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Wax didn't have to look at it here. Besides, anywhere...else...what if Wayne were to trade it for something? He swallowed bile. No. Quite impossible. A memento of him...like that? It really ought not to get out in public. (When he had first gawped at it, he had avoided looking Lessie in the eye for some time, while he'd dispatched Wayne anywhere Wax didn't have to look at him at all.) Better for it never to see the light of day again. Much like its artist. Should it have gone before a firing squad too? It was only paper and charcoal, light and shadow. Heavy artists' vellum, smooth and pale, as easy under his fingertips as all those hidden places the sun had never found on his lover's body, places that were only for him. And the charcoal, fine and dark as his lover's hair, effortless in those elegant, precise fingers, as if it had had metal minds of its own to take the weight. (They had tried it once, until a critical instant in which Wax had--entirely understandably--lost focus on his Steel-pushing and Iron-minds to send the lovers crashing into the--well, what had been a bedframe--and he could still taste his own blood on his lips, startled and metallic, his lover's laughter, dark and soft as the Survivor's own mist-cloak, all the more luxurious for that one fleeting taste of it...) He sank his teeth into his bottom lip. Even in this furtive little corner, his fingers hesitated at the buttons of his trousers.
Defiantly, Wax hooked his thumbs into his belt loops instead. Pushed away the soft, buttery feel of leather against his skin, not at all how the belt had felt striking his bare thighs, his lean back, his tense arse. Miles had never been one to set about anything (or anyone) by halves. He curled his fingers, scraping blunt nails against his pistol-calloused palms. If he stared straight ahead he didn't have to see the tenting in his trousers, and if he couldn't see it, maybe it would vanish with enough deep breaths. Which left him eyeing the Ruin-cursed sketch. Wax had become something of an expert at destroying suits this way. (Not so fine a suit, last time, but the best that True Madil could offer, the gentleman bounty hunter on par with the governor instead of over-shadowing him before the press, shaking hands in a frozen mockery of gratitude, the million-boxing bounty heaped on the table before Wax in choreographed disarray. Gauche, Wax had scoffed to himself, but unlike Miles he could smile until his jaws ached and keep his blood-money scowls to himself.)
Had the damn sketch not been entombed in a frame and cowering beneath glass he would have crushed it. Crumpled it, clawed it into pieces, tore at it until it was ripped up and bleeding like his own heart. Fed the fire with it. Any of the cold, gaping marble fireplaces would be a fitting mausoleum for his shame. Made little embers out of it, bright and hot like those first few touches, drifting and uncertain until they had burned under his skin and somehow smoldered there permanently. He'd been terrified. Hadn't he? Terrified of loneliness in a place so vast, so empty that he'd lost all perspective. Some nameless wilderness so abandoned by civilization that it was only natural he had abandoned civilization himself. Rutting, that was all. Wordless exhortations to be filled, to be taken, to shatter. They hadn't needed words. Just touches and moans and gasps, a cipher made for two. More, deeper, harder, again, please, again, again, again. Fucked to exhaustion, he hadn't had to see any more of the dead, to feel any more of Pars' victims tugging at his heartstrings, to hear them whispering to him at night. Draining away the poison of Pars' barbed taunts. It had been necessary. Like draining a metal-mind. He had never worn his earring. (And Harmony help him, hadn't Miles taken advantage of that? Just the memory of his teeth sinking into the soft, delicate, sensitive skin of his earlobe was enough to make Wax hard, even now. Miles had set his teeth into other places too, until the fleeting shadow of that was enough to undo Wax completely.)
Wax flexed his fist, slowly. Little rivulets of blood teased along his fingers. He'd ruined the portrait. Added lines to his body that hadn't been there even five years ago, when he'd sauntered into Miles' office, demanding he join the hunt for Pars. (Demanded. It sounded better then grovelled. Pleaded. Begged.) Glass crunched under his fine shoes. The golden frame was warped, dangled askew. The little metal clips holding the backing had disappeared entirely. Wax' knees creaked before taking his weight. His ragged gasps for air were too loud for these thin walls. Harmony help him, were the staff off today? Had he called Miles' name? He picked at the fragments of glass embedded in his hand, fingers sticky with his own release. He jerked his cravat loose, wound silk the colour of Miles' eyes around his wounds, stared numbly as the blood stained it darker. Other places had to be cleaned too. Perhaps not. Perhaps his trousers were beyond redemption. (Redemption, Miles had snarled, was not for the likes of Pars Deadman, and they should have bloody shot him while they had the chance, not dragged him back to the scum who had let him escape in the first place. Wax had flung his chair at his host, only for Miles to snatch it from the air with one hand, whip his belt free to tie Wax to it with the other, and slam chair and law-keeper before his desk. Yes, it had been most unwise to goad Miles to go fuck himself. He had, of course, proceeded to do so. Perched on his own desk, not an inch from Wax' wide-eyed, dry-mouthed face. Calmly, hands on his spread knees, thin lips and dexterous tongue working himself from root to tip, while his cold eyes locked on Wax' own in unabashed challenge.)
Wax had never felt those lips on his own. Kisses were for Lessie. Kisses meant he felt something. Miles felt no pain, why should he? Would those scowls have tasted good? Could he have smoothed them away, banished them, swallowed Miles' demons in desperate, hungry gulps? Would it have changed anything? Himself, perhaps. Wax shivered. Would he have had the courage to say no, when Miles had proffered that fleeting chance to rule alongside him, to change the monster from within? Would he have had the courage to say yes?
The sketch drifted slowly to land at his feet. There had been no others. No other lovers. It had fallen from Miles' journal, battered, dented, stained with ash and blood and things Wax hadn't wanted to consider. (He had only come to help Marasi with her cryptography. Not to inhale pages that still smelled faintly of Miles's cigars, nor to smile at the ink blots he'd left in an ill-temper, certainly not to reminisce over the image of the ever-present law-keeper's notebook perched on one knee, cigar dangling precariously from his lips as Miles scribbled, while the dying sun had set the metal-minds in his shirtless torso ablaze, and he had caught Wax staring, something hot and dangerous glinting in Miles' eyes as his features strained into a smile. Wax had snapped from his day-dream to watch his reputation slide straight to Ironeyes' Tomb, in that one hideous gap between heartbeats as he saw Marasi's curious fingers brush against the sketch, even safely folded, and he couldn't have picked the damn thing up fast enough, not with the Survivor's own duralumin-enhanced speed bubble.) In the Survivor's Deadly Name, what if Marasi asked after it? Wax couldn't recall what she had stammered this morning, although he recalled every detail of how her lips had moved, how her cheeks had flushed, how the newly-framed, meticulously-restored, exquisitely-composed, blatantly pornographic portrait had trembled in her outstretched hands. A parting gift. A sob clawed its way out of his throat. Wax imprisoned it in the claustrophobic secret room with the sketch. He slammed the door on it with a Steel-push hard enough to rattle the Allomantic lock, scrubbed at the evidence with scalding water from gold-plated taps, started making himself civilized in the gold-encrusted mirror, until the steam blotted out Wax Dawnshot, former law-keeper of Weathering, entirely. High Lord Waxilium of House Ladrian was what he was now. That was whom Elendel expected at Miles' execution.