#so this is my first time I've set out to write smut specifically uhhhhhhlmk what you think! ahhh!

[jainydoe]

Delirium

summary: She’s an angel, he’s a dog. Or, the confessions of a white tenured male.

tw: smut, mentions of death, violence

In his dreams are mausoleums. Rows sky high of those he’s trounced. Boys and girls from Schoolyard’s Past. A stranger from a conference who murmured about his adornments - Volkarin is just so … tragically nouveau riche. 

Johanna. With her hair and her laugh, laid dead with a frozen smile.

He keeps them all. Collected. Strolls along the cool, clean corridors and considers their carcasses. Malleable. Under his thumb. Under his spell, should he wish. Ripped from rest and compelled to answer any inquiry that may flit across his mind. He’s built a recent wing. Young men and women and. Taashes. Tucked neatly and filed amongst the masses. 

Then there’s her. 

For her, he’s built an atrium. A private temple where she’s kept in glass. Perpetually moonlit. Preserved. Perfected. In his dreams, he lifts the top of her enclosure open, rushes a breath across icy cheeks. Hours pass and he stares. Confesses secrets. Fears. Wants and desires. He thinks of the different ways she could die and how each would draw and quarter the soul until he’s scattered so distantly, he’d be impossible to make whole. Her, hung in a frozen suspension. Mouth agape and rigor mortis set in. His face would slot so carefully under her breasts, and he’d keep her there, midair, just to ache and sob into her ribs. Or her, burned and charred, body fruitlessly attempting to stay with him. Resisting the path to ash. He’d grip the air, magic rising the fire higher and higher, screaming into its lashings in a jealous rage. That it could consider itself worthy enough to touch her. To take her. Consume her. It takes a few weeks of knowing Rook before he’s begun desecrating the other crypts in his dreamscape. Every gentleman, lady and tramp who accost her with their gaze, with their booming want, earn a place in the Hall of the Damned. He keeps them in an area far from her tomb. The moonlight doesn’t grace their nameplates. When he imagines their spirits pleading in the dark, scared and confused, he sleeps like a babe. 

The waking hours are cruel and unusual. At home, every chapter of the day is one to celebrate. The mornings, ripe with expectation and promises. Brunches. Afternoons of discussion and lounging and napping and laughing and dinners overflown with debate and passion. He misses conversation. The type that leaves you buzzed and amped. He catches it sometimes with Bellara or Neve, but Rook leaves him itchy and ready in a way he hasn’t been since his boyhood. If she were a girl in a club and he were a boy with two drinks, he’d give her that smile that always works and kiss her hand to go the extra mile. He’d tell her he knows a spot in the Memorial Gardens and play the gentlemen who won’t offer to fuck her right away because modesty will have her gagging for it. But this is the real world and he’s pushing fifty. The closest he can get to romance is pouring her wine at the dinner table and laying on the pet names like he’s got plenty to spare. He’s started pampering himself. On days where she’d rather have the company of the boy or the other boy, he spends hours rubbing creams on himself, languidly dressing, steps out onto the balcony in his room and thinks about what she’d say if she saw him in just his dress socks, hair ungelled, five o’clock shadow shading his bone structure in that way he’s been told is haunting. He hopes the look he’d give her would haunt her. Etch itself into her memory and burrow into the marrow, to the point where she couldn’t ever feel pleasure again without thinking of his. Remembering the way he’d whisper her name before coming undone at the seams.

Tonight isn’t anything special - not in the grand scheme of things - but he lets the perfumed oil drop onto the paper-thin dip of his inner wrist, taking a deep, deep pull of the leather-booze-sweat-and-musky combo that he knows will drive her mad. He watches her in marketplaces, eyes running over the twinkling bottles of imported goods too precious to touch. Curved glass, inviting and seductive, begging to lay on flesh. She has caked blood on her chest and makes sure her steps are less heavy, presence less imposing. The salespeople offer, nonetheless, smiles wide and hands outstretched, and he feels his shoulders tighten as she wipes her hands along her armor, picks at her skin, begins the fruitless endeavor of trying to dig the last bits of dirt from under her nails. 

Sorry, I’m afraid we can’t afford anything today. 

A lie, though one she might not realize she’s telling. She’s a scrounger. A scrappy, makeshift trader. He wants to ask how she can keep affording all the sleekest, strongest armor and charming home adornments, things that make their situation less of a shit-fuck and more of a happy-accident, but he knows she’ll never tell. I’ve got to keep some secrets, she’d smile, impish and nymph-like, an invitation for him to peel off all her layers and share a secret he’s kept for this whole entire time. One that’ll keep them whispering to each other all night. In the darkest hours, he lets the mind wander to flushed lips, reddened limbs, reddened teeth from the caked blood he’s licked her clean of. She’d be disgusted and he’d be drunk, covering her in every shiny thing of his he has to offer. 

Marketplaces are a dangerous setting for him. Tempting in their quick releases. I saw this and thought of you, and I saw that and thought of you, I’m practically always thinking of you, do you think of me, how often, how deeply, how about you show me, right here, right now, before either of us have a chance to think twice. 

Wearing the oil is the little thing he allows himself, a pathetic tether to the fantasy he’s let play out. The Rook he’s created from stolen glances, lopsided conversations, dinner jokes and morning tea and midnight-solo-hand-fucks where he can ramble all the things he loves about her and it isn’t unwanted, it makes her cum - that Rook would smell the fact he’s wearing their scent, and make a point of having his sheets smell only of her for the next week. She’d be furious. She’d be deliriously in love. He should make his way to dinner, already. He’s expected. Who will ask questions no one wants to answer if Emmrich is spiraling all on his own?

“So, after all that, what did you do?”

They’re trading adventures amongst themselves, this medley of gritty, young things. Stories of near-death and past lives they’ve left behind - it helps distract from the. Well. Emmrich doesn’t share much because when you work in death long enough, you learn only the other people who work in death care to talk about it. He’d hoped Lucanis would be a shoulder to gab on. He couldn’t have been more wrong. He makes a note to visit the Necropolis soon and only realizes the table has gone silent when Rook is all cheeks ablaze and girlish hair-tucking. Her eyes dance around the table, avoiding Emmrich, entirely. He probably would, too. People who don’t contribute don’t get the benefits of worthwhile attention. A lesson he teaches his students all too well. There are too many other, more important things to fail at here, though. Oil and restriction are the two indulgences he’ll allow, he’s decided. And another glass of wine. Dalish? Huh. Good for them. 

“Well,” she continues, “there’s more than one way to convince a guard you’re better off unchained.”

Harding’s guffaw shakes the table and he almost lights a necrotic pool on her chair. Taash is slapping Rook’s back and Neve is laughing into her glass. By the time he’s back in his body, aware of the room, of his senses, Rook is the only person sitting at the table. He can picture it so clearly. Her, chained. Stretched. Arms above her and belly exposed, a deceptively innocent cross of one leg over the other. A pretty please and an I promise I’ll never commit another crime ever again, I swear. He thinks about gripping the hair at the top of her neck and asking how she can be so cavalier about life, constantly toeing the edge. When she regales the dinner table with stories of old friends, people she used to know, he’d imagine meeting them, bringing a bottle of shockingly Dalish wine, something local and real and so down-to-earth. He’d turn up the charm, make them all laugh and later that night spread her legs, his chest against her back as his fingers dipped down, tracing the edge of her underwear, asking if he’s performed to her satisfaction. It’s miserable. It’s juvenile. The fact that the thing that drives him over the edge is imagining himself as a fixture in her life. Her charming companion. Her smart and funny guy that buys her chocolates and treasures and knows that when he touches her right there, she has to shut her eyes because he’s just too much. He’s taut. He’s on edge. And it’s because he knows she’s lying. 

“Heading to bed, Emmrich?”

He smiles, rising from his chair and crossing over to the fireplace. He reaches into his breast pocket, pulling out the gold cigarette case he’s kept on deck, nowadays. Smoking used to be something he considered a young man’s game, reserved for the insanity one feels only in their twenties. He’s realised that feeling is a long-forgotten acquaintance whose not only decided they’re moving in, but that they’re marrying Emmrich and pregnant with twins - Starvation and Enslavement. It’s too late to do anything about it. The nursery’s all picked out. 

He crouches down on one knee, inching closer to the fire until the flames nearly kiss him and he can puff out a bit, igniting. “Forgive me, my dear. Forgot my lighter on my desk.” He can lie, too. For a moment like this. He knows what he looks like, sharp and wolfish and the fire paints him a dashing devil instead of a foaming beast. This little move is one of the few tricks he learned from the only other girl who invoked The Acquaintance. Come on, Volkarin, don’t be such a coward. Fucking popinjay. “That’s quite a tale you told, earlier. The one with the guard and chains.”

Her eyes are on him as he rises and leans his shoulder against the mantel, controlled and poised like a former ballerina.

“I’ve lived an exciting life, I know.” 

He grins. “Remind me, what did you say you did, exactly?”

She knows he knows. Years of training students keeps one’s finger on the pulse of casual deception. She crosses her arms and lifts her chin in the particular way she does when she wants to appear leader-like. “I blew him. And while he was seeing stars I locked him back in my cell and got away.”

He twitches. His nose burns. “Charming, as always, but I’m afraid that’s not quite what you said earlier. You said,” he uses the cigarette to point at her, “that you took him on your cot and locked him onto it. I remember for two reasons. The first,” he inhaled, “I found it puckish and creative. The second,” he exhaled, letting the smoke twirl away from them both as the tip of his thumb started tracing his mustache, “I know for a fact they don’t keep cots in those jail cells. Too comfortable. A distraction from contrition.” He looks at her shoes. Her hands. Rolls his gaze up to her eyes. “Did you really have to sleep your way to freedom, or was that just a show for our more easily entertained party members?” 

She’s enraged and embarrassed, but not too much to point out the obvious. “I don’t know, Emmrich. For a guy who remembers to bring a handkerchief to battle, I highly doubt you happened to forget your lighter on your desk.” In a flash of nerve and steel, she slaps his chest, feeling into the pocket of his vest and slipping out the matching, gold zippo. “Do you think I’m someone easily entertained?”

He looks at her nose, her chin, the bottom of her eyes, counting each lash as he counts his breaths. Lets himself smile. To relax her. To challenge her. To beg her. “I’m afraid if the likes of prison guards and roguish younglings can keep your attention,” he sighs, tossing the rest of the cigarette into the flames, watching it become engulfed, “then I couldn’t possibly attempt the conquest of your favor.” He knows what he’s just admitted. Feels it in the tips of his fingers as he wills them not to dance along his thighs or itch at his neck. Be calm. Be kind. Be careful. 

“What would that look like? If you,” she’s shivering, “If you did attempt?”

“Likely frightening.” That makes her laugh. He’d do anything to make her laugh again. But he’d really do anything to shut up that laughter, afterward. Spin it into something breathy and relentless. He wonders if this is what it feels like once your mind is lost. Thinks of cellars and bugs and the stench and rot of insanity. He’d look so perfectly appropriate in creamy cotton, pulled tight, all to keep him from the frenzied need to keep touching himself, no matter how much it hurts, because the ghost of her memory is most present when he’s wanton and weak. It’s not a bad outcome. He would gladly take the isolation of the fractured mind, shattered glass reflections all of Rook, 

Rook, 

Rook, 

Rook, 

over the pounding loneliness he’s known all too well. 

He watches as she looks at her hands, dirt chunking from under her nails, and she smiles something light and tempting. Maybe she wasn’t lying about that guard, after all. Who wouldn’t unshackle a maiden so sweet? He doesn’t care if she’s a siren. He’ll hold his breath until he chokes. “Truth be told, my dear,” here goes nothing, “to vie for your affections, I’d probably pester you with questions, act a fool and ignore any indication you might feel the same in the hopes you’d eventually leave me to perish in peace.” It breaks his heart to watch her frown. Don’t pity him. Don’t look at him. He’s not a wilting lily, he’s a dying ember who only needs the air from her lungs to lift him back to life. He was making peace with death, before her. It’s something he’ll never forgive her for. 

She lifts a hand to his jaw, delicate and rough, thumb running under his cheekbones. “Well, if I were to be in a similar position, perhaps I’d darken your doorstep every day, lose my nerve if I catch your eye too long and fashion myself an expert lover in the hopes it’d catch your attention.” 

She wants him and he’s a makeshift dragon tamer. Scrappy. Scrounging for any hint of interest. His desire is an archdemon he’s been holding back with shoelaces. “My dear, if your intentions are sincere, I fear what may become of me.” 

A girl possessed, the blacks of her eyes blow wider as the sharp of her teeth begin glinting in the firelight. He’s choking. “You should be afraid.”

Once they’ve crossed the threshold of his door, she pushes him against the slab, lips shiny and breath shallow. Her fingers are clumsy with youth and he’s bumbling out apologies for the mess, for the cold, for anything that might make her leave. He wants to bring her by the fire, warm her up, take his time with his meal. He hears a rip in his dress shirt and considers offering a proper spanking, but before he can assume the position she declares “Get on the table.” He cocks a shoulder and tilts his head. Smiles. Mind blank. 

“I beg your pardon?”

Her strength should come as no surprise and he regrets his yelp when his thighs scrape against the stone. He’s in briefs and briefly wonders if this is where she kills him. Lets him bleed out, a martyr, her sacrificial lamb. He’d keep his eyes on her as the lights go out, glad he could finally perform to her satisfaction. When she yanks the last bits of cover off of him, the cold much more biting and mocking, he nearly crosses his legs and asks if she’d like to join him for dinner sometime. 

“Lie down and spread your legs.” He laughs. The look on her face says to shut up. 

If she’s impressed by his figure she makes no show of it, stripping herself down and, like a lightning rod, gaining electric power with every item she removes. Once she’s as bitten by the cold as he is, puckered and goose-pimpled, she steps up onto the stone, between his legs, staring down at him. His mouth waters. “Tell me you want me.”

“I want you.”

“Tell me you need me.”

“Darling-”

“Say it.”

He feels himself getting harder. “I need you.” “I’m going to kill you tonight.”

“I know.”

“And when I’m finished, you’re going to thank me for it.”

“I will.” 

She wastes no time warming him up. Her mouth is boiling on the tip of him and he angles to scrape the back of her throat if just to put her on the back foot. In response, she grips his hips, nails digging into the bone as she lowers and lowers and lowers until his toes curl and throat tightens. She’s a harlot and a harpy and his heartbeat is pounding through his head. Hands are pathetic and past conquests no match for her pretty little mouth. Her drool is dripping everywhere and he’s parched. “Let me taste you.”

“No.”

She scratches at his inner thighs, the soft little points where he’s hairless and shallow and the chills running down his scalp make him feel almost feverish. Good. He hopes he infects her. He hopes the little bit of poison that’s soon to fill her cheeks will spark delirium, binding her to him, his kiss the only antidote. Her hair is so shiny and he’s seeing stars. “Kiss me.”

She pops off and grips him like it’s a weapon. “No.” The back of his head thunks in anguish. 

“Please, I’ll do anything, I’ll say anything, please, my darling, if I could just,” With a final lick he cums, shiny and sticky on his stomach, matting his hair. She leans over him, commanding and resolute. A demon. A creature of evil. A girl who will haunt him forever. 

“Take me to dinner.”

“I will.”

“Buy me something nice, too.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll fuck you when you prove you’re better off unchained.”

“Thank you.”

That night, he dreams he’s trapped in a glass casket and she sits in the pews, smiling at him. He’s never slept better.