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It wasn't as if Qifrey had been nice as a child.
He was strange, and remote. His stare felt accusatory; he knew so little, and somehow that lack became a question for which everyone had to account: why are things the way they are? What makes you belong more than me?
His teenage years were worse. He was moody, and snide, and hardly anyone knew it because he smiled, constantly. Easthies liked him better before he picked up that habit. He liked how blunt and cold Qifrey could be. He liked him in the moments between, honest interstices when he wasn't cloistered with Olruggio or being doted on by Beldaruit.
What sort of man is adult Qifrey? Unpleasant still, Easthies finds, and not in the ways he enjoys. He flouts the rules and enables his atelier to do the same. Earlier that day, he held a sword to Easthies' neck, glared at him with one eye and a flatness that made Easthies believe he truly would swing.
Easthies studies the wall of ocean pressed up against his windows. All that unbreathable weight held at bay. Qifrey as an adult, he thinks, is a dangerous man.
He doesn't look up as the door to his study opens and closes. Light footsteps tread the room. Utowin comes to perch lightly on the edge of Easthies' desk, crossing his long legs in front of him.
"Hard day?"
Easthies' mouth ticks into a frown. There is mud from the bank dried on the hem of Easthies' cloak, and sand from the riverbed in the seams of his shoes. He is aware he ought to have bathed by now. He'd made his reports, in person and on paper, and sent teams to investigate upriver and down, and sent messages to the sages; at some point he must have sat down, but he can't quite remember when, nor how long he's been sitting here, come to that.
"It's him, isn't it?" Utowin ventures. "Qifrey."
"What about him?"
"What indeed," Utowin says, cheerful, though his gaze that sweeps the room and Easthies himself is shrewd.
Easthies clears his throat. "Are you here for a reason?"
Utowin bends and retrieves Easthies' hat from the floor; Easthies thinks he may have thrown it, though he can't say for certain. Utowin turns it in his hands then sets it on the desk with an absurd little pat, as though it were an animal.
"He got to you," Utowin says.
"Don't be ridiculous," Easthies says flatly.
"I wouldn't have let him hurt you, you know," he says easily. "Whether by sword or by spell." He looks down, examines his fingernails. "I'd have sooner killed him."
"He'd have fought you."
"Are you saying I'm not capable?"
"There's a desperation to him. He's lawless. He wouldn't fight fair."
"Sounds like a man with ideas above his station."
"Exactly," Easthies snarls, vindicated. "He ought to be locked up."
Utowin tips his head. "Here?"
"Where else?"
"In this room?"
Easthies narrows his eyes. "Utowin."
"I'm only saying. You could teach him a thing or two, I imagine. Reform him. Unless you don't think you're up to the task, either. He's a talented witch, after all."
"You sound almost fond of him."
"Do I?" Utowin asks. He gestures with his chin. "You're the one who's hard."
Easthies starts and looks down at himself. It's true, humiliatingly true, and for how long? Framed by the open flaps of his robes, his cock strains against his breeches. He hisses in a breath.
"You've always had," Utowin says carefully, "a thing, about him."
"I don't trust him," Easthies spits. "He wears two faces."
Utowin studies him, meticulous in a way no one believes him to be. Easthies doesn't allow himself to look away. He grips the arms of his chair until
his knuckles stand out whitely.
"Go on," Utowin says quietly. "Take care of yourself. It's nothing I haven't seen."
"Insubordinate," Easthies says, and then, after a beat, as the idea crawls over and through him: "And what is it you intend to do?"
Utowin shrugs. "I'll be here."
He ought to kick Utowin out and lock the door. He ought to go stick his head through a archway and into the ocean, or swing his pennant in the training yard until he can't lift his arms. Utowin lounges and looks on. He's calm in a way Qifrey appears to be and isn't, an inch below his surface. Utowin is dangerous, much like Qifrey: the difference, crucially, is that Utowin stands on the correct side.
"Come kneel," Easthies says.
Something lights in Utowin's eyes. "That an order?"
"No," Easthies says, but Utowin is already moving, folding himself into the space at Easthies' feet and bracing his hands on Easthies' thighs.
He rubs his hands up and down, like he's trying to warm Easthies, or soothe him, something needless like that. He cracks a smile when Easthies stares down at him.
"Get to it, huh?" He lays his head against Easthies' leg, skirting his erection. "You think Qifrey would be all business? Or would he make you wait?"
"I can't see how that's relevant," Easthies says, his jaw tight.
Utowin unpicks Easthies' laces in brief, practiced movements. "It's just you and me, boss. You can tell me." He pulls Easthies' cock from his smallclothes and laps at the tip with the flat of his tongue, one firm pass. "You really never thought about it?"
Easthies fists a hand in Utowin's hair. Utowin groans appreciatively and flicks a look up at Easthies through his lashes.
"You talk too much," Easthies says.
Utowin laughs low in his throat and, in the next moment, swallows him to the root without fanfare, his nose to the dark curls of Easthies' pubic hair. Easthies keeps hold of Utowin's head. The hot clutch of Utowin's mouth is the first new feeling to reach him in hours, a pulse of color amid a rage of white and black.
Easthies tugs at his hair for the moan that shivers up through Utowin's throat. Utowin's talent, as always, lies in his dedication. He sucks cock like he'll die without it: not frantic, but thorough, nearly worshipful. Romantic, someone might call it, for a certain definition of the word. Easthies doesn't say anything about it at all, only permits that Utowin gag himself on Easthies' cock in private moments and foster no complicated ties between them. One among the many divides by which Easthies rules his own life.
Utowin comes up for air, licking his lips and still working Easthies' spit-slick cock in his fist. He grins lazily up at Easthies.
"Of course," he says, a bit breathless, "there's always Olruggio to consider. I'm sure he has a vested interest in Qifrey's mouth. Watchful Eye or no, I doubt he'd take kindly—"
"Enough," Easthies says, and surges to his feet. Utowin scrambles backward to make room, or tries, but Easthies grabs him by the shirtfront and forces him to stand.
"Eas," Utowin begins, but he meets Easthies' eye and his jaw clicks shut. Easthies watches a shudder pass through him.
"Across the desk," he says, low, and Utowin raises his hands in a gesture of capitulation.
Easthies releases him. Utowin turns and bends at the waist until he's flat against the surface of Easthies' desk. His cheek is mashed against the wood, one glassy eye fixed on Easthies while he undoes Utowin's breeches. He leaves them and Utowin's smallclothes tangled around his ankles.
"Is this what you were after?" He slicks Utowin's hole with salve from his desk drawer; the muscles in Utowin's back flex as Easthies fits one finger in him, then two. "You could've asked."
Utowin flutters one hand. "Sometimes you don't hear me."
It's not an answer Easthies enjoys. Utowin swallows a gasp as Easthies slides his fingers out, then arches his back when Easthies presses his cock into the slick mess of his hole.
"I'm listening now," Easthies says. He holds Utowin by the hips and fucks all the way in, one smooth stroke while Utowin's hands twitch and scrabble at the desk. Easthies frowns. "Don't ruin my papers."
"Ah, fuck. Eas—"
Easthies pulls out only to slam back in to the hilt. Exact, forceful screwing, so Utowin doesn't have a chance to whine for more. Utowin cranes his neck to look back at him, his lips bitten red and parted.
"Go on," Easthies says. "Was there something more you wanted to say about Qifrey?"
Just saying the name singes something in him. Crossing lines, he thinks. That which cannot be allowed.
Utowin laughs shakily. "Hell. You want him pinned like this? He's no more fragile than me. He could take it."
Easthies hammers into him, harder, fucking him across the desk by inches. Utowin groans. When he speaks again, it's broken up by gasps. "Want— want him to, ah, say your name? Want to keep him under your— Fuck, Eas, please."
Easthies clicks his tongue and reaches for Utowin's heavy, leaking cock. He jacks him off artlessly, the same unrelenting tempo at which he fucks into him. Utowin chokes out little sounds on every thrust. The eye he turns on Easthies looks fevered, wet and glazed. It's wrong, Easthies thinks: there shouldn't be an eye there at all. Only an empty socket and a tangle of scars.
The thought catches him like a fishhook. It's not what he thought this was. Playacting, carefully metered feelings marched one at a time past his defenses, where he can keep watch over them, and cast them out if needed.
When he is looking at Utowin, he ought to see Utowin. He deserves as much. Of this, Easthies should be capable.
"Maybe," Utowin manages, swallowing hard, "maybe you want to be me? Maybe you want him over you, holding you down—"
Easthies clamps a hand over Utowin's mouth. He folds himself over Utowin's back, the cascade of his hair falling over them both, trapping the heat of their breathing. Easthies fucks him hard, making a point of his presence. It's singular, nothing external stealing in, only the slap of flesh and Utowin's cock drooling over the backs of Easthies' knuckles and Utowin moaning into his hand.
Utowin fucks back against him in desperate little movements. Easthies puts his lips to the shell of Utowin's ear.
"There's no one else here," he says. "No one. Do you understand?"
Utowin nods weakly under his hand. Every visible part of his face is flushed. Easthies uncovers his mouth and it is as he's dragging in that first new breath of air that Easthies shoves into him and comes, gasping, his load shot deep in Utowin's ass.
"Fuck," he hears Utowin saying, distantly. "Fuck. Easthies."
He's hardly aware of himself as he finishes Utowin off: rubbing at the head of his dick, the surest way to tip him into overstimulation. Utowin shudders and twists beneath him, and Easthies bites down on Utowin's shoulder through his shirt as he comes. He catches Utowin's spend in his fist, then lays atop him a moment. The both of them breathe hard and out of sync.
Utowin gives a strangled groan as, at length, Easthies slides out of him. He turns himself over on the desk. From flat on his back, he watches Easthies wipe his hands on a handkerchief.
Easthies watches him in turn. His hair is soft and mussed. Unruly tufts of red. His lips look blood-hot, kiss-bruised, though they'd done no such thing. Muzzy from his orgasm, he thinks he could do it now. Kiss Utowin until things became complicated. The color of him is tempting: vital in every place Qifrey is pale and cold.
But surely not every place, he thinks, unbidden, as he offers Utowin a hand up.
The thought is as sharp and as quiet as the tail-end of a ribbon whipping past.