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The tavern is just one more septic blister on Dol Makjar's rotten underbelly, waiting to be lanced. Bolaire would struggle to pick it out of a line-up of the city's seediest, shabbiest offerings - which, he supposes, is the point.
Thimble meets him at the back door. She flutters at face-height, joined by the moths who seek shelter from the downpour, as it swamps the sagging gutters and the tight-packed gable rooves, slicking Bolaire's outfit to him like a cold second skin.
"You can just make the drop and go," she says, in lieu of a greeting. "That's all you need to do."
"What a pleasure to see you again too, my little friend," Bolaire replies. Rain sheets around him. Bolaire likes to think it adds to his mystique, but he suspects that, between his stringy, sodden curls and greying skin, he looks more like a drowned thing fished out of the Vroth. "Although I fear this cruel world is rubbing off on you. You would force me to conduct business outside, on a night like this…"
Thimble casts him a despairing look. "I'm serious, Bol. Not tonight."
"Why? Is his lordship not in the mood to entertain?"
"Bolaire…"
"You heard the man," says a voice from further back in the dank, dark hallway. Thjazi steps forwards, floorboards creaking, face half-cast in shadow. He puts Bolaire in mind of the stories he used to read Hero at bedtime: intrepid little adventureresses, hungry ogres hiding in caves. "He demands entry, and who are we to deny him? If 'man' is even the right term, I suppose."
Bolaire drums his fingers on the leather strap of his satchel. Thjazi won't speak further on his nature in front of Thimble, for Bolaire's secrets only have worth so long as they stay that way. "Spoken like one who has not yet earned the privilege of finding out," is his smooth reply.
Thjazi's expression remains carefully neutral. He takes another step forward -
And Thimble flies between them, dusting Bolaire's sodden coat in pixie dust the colour of springtime. "Thjazi, c'mon. He was just leaving…"
"I was?" asks Bolaire. The grimace Thimble turns on him is half desperation, half fury - before she whips back to Thjazi, tiny fists clenched at her side.
"He was! So - so let him go, okay? Bol didn't have anything to do with what went down at the symposium. You weren't even supposed to see him today, because I know he pisses you off. Just - just take the damn package and - "
Curse Bolaire for his inability to let good gossip slither on by. He can't help but lean closer, curls drip-drip-dripping over worm-ridden floorboards, the light of cheap, pig-fat candles greasing the edge of his mask. "Hm. You don't mean the symposium of benefactors at the Guild Hall, do you?"
He practically hears Thimble and Thjazi's gazes cross, like the ring of his glass rapier against another blade in combat.
"Where there was that explosion, not three hours ago," he starts - then yelps as Thjazi grabs a handful of his frothy lace cravat and yanks him inside.
The door thunks shut. Bolaire slams against it.
His heart pounds - a rare sensation nowadays. That hunk of muscle in his chest has taken to beating weakly, lazily, when it does so at all. Now, his pulse reverberates throughout his entire torso, throbbing dizzily behind his eyes. Three months have passed since he last switched bodies, and he is rapidly approaching the end of his tenancy. Bolaire wonders if a body can expire from sheer exhilaration - or fear, or whatever else it is he feels as Thjazi manhandles him against the wood, snarling in his face, all bristling stubble and underbitten fangs and brown eyes that, in the half-light, Bolaire can so almost imagine are blue…
"You could've walked away," growls Thjazi. "Remember that."
Bolaire squirms, pinned to the door with a green forearm across his throat. "Oh, but we haven't concluded our business! I hate to leave a job unfinished..."
"You brought what I asked?"
Bolaire jiggles the satchel. "Invite me to a part of this squalid shack where fewer spiders threaten to fall down my collar, and darling, you may decide that for yourself."
Thjazi's cold eyes narrow. The bad mood rolls off him like the thunder pealing from the overhanging clouds. Dol Makjar is a city forever overcast, but Thjazi has his own personal cumulonimbus, weighing on his broad shoulders and harshening the planes of his scowl.
He is so like Hal - so beautifully, achingly like Hal; from his high cheekbones to his heavy brow and his long-fingered hands. But while Hal lifted a sword, during the War of Axe and Vine, he placed it back in the chest beneath his mantle at the first opportunity, training his fingers instead to press on the strings of his lute, making music rather than bloodshed. Thjazi, Bolaire expects, clings onto his sword at all times, even when it is far beyond his grip. He has never learnt to let it go. Unarmed, dressed in a simple shirt and corduroy britches, he is nevertheless a threat, imposing over Bolaire while the rain beats on the door like it wants to get in.
He leans closer. His breath is sour, pipe smoke and meat.
"I don't know where you got the idea, mask, that I owe you civility, let alone comfort."
"Uh, I'll leave you guys to it," squeaks Thimble. "Gotta fetch supplies for tomorrow. Breakfast, and stuff. See ya."
She wriggles through one of the cracks in the wall with one last miserable head-shake and a puff of pixie dust in Bolaire's direction. Bolaire can't blame her. She did try to warn him. He's just never been all that sensible, when it comes to the Fangs.
"I believe it's called 'basic politeness'," Bolaire starts, then wheezes as Thjazi's ropy forearm crushes his windpipe. Thjazi keeps him pinned a moment longer. A stream of rainwater falls from Bolaire's cape, puddling beneath his boots. They stare into each other's eyes until Bolaire's wig begins to frizz from the tension as much as the moisture.
Thjazi pushes back, sneer plucking at his tusks. "Upstairs," he growls, glaring at the leaky timbers, with their damp-swollen joinings and poked-out eyes. "These walls have ears."
Bolaire rubs at his sore throat. He refuses to give Thjazi the pleasure of watching him bend double and cough.
As he mounts the stairs after Thjazi, tension jitters at the base of his spine. This is a mistake, he thinks - but to retreat now would be to lose face, and he has precious little of that to spare, with Thjazi. The stairwell winds around two stories, then debouches into a draughty attic strung with cobwebs, naked but for a table and two chairs. Moonlight spills through the skylights, weak as Bolaire likes his tea when he's first breaking in a body - when every sense feels serrated, and if he consumes anything too flavoursome, his stomach twists like he isn't the only parasite to call his host home.
"Sit." Thjazi presses hard on his shoulder. Bolaire's legs fold from under him, and he lands on one of the rickety wooden chairs, hood slipping from his curls. Thjazi takes the chair opposite with far more grace. "What do you know of the symposium?"
Bolaire smooths the scrunched, sodden layers of his coat and doublet, as best he can. "Mostly what you and your little friend just told me, without so many words. Your reactions were practically a pantomime! Anyone with eyes could see that something went awry tonight, and quite dreadfully so. Which means…" His wig hangs heavy, having absorbed half the downpour. Bolaire spins a wet curl around his finger. "Either you're asking to gauge my involvement, or because you don't have the answers either."
Thjazi steeples his hands. "Which do you think most likely?"
"The latter. Which, I'm afraid, puts us in the same boat. I am aware only of what the criers sang this eve: that there was a blast, but none were hurt, and the Arcane Guard have everything in hand."
"Hm. You're telling the truth?"
"Gospel."
Oh, Bolaire longs to learn more - but in his ignorance, he is useful to Thjazi. If he ever uncovers too much about his operation in Dol Makjar, Bolaire will be shunted from the box in Thjazi's mind labelled 'assets' into the one labelled 'threats', and dealt with accordingly. And that simply wouldn't do. If he is ever forced out of this city, he has those he would talk to first, Hal chief among them. He doubts Thjazi would give him chance to say goodbye.
"Who is he?" asks Thjazi. It's such a non-sequitur that Bolaire can only blink.
"Who?"
"The unfortunate soul whose shape you have stolen."
"Ah." Bolaire gives an indolent shrug, sweeping his mass of curls over his shoulder to drip down his back and onto the floor. "I don't know. I hardly keep track."
"You are indeed a monster."
"I rather think that's in the eye of the beholder."
Whatever Thjazi finds, during his scrutiny of Bolaire's grinning mask, he must make peace with it, for he ducks his head with a grunt and, rather than reaching for a weapon, waves to Bolaire's satchel. "Enough smalltalk. We have business."
Bolaire sets the bag on the table with a weighty clunk. "Indeed - and this particular prize was quite the task to acquire. Not that you appreciate it- "
"Yeah, yeah. I weep for your suffering."
Thjazi draws the bag closer, but doesn't flip it open right away. Bolaire can't help but simper as that calculating stare rakes him over, weighing up the likelihood of him making an assassination attempt and finding the odds, as always, evenly split. Thjazi examines the leather bag from all angles before gingerly popping the clasp - then leans away, like he expects another explosion.
"Please," says Bolaire, "you think I would resort to such a simple trap? If I were to orchestrate your end, darling, you would never see it coming."
"Shut up," says Thjazi.
Bolaire, begrudgingly, does so. Thjazi's voice remains mild, but Bolaire isn't fool enough to think that makes him any less dangerous - and he can't help but recall the tight, frightened whiteness of Thimble's face.
Reaching into the satchel, Thjazi draws out a box, small as Bolaire's hand but heavy as ore from the heart of a star. It's ornamented with intricate coils of steel. The locks are pre-picked - another of Bolaire's little courtesies - so Thjazi doesn't have to waste precious seconds prying it open. He lifts the lid to reveal a piece of Lloy steel, smelting cast-off from the swords that smote a god. It's a powerful artefact. A single candle illuminates this hovel, flame pointing towards the skylights; when the silver slag is revealed, that flame stretches to triple the candle's height, twisting on itself like fleece rolags spun into twine.
Hairs prickle to attention down Bolaire's arms. Thjazi, contrarily, relaxes.
"You came through," he breathes.
"When have I not? Of course, gratitude would be too much to expect - "
Thjazi's gaze snaps up. He shuts the box with a soft thunk, the hinges designed to dampen its closing. "I don't thank tools."
"It takes one to know one, I suppose."
"Careful, mask."
Over his near-century of life, Bolaire has played with fire too many times not to recognise when he might be burnt. Tonight, after the disaster at the symposium, Thjazi is hurting - and so he wants to hurt in turn, by words or any other means. Bolaire won't give him the satisfaction. He lounges in his chair, crossing his long, leatherclad legs - and, rather than baiting Thjazi further, tries for a smile that, if not friendly, at least makes a valiant pretence.
"You don't thank tools - very well. But would you deign to offer them a drink, before sending them into the rainswept miseries of a Dol Makjar night?"
Thjazi stares at him a second longer. Bolaire wonders what he sees. An object, like Thjazi claims? Or something far more dangerous? Bolaire and Thjazi share little, after all, except their weakness: the wellbeing and happiness of one Halandil Fang...
But while Hal would've smiled warmly, said 'of course', and invited Bolaire to peruse - and mock - his liquor collection, Thjazi's face remains stone-cut. "This is your last chance," he says.
"To what?"
"To walk out of here."
"Ooh." Bolaire doesn't have to feign his shiver: the draft only adds to the chill of his wet, clinging silks. "How ominous. But I find myself at a loss! You see, I much prefer to give offence on purpose, and in this instance, I am hard pressed to figure out where you found it - "
"Speak plainly, freak."
Bolaire leans his elbows on the table, scooting to the edge of the chair. He traces the pattern on the box, Thjazi following the motion, ready to counter him should he try any sleight-of-hand. "Why do you hate me so much?" he asks.
That surprises a laugh out of Thjazi. It bursts from his nose in a way that's far too familiar. Hal and Bolaire have attended many a stuffy fundraising function together, the sort of 'entertainment' that feels as starched as the butlers' white collars. Such events usually devolve into a dull carousel of shaken hands and polite smiles, but Bolaire ekes great joy from cracking Hal's poker face, whispering salacious snippets of gossip in his ear about every noble who passes, some rumours he has overheard and others he makes up on the spot. It's a delight, to make him snort into his drink - if only because Hal inevitably tries to glare at Bolaire afterwards and scold him, but cannot quite cull his smile.
Thjazi? His expression is as cold as the Lloy-slag he had Bolaire steal.
"I need a reason? Beyond you being a serial-killing, body-snatching curse who is far too close to my brother?" Bolaire's gloved fingertip freezes, tracing a snail-shell whorl on the box's lid. Thjazi drops his hand atop his. "The truth of it is… I don't particularly hate you, Bolaire. You are a thing, designed for a purpose. You might have strayed from that design, but you remain beneficial to my ends, and I will use you as I see fit." He squeezes in mock-comfort. "You make it so easy, after all."
Bolaire isn't a man prone to taking umbrage. One learns patience after decades of playing the same tired part. But, he must confess, this is the first of Thjazi's jabs to strike in the vicinity of his heart. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Oh, come on." Thjazi's thumb sweeps across Bolaire's knuckles, deceptively gentle. "We can play this game day-in, day-out, you and I. But we both know you wouldn't be here unless you needed this."
"Needed what?" Bolaire cocks his head, smile fixed as that of a skull. "To be belittled, worked like a dog, forced to betray my own museum and my closest friend?"
"Yes," says Thjazi.
They sit in that for several seconds. Bolaire makes to deny it. Pauses, though he doesn't know why.
"I have nothing on you," says Thjazi, into the silence. His thumb paints circles on Bolaire's knuckles all the while. "Not really. You have no true ties, Bolaire. You're not mortal. Just a lost mask from a long-finished play. If you wish to escape me, all you need do is walk away. Then I can spill your secrets to my heart's content. It won't matter, if you're on the wind. And yet, you remain. You keep returning - to my brother, and through him, to me. Why, it's almost… pathological."
"You don't know what you speak of," says Bolaire. His voice tremors, just a little.
Thjazi epitomises his banner. He is the falcon, soaring above the battlefield, forever scanning for prey - and at the waver in Bolaire's words, his gaze sharpens like he's about to snatch a sparrow from thin air; death from above.
"Don't I? Can you deny that you are… untethered, without a calling? I give you purpose, mask. Any blackmail material I possess is immaterial, for you are a thing at your heart. You are bound by your nature, and that nature is to be used."
Bolaire hasn't eaten in so very long. His body withers day by day, stomach a shrivelled husk - yet it still clenches in reaction to Thjazi's claims. Incensed ripostes flurry through his mind ("I am your elder, boy, and by far your wiser. You think to lecture me on 'nature'? If you think I could ever simply walk away from Hal, I fear you have spiralled so deep into conspiracy you have forgotten what it means, to have a friend - "). None make it to the tip of his tongue.
He drags his hand from beneath Thjazi's. Flounces to his feet, shaking drips from his coat and wig. He intends to stomp from the room and leave Thjazi with only the puddles to remember him by - but fingers loop his wrist, drawing him to a halt.
Bolaire can't break that grip. He is Hal's equal in strength - the two of them huffed and puffed while helping Olgud install the stage at the Hallowed Round, straining to lift the heavy pallets - but he was a fool to think Thjazi would be his match. A centimetre of bare flesh lies between the ruffled lace of Bolaire's cuff and the lip of his leather glove. Green fingers find it with cruel precision, dig in hard enough to bruise.
"You think Hal would direct you as I do?" Thjazi murmurs. Though he remains seated, he manages to loom. His shadow is too great for him, cast out long and dancing by the fire, ensnaring Bolaire in dark, immaterial arms. Thjazi tugs, and Bolaire - damn it all - allows himself to be drawn in, until he stands before Thjazi, knees bumping those of his tormenter.
Thjazi's eyes are half-lidded. Now Bolaire is close, he can't help but notice all the points where he and Hal intersect. The same nose, though Thjazi's has been broken enough to exaggerate the hook. The same rough bristle of a beard. The same sensual lips, prone to smiling - or smirking, in Thjazi's case, like Bolaire is as transparent as his glass rapier, and Thjazi can see right through.
"You think he could give you what you need?" he whispers.
Fuck him. Bolaire seeths, and though he knows it's infinitely stupid -
Though every iota of his common sense screeches for him to take the blow to his pride and be done with it-
He does what he has longed to since he first entered this tumbledown shack, and backhands Thjazi Fang across the face.
Instantly he regrets it. If he instigates a fight, he will not be the victor. "My apologies," he babbles, shaking out his stinging knuckles. "That was a mistake - heat of the moment. I shouldn't have let my temper get the better of me - "
Thjazi rotates his jaw, rubbing the red mark on his cheek. Then he yanks, grip still manacled around Bolaire's wrist. Pulling him onto his lap.
"Oh," bleats Bolaire. "Fuck. "
Any other such eloquent summations of the situation are muffled by Thjazi's mouth, which seals over his in a hot pact of iron, like the brand meeting the cow's bowed neck.
"Mm - "
Teeth clack on clay. Bolaire's lips are fired and glazed, significantly firmer than Thjazi's own, but this hardly puts Thjazi off. He mashes himself against Bolaire, forcing his tongue through his gasp. Dragging slick against Bolaire's own.
Bolaire tries to wrench to the side, but Thjazi's hands have migrated. They grasp the sides of his mask - his face - holding him still for the devouring.
"Mm!"
Bolaire won't be bested so easily. He scrabbles at Thjazi, a frenzy far beneath his usual elegance, scratching at his chest, smacking at his throat, squirming like a worm on the hook - until at last, Thjazi draws back, wiping his spit-shone chin on the back of his hand.
"Well," he says, "that was unpleasant."
Bolaire is hardly in the mood for being insulted on top of molested. He casts Command - "STOP - "
But Thjazi does not. Bolaire's spell crashes off him like a wave against a cliff, leaving the rocks untouched. He nuzzles Bolaire's throat, where the body's pulse still tries to feebly flutter. Groaning, low in his chest.
"Fuck, mask. You really gonna fight me?"
Bolaire can barely believe this is happening. Oh, why didn't he listen to Thimble? Why didn't he toss the damn satchel at Thjazi's head and run?
"Yes!" he spits. "If you keep pawing at me like an animal - "
Thjazi growls. His hands slide over the corset-laced pinch of Bolaire's waist, and he grinds them together, dragging Bolaire against the bulge in his britches. Bolaire flinches - for that isn't the sort of hardness that brews from a single, however violent kiss. How long has Thjazi been thinking about this? Since he revealed the Lloy ore? Since he had him pinned to the door?
"What do you even want?" he hisses, leaning as far back as Thjazi will allow.
"Isn't it obvious?"
Oh, throbbingly so. Bolaire damns his treacherous body for the flush that skulks up the back of his neck, the low stir of want inside him. As always, his hosts never know what is in their best interests.
Bolaire is no stranger to sex. Little else is to be enjoyed about possessing a mortal form, besides having arms with which to fashion his exhibits, and a tongue to enjoy a good rosé. But his appetites have always been fleeting. While he is fascinated by the people around him; the rich yet fickle tapestries of their lives; it is rare for him to nurture attraction. Most of the time, when he slips betwixt the sheets with another, it is to milk his body for hedonistic pleasure, before it dies and he must learn an entire new set of erogenous zones.
Really, in a century of fighting and performing and finally, truly living, he has only met one man for whom he has felt desire; one man for whom he has permitted himself, in the privacy of his midnight chambers at the Archanade, to fist at the sheets and throw back his head and deliriously imagine, what if. The fact that the bastard currently holding him captive is that man's double, is a fact Bolaire wishes desperately to ignore.
"Today," says Thjazi, groping the damp leather covering Bolaire's backside, "has been a very fucking bad day. Let me have this, damn you."
Bolaire should shove him away. Yet in that moment - thoughts teetering on that narrow precipice between Thjazi and Hal - he hesitates.
That is all Thjazi needs. He kisses Bolaire again, heavy and thick. His scent fills the hollow clay of his nose: oil from a whetstone, burnt leaves, cedarwood. The sour ozone of his magic.
Bolaire doesn't want this. Doesn't want him. But then again, he supposes, as Thjazi tries to sink his teeth into his black-painted underlip only to be repelled by the hard ceramic, Thjazi doesn't want him, either.
There are a myriad reasons he doesn't make a more concerted effort to escape. Not just because of the dirt Thjazi holds over him; or the features he shares with his brother - but because for once, this ugly pact between them is reciprocal. Tonight, they make use of each other.
Daringly, Bolaire rocks his hips. The friction is delicious. Thjazi must agree, because he grips Bolaire's pelvis and grinds.
"Mm - "
Bolaire's back arches. It's primeval, atavistic, his body responding to a rhythm far older than he is.
Really, he should find this amusing. Mortals are so comical with their sex - how they rut and hoot at each other, pulling all manner of stupid faces. But right now, as Thjazi mouths at his throat, bullying the skin between mask and high-buttoned collar with bruises, Bolaire can't help but make a few mindless faces of his own.
Only when Thjazi fists his hand in Bolaire's hair and pulls, does the trance break. Bolaire clutches at his wig, knocked perilously askew. "I - you beast! Careful! Do you know how expensive that is?"
Thjazi scoffs. "Freak."
Still, he stops yanking at Bolaire's curls, shoving a hand beneath Bolaire's rumpled layers of silk and brocade instead. Bolaire snarls at the impudence, especially since one of the hook-and-eyes has popped off of his doublet - but he decides that, just this once, Thjazi can be forgiven. That hand is so big and so warm, after all, and so very like Hal's.
Thjazi doesn't let him get comfortable. He stands, lifting Bolaire's lithe, long form with him, forcing him to wrap his legs around his waist so they won't drag on the floor. Bolaire scowls. It's demeaning, to be forced to cling.
"Thjazi - a little warning..."
Thjazi doesn't give it. He deposits Bolaire on the table, right beside his stolen treasure. Bolaire stares at it as Thjazi (silent now, more urgent, as if pausing to think too hard about what they're doing may make him change his mind) divests him of his rain-soaked outfit. His reflection shimmers, distorted by candlelight.
The box is a pretty thing. The piece of slag too: smooth and sleek and gnarled all at once; a little iridescent, like pixie-wings. Both have their uses to Thjazi.
Thjazi's talk of Bolaire needing this was nonsense. Yet, Bolaire cannot deny as he lays there, staring at this broken off-cast of a godslayer blade that never got to see battle, that there is a certain… comfort, in being a tool. He gained so much, when he left the Panto. But he gave something up as well. He hates that Thjazi is the only one to see it.
Such thoughts are stripped from his head as Thjazi wrenches down his thigh-high boots and yanks off his wet, clinging trousers. "Fuck, d'you have to wear so many clothes - "
He falls silent as he looks Bolaire over. Bolaire can barely stand to do the same. He's a starveling thing, ribs standing out in sharp relief, belly concaved. Mere days, by his reckoning, until he starts to smell the first stages of decomposition. This body was his choice, and so it suits his preferences: elegant, long of leg, trim of waist. But no one is beautiful, when they are almost a corpse.
Bolaire wouldn't care - Thjazi certainly isn't doing this out of attraction - if only he didn't, just for a moment, envision Hal in his brother's place, staring down at him with repulsion, seeing him for the monster he is…
"What's wrong with you?" Thjazi mutters, even as he grabs one wasted white thigh and pushes it up till it creaks at the hip.
"So very much," is all Bolaire can answer. He turns his head to the side, shaken more than he wishes to confront, but Thjazi grabs his chin, not permitting him the mercy of dissociating until this is over.
Hal's eyes would brim with concern, Bolaire tries to tell himself, if he was in his brother's place. He always frets during the withering weeks, when Bolaire's body is expiring around him. He makes a thousand excuses to meet Bolaire for tea and take him to the opera and bring him on picnics with his children, like he is all that tethers Bolaire to this mortal coil. Sometimes, Bolaire fears he might be. Hal has never pried, beyond gentle questions that are far too easy for Bolaire to rebuff - ("Are you quite alright? Bolaire - is there anything I can do to help?"). Bolaire likes to pretend he wouldn't recoil, if he knew the truth - but he can't be sure, and so here he is beneath Thjazi, who regards him with a curious sort of cruelty as he shoves his too-thin legs apart and grasps his limp prick in a calloused hand.
Bolaire winces. In his body's ailing state, he doubts he'd be able to rise even with the most attentive lover (even with Hal). But Thjazi's rough ministrations have no hope of bringing more than a flush of colour between his legs. Bolaire's head thuds back against the table, but not from pleasure.
"S-spare a little lubrication, damn you…"
"Princess," Thjazi accuses, but spits a gob of saliva onto his palm before dragging it over Bolaire's soft, pinked cock once more - then down, past the dark curls on his sac, to the tight purse of his hole.
The first finger hurts, when he works it inside.
The second hurts worse.
Bolaire expected no less - but he can't help but choke on his inhale as Thjazi bends over him, blocking out the light. Forcing his fingers further apart, Thjazi flicks Bolaire a grin, somewhere south of cocky.
"Huh. Didn't know you could make sounds like that."
"I - it wasn't a good one."
"It was, for me."
The third finger teases him, and fuck, Bolaire already feels thin-drawn, as if something within him might snap. He balls his fists in his beautiful outfit, discarded across the desk.
"Been a while, huh," says Thjazi conversationally. Bolaire wants to kick him in the teeth.
"Hardly. You're just a brute."
"Hey. Straying a bit close to racial stereotypes there, aren't we?" Thjazi delivers his tut to Bolaire's ear, sharp as a firecracker bursting in the overcast skies. "Whatever would Halandil say?"
Bolaire shoves at his chest. "Don't - "
"You make it too easy. Like I said."
Thjazi withdraws his digits, pulling open a drawer in his desk. A scrape of a cap, then oil trickles over Bolaire, scented faintly of citrus. It's the first kindness Thjazi has shown him, and Bolaire hates that he relaxes into it like a cat, hates that he arches his back and rolls his hips up, demanding now, when Thjazi fucks him full again, two fingers plunging deep, knuckles smacking his rim.
It's just -
Fuck.
He really does look so much like Hal.
It's him Bolaire opens for, as Thjazi slips the third digit into his hole and purrs at the lack of resistance. It's him Bolaire sees when Thjazi thrusts his hand, grazing this body's prostate by accident, sending ripples of pleasure rebounding out from his core.
Halandil. Halandil. Halandil -
He doesn't know what happens. Perhaps his expression veers too blissful for Thjazi's liking, or his lips shape that forbidden name. But a thundercloud has loomed above Thjazi since Bolaire first walked into this rat-trap of a hideaway. Now it cracks open, and the storm rages down.
He pulls out his fingers so sharply it's like he took a handful of Bolaire's guts with him. Bolaire chokes. The emptiness is awful, aching and cold, for the few seconds before his body clamps shut.
"Wait," he tries to say, as Thjazi grabs his protruding hipbone and shoves him onto his side, then again onto his stomach. "Wait, I don't want… Not like this…" He needs to see him. Needs to at least be able to pretend -
Hal, panting as he rises from between Bolaire's thighs. Raking back his sweaty hair, fixing him with that kindly grin that crinkles at the corners of his eyes…
"This isn't about what you want," Thjazi reminds him. Tossing Bolaire's coat aside, he presses him into the wood until his ribs ache. The rustle of falling trews makes Bolaire tense almost as much as the blunt, sticky cockhead that kisses his crease. It drags back and forth, gathering oil, before -
"Mm. You're tight."
Bolaire would squeeze his eyes shut, if they only had lids. As it is, the blue dots deep-set within his mask wink out. He clings to the table like it's a raft on choppy seas.
It - hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, because despite the perfunctory preparation, Bolaire is all burning resistance, clenching down like he wants Thjazi out. He imagines Hal's hands on him; how much kinder they would be in their mastery. Their sex would be a different two-backed beast: longer, slower; Hal working Bolaire until he's all supple acceptance, their bodies meeting and joining like two halves of the same whole.
Thjazi merely hisses, readjusting. Gains another burning inch.
"You're thinking of him," he breathes over Bolaire's ear, stirring the damp red coils of his wig. "My brother. Aren't you?"
"I - fuck, I - "
"You think of sullying him, don't you? With your bloody, ever-dying hands." Thjazi smiles. Bolaire feels it against the back of his neck. "I have protected my brother from the cruel truths of this world for years. You think I don't see you hovering, vulture? Casting a shadow on his house?"
"You don't understand - "
"Oh? Is it more than mere opportunism?"
Thjazi sets a languid, shallow pace. Bolaire shudders. When he received for the first time, it was long ago, back in the days when he was still eager to learn all that a mortal form had to offer. He had visited a pleasure house to the west of Timmony where the gigolo had laid him down and licked him open and loved him till the morning light peeked through the curtains. It had been a pretence at intimacy between two strangers, but one Bolaire had greatly enjoyed.
Thjazi? He is no stranger. And he knows just where to hurt.
"Has the mask convinced itself it can love?" whispers Thjazi. "That anything it feels is not just a performed act of emotion? Designed only to destroy?"
And he thrusts. Forcing through the clench, hips tacking to Bolaire's at the deepest ingress. Balls slapping his, from behind.
Bolaire gasps. He is naked in far more than flesh - stripped away so utterly that he imagines his body crumbling under Thjazi's touch, unmade by his hands, reduced and reduced and reduced until there is only the mask and the madness -
Thjazi thrusts again, jolting him back into physical form. Somehow, that's worse.
"Ah - "
He can't escape the heavy plunge of the cock through his guts, nor the weight on his back as Thjazi leans over him, caging him in dense green muscle. His chest hair grizzles through the open v-neck of his shirt, scraping Bolaire like wire. Everything is pain, and humiliation and swirling heat as Thjazi drives into his prostate.
You were made to be used, echoes Thjazi's voice. This time, it emanates from deep inside Bolaire, as if it has found fertile soil and taken root. Heat swirls in his abdomen, rising slowly, starting to pulse. Bolaire might've succumbed to it - if Thjazi hadn't murmured in his ear -
"Don't forget what you are."
Bolaire's mask falls into an expression terrifying in its familiarity, like it was carved to fit. Panic claws through him. He writhes, trying to squirm forwards and shove back all at once, escape and attack and be free -
But a thick green arm locks around his waist.
"Take it," orders Thjazi - Hal - Thjazi. And Bolaire does.
"Hal," he sobs. "Hal…"
Thjazi tuts. Fucks him in steady, cleaving strokes that seem designed to pull apart his every defence, split him down to the very mind. "You can't have him," he says.
Bolaire nods along. The only thing he hates more than the man inside him is his own foolish self, for daring to dream otherwise.
They rock together on that desk, curving naked in the candlelight, green flesh melting into sallow, sickly white. The table legs creak and groan. The candle burns low, perfuming this hot, airless space with tallow. Sweat glistens, dries to salt.
Through the side door, Bolaire can glimpse the corner of a bed. He wonders why Thjazi didn't take him there, instead. It would mean more comfort for both of them. While Bolaire is old only in mind, Thjazi is approaching that mid-life stage where, according to Hal's grumbles, one's knees start to ache at every activity - but perhaps it is just another demeaning cut, added to the thousand Thjazi carves into him; another reminder that he is not a lover or an equal.
Just a thing to be used.
And fuck. It feels so -
So awfully right.
The tempo of the grunts in his ear starts to rise. "Fuck," Thjazi gasps. "Fuck…"
He's hardly gone out of his way to make their pleasure mutual. Yet when he reaches beneath Bolaire, he seems to take offence at the limp slide of his cock through his fingers, for he slows himself, grinding in place.
"You can call me by his name, if you want," he says, like it's a kindness. "Go on. If it'll get you there."
Bolaire grits his teeth. Thjazi can have him loose-fucked and snivelling, bleeding and broken, whatever he prefers - but he refuses to debase Hal in such a way. He was wrong to ever picture him in Thjazi's stead. Hal doesn't deserve to be in this foul, rot-ridden corner of the city, even in Bolaire's mind. Bolaire would kill to keep him far away - and this is the one thing on which he and Thjazi can agree.
"Don't say I didn't offer," pants Thjazi. He picks up his pace again, chasing his end.
Bolaire is pathetically grateful. Clutching the edge of the table, he watches the wood flex and creak. He fears the legs will snap from beneath their combined weight as Thjazi's thrusts devolve into a brutal battery. Their sex is almost violence, like Thjazi wants Bolaire slain. Alas, this will not finish him, even as his body quakes and jolts and splits and bleeds, and pain fractures up through him until his mask might shatter.
"Ah - ah - "
"Go on," gasps Thjazi, dragging Bolaire back onto his cock. "Make that pretty noise again."
Bolaire bites his lip just to spite him - but it doesn't matter. Thjazi's hips stutter. His grip tightens until the ring of Bolaire's pelvis creaks. Stinging liquid heat blooms in his guts. As Thjazi groans, Bolaire presses his forehead to the cool solidity of the table and forces his dying body to breathe.
Thjazi lingers inside him. What thoughts pass through his head, Bolaire cannot fathom. Maybe it is simply instinct, to share heat with another in this way; or a general preference for kindness towards his bedfellows that, thus far, he has not shown Bolaire.
Then the moment passes. Thjazi tugs himself free. Bolaire cringes at the burning gape, then again from the hand that drags down his back, over the knobbled swoop of his spine.
"Well?" asks Thjazi. "Do you feel suitably used?"
Bolaire does not reply.
Thjazi shrugs. Moving away, he collapses on the chair where all of this started, sweaty and magnificent, shirt clinging to the muscle of his chest. He tucks his wet cock back in the fly-fall of his trews. It's glazed in red. That's hardly surprising; Thjazi was far from gentle, Bolaire far from eager, and the drag of their flesh against each other was gritty and harsh by the end, oil rubbed away. A fight intended only to hurt. Bolaire tries to move his legs - only to collapse boneless on the table, groaning. Everything below his waist is salted agony.
He lies there for a small slice of eternity. His legs begin to numb, the damp cool of the attic sinking into his sweat-shone body, now he is no longer warmed by friction. He refuses to think of how Hal would've offered him a blanket.
The sound of harsh breathing resounds off the rafters, his and Thjazi's alike. Both gradually slow. Bolaire gathers himself, best he can, rolling painfully onto his side. He finds Thjazi watching him.
"I didn't know you could cry," he says.
Bolaire touches the damp beneath his empty eye sockets. He didn't, either.
The silence stretches. Thjazi's gaze falls on his bloody hand, and the red smear on Bolaire's inner thigh, which spreads like the rot beneath the bowing floorboards.
"Mask," he says. Stops himself. Turns away, to the window fogged from their panting, and the dark spectre of the city beyond. "Will you go to Hal tonight?"
Bolaire, still mute, shakes his head. Thjazi smiles.
"Good," he says. Plucking Bolaire's fallen breeches from the floor, he tosses them over, the signal as clear as if he had burnt the Falconer's banner that hangs above the door: We are finished. You have fulfilled your purpose. Leave.
Bolaire has been hollowed. This encounter carved something out of him, left him empty as the starless nighttime sky - yet at the same time, a deep-buried part of him exhales, like it has been holding its breath for so very long and has finally decided to drown.
Just a thing to be used, Thjazi calls him. How tragic, yet how true.
Moving hurts. Bolaire does so anyway, dragging the clinging wet leather over his legs. He moves like a puppet as he pulls on his shirt and corset and doublet, albeit a clumsy one, as if half his strings have been cut. He fumbles with all the fiddly clasps, struggling to fasten himself away without going cross-wise, but with every inch of himself he hides behind leather and lace, it is if he becomes a touch more solid, reconnected to the world. He's not sure he likes it - but the thought of staying here, blank-eyed and doll-like for Thjazi's amusement, scares him even more.
Thjazi follows him as he totters down the stairs, wincing with each step. He leans on the doorjamb as Bolaire limps out into the cool baptism of rain.
"We should do that again sometime," he says. "Come back, mask, when next you need to be put in your place."
Bolaire doesn't trust himself to speak. He's afraid he might say yes.
Bolaire drifts through the city like a ghost. This far into a possession, he is an intrinsic part of his host, enmeshed in their muscle and sinew, threaded into every jittering nerve. He cannot escape his flesh, even as it grants his freedom. This is his prison and salvation alike, from the burning ache in his backside to the drip of Thjazi's seed down the inside of his pant leg. Yet at the same time, he feels distant, watching himself from far above.
So he is not to blame when his feet make a liar of him, leading him through the Rookery and up to Hal's front door. Bolaire can only watch as his body raises its fist and knocks.
Midnight has come and gone. They are into the small hours of the morning, when the street is devoid of even the local cats. There isn't so much as a magpie to keep a beady eye on Bolaire from the Fang house's tiled, tiered rooves. For a moment, Bolaire thinks Hal must be too deep in his slumber to rouse. He forces himself back into his body, dropping his hand before it can knock again. Turning away, back into the rain, he has descended the first slippery stone step when the door swings open and a gruff voice says -
"Bolaire? It's the middle of the night."
Hal. Bolaire spins to face him. He finds Hal sleep-rumpled, haggard, hair fluffed more on one side of the other. His stubbled face is illuminated unflatteringly from below by the bare candlestick he holds, plucked from one of the wall-mounted sconces, yet Bolaire has never seen anyone so beautiful.
Hal returns his stare. Whether it is Bolaire's silence that unnerves him or merely the sight of him, rain-swept and tremoring, the buttons of his silk shirt askew, the tired, handsome lines of his face remould themselves into concern. "…Why don't you come in, hm? Let's sit you before the fire. This is hardly walking weather; you must be drenched."
Bolaire is, but the sticky wrongness inside him won't be cleansed by fire. Not until he discards this body and chops it apart, feeding the plumpest parts into the blaze.
He doubts Hal is ready to see that. He might not ever be, but certainly not at - he checks the face of the grandfather clock as Hal shepherds him into his living room, dragging two ghastly paisley easy-chairs towards the hearth - two in the morning.
Bolaire lets Hal divest him of his coat and sinks into the cushions like he's melting. Hal putters about, fetching a kettle, stoking the coals. Once the water is bubbling and two mugs are laid out on the side-table, and a fluffy sheepskin blanket has been draped around Bolaire's shoulders, Hal folds into the other armchair, groaning at the creak from his knees.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?" he asks, as Bolaire stares into the flames.
Bolaire peels his painted lips apart. A lie falls out, easy as breathing. "I was accosted by some ruffians on the street. They tried to rob me. I got away - but am still a trifle… discombobulated. That's all there is to it."
Hal's eyes widen. "You were attacked? Gods, Bolaire. We should call the guard - "
"No. Please."
"A doctor, at least - "
"No, Hal."
Hal grasps uselessly at the air, torn between closing the distance and giving Bolaire space. Eventually, he fishes the kettle from the fire and pours two cups of tea.
"What is it that you need?" he asks, pushing one to Bolaire. It leaves a damp ring on the table. Bolaire should chide him for not placing down coasters - but he picks up the mug instead, warming his freezing hands on it, and peers at Hal through the bedraggled red coils of his wig.
What do I need? To never see your brother again. For your children to love me, though I am a monster.
You.
"To stay here, for a while," is his reply.
Hal's features blossom into warmth. "As long as you need, friend," he says, unfolding a pair of half-moon spectacles from his pyjama shirt pocket. He lifts a book from the arm of his chair, turns to a dog-eared page, and drinks his tea in measured sips. Bolaire holds his own mug until his hands start to thaw. Shivers cascade through him. They no longer come from the cold: just residual quakes of memory - Thjazi's green hands cupping his waist, spreading his thighs, moving him on his cock like the object he is.
If he told Hal, what would happen? Would Hal insist Bolaire is not a thing, and does not deserve to be treated as such? Or would he simply not believe him? Thjazi is his brother, after all.
Both options are devastating - so Bolaire holds his tongue. When he lifts his mug to his kiln-fired lips, the tea is dilute and pallid. He glances sidelong at Hal, whose tastes run to stronger brews, and finds him dipping the mesh bag of leaves in his cup. Realising he's been caught, he smiles at Bolaire, a trifle sheepish, and pushes his glasses back up his nose.
"Is there anything else I can do?"
"Tell me what you're reading?"
Hal’s jaw squares. He wants to snap his book shut and insist that Bolaire be honest with him; Bolaire sees it in his eyes. But as ever, Hal chooses kindness. As he launches into vitriolic criticism of Daverforth Mullaho's prose (how is such an insipid writer so lauded by the Halovars? Why, with Hal's luck, they will insist that he include samples of his stagework in the Hallowed Round's opening roster...) Bolaire curls in his chair and lets the words wash over him.
Usually, their discussions are a pull and a push, a give and a take; Bolaire offering up his own opinions for Hal to passionately find fault with. But Hal must sense that Bolaire is not in the mood for debate, for he fills the cosy space with his own voice, until the words meld into the low-burning crackle of the fire, lulling Bolaire towards quietude - neither rest nor peace, but the closest to it that he knows.
When his eyes flicker out, Hal lets the one-sided conversation peter. He leans across, tugging the sheepskin higher over Bolaire's shoulder. Bolaire fights to keep still, so as not to press into the touch or flinch away.
You see me as a person, he thinks, as Hal smiles at him and returns to his book. A friend. And I let you believe it - for out of all the lies we tell each other, that is, perhaps, the sweetest.