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Such a lame chapter. Georik OOCness/insanity/probably a terrible need to pee... *sigh*
The Dante excerpt is his, Dashwood's bruise is mine; I do have one myself, exactly the same minus the scars. It came from a wine bottle. No, I didn't take part in a bar brawl - unfortunately - but I did have one helluva amazing May Day party. At a gay bar.
“You’ve got that look on your face again, Master. A penny for your thoughts?”
Warm fingers rustled fondly down the ebony Silk Road of Georik’s disheveled hair, undoing the occasional knots and dipping into the hollow of his neck. What his eyes could not see pelted into his heart, a profuse overflow of all the remaining senses when the night blindfolded its own.
His skin still tingled, entangled in the comforting warmth of another man. It was indeed Dashwood who occupied the count’s sparse thoughts; the tremendous earthquakes and thunderous heartbeats he had felt against and inside his own body, yes, but also the littlest of things that had haunted him since the young man’s arrival.
“I will take a look at your leg. Stay there while I fetch a light.”
A shiver crept up his spine as he tore himself away from the restful yet expectant embrace. The floor under his bare feet was pleasingly cold, whereas the menacing throb between his temples pleaded him to recline a while longer. Gritting his teeth, Georik put his inglorious feelings aside and stood up in one abrupt motion, the pain radiating all over his back so intense it was enlivening, even.
“Trust me, Master, my legs are all fine… though the one in the middle might need another checkup,” he heard the redhead all but snickering behind him, obviously admiring the view as the physician bent down in search of his garments scattered all over the floor.
His boots and trousers were precisely where he had dropped them in his pride – or with it; quickly dressing himself from the waist down, he finished by enchaining his abused and exerted organ under a row of buttons. A lamentful sigh escaped from Dashwood, earning a ragged one from the count’s dry lips in exchange. Something cold and firm yielded slightly under his boot, eliciting a crackle, yet he decisively paddled his way to the door and peered out.
The corridor, eerily similar to a catacomb in appearance, was empty; Lillith’s door was soundly locked and the torch, left there for comfort in her desolation, was still burning. Yet the fire had turned spiritless, fading with the safeguard of night. It would not be long until Timothy’s morning chores – ironically, Georik could only hope that this time, too, the boy would oversleep.
A quiet lament from the closing door ushered him back to the dismal realm of his late father. He did not even glance at the unfortunate youth whose severed arm – or, more likely, wrist – he had snapped underneath his boot; he was utterly captivated by the Vitruvian Man in flesh on his examination table, the reclining figure embraced in the dusky afterglow of past events.
Quirking an eyebrow, Dashwood chuckled in his beard, vexingly conscious of the image his bare body branded into the physician’s retinas. He was leaning on his elbows, legs crossed up in the air; a perfectly calculated pose to reveal the subtle yet luscious curve of his buttocks… and those faint streaks, spreading across his back like the branches of a weeping willow.
A spell of revulsion churned in the pit of Georik’s stomach, for it was no quest to identify the source of those various hues of scarlet recurrence. His fingers revered smooth, healed marks and nastier welts in turn as they climbed and descended the vertebral slopes, one at a time. As much as ‘incorrigible’ remained an apt description of the devilishly smirking redhead, the young count knew there was more to all such cruelty.
He succumbed to the brief indulgence of planting his ear on the man’s back, sensing the tickle on warm skin as his dark locks pelted over it. He was greeted by the cymbal of a stable heartbeat, with no other distortion than the faint vibration of a pleased purr from deep within the other’s throat.
“It beats for you, doesn’t it, Master?”
With no intention of answering and even less expression on his face, Georik resumed his hand on its adopted duty, retracing his previous path and far exceeding it with a clinical yet devout feel of the callipygian ideal he could not deny. It was not often that he had the opportunity to study a live body this tastefully molded…
“Oh, Master, you’re insatiable. May I expect you to patch me up afterwards as well, then?” Dashwood chuckled, teasingly shifting his legs in response to the physician’s veteran palpation.
Warmth returned to the young aristocrat’s fingers from the forceful clamp of an invitingly quivering pair of thighs; whereas the heat, colorless and motionless, splashed across his cheeks with the young man’s raunchy remark. Ignoring Dashwood’s words, he resumed his pursuit until both tactual and visual perceptions made him stop.
His triumph of pinpointing the injury faded into a dull grey of aversion, yet one tinged with sadism so oddly becoming of him as of late. Right behind the young man’s right knee, a plum-colored blotch of the size of a man’s fist spread out under the physician’s fingertips. This one, unlike the blatant record of a most likely ritual flagellation, was made with something hard and blunt, leaving two large but already scabbed cuts behind.
“See, I told you it’s healed already. Otherwise, don’t you think I would’ve asked Master to fuck me senseless and not the other way aro--- ouch!”
Georik’s expression went sour as the injured area yielded slightly; no bones were broken, it seemed, but the muscle was obviously damaged from seemingly frequent yet irregular traumas. This bruise was far fresher than the one on his face and more severe as well, yet Dashwood would reveal nothing of its origins; he merely fidgeted under the physician’s weight, an almost delighted wince on his face as he hissed in discomfort.
“Nothing is broken, but next time might not be so lucky. You’ll have to avoid straining the muscle too much, or you’ll risk a permanent disability.”
Paying no heed to the rustle from the young man’s direction, Georik ran his fingers over the assortment of bottles on a nearby shelf; without a glance at the labels, he picked a plain vial and brought it to light. It was an ordinary salve with aniseed oil, one that would heal the skin up in no time and act as a relaxant agent as well. That was all he could do for now… yet he could not exorcise the ghoul of incompetence gnawing at his healing hands.
“Are you confining me to bed, Master? And what will you do if I disobey?”
Dashwood had rolled onto his back, curiosity taking over the fluster from the physician’s tacit questioning. A dark fingernail nestled between his lustfully curved lips as his teasing gaze lanced up at the raven-haired man. His beautifully toned muscles gleamed in the soft light as he slowly folded the injured leg over the good one; blocking Georik’s view of the part that least seemed at rest in him, leaving only the dark red arrow of his as a dead giveaway.
Heat returned to prickle Georik’s veins, throbbing at his very core as he drifted back into the sphere of another man… a magnetic one, pulling him closer until the warm diffusion of two sweet breaths caressed his refined features. He could feel Dashwood’s chest rise and sink beneath him, gaining intensity as the physician’s hand gravitated to the outlandish silver ring that bore an uncanny resemblance to the mansion’s doorknocker.
On a stormy night like this, no one could hear a timid tap on soaked hardwood. A guest would pound the door with both fists and bang the knocker so hard as to tear it from its hinges; that was the urge taking over Georik as he traced his thumb over the ornaments, relishing the contrast of cold metal and a dusky, puckered nipple. So soft, yet so hard – how he wanted to see Dashwood’s pain or rather the pleasure he so seemed to seek when the sensitive tissue would tear and bleed, the jewel freed from its sarcoid prison, a cry of passion stolen from the redhead’s cherry lips so keen on spouting vile remarks…
“… Take this and your clothes as well. I’ll be waiting on the main door.”
The vial in his hand shook slightly as he passed it on to Dashwood, who sighed as if deeply offended from the physician’s abrupt retreat. His throat was dry, his head groggy as he scuffled out of the room. A shadow soon followed in his footsteps down the stairs, a silent and warm embrace until a refreshing breeze broke the silence.
One, two, three… his steps heavy as funeral tolls, he stopped at the threshold, savouring every stray raindrop that splashed on his feverish skin despite the tall figure leaning on the doorframe, a barricade between him and the rain. Tears from the sky ran down the redhead’s mussed locks in small rivulets, bedewing his glowing cheeks and gathering at the carmined tip of his chin as he splayed his hands on Georik’s bare shoulders and sighed enthusiastically.
“I wish I could stay longer, dear Master, but I’m afraid duty calls the two of us.” His warm touch dethawed into the physician’s flesh, weightless; crepuscule laughing in the face of a looming dawn.
“You’re forgetting something, aren’t you?” Not that Georik would ever have thought the debt collector idiotic enough to assume the physician would have forgotten the true purpose of their encounter, however heedlessly the two had abandoned themselves into the throes of passion.
“Would I ever do anything of the sort? You see,” Dashwood whispered in the other’s ear, slipping a sober note on the tip of his tongue, “we need to advance carefully lest we should raise the Count’s suspicions. Please give me some time… a week or two, I’d say, and I’ll get what I need to pay off the first part.”
He paused to lap up the bittersweet streamlets on the physician’s neck, a secretive flicker in his glance. Privy to the direst of Georik’s secrets, this man now held a redoubtable might over him. Perhaps it would be wise to kill him after all… yet Francis Dashwood was a cunning bastard whose demise would not hinder the truth from leaking.
“Don’t worry, Master. I will make sure not to disappoint the one who so clearly showed me the definition of priceless.”
With that, he took Georik’s hand and gently pressed it to his lips with a swift bow, his doused mane of the shade of mahogany in the palest of moonlights.
“As if one would believe that would ever be a part of your vocabulary. Good night.” A smile graced Georik’s lips with genuine amusement as he withdrew his hand, catching one last spark of the portentous fire in the debt collector’s smirk before turning his back to the sleeping town.
“Sweet dreams, dear Master.”
He did not look back; Dashwood would have already disappeared in the rain, bareheaded and scantily clad to surely lose himself into the depths of sickbed. Not that he had not been thoroughly drenched previously that night…
Having locked the door, Georik slumped onto the nearest fauteuil, jaded eyes narrowed to catch a glimpse of the horned shadow receding behind the grandfather clock.
“Did you enjoy the show, Mephistopheles?”
His answer was a cold, deep chuckle, fading away with the demonic presence as the clock struck five. In a few hours, he would be on his way to the palace, letting another day slip through his busy fingers that obeyed Bruno’s every twisted whim. He ride back home with the sunset, perhaps drop by Despanie’s place, only to end up back in square one.
Time, what a fearsome adversary to keep, Georik thought as he brushed away the dust covering a book he had unconsciously picked somewhere. It was long untouched, probably gone unnoticed by St. Germant after whom the rest of the mansion was speckless.
He stooped towards the lamp, tracing the gilded calligraphy on the cover; Dante’s Divine Comedy, in whole.
Georik recalled the serene smile her mother used to wear when reading some of those cantos out loud before bedtime, painting the author’s image of paradise with her tender voice and showing the intricate gravures to her beloved children.
Conveniently enough, she had only acquainted her son and daughter with Heaven, without a word on the hell on earth they had drifted into with no forewarning; even though Inferno alone felt as thick as Purgatorio and Paradiso together.
He pored through the pages, so vacantly that even the illustrations passed by him unnoticed, until a careless papercut stopped him at Canto XV. Weariness spared him the sting, but the lines under a waxing moon of blood caught his attention.
“O son,” he said, “whoever of this herd
A moment stops, lies then a hundred years,
Nor fans himself when smiteth him the fire.”
A dry, short laugh spiced the tang of his own blood as he licked his cut fingertip and put down the Comedy. It was six o’clock.
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