Fandom: Doctrine of Labrynths, including Melusine, The Virtu, and The Mirador, all by Sarah Monette.

Rating: M

Author: Greensl33ves

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Notes: Includes slash and incest. It's the series, darlings, not just me. The timeperiod is somewhere between The Virtu and The Mirador. Just so you know, this is Gideon talking.

Strike the wall and watch your hand bleed. Be grateful it isn't someone's face.

I can't take much of this anymore. I can't. I can't watch him, his eyes that are so uneven, that never quite focus on anything except in anger and hatred.

He blames himself. I take comfort in that. He should. What he did to Mildmay is unforgiveable, even if his brother did anyway. I wouldn't have ever forgiven that, but then again, I don't have to. I'm not Mildmay.

When we split up so long ago, out in the Grasslands, I wondered what would happen to them. Would they be alright? Mildmay, well, he was sharp, tough, a strong man and smarter than he looked to boot, but Felix? Even back then I realized how he made me feel. Even then I saw how he watched his brother. Half-brother, now lone protector. White Lady and anyone else listening…

Isn't it horrible? My biggest rival for my love's attention is his brother. His crippled, scarred, broken little brother who has killed more people than he can remember and can barely even read. Mildmay, who is beautiful and gentle beneath his scars. Yes, I can size up my rival. I even like my rival. He's a decent person, which is more that can be said about the man whose bed I share.

I am always acutely aware that it is not my bed that I sleep in. I have no rooms in the Mirador, nor do I desire them. To take one of the small, bare rooms that would be offered to me would be to admit that I am a prisoner here, not a guard. I have no power.

Well, no, I do have one power. One very small power.

Felix is angry today, oh is he ever angry. He was pounced on after court by Robert of Hermione, crowing on something about Felix's days in Pharaohlight—or so I heard from Mildmay—and now Felix is out for blood. He drew some at the Curia meeting this afternoon, but now it is dinnertime and soon it will be the quiet evening and I'm not sure what will happen then.

Please understand, I'm not afraid of Felix. He's temperamental and cruel, but he would never lay a finger or a spell on me. He once gripped my arm roughly, but really that's the worst I can say of him. I'm not grateful; glad, but if he laid a hand on me I would be gone and he knows it and so he would never do it and so I am not afraid and have nothing to be grateful for. But it does make me wary. What of the day his control slips? Yes, I'll leave him if he strikes me, but if he were to strike out and hard and fast, I wouldn't stand a chance. I cannot even scream for help.

When dinner is over, the silence thick as gravy, Mildmay flees to his rooms with a pack of cards and I pick up my book where I left off. Felix just stares at the fire and I wonder if he will stay in or go out? I don't know where he goes when he leaves, and I don't want to. I suppose I could find out, but I won't, just like Felix will never hit me. If I do that, I can never undo it, and I can't quite bring myself to.

Now Felix has turned his eyes to me and I can practically feel my skull heating up.

:What are you reading?:

I don't even bother to look up. :You don't actually care.:

:No. I do. What are you reading?:

His voice is flat and engaging all at once, the double voice that betrays the secret that his mismatched eyes only confirm: Felix has two selves. One of Felix's selves is determined to be polite right now; the other doesn't give a damn what I'm doing and we both know it.

:Felix, if you want to pick a fight, you may bate your brother. I'm not in the mood.:

Now his voice is lofty and angry. :I don't want a fight.:

I sigh. :Then what do you want?:

:This.: Felix reaches out a hand and delicately turns my head from the text in my lap to his face. I let him.

:You want attention? How old are you again?:

"Fifteen years younger than you," he snaps out loud and I jerk my head back from his voice but don't take my eyes from his face.

:Then surely that is old enough to entertain yourself. I'm reading.: I don't let my hurt creep into my inner voice. Unlike Felix, I can better control what emotions go into it; I have more practice.

Felix, though, is undeterred. :And what are you reading?:

:Nothing, because you keep interrupting me!:

:If you wouldn't ignore me, I wouldn't interrupt you.:

:If you weren't looking to pick a fight, I wouldn't ignore you.:

Silence in the room, silence in my head. The fire crackles and from inside Mildmay's room there is the faint snapping sound of fast-shuffled cards. Felix stares at the fire for a moment more before striding out of my line of sight. Good. He's gone to bed.

Suddenly there is a soft hand on my shoulder that squeezes lightly, then tighter, kneading at my muscles. Two hands now, prodding me to hunch over, which I do as he begins rubbing at pains I didn't know I had. Little crackling sounds are coming from my back, and a sharp jab makes me cry out slightly, a slip in my control.

I freeze at the noise, but Felix doesn't. He just keeps rubbing and it feels—oh, it feels wonderful. Like someone dissolving words written in ink by dipping them in water. I moan again and I must be losing my mind because I never, never make noise, but no, it is this delirious feeling that is sweeping through me, making me forget to be angry when Felix leans down and kisses my ear and whispers, "Let's move this to the bedroom, shall we?"

Nodding, I stumble to my feet and he puts a protective arm around me, nuzzling my neck as he leads me to the bed and kicks the door closed behind us, shutting out all light. Now he's sliding my waistcoat off, my cravat is being untied, my shirt is being unbuttoned and I expect him to reach for my pants but no, no he doesn't. Instead he kisses me on the mouth, running his tongue across my opening lips, and gently pushes me back onto the bed.

He is naked and I don't remember him undressing but he is straddling me and I am forgetting why I feel like I should be angry as those long fingers form fists that gently, gently, shove into my chest as they did my back. His hips are circling slowly, rubbing his cock—oh!—rubbing his hard cock against my pelvis, against my cock that already is straining against my pants. I reach down for my own buttons, ashamed to be wanting this but unable to help myself but Felix captures my wrists gently in one hand and moves them aside, then goes back to rubbing my chest. His fingers aren't working any lower, either; if anything they're going behind me, kneading my sides and also pulling me up to meet his mouth halfway, to kiss him with open lips. My hips strain to rise as his tongue thrusts into my mouth, but I can't. He has pinned me down and his dripping cock touching my stomach is so hot that it's almost painful and I can't help once again reaching for the buttons on my pants only to be captured with one of his large hands again, more firmly this time. The other arm catches me around the waist and lowers me down again, and then Felix lets go of me altogether to slide down from the bed and kneel in front of my dangling legs.

Slowly, slowly he spreads my knees apart, so slow that I know he's doing it to annoy me. Agonizingly he reaches up—finally, finally the buttons!—and squeezes my dick through my pants. I let out a gasp of frustration without meaning to.

:Dammit, Felix!: is all I can manage.

:Impatient, are we?: His voice is amused and…seething. My eyes open wide in the dark and some of the fog lifts from my mind.

:Felix: I ask quietly, :are you sure you want to do this?:

He doesn't say anything, just mouths my hardness through the fabric, and I let out a tiny squeak. He pauses, and I can feel his breath against my stomach. Then in a single swipe the front of my pants are ripped open, the buttons hitting the walls with tiny little 'pings' as the cloth tears painfully against my sensitive erection.

:FELIX!:

He rubs the head of my cock with his thumb, gripping the shaft tightly. His hand is ever-so-slightly trembling.

:Felix?:

His breath is tickling my pubic hair now, quick, shallow breaths, and I know that something is wrong. I call up my witchlights and sit up quickly.

There in front of me kneels Felix Harrowgate in all his naked glory, eyes closed against the sudden glare, a set of bloody fingernail crescents adorning each thigh. He takes a deep breath—

And then he is gone, slamming open the doors of the room with an open palm so that they bang against the wall and a painting falls down. Two steps more and he has a dressing gown in his hand and is grabbing the head that Mildmay pokes out of his door, dragging him across the room by the hair.

"What the-" I hear Mildmay exclaim as he throws one last look back at me. Then the door to the hallway slams in front of his face with an awful crash and I am alone again.

I stare at the door another minute before looking down at myself. The pants, of course, are beyond repair, with half of the front ripped off. My now-limp cock is shrinking in the cold air, red with chill.

No. Not chill. Blood. Blood on my penis, smeared across the head like some twisted lubricant.

Watch the first strike wall behind your head. Be glad it didn't hit you. Don a dressing gown and find yourself staring at the door to the baths without ever knowing you left your room. Be clean and stinging from harsh scrubbing a few scant minutes later and try to forget what you saw.

The hour isn't late when I return to the suite, and as I expect, it is empty. My book lies next to the chair I was sitting in. The fire burns without a care. There is a new crack in the plaster where the door hit the wall. My clothing is on the floor where Felix dropped it. He is somewhere with the brother he watches too closely and guards too jealously. I climb into bed and pull the covers up so that they reach the headboard.

Felix does not return to the room that night. I know because I watch Mildmay help him into the suit and settle him into his own small bed before resigning himself to a chair for the night. There is blood on Mildmay's hands and he stares at it until finally he turns and looks at me out of the corner of his eye, probably wondering whose it is.

Reluctantly I stand and grab my tablet off a table before going to Mildmay and sitting beside him.

"We was up in the Crown of Nails," he says softly, defensively. "He's in a bad way."

I nod and he glances back at his hands, just barely stopping himself from wiping them on his pants and instead clasping them in front of him.

"He don't- He didn't-"

Mildmay breaks off, looking down. I sigh and write three words on my tablet, big and with all capitols.

HE HURT HIMSELF.

Mildmay stares at the writing for a full minute and nods once, a jerk of the head that makes the ribbon in his hair fall out so that it gleams around his face like fire. For a moment jealousy tears through me like the knife I've seen him play with, and I stand without meaning to.

"'Night, Gideon," he says softly, and I make myself close the door behind me softly.

I have one defense against Felix, and Felix only has one person he'd break that promise for. It seems that my defence is still intact. How much longer, though? How much longer will Felix restrain himself, from either of us?

I don't know how much more of this I can take.

Author's Notes: Yeah, yeah, I know you were all hoping for Felix/Mildmay, but I just wasn't up for it last night. What can I say, I was in a melancholy mood. And if you're sitting there thinking 'this porn sucks' well, um, it's not my specialty? I'm really good at the whole 'fade to black' thing, so actually writing it, however brief, isn't something I have much experience with.

But yeah, it's Gideon, whom we never hear from in cannon, and frankly I love the idea of Felix having two voices, one for each eye, one for each life he's lived, one for sanity and one for madness, one for his love for Gideon and one for his obsession with Mildmay. The way I see it, why Felix is so nasty to Mildmay, is that it's mostly pure jealousy. What can I say, Felix is a bastard. Which reminds me, "Something to Look Forward To" has a sequel that I'm working on slowly but surely. Really slowly. So you know.

Anyway, I hope you liked it, please review! There are so few of us in this fandom... D: We must stick together! Is there any more Melusine fan fiction out there? Oh yeah, and tips on bettering my pronz are appreciated, just cause I know I can use them. I love you all!

-Steph

aka Greensl33ves