paul, I mean it--”
A hard row of teeth met his lips, and he knew Paul was smiling. That enigmatic grin, an invitation for Feyd to bite down deeper, steal a pained whine from the source, where the sound tore itself from Paul’s throat. He was going up in flames; his stomach clenched with a smoldering want, the knowledge that when this was over, he’d be finished too, kicked out of the church, out of school, maybe out of life as he understood it. This was his last year before college, and that was taken into account as well. The administrators hadn’t wanted to rock the boat with his dismissal, but here he was, flipping his raft of redemption over, sinking to the bottom.
Voice stretched thin, reedy and wrecked, Paul hit the wall behind him hard, biting out the last of the quote. “Turn to them the other cheek also. Matthew, five thirty-eight, thirty-nine.”
“You hit me back, you sicko,” Feyd growled in his ear, feeling a slow shudder wrack Paul’s body as he writhed in Feyd’s hold, shock and terror and a thousand other disparate emotions whittling down into angry, brittle hunger. “Don’t act like you’re any better than me.”
“You’re here because I’m bett--”
Feyd’s fingers found Paul’s bottom set of teeth, jamming it down, even as he could feel Paul’s jaw begging to close, muscles twitching beneath his touch. His other hand wrapped around Paul’s tongue, yanking his entire head forwards to receive the glob of spit leaving his mouth. A shrill sob gurgled in the back of Paul’s throat once he realized what was happening, and he flailed again, trying desperately to twist away.
Too late, as Feyd saw the white foam splatter across Paul’s tongue, the thin string of saliva connecting them hanging between their lips, shaken from their breaths. Their eyes met, Paul’s confident austerity crumbling into something humiliated, almost hateful or happy in the way he glared at Feyd, body trembling, and Feyd slipped all his digits from Paul’s open mouth, save his thumb and forefinger tugging his tongue out. Predictably, Paul’s teeth came crashing down, a prickly stab of pain washing past Feyd’s fingers, his arm, warming his chest anew.
Gritting through the sensation, he spoke: “Swallow.”
It didn’t come as a surprise that Paul pulled back when the command registered, head crashing against the wall in the frenzy of shaking it from side to side. Straining his thumb further into Paul’s mouth, Feyd knocked their foreheads together, Paul’s sweaty bangs sticking easily to his skin.
“I said.”
His thumb slid downwards, fumbling under Paul’s tongue. He swiped it across the inner wall of Paul’s bottom gums, prodding the wet outcropping of flesh there, index stroking Paul’s chin. “Swallow.”
Paul mustered a breathy grunt in response, jerking his chin one way and the next, eyes darting everywhere but Feyd’s face. Gone was the boy who ignored him upstairs, inquired sweetly about his tattoo, his bruise, played therapist-priest as if to mock his time wasted here. Instead, a pathetic creature with spindly limbs quivered before him, gnashing at its muzzle. An angel within a demon within an angel, smothering Feyd’s pores with his steamy exhale, at odds within a heat wave, this blistering excuse for a room.
Once more, Feyd shoved his thumb further back, using his palm to smush Paul’s right cheekbone into the wall, dislodging a groan from Paul as he cornered him against the surface, free hand bracketing his left shoulder. The smell of mint, laundry detergent, and sweat flooded his nostrils, and Feyd’s brain began a chant of Paul, Paul, Paul .
“Swallow.” Feyd’s forehead was still pressed to Paul’s skin, now against his temple to keep his gaze trained on his eyes. “It.”
Finally, Paul’s pupils met his, dark and blown wide with admission and acquiescence. Tongue curled and stuffing his mouth to the brim, Paul swallowed awkwardly around its length, throat bobbing in the light of the sunbeams. Spit dribbled from the corners of his mouth.
Feyd allowed a smirk to creep across his face as he twisted Paul’s face towards himself again, eyes traveling down the pale-bright column of Paul’s neck, relishing how a part of him was swirling around in Paul, mingling with tissue, fat, his very being, like a drop of blood misting clear water. Like taking communion.
“And what do you say afterwards?”
Unsteady, Paul slumped against the wall, his chest heaving and face pinking, eyelashes clumping together with sweat. Feyd was certain that this, today, was his first kiss, and for a moment he lamented the green shoots of innocence his lips had trampled all over, the wings he was plucking feathers from with each possessive press of his fingers, teeth, his knee between Paul’s legs. But that all melted away beneath the sensation of Paul’s body, an obscene question wrapped around Feyd’s, his answer being to claw at the heavens, lash his teeth against the tender skin at the juncture of Paul’s neck and shoulder, just to hold him, have him, hurt and mangle and possess this kindred soul in its entirety.
“Amen,” Paul choked out, looking to be on the verge of tears.
“Good boy,” Feyd breathed, before Paul half-collapsed, half-slammed into him, and they tumbled back down to earth together.