The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 06

"Has she made us want those things?" Sorin mumbled into Sparrow's ear with hot breath. "Or are we just obeying natural law by loving her? What else could a man possibly do but devote himself to such a being?"

Sparrow hummed. The apricot candlelight blurred in his vision. He closed his eyes. His spine felt like an unfurling stem in the rain. He wriggled into the furrow of fat down Sorin's chest, perfectly fitted to him. The steam billowed with his long, lazy exhale.

The turquoise surface of the bath rippled as Sorin moved subtly. "I get angry with people that wrong me, human people, because we are the same. We have to live in a collective. We all feel the same pain and the same joy. We all have the same needs. None of us are above each other, so we have a responsibility to be good to each other. And I try to be, so when I don't get the same in return, I am angry." His slick tip rested against Sparrow's opening, stopping his breath. "By nature, I do not have to earn the goodness of men." His voice gruffed, teeth grazing Sparrow's ear. "I am owed it. I deserve your goodness."

"Take it," Sparrow whispered.

Sorin's breath rushed over his torso and shimmered the soap bubbles. He slipped inside Sparrow's willing body with the silver slickness of being underwater. Smooth pleasure spread through Sparrow, chased by a shudder that made Sorin's cock tremble deliciously inside him.

Sorin sighed like a snoring boar and began to move softly, just a little, just enough to keep the pleasure and the warm water lapping rhythmically over them. He kept speaking quietly into Sparrow's ear. Sparrow rolled his cheek onto the comfortable shoulder and purred. Sorin's voice rolled into a thick, doped mumble, but the clarity in his thoughts seemed to have sharpened, almost like this was his favourite song and he knew it backwards. "But her? I share no existence with her. She is a different entity, one with different rights. It is an abomination for a sheep to eat another sheep. But for a wolf to eat a sheep? Nothing more natural in the world."

Pleasure and water. Pleasure and water. Darkness and water. Darkness and pleasure. Sparrow was flowing. "Uhuh... I see..."

"So, no, I don't get angry with her." He slid deeper. "She can do anything she wants to me. It is her right as a wolf."

"Oh..." Sparrow moaned and it eddied into a grumble. "The difference is, sheep don't fall in love with wolves. They don't want to be devoured. I'm not livestock."

"Alright." Sorin stayed deep and twisted his hips. The weight of water moved on Sparrow and the weight of the thick, eternally wanting cock pressed inside him. Steam kissed his eyelids. He wrapped his arms about himself and rubbed Sorin's biceps, mounding with the slow ooze of muscle as he ground gently into Sparrow, murmuring, "Then be human. Humanity is special to her. She treasures it, even as she carves it up. It's diamond to her. She mines it." His cock sheathed deeper still and swelled, the sensation pouring over Sparrow and making him writhe in the tight wrap of his arms. His body moved on Sorin's like a river against the bank. Sorin groaned and thrust with a little more purpose, his torso hardening beneath him. "Let yourself be human and her be something else. It's the most wonderful feeling in the world."

"But..." Sparrow's question was lost in a wave of pleasure, splashing in his nerves as the water rocked and stroked his balls between his spread legs. He gulped and murmured shakily, "But how can there ever be a bridge between those two places? Where can I meet her again?"

Sorin's fingers stole down Sparrow's quivering abs and curled around his thickening cock. A long, slow, tight stroke webbed the water with electricity. "In pleasure." He rolled his hips and carried Sparrow through the wave. "In pain." He palmed his tip, sparking with sensation. "In worship." Thrust. "In service." Stroke. "In captivity." Deep. "In promise." Tight. "In protection." Twist. "In patience." Swish. "In trust." Harder. "In the moment of surrender just before she raises you up." He thrust so deep he lifted Sparrow, his shining cock cresting out of the tiny, glistening bubbles. "If you ever went to Church, then how can you question this now? She craves our humanity like God does. Like we ask Him to." His touch. His depth. His softness. There was a pressure in Sparrow's throat with the sweetness of it. Every word layered more steam on his skin. "The only difference between her and God is that she actually grants your prayers."

He kissed Sparrow's cheek. Sparrow almost wept, water within and without. Sorin gripped and thrust hard, grunting and sending a pulse through Sparrow and the bath. Sparrow gasped. "Until she kills you."

Sorin held him fast and moved in him hungrily, stirring, aching, breathless. "And God doesn't kill you? God takes life. The mountain takes life. Nature takes life. She's just nature. In all its bounty and danger. Do you hate the mountain because men have fallen on its rocks?"

Sparrow clung to him and mewled, trembling, full. "No."

"You forgive it, right?"

"N-no." He rolled his head to nuzzle into Sorin's neck and smell the last of his musk under the tingling soap. "It's..." He ground his cock in Sorin's restless squeeze. "It's not about forgiveness. It's not a forgivable thing. It doesn't occur to me to either hate it or forgive it." He swallowed the end of his sentence in a moan and a curse and braced his feet on the bottom of the bath to take the tender thrusts. "It's there and death is with it, and that..." He arched his spine and sighed high. "That hurts." He pushed into Sorin's touch. The pleasure was speeding up in his blood. He could feel his pulse in his wound and it felt irresistible. "But I feel the pain and I heal and it becomes my home again. It cradles me, it loves me in its way, and..." Up and down, they bobbed in the water like flotsam and jetsam. Sorin strummed the tip of Sparrow's cock and throbbed inside him. "And I love it," Sparrow groaned. "But the men who die on the rocks are not part of my love with the mountain. That's their footfall." He reached back and raked his fingers into Sorin's curls and grasped. "I mourn them. I thank them for teaching me what I am." The stickiness of the misty air made him prickle and rasp. "They fold into me and the mountain." The sensation welled, made his head swim. "Its history." He tensed and held Sorin inside him. "Its spirit." Sorin moaned hot on his face. He was so hot. Boiling. The pleasure was under Sparrow's skin and in his belly. He shimmied his shoulder blades and embedded himself in Sorin's softness. "But it is still my home." A surge. Sorin's cock thudded hard and shot sensation through his body. He arched. He gasped. His muscles thrummed. "It is..." he choked on a cry as Sorin snarled sensuously and caressed his cock. "It is still..." Heat was building in his body like a tropical storm. The humidity of the bath was stifling. He was melting, disintegrating into the water, turning to steam. "It is still my love." The pleasure overflowed. Sorin released an earthquake groan that rippled through the water. Sparrow was filled with honey heat. The fist on his cock clamped and a final wave of drenching desire cast over him and purged his body. The crystal bubbles swirled with pearl. Sorin pumped Sparrow, easing every drop of sensation from him as he sighed and whimpered and twitched. The end of his words dribbled out of him in a muddled moan. "My place in its vastness. My time in its ancientness." He liquified. He slumped against Sorin, eyes fluttering, soap sparkle dazzling them blearily. He snuggled onto Sorin's chest and rested in the rumbling, deep breaths as he relaxed. His great, pounding heart drowned Sparrow's hearing.

Sorin held him close and kissed his hair. "I like talking to you, Sparrow."

"You do?" Sparrow murmured sleepily.

"Mm. You say whatever you're thinking."

Sparrow chuckled shyly. "Not all the time."

Sorin chuckled too, bouncing Sparrow on his chest. "Then you're not afraid to speak before you've got all your thoughts worked out. It's like watching a flower grow."

Sparrow snorted. "Slow and fragile?"

Sorin cupped his chin and turned his face up to look at him. His blue eyes were twinkling with the candlelight on the bubbles. His brow was misty, tiny droplets in his fringe and freckles. "There is nothing fragile about pushing through dirt to turn your face up to the sun."

Sparrow gazed up at him. He was far from the tormented soul he'd seen last night. Last night? It felt longer ago than that. He swallowed. He couldn't feel his wound. He pushed up with a trickle of water and kissed Sorin's lips. Sorin kissed him tenderly, the tip of his tongue venturing into his mouth, his fingers wandering on his back.

Something came to Sparrow through the mist. He tugged away and hauled his tired body out of the bath. It sloshed and streamed as he clambered out and perched on the edge, cooling too quickly. He fished up Cyrus' trousers and searched the folds for the pocket. On their way to the prison, he'd asked to stop at his room to collect something. He withdrew it in a closed fist and carefully held out his hand to Sorin. Sorin blinked and peered at Sparrow's hand. Sparrow opened it. In his palm was the little red and white woven bow, looping around a pewter horseshoe charm, the mărțișor the stranger had left behind. Sparrow watched Sorin's face as he took it in. He wasn't reacting.

"I found this," he prompted. "I think it's yours."

Sorin peered closer, one eyebrow raised curiously.

"Do you remember being given it?"

Sorin wet his lip. "Maybe." He scratched his hair. "It's more like I remember it being given to someone who looked like me. Before."

Sparrow's heart skimmed over a beat, like a pebble. "Before?"

"Before I died," Sorin clarified casually, then frowned. "No. Before I was alive." The dark silver cupped his light irises. "I look at it and it's like showing a child a sliver of their umbilical cord. Familiar, but alien." He spoke slowly, learning his feeling as he went. "It is mine. But also it was a tether to another existence. A tether that's been cut. An existence that could only be for so long and would suffocate me now."

Sparrow sat with that for a long moment.

The hushed sound of soap fizzing and wicks crackling.

He took Sorin's hand delicately, laid the mărțișor in his palm, and folded his hand closed. "Well," he said with a smile, "I don't want you to stop existing."

Sorin's mouth quirked, the slightly haunting look back in his eye. "Maybe you could give it to her?" He grinned widely, darkly. "As a trophy."

The warmth faded in Sparrow's body. He squeezed Sorin's hand and leaned down, glancing at the tattoo on his wrist, the rising sun over the mountain. He kissed his forehead. "Try to keep it. For as long as you can."

Sorin hummed and tilted his face to steal a kiss from Sparrow's puckered lips. Sparrow took a deep breath of the enlivening, dreamy, perfumed steam. He stroked his thumb along Sorin's blush. "Cyrus was waiting for me. I'm going to tell him he can go. Let's stay together a little while."

Sorin kissed him again and smiled against his lips.

*

Pisces' twin tails of starlight danced in the deep, still pool of night. The air was fresh and earthy after the long day's rain. The din of it had invaded Vestalia's sleep, making her dream of the clatter of metal and then of hissing, falling ash. She sat in the window seat of her bedroom, bare feet curled under her, gazing up at Pisces splashing merrily about in the vastness, the very picture of innocence. Starlight had such purity to it. Her window was open a crack, the chilled air brushing her arms and chest in her black, rippling nightgown. A breeze skipped across her and made her shiver.

"Don't let yourself get cold."

A gruff, homey voice made her start. She shot her sharp eyes to her bedroom door, glinting flint in the darkness. She hadn't lit the hearth or the candles yet. The velvet drapes framed her like a creature emerging from the depths of a mere.

Cyrus was closing the door softly behind him. His grey shirt was oddly uncreased, the scent of lavender shrouded his soil and bone smell. He'd taken some care over himself, he must need her tonight.

She rolled her eyes mockingly and turned back to the stars. "Learn to knock."

Cyrus' moustache twitched. "I don't think I've made you jump in fifty years."

"I jumped because I shouldn't have to listen out for someone who doesn't knock."

Cyrus started to amble further into the room, scooping up her crimson robe draped over the foot of the vast bed as he went. "I am a villain."

"You are." As he reached her, she stuck her hand up with a hint of sulk. He smiled, took it with the gentleness of holding a feather, and kissed it with lips like grasshopper wings. She smiled coyly. "But it's alright, because so am I."

Cyrus chuckled like conkers splitting. His eyes were a warm black tonight, just extinguished charcoal. She gave his finger a small tug. He handed her the robe and lowered himself like lumber to sit opposite her on the dark cushions, leaning heavily on the stone wall. She slipped the crimson velvet on, but left it open so as not to close off the breeze entirely. She stretched out her legs and put her feet in his lap. He took them like the branches of his fruit trees and began to massage them softly. She felt her slow blood warm in them. Tension began to shift out of her body. She released a low exhale and looked once more to bright, happy Pisces.

"I did knock," Cyrus said plainly, eyes on her feet. "You didn't hear it."

Vestalia frowned. "Oh."

"You must have been very deep in thought."

She shrugged.

"And I thought I'd better come and wake you up from it, before you sank into one of your motionless contemplations for days and days." He glanced knowingly at her.

She prodded his thigh with her toe. "I do not do that."

"There were cobwebs forming on you last time."

She barked a ringing laugh and kicked his hand. He grinned and caught her foot back up and worked the heel with his thumb. The sensation slinked pleasantly up her legs, easing her taut muscles. She hummed and shook out her hair, prickling in her scalp, and turned back to the stars. They winked at her conspiratorially. She didn't return it. There was a drifting weight in her body.

"I've driven him mad," she murmured plainly.

Cyrus kept up the gentle rhythm on her instep.

"He saw me as a refuge." She ran her talon fingernails through the hot iron ends of her hair.

"You don't care how people see you," Cyrus answered.

She cocked a thick, dark eyebrow at him. "Sometimes I worry that's all I care about. I'm a performer. I've always been a performer, for fifteen hundred years."

"Do you wear beautiful clothes when you have no guests?"

"Yes."

"Then you're not performing for other people, are you?"

She searched his face. He looked like he was working clay or carving wood, he had the centred focus of a craftsman. She smiled and puffed out through her nose. "You'd think I would have grown out of needing to perform to myself. At least there's some sense in doing it for others. We have to give each other energy, or we'd all shrivel up. But it's childish that I still need to play-act for my own benefit. I should know myself by now."

Cyrus stroked around her foot in his lap and clasped it cherishingly. He gave her a small squeeze to bring her eyes to his soft gaze. "Maybe you are simply unknowable."

It felt as if he had reached into her and lifted her heart in his steady hands. It was a familiar feeling. She smiled at him and tickled his palm with her toes. She huffed and pouted. "Should I have let him go?"

Cyrus made a heavy, rough sound and rolled his shoulders. "Well, it might have been easier for me. Scavenger or no, living humans wandering about make it harder to keep myself dignified."

Vestalia tutted and leaned forward, stroking his curls like a poodle's. "I've been neglecting you."

"No, no, no..." He waved his hand. "Well, yes."

She laughed. It chimed on the glass and winged down to the garden.

He grinned dully. "But the scraps of your attention are a blessing, you know that."

She ruffled his shaggy hair and danced her fingertips down his face to tug affectionately on his beard, smooth from washing. "Are you jealous?"

He tucked his chin and kissed her knuckles. "Are priests jealous when God has other worshippers?"

"Oh!" She flung herself dramatically backwards, hand to forehead. "He's too charming! I'm weak!"

Cyrus let out his rare, booming laugh, his face crinkling like paper. She chuckled, took his hand, and pulled him to stand with her. She led him to the wall beside the window, half his face in skeletal moonlight, half engulfed in red darkness. She reached up and rubbed his shoulders. Her voice fell to a soothing lilt. "How bad is it?"

Cyrus' face hardened a little. "I'm... tired."

She pushed him with her eyes.

He sighed his mechanical sigh. "You've fed me well. But..." He dropped his shoulders into her touch. "It's not just the hunger. It's the decay. It's like fraying at the edges of my brain. And when I'm working or when I'm with you, I have clarity. But, other times... it's like fibres being teased out of my mind and left in a tangle loose in my skull. If I do a single thing without being utterly deliberate then there's this strange fade and I almost see myself in a graveyard. I am stalking a graveyard all the time I am not carefully focused on my surroundings. And when your little morsel is running around with his cacophonous heartbeat..."

She swished her hair to the side. "Do what I do, listen to it like music."

He looked at her ruefully. "It's a song my body hasn't played in a long time. Hearing it can be..." He grimaced.

She nodded sympathetically. "I know, my shadow." She rubbed the jutting bone under his rigid muscle. "Let's give your body the song it needs."

She felt him relax. She took her hands away. Slowly, he removed his shirt, like a monk changing his habit, his eyes lowered reverently. The fabric swept away and moonlight touched him. His body looked cobbled together from bleached pebbles, his skin rough and dry, flaking in places and scarred in others, the scars less like healed living flesh and more like bloodless damage done to stone. Wirey, black hair tufted on his chest and belly and shoulders, greying with the grey tinge to his skin. The lavender soap scent drifted stronger from him. She smiled at the care he gave his body when he was to show it to her. She took his shirt from his hand and folded it carefully as she walked away from him. She laid it on the bed and passed to a large, arched, latticed cabinet across the room. She opened the double doors and the insides shone in the moonlight. Hung on a dozen dainty hooks on a cherry velvet backdrop were an array of expertly crafted coiled whips, sleek crops, rippling flails, broad paddles, and spiked tools tipped with twinkling crystal. She took a deep, satisfying breath of the clean, blood-tinted scent of gleaming leather and glinting steel. She ran her fingers along the dangling tails, electricity seeping up her arm. She let her hand rest before her mind, choosing with instinct. She alighted on a whip the length of her arm with a split tongue like a hissing snake's, braided from emerald and indigo like peacock feathers. It clicked eagerly as she unhooked it from the cabinet. When she turned back towards Cyrus, he was dutifully in position, palms to the wall with his broad back to her, creviced with muscle and bunched stiff around his hulking shoulders, his wild hair brushing the nape of his neck. He was standing perfectly still. Waiting.

She smiled and began to walk slowly towards him, the swish of her robe on the floor as serpentine as the whip, which she wrapped around her hand and tugged to make it creak. "Do you hear that?" she murmured, the lilt in her voice dropping lower. "This lash needs some exercise. It's stiff. It needs a good, hard body to break it in."