Charles’s thumbs ran down the sides of Timothy’s cheeks, parting him to make way for Charles’s tongue, which was finding deeper, darker scars. Timothy shut his eyes and relaxed the muscles there, his breathing coming faster.
The others were dead. But he was not.
Charles’s tongue flicked over Timothy’s entrance; Timothy gasped, sucking in dirt, digging his fingers into the carpet.
Ca’dimdirah. Fuck me. Fuck me with your mouth and hands. Fuck me without art, because this is not the place or time for beauty. Ca’dimdirah. Ca’dimdirah. Ca’dimdirah.
He did. Timothy could not tell what, exactly, Charles did, but he knew he felt wet and hot and dirty, and he knew he was being fucked. He was on his knees with a strange man between them, he had his face buried in moldy carpet in a room that ached with cold, and he opened himself and let himself be taken with mouth and tongue and hands and breath. He held himself still, finding a strange peace in being the object, of being so removed from his art that he was in that moment just what Smith had called him: a slave to pleasure. It soothed parts of him he had not known were aching. There were so many dangers. So many shadows. And yet in this odd, unexpected dance, there was also a strange light.
He came abruptly. The orgasm was so hard, such a push and void that for a moment he thought he
had
only pissed, but when he opened his eyes and looked back at himself from beneath the tent of his body, he saw the pool of white he had made. He saw too Charles Perry’s knees between his own. The sight gave him a quiet sort of comfort, and he smiled as he shut his eyes again.
When Charles eased him down to the side, resting on his hip, Timothy did not fight him. He tucked his arm beneath his face and watched Charles settle back against the couch, wearing nothing but a necklace much like Jonathan’s medallion. Charles reached for the bottle and took another drink, but his hand was shaking. His naked body glistened with sweat, caking his hair to the sides of his face.
Sated, his body still humming from release, Timothy smiled. “Thank you,
charisa
.”
“You’re welcome.” Charles put down the bottle, smiling back, but he still had an edge on him. “Wish I had a cigarette or a dram. I wasn’t joking about being an addict.”
“Bad for your body,” Timothy said.
“So is Smith.” Charles spread his feet and let his arms rest over his knees, giving Timothy a good view of his sex, which was hard and pointing upward.
It was also, Timothy noticed, covered with the same profane marks that covered his arms.
Charles caught him looking and took himself in his hand a little self-consciously. “More henna.”
Timothy’s eyes were tracing the rest of him. “You have scars too. Though they are…strange.”
“Some are from the mundane sort of accidents,” Charles said. “Knives in an alley, falls when too drunk to navigate stairs, angry lovers with blunt instruments. But the ones you’re noticing are Smith’s.” He grimaced and pointed to the inside of his thigh. “It’s a sort of vise thing.” He tried to smile, but the gesture was pained. “Sometimes I can’t help fighting back, so he’s taken to bolting me in place, as it were.” He rubbed gently at the raw, red flesh. “The torture doesn’t bother me like I thought it would. It used to seem the scariest sort of thing, being hurt on purpose, over and over again. I heard about the Cloister monks in the stories from the Continental War. And I saw the evidence of what Father had done to Andrea and to others, and when I heard of both of these things, I felt sick. I never thought I could bear it. But it’s oddly easier than I thought. It sounds insane, but you…get used to the pain. Or at least I did.” His hand stopped stroking his thigh and fell back to the floor. “It’s what it does to my mind and my insides. That I keep thinking will kill me.”
“It’s because you’re strong.” Timothy’s accent was thicker; he was too tired to try and flatten it out. He wished he could speak in Catalian, because the words were hard to find in Etsian. “To rape the body is nothing if the mind does not come along. You have a strong understanding of your body, more than most. You understand it as an extension of your mind. But Smith has found the way into your mind, your secret door. And he does not come in love.”
Charles shrugged. “I’ve lived a long time without love. And even with Andrea, when I thought it was love, it was still just good sex. I don’t understand why it’s so different with Smith, why I can’t separate myself.”
“
Ma’to it qu’er a liera
,” Timothy said. “All of us yearn for love, and there, charisha, is both beauty and pain. Love is our sun. We cannot live without it.”
A cloud passed over Charles’s face, and he ducked his head to try to hide the pain. His laugh was hollow. He said nothing.
Timothy held out his hand. “Come. Come here.”
He came cautiously, like a boy crawling across the carpet fishing for a smile, trying to make light by brushing a kiss against Timothy’s hip. Timothy motioned him forward, and soon they lay side by side, faces inches apart and lit by the orange glow of the fire.
Charles stroked Timothy’s face and ran his hands over his neck and shoulders. “You are so soft,” he whispered. He slid a hand over Timothy’s chest, his stomach, then up again, back to his breast, which he began to knead lightly. “You are soft but hard.” Charles nuzzled Timothy’s nose, his cheek, and closed his fingers over the hard peak of Timothy’s nipple. “You are perfect.”
Timothy nuzzled back, seeking his mouth, taking his lips with gentle fierceness, coaxing them open, suckling each before dipping inside, claiming and soothing at once. The baetlbeth was still buzzing in his head, but there was so much more than that humming in him now. There was magic here, magic
he
believed in. Charles slid one hand between their bodies to stroke Timothy’s hard, ready sex while his other continued sweet torment of his nipple. Timothy shuddered, then sagged, then broke the kiss and tipped his head back, arching his neck in offering as pleasure rose inside him again.
“You make me feel good and whole,” Charles whispered, his lips hot against Timothy’s neck. “How do you do that?”
“I do nothing. You do it to yourself.” Timothy opened his thigh, then drew it up high to rest against Charles’s hip, opening himself to his lover’s eager hand. “I am only lying here, submitting to you.”
“It’s more than that. It’s—I don’t know.” Charles’s hands stilled, and he buried his mouth against Timothy’s chest. “Smith asked me once what it was that I wanted. Not from him, he said, but in general. I told him nothing. That there wasn’t anything. I couldn’t see it. And then he showed me. I had a dream that was a nightmare—it was why I came to him, to get rid of it—but he took me through it, past the wraiths that tried to drag me down, and when he did, at the end, I saw the Goddess. She was golden and beautiful and strong, and she looked at me, and she loved me. And I wanted her. I finally wanted something. And Smith raped it. I’ve never seen her since, and I’ve lived nothing but the nightmare. But I can’t forget that wanting.”
“Charisha.” Timothy shut his eyes and buried his lips in Charles’s damp hair.
Charles’s hands found Timothy’s hips and kneaded gently. “What I don’t understand is how it’s better,” he whispered. “I don’t understand how I feel more alive being tortured and raped every day, used against my own family for someone else’s selfish quest—why am I happier than I was before? What is wrong with me? I want a phantom! She isn’t real. She was just a dream, despite how it felt during his spell. Am I such a fool that I keep hoping I am wrong, that she will appear? That I would give up everything, anything, even my life, to feel the way I felt in that dream for the span of just one heartbeat? That I hope Smith is right, that she is coming to find me? That even if I’m leading her to him, I can’t care, because at least, before we are both destroyed, I might see her again? Does that make me terrible, as much a monster as he?”
“
Donna, charisha—non, non, non
.” Timothy pulled his lover’s face up and kissed him soundly on the mouth. “Hush. Hush. Hush, quiera.”
The word was out before he could stop it, but once it was, Timothy went still, hearing the echo inside his head.
Charles smiled against Timothy’s lips. “That’s lovely, that word. Will you say it again?”
Timothy shut his eyes, feeling dizzy.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t realize what I said. It doesn’t matter.
I know. I know what I just said, and what it means.
“Quiera,” he said again, so soft it was like a kiss. “Quiera.”
Every utterance of it seemed to bring Charles more peace, even as it made Timothy more unsettled. “It’s beautiful,” Charles said. “What does it mean?”
“Complicated.” Timothy swallowed hard, opening his mouth to try and take in more air. “It’s a…magic word.”
“Catalians don’t have magic words,” Charles reminded him.
“Just one. Just that one.” Timothy kissed him again to stop his mouth. “Touch me. Put your mouth on me again. Make love to me.”
“Say the word again.” Charles’s mouth was trailing down his cheek, over his chin, but he was moving slowly, teasing him. “Say that word. Qu…quair-ah.”
Timothy clutched Charles’s shoulders and tried to push him down.
Don’t. Just fuck me, like you said. Don’t do this to me.
But Charles was tender, not rough. “Being with you feels like that moment in the dream.” He placed tender kisses on Timothy’s collarbone. “I shouldn’t say that. My chest feels tight when I think about it, because why would you think of me that way, and there it will be again, that light, that hope, seen, then gone again. But when you say that word—” He pressed his forehead against Timothy’s chest, his shoulders sagging. “In the dream, I saw the Goddess and thought if I could be with her, she could make me happy. I
knew
she could. But you… Goddess bless, Timothy, I hear that word and I want you, because when you say it, I can see…”
Timothy gave up and slid his fingers down through Charles’s hair. “Yourself, quiera. You see yourself.”
“Yes,” Charles whispered and clutched at him. “Say it. Please. Say it again.”
Timothy did. He said it over and over again, a litany as Charles trailed his mouth and hands down Timothy’s body. Passive, he thought fleetingly, abstractly as he kept up his chant. I have never been so passive. He felt like the earth, flat and open and vulnerable, unable to move, unable to stop his invader, but he did not mind, because his lover was so gentle, so strong.
Honor
. There was love, and there was honor here.
It hurt. But so long as Charles kept touching him, he thought he might survive.
When Charles lifted his head and put his hips where his head had been, when he lifted Timothy’s legs and held him up by his hands as he opened him, Timothy went gladly, thinking again of the earth, of the mountains opening for the river, for the sun to stream between them, for the air to pass through the gap, to be filled. When Charles moved inside him, he arched to meet him; he could not speak any longer, but he didn’t need to. The words, the drug, the strange magic of this stranger night spun around them and took them somewhere else, somewhere beautiful and soft, to a garden no men or fire or stones could ever destroy.
And he saw her appear, gold this time, hovering over him, her tears like diamond shining behind her veil.
“No,” he whispered, trying to bat her away. “Not now.” When Charles paused, Timothy opened his eyes and shook his head. “I didn’t mean you.”
Charles titled his head to the side and lifted an eyebrow. “Is there someone else making love to you I should know about?”
She was still hovering there, above his head, and Timothy wanted very much to choke her for stopping the spell Charles’s lovemaking had cast. “The ghost,” he ground out, glaring at it. “I spoke of it earlier. It seems to have returned.”
“This place is said to be full of ghosts,” Charles said. “The Old Ones. They are wraiths, haunted and lost.”
“There is only one haunting me,” Timothy said. “She doesn’t look old. She isn’t lost; she’s a nuisance. And she hides behind a veil.”
Charles’s grip on him faltered; he was staring down at Timothy with a strange expression on his face. “What does she look like?”
“Tall as I am, though sometimes she seems like a giantess. Dark hair like the people of my country, and it comes in great curls all the way to her waist. A dress made of sheer fabric, like wind. And a veil. Always the veil. She was gold at the inn and blue in the tower, but here she is gold again.”
Charles gripped Timothy’s hips tightly, pressing his own against him in excitement. “That is the woman from my dream. That is the Goddess.” His eyes went dark, his expression hooding in new passion. “Timothy—” He began to move, his hands tightening, holding Timothy still as he pushed deeper. “
Timothy
.”
Timothy shut his eyes, gasping now as Charles’s thrusts turned into waves, rolling movements that seemed to touch the back of his throat, lighting up his spine and sending fire through his veins. But the ghost was there still, not speaking, just weeping and hovering. And finally Timothy could take no more.
“
Come
,” he said silently and opened to her.
She entered him, sliding into his mouth, and then the world went as gold as she was. He flew up into the stars, becoming as large as the cosmos, making every movement Charles made inside him an explosion, sending him even higher. He came, but he didn’t come with his body: it was as if in his orgasm, he drew the whole world inside him, every particle of it, until he was the world, and the world was him. He felt Charles’s pleasure building, felt it because Charles was in the world too, but he realized in that moment that Charles was, in fact, not
wholly
in the world. Not yet. When he came, when he came in this moment, in this place—when it happened—
when it happened—
Charles jerked, bucked, and cried out, but in pain, not pleasure.
The world shattered.
His body had never left, but when Timothy came back from those heights, he felt slammed, as if he had fallen from heaven onto the carpet again. His sex was hard and aching, and Charles was not inside him. Charles was lying on the floor, shaking, gasping, clutching his groin as he wept.