Work Text:
His skin is sticky with drying blood; his nostrils fill with the scent of gardenias and damp stone. Neither is surprising. Familiar, each, in their own way, but rarer that he should let them intersect. Like two lovers one strives to keep from meeting. Like grease and an open flame.
The Dark Urge closes his eyes and considers the puzzling mix, the circumstances that could have borne it out. The gardenias, he knows too well, cloying and bright with a citrus bite—rather like the man who owns them. A sharkish smile. A glass of honey-sweet wine. Has he finally succumbed to his father’s bidding? To ravage the Banite in his own courtyard garden, feel his vile flesh clump beneath his claws . . . What a terrible, beautiful sight not to remember. Surely he hasn’t—
Please, Father, don’t let me have killed him yet—
His eyes open again with a sharp pang. “Gortash.”
He speaks, or tries to—his maw is sore and cluttered with gore. He darts out his tongue, sluggishly, to taste the meat stuck between teeth, and tries to study it—does it taste of that rich blood that haunts his days and nights—
“Now, isn’t this a pitiful sight.”
The Dark Urge rolls onto his back to find the Banite in question looming over him, looking far too amused and pleased with himself. Mouth curled, dark eyes glinting like polished onyx; clothes far too tidy for so early in the day—Or is it? The Urge squints, finding the day uncomfortably bright despite woolly gray clouds. Still, Gortash has no cause to look so smug about a bloody Dragonborn cluttering up his courtyard like the biggest, prickliest weed.
Maybe it would’ve been better if he’d torn him apart after all.
“And what brings such an tragic little mess to my garden this morning like something the cat dragged in? Come, now. Get up.” Something blunt prods the Dark Urge’s side: the toe of Gortash’s boot. “Let’s get you inside before the servants see.”
The Urge allows himself to be wrangled upward. His limbs aren’t quite obeying him fully, but he drapes a thick arm over Gortash’s shoulders, and manages to shove his feet underneath him well enough to push himself upright. Gortash is warm. Steady, despite the added weight. The Urge’s tail sweeps in a weary arc, and it occurs to him, dimly, that he’s naked beneath the thick coating of viscera that bathes his arms and face. How long has he been lying there on the flagstones, blood baking into his scales? How long has his head been pounding like a ritual drum, hammering out any semblance of coherent thought?
Together, they stagger into the illustrious Lord Gortash’s townhouse, up the winding stairs to his master suite on the top floor. Each step reveals a fresh pain, fresh cut, fresh bruise; an unclosed wound is reopening along his side where it’s pressed against Gortash, spurting with new blood over old. Along with it, the Urge is sure he’s leaving bloody footprints and a trail from his tail, but Gortash makes no comment on it.
What happened to him? He tries to grasp hold of the night before, but it’s like grabbing shards of a shattered mirror. It isn’t uncommon to lose himself in a bloody fugue, but the reasons can be maddeningly unclear. Sometimes, the scent of blood clings to his nostrils in a way he can’t scrub out, and the only answer is more; more; more still. Sometimes, he suspects it is punishment from his father. His knife-hand idle for too long; his offerings too easy or lackluster—whatever the cause, Bhaal reaches through him and stirs that terrible frenzy in his veins.
Excess. Wanton. Orgiastic. Slaughterful. A spree worthy of His Chosen, His flesh, His gruesome and glorious command to murder far and wide and deep. To slay and breed and slay again—
“Here we are, then.” Gortash has led them to the oversize washroom on the top floor: cool marble tiles and dark wallpaper in deep blues and greens and golds, and indoor plumbing for an excessively large soaking tub that he’s filling with steaming water in short order as soon as he settles the Urge onto a padded bench. “I’d tell you to undress, but you’ve helpfully seen to that already.”
The Dark Urge winces, and watches Gortash ready the bath through half-closed lids. The scent of rosewood soap floods his nostrils, cutting through the dull, stale copper. The sleeves on Gortash’s expensive silk blouse—red-streaked, now—have been rolled up to expose his sturdy forearms, sandy brown and feathered with dark hairs, save for those white rings of faded scars close to his wrists. The Urge’s thumb twitches, and he remembers how those scars feel beneath his palm as he pins Gortash’s wrists together, as he squeezes until the bones start to grind. Such frail things, and yet proof of such unchained strength. How perfect, to know such might will submit to him, and yet turn right around and bind him in return. Both of them so splendidly matched, and burning with the same hunger, the same drive . . .
No. It does neither of them any good to pretend this is more than what it is. There is no use in getting too attached. If anything, the Urge should rub it in Gortash’s face, how readily he’ll lure others in by any means, sometimes lets them warm his hide for a few hours before he turns them into cold and lifeless husks. He should brag about it—gloat until the burn of bile leaves the back of his mouth. But he can’t quite force the words out.
“You haven’t asked what happened,” he says instead.
Gortash shuts the water off and stands back up to retrieve him once more. Tell him. Let him learn how little he means to you.
“What happened is a bloodied, carved-up Dragonborn decided to make a nest of my gardenias. Is there more I ought to know?”
He’s hoisted up once more, and it should be humiliating to let this smaller human haul and steer him like a sack of feed, but his warmth—his scent—feels like the Urge’s only tether, right now, to the present moment. A vast blood-tinged nothingness stretches into the future and back through his immediate past, blotting out all the details, but right here, he can cling to this one solid thing he knows. Enver. Even in a frenzied state that robbed him of his own self, he knew Enver. He knew to come here.
The Dark Urge says nothing.
They reach the tub, and he allows Gortash to guide one thick leg over the lip of the tub, and then the other. Gortash groans from the strain of holding the Urge around his shoulders, but slowly, the Urge manages to sink down until the hot water envelops him, and works its way between all his scales, his cuts, his thoughts. He sighs and lets his head fall back until his horns click against the tub’s side.
“Let me ask that another way. Should I expect anyone showing up to finish the job?”
The Dark Urge tries once more to sift through the past few days, and slowly, the fog retreats enough to expose shadows, silhouettes. There’d been the tavern—the brothel. Faces made ghoulish in candlelight and shadow. Squirming flesh, throbbing veins, Father’s vile taunts goading, goading . . . The screams. The guards. More. More sheep to the slaughter, until everything was silent, glistening, red.
“No,” he says. “I don’t think so.”
Gortash makes a sound in the back of his throat. “That’s something, I suppose.”
Water spills down the ridges of the Urge’s face and over the curve of his snout as Gortash pours it over him. He blinks furiously, trying to keep his eyes clear, but now that he’s invited the past few days to slide their foot into the doorway, there’s no holding them back. The bloodshed, the carnage—it’s nothing new. The hot squish of gore under his claws is more familiar to him than any name he’s tried to claim for his own. It used to be less common, this need Father sets burning in his loins, demanding he spread his seed far and wide, but ever since the Urge began working with the Banite—ever since they began . . .
Well. It doesn’t matter. The Urge has never seen the point in spawning more children of murder who will only themselves require slaughtering, if they don’t slay him first. Father insists. Father demands, and he obeys.
Far be it for me to question your most gruesomely vile and glorious slaughter, my lord, Sceleritas chides him, from time to time. But might you consider leaving some alive to bear your spawn after fornication?
Not if the Urge can help it, thus far, but someday that’s sure to change.
Firm brush bristles dig into the back of the Urge’s head as Gortash begins to scrub at the gaps between his rear horns. He uses steady pressure, yet takes greater care on the Urge’s thinner patches of hide where they join with the horns’ bases. The Dark Urge is used to Sceleritas Fel’s fussing and scrubbing, which is certainly thorough, but this feels like an indulgence rather than an obligation: Gortash’s movements are practiced and patient, taking his time around each root in a way that feels . . . caring. Worshipful, almost, if the Urge didn’t know any better. The Urge finds his eyes lidding, giving himself over to the soothing motions.
“It’s almost impressive,” Gortash says, “all the cracks and crevices you managed to get bloody. No wonder you’re in a mood.”
“I’m in a mood?” he asks, sinking a little lower into the tub.
Gortash makes a noncommital sound, close-lipped. “Broodier than usual, I’d say.”
The Urge scowls, or rather, finds a preexisting scowl on his face deepening. “I do not brood.”
“No, dear Urge, of course not.” Ugh, and now the Urge can hear the smug grin on Gortash’s face; he knows exactly what it will look like if he turns around, but turning around would stop the indulgent scritching with the brush. “I suppose it’s more of a sullen pout.”
“I certainly don’t pout.” To accentuate his point, he lifts one hand out of the tub, and flicks water back at Gortash with it.
Gortash huffs, wriggling away, then gives him a light bap to the back of the head with the brush. “Oh, yes, I can tell. The height of maturity, you are. Dip down and rinse.”
Gortash’s tone shifts immediately from taunting to the solid, imposing voice of command that the Urge knows far too well. It’s the tone he’s used to bluster their way through audacious heists and schemes; for yanking the leash up short on snivelling street thugs and Patriars alike. For making them writhe and squirm. For forcing them to grovel and beg. The Urge obeys immediately, not because he’s being forced to, but because that voice burns straight down into his groin and he would do anything, anything, to keep that voice trained on him.
He dunks down into the tub, and stays underwater long enough that he hopes the embarrassed flutter of the spines along the hinge of his jaw have stilled before he surges back up.
“Now, isn’t that better.” Wood scrapes over stone as Gortash scoots the stool he’s been sitting on closer to the tub, and then heavily ringed hands are curving down over the Urge’s shoulders to caress along his chest with a washcloth.
It should feel commonplace by now. He’s not unused to Gortash’s touch. After the past several months of glances and glancing blows, they have . . . indulged in the pleasure of one another’s company enough times that neither can pretend it was mere accident. But rarely does he feel Gortash’s hands linger on him the way they are now; usually it’s frenzied grasping and groping in a fevered rush toward something more. The pressure upon his scales, then the caress around the edges, coaxing into the tender, pale pink hide in the gaps between . . .
A noise between a groan and a growl issues from the Urge, and he is caught on the tipping point between surrendering to comfort and sparking toward pleasure. Something in the pause of Gortash’s fingers suggests he must sense the dilemma, and the Urge flinches, head bowing. He doesn’t deserve either. No comfort for the carnage he’s wrought. No pleasure for the savage lust he’s inflicted. But neither is he brave enough to tell Gortash to stop.
Tender caress or teeth sank into supple flesh; Enver’s smirk or his sharp, pained gasp. The Dark Urge craves it all.
Gortash smiles—the Urge can see it curving scythe-like in the nearby mirror—and dips his hands beneath the water’s surface to continue his scrubbing, a little brisker than before.
“You don’t have to—tend to me like this,” the Urge says finally, when he’s leashed the heat building in his belly enough to trust himself with speech. “It isn’t why I came here.”
“Then why did you?”
Because you are safe. It’s the only answer his maddened mind must have provided. Why would he want to return to his father’s temple after being made into his puppet, feeling his fingers tugging at the Urge’s strings, guiding his claws, stoking his desires until skin and blood and bone are nothing but a frenzied swirl. When he’s with Gortash, he is safe. He is himself, as much as he can be. Whatever dark hungers demand the snap of Gortash’s sinews and spilling of his blood, they are easy to quell: for now, the Banite has more value to him alive.
“I had nowhere else to go.”
“You have your temple,” Gortash says, and the scrubbing becomes more vigorous—his thighs, his groin, and as Gortash reaches lower, his chin hooks over the Urge’s shoulder. It would only take the sparest turn of his head to flick out his tongue and taste Enver. To part his jaws and nip and seize.
“Then I’ll go there,” the Urge growls, “if it’s such a fucking inconvenience to you.”
Gortash gives a sharp, rough squeeze to the Urge’s cock, and the sparest snort at finding him partially hard. The Urge winces. Is he ashamed? Should he be? It’s not a feeling he experiences much, and yet Gortash seems to prompt it from him. Not because Gortash disapproves—but because he wants to be something he’d approve of.
“I said no such thing.” All at once, Gortash is pulling away, with a swat to the Urge’s side. “Stand up. If you can,” he adds, sharp.
It’s an unnecessary jab, but a fair one, the Urge concedes, as he pushes himself from the water made rosy with blood. White entrails of bubbles froth on the surface as more pinkish-red washes down from the Urge’s frame, and the metallic stink of it submits to the soap’s perfume. There’s no hiding, now, his stiffening cock, though it’s hardly at full mast: thick and plated in the mirror. The Urge looks away from his own reflection, and wills Gortash to do the same.
Gortash leans over to open the drain and run the water again, strong forearms just in the Urge’s field of vision, and scrubs the washcloth clean in the flow. “There we are,” Gortash murmurs, and touches his fingers to the Urge’s side—and this time it’s a sharp, stinging dig at a slice between scales. One of his knees buckles and he bends toward the touch with a hiss. “Looks shallow enough, thankfully. Wide, though.”
If there is a question in there, the Dark Urge doesn’t answer it. Maybe one of the guard’s shortswords, catching him in the side in that final frenzied melee. The sting is a good reminder, and he can’t help but appreciate the way Gortash’s fingers feel probing it.
“I have potions, if you need them.” Gortash returns to soaking the washcloth in the flowing water, then squeezes it over the Urge’s hide to continue rinsing him clean. “But you know that already.”
That alone lessens the pain of the wound, and the Urge smiles. One hand braced around Enver’s chest as the other thrusts a potion to his lips, and his own jaws never letting up from Enver’s shoulder, never once stopping the gush of blood as he buries his hips flush to Enver’s ass—
It doesn’t make sense, why Gortash would tolerate this. Any of it. The carnage, the uncertainty, the ravening way he loses himself in blood: Gortash’s, others’, his own. The—unfaithfulness, if such a word can apply to the undefined thing they share and the way the Urge’s choices are at least at much his father’s as his own. And even that feels like an excuse—even that points toward the deeper thing Gortash should not want: his flesh and blood are ever entwined with Bhaal’s, with Bhaal’s will, and how could that ever be something the Banite desires? How could the proud lord stoop to this—tending?
“You’re very good at this,” the Dark Urge says. Because to say thank you feels like both too little and too much.
“I was not given a choice,” Gortash answers.
The Urge watches him in the mirror, dark eyes meeting red, and he suddenly feels foolish. He knew better. He has seen it countless times in their shared dreamscape: a younger man’s chapped and blistered hands scrubbing countless garments, marble floors, plates, walls, chains. Folding and polishing and mending and grinding and grueling. Clearing away the detritus of others’ excesses: rotted food, bloated corpses, semen- and blood-soaked sheets. And always, shadows looming over his shoulder. Never fast enough, never thorough enough, never enough—worthless, worthless, worthless, they never let him forget—never anything but a servant, a slave, an unpayable, unending debt.
The unspoken lingers in the steam between them.
Gortash is choosing to serve him now.
It burns like oil in the Urge’s lungs as Gortash drapes a plush, oversized towel around his shoulders and begins to scrub him dry. Why? Because he believes their alliance demands it? Because he’d expect much the same from the Urge, if their positions were reversed? Yet somehow he doesn’t think so. It feels like a gift, an offering, one that the Urge can never possibly return or repay in the same way. It’s too much. The emotion it sparks in him is far too much. There’s nowhere for that fire to go, and yet he has to get it out of him somehow.
When Gortash’s hand next reaches forward to help him dry, the Urge seizes him by the wrist and tugs him closer.
“Oh—”
Gortash bumps up against him, face pressing into the Urge’s chest with eyes round and soft in surprise. But only for a second. Then they’re sharpening like hard chips of onyx as a wicked grin overtakes his face, and he spreads his palm over the Urge’s pec, thick stacks of rings clacking against the hard scaled plates. His gaze flicks up from beneath sharply angled brows, dark bangs; and, oh, only Gortash has ever stood before the son of Bhaal with such a challenge in his eyes and lived.
Their mouths crush together, a slightly awkward meeting as always of soft plush skin and thick, fatty pads of scale, but hunger outstrips logistics, and they are opening for each other, Gortash’s head tipping back as the Urge leans down, and his sinuous cerulean tongue slinks and scrapes past Gortash’s lips to taste all of him he can. Does he still taste of blood? Of flesh? Gortash is only bright, floral, perfume and delicacy and craftiness, but the rake of black-painted nails down the Urge’s front is anything but fragile or soft. Scrabbling. Moaning around the Urge’s tongue. Swallowing down his tongue, both their groans. The Urge tightens his hold on his wrist and presses harder, feels his spine buckle and bend, and wonders how much it might take for it to snap.
and at the end of all things, holding him tight, one blade piercing them both, blood married as it spills for all time—
The Urge seizes a fistful of Gortash’s flimsy silk blouse and pulls. The initial rip, the fabric laddering, then splitting in a slow unraveling shred—how is it just as satisfying, on Gortash, as the tear and spill of flesh from anyone else? Baring that sandy, warm skin: the Urge watches it in the oversized vanity mirror as the blouse shreds and falls away, and the elegant lattice of cris-crossing scars on Gortash’s back are exposed for him like a secret. He runs one palm up the length of Gortash’s spine, gliding over each hillock of faded white scar tissue, and then seizes a fistful of the dark locks at the nape of his neck.
Twists his fingers in them.
Tugs.
“Mmh—” Gortash musters a half-hearted protest around the Urge’s thick tongue, the sound rumbling through them both. Slowly, the Urge draws back, and a thick rope of saliva spans from Gortash’s mouth to his, but he doesn’t ease up his grip on Gortash’s hair. Not when his neck pulls so long, an elegant arc of thin flesh and the dancing vein of his pulse served up to the Urge like the most sumptuous feast. He ducks his head to nose into it, slitted nostrils rounding to drink in his scent, and nips him with teeth just hard enough to let Gortash feel all the damage he’s choosing not to inflict.
“Enver . . .”
A tender name offered up sparingly—the Urge loves the way it shapes his broad mouth—but it’s also a cue. A shift. A hunting dog straining at its leash. You served me so much more than I deserved, the Urge thinks, pressing his tongue flat against Enver’s jugular and tasting its hasty throb. in this way, he serves Enver, too.
“Nothing on the front around the collar. It’s the wrong season for ascots,” Enver says wryly, despite the shivering desperation in his tone.
The Dark Urge nods. “But the rest?”
“The rest is fine.” Enver rocks his hips forward, thighs slotting around one of the Urge’s, and there’s no missing the bulge in the front of his trousers grinding into the Urge’s bared leg. “More than.”
“Me or you?”
“Me, gods, just fuck me, please,” and the whine has barely left Enver’s lips before the dreadful assassin and Child of Murder is spinning Enver to face the vanity, one arm pinned behind his back, and shoving his breeches down with enough force the buttons snap and ping against the tiled floor.
And, gods, isn’t he beautiful like this? The Banite submitting and yet demanding; shepherding the untamed killer’s worst instincts through his orders before setting him free. Dark hair messy, scars bared, fierce eyes defiant as he glowers at the Urge in the vanity mirror. The Urge can only smile as he grabs a vial of oil; caresses the raised curve of Enver’s ass and slides an oiled finger down the length of his crack. That fire and fury is his. It’s theirs.
He can be gentle, when he wishes. He can be slow, patient, methodical, plucking Enver apart like chords on a harp and listening for each sweet sound to fade. He can control himself. Ground himself. Pretend, for an hour or two, that the urge isn’t there burning under his hide and the ache in his blood can’t reach him here. But sometimes it’s safest to stand right on the edge, cold air whipping around them both, and trust that Enver won’t let him fall.
“Shit—”
He finds the tight knot of muscle at Enver’s entrance and thrusts one finger in, no gentleness, no warning. Enver bites down on his own forearm to stifle his sounds, but the Urge gives another tug to his hair to pull his head up. “Let me hear you,” he growls, at the same time he curls his finger to pet at Enver’s tight muscled walls. “Let me drown in your sounds.”
Whether from his words alone or the ungentle scrape of claw, Enver shatters with a sob, and the Urge loses himself in the sweetness of pleasured pain.
—angry guttering candles nearly burned down as they paint the bedchambers in flickering, sickly light brown light and tendrils of smoke. Are any still moving? Is Father finally sated? Yet still he can’t stop, still he loses himself in quickly cooling flesh and the wet, tacky blood matting to his hide. He can’t escape. He can’t undo this, can’t unchoose, because it was never his choice to begin with. He is not a spawn. He is not a son. He is a weapon wielded far too bluntly, a bludgeon who only dreams of being a dagger—
“More,” Enver gasps. “Now.” Even in hot panting breaths and anguished cries, steel underlines his words, and he doesn’t need to Command the Urge to make him obey. The Urge works a second finger inside Enver, piercing, stretching, slicking him, yet it’s never quite enough, and neither of them would have it any other way.
The Dark Urge’s towel falls the rest of the way down. He is not given to admiring himself in the mirror, not usually, but he appreciates the heat in Enver’s stare, searing over the bunching muscles of his arms as he soothes one hand down Enver’s back and spreads oil over his cock with the other. Enver bites his own lower lip—the only show of nervousness as the Urge nudges the flared tip of his shaft to Enver’s rim. The Urge smiles at him in the mirror, and Enver smiles back: a curious warmth spreads through him, not hot like blood, but more encompassing: like the summer sun baking into his scales.
Then he’s pressing inside of him, palm wrapping around Enver’s throat to feel every aching groan.
“Fuck,” Enver manages to wheeze, after a series of incoherent sounds, his body hugging so tightly around the Urge’s cock that it’s crushing, bruising. A gauntleted fist. The Urge is slowly pressing deeper; his pink throat quivers with strain as he holds back, making sure Enver can feel the notch and catch of every ridge of his shaft scraping at his rim. Their chests are both heaving. Beads of sweat claim strands of Enver’s hair for his forehead, and trickle tenderly down his temple.
It is the opposite of everything he did the night before, no matter how similar it appears. It is everything his Father would never want for him, and as his hand at Enver’s throat, forearm braced around his chest, becomes a sweet embrace—
As the aching plunge of his ridged shaft spears deep inside his wicked Enver, his artful rogue—
It is the beauty of everything he’s never dared claim for himself, before. Of everything he wants, and everything Enver deserves. Something for the two of them alone. No gods, no masters, no schemes; no death and no control. It is living. It is surrender.
An offering to and of each other.
Enver thrusts his hips back against him with a greedy whine, even as his walls are seizing, his pucker clenching, his cock in the mirror bobbing helplessly where it’s trapped between his stomach and the vanity’s top. The Urge pumps into him, his fist at Enver’s throat a lever, and the rings and glass bottles arrayed on the vanity’s top rattle and clatter from the force like the bones strung up around the Urge’s temple home.
“Louder,” he urges his Enver. “Let everyone know you’re mine.”
He wraps his other hand around Enver’s prick and strokes, letting the rows of Enver’s frenum piercings—five sets of golden barbells scaling the underside of his shaft—dig into the softer hide of his palm. But after a shuddering gasp, Enver’s hopeless face in the mirror turns wicked. Dipped in viciousness, whetted with malice. The Banite he adores, through and through.
Enver drives himself back onto the Urge’s shaft, all the way to the root, the force of it nearly knocking the Urge off balance. Even though the Urge can feel how he’s quivering to hold himself so deeply, arms shaking where they’re braced against the vanity, lovely muscles of his back spasming.
“So long as you are mine as well.”
Always, the Dark Urge thinks. Always. Forever in your service, too.
A blasphemous, dangerous vow he doesn’t dare expose to the air.
So instead he clamps hard on Enver’s throat with his palm, and sinks his teeth into the nape of his neck for an answer as he quickens his pace, relentless, furious, pinning him, choking him, relishing the hot, dark burst of blood in his mouth. Drying Dragonborn hide cracks against sweat-damp skin, echoing off the bathroom walls, and the vanity’s legs screech in protest. Enver’s cries are strangled and lovingly gathered in his hand. The Urge’s snarls are smeared against Enver’s flesh. His tail twines around Enver’s thigh, jagged spines catching on his skin and sinking in.
His to indulge in, no matter how Father tries to twist and turn his body and his will to other purpose. His to kill, but not until the end, not until they can claim the world in their names and watch their blood flow together, bodies entwined, last breaths mingling. His to serve, to kill for, to die for.
The splintering of wood rends the air, and only the Dark Urge’s swift instincts, trained in dark alleys and hushed manor halls, help him hoist Enver up enough to keep from collapsing with the vanity as its legs buckle and snap. Another crack of his hips, and the Urge buries himself deep as stars dance behind his eyes, and Enver is spasming, twitching, spilling hot seed over the Urge’s hand, weeping—
The Urge’s teeth in his skin turn to sweet kisses, which turn to furious clamoring for purchase—
And he’s cumming too, Enver’s body already stretched too tight around him as he floods him. Lightning crackling in his veins turning to a rushing, static hum as bliss bleeds into perfect nothingness.
Red burning him from inside, maw claiming flesh, fucking, rutting still, blood a cleansing river down Enver’s spine and cum dripping down his thighs, but it will never satisfy, it will never be sated until they are both bled dry.
But this is all he wants. Enver in his arms, cumming for him, living and breathing and heart beating for him, and every echo of his pulse is a sacred vow broken to his god, but every smile and breath of Enver’s is a promise kept to himself. That they can both be so alive, if only for today.
Then Enver is smacking at his forearm, and the Urge realizes how purpled his face has become in the mirror that’s hanging askew, and gently eases him to his feet as he pulls his hand away.
Lord Gortash slumps against the wall as the Dark Urge crumbles into an awkward sitting position by the collapsed vanity, back leaning against the tub. His tail curls sheepishly beside him, and his muscles are limp and feeble as he gazes up at the fearsome lord, who’s scrubbing away blood, smearing healing poultice on the savage bites on the back of his neck.
“You deserve better,” the Dark Urge mutters under his breath, when he trusts himself to speak bast the deluge of hatred clotting his throat. Better than me. Better than the abomination of a partner that my father makes of me.
That I let myself become.
Gortash sets aside the poultice and stalks toward him; snatches hold of his jaw, fingers stretching wide to span both sides. Wrenches his face upward to force the Urge to look him in the eye.
“I deserve anything I damned well desire,” he hisses. And even bloodied, swollen, stripped bare, he is every inch the commanding lord he’s tempered himself into. He is every bit of the god he aims to become. “And what I desire?”
His thumb grazes over the Urge’s cheek, and the Urge finds himself sighing, melting, relieved.
“Is exactly this.”
The Urge’s eyes wince shut. In the blessed silence and absence of clamoring red-tinged voices, he can even dare to imagine it: brilliant gold bathing himself and Gortash, two kings in their crowns, two gods on their thrones, the world bowing and bending to suit. And yet in their victory, the rest of the world was only afterthought. He already had all he wished for. This hand in his own, these lips pressing against the flat wedge of his head, this pleasant, brilliant ache in his thighs and the answering pains he knows live deep inside his fellow king.
He will serve him, in deed and word and heart and soul. He will repay every morning of shame like this one and every night of betrayal. Every thought forced upon him that dreams of gutting their hoped-for future and perfect now.
The Urge cradles Gortash’s hand in his own and shifts it to press against the front of his maw so he can mash thick lips against it. “Then it is yours.” A knight’s kiss for the hand that has served him; that he hopes he can someday, somehow, repay. “Always and again.”
“I trust so,” Gortash says, his wry tone just a little damp around the edges with emotion.
And it is better than any promise that either of them could make.