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it was always a risk to go much further than his own tower. if elric didn't time it properly, he might find himself alone in some remote part of the palace, having to trudge to more familiar ground, or hope a servant would happen to find him before the hour grew too late. such were the hazards of a life bound to a schedule of medicines.
"have you made love to my sister today?"
elric continued on his course to the library. yyrkoon wasn't looking at him, but strode alongside with his hands behind his back, as though they were discussing the weather. long used to his cousin's provocations, elric gave a wan smile and hardly paused to think of a response. "would it upset you terribly if i had?"
"i like to know when i may need to cause trouble."
elric was of a mind to laugh at him, which would certainly annoy yyrkoon for a moment, but he was tired (as he often was) and did not want to get into the exertions of a real argument. elric often wished he could read others' thoughts, the better to avoid the foolish song and dance routines his people often performed to conceal their intentions. he never met a fellow melnibonean who was completely immune to posturing. he ruefully could not deny that he had these tendencies himself.
"it makes no matter to me," said elric. "cymoril is the mistress of her own desires. why not ask her?"
yyrkoon was close at his elbow, but there was no reply. because she'd throw something at you? elric chose to hold his tongue.
"it is not her conduct that concerns me," said yyrkoon.
"and what of mine concerns you?" elric knew the answer to that question. he'd started hearing the gossip long ago.
yyrkoon had a strange expression for a moment. elric could not read it at all. then it disappeared. "cymoril is an ideal for all melnibonean women to follow," he said evenly. "i worry your influence upon her may prove disruptive to that ideal."
elric's tone was curt. "she can think for herself."
yyrkoon was the taller of the pair. elric was only ever blandly aware of this fact most of the time—most of the time. yyrkoon steered him against a wall between two paintings. then his cousin's height became something obvious, like the coldness of the marble at elric's back, or the angry thrash of his heart against his ribs. it would have been within his right to shout something like how dare you. yyrkoon's fist was tightly closed around his arm.
"she cannot, of course," said yyrkoon, "think for herself. not like you or i. she is dear to me, but it will be many years yet before she ceases to be a fool. you speak of dangerous things—things that are not our way—and i will not have her repeating your thoughts until she becomes you writ female."
elric did his best to look down his nose at yyrkoon for a moment, a task impossible owing to their difference in heights and the ridiculous way he felt looking up at someone he meant to be scolding imperiously. and there was that melnibonean urge to perform again. he might have blushed if he weren't so anemic.
"dear cousin," said elric, "what she and i have is more than a filling of a vessel." he let those words settle and watched yyrkoon's lip curl. "if you do not think of me as cymoril writ male, perhaps you do not know her well at all."
in reality, cymoril did not understand him much more than anyone else—she simply allowed him to have his aberrant thoughts in peace instead of constantly issuing challenges like most of the others. she properly listened to him more than anyone else, save dyvim tvar. but the lie had the desired effect. yyrkoon's kohl-rimmed eyes widened for the briefest instant. if elric had blinked, he'd never have noticed.
yyrkoon unhanded elric's arm, smiling enigmatically. "perhaps," he said. "perhaps it's you whom i do not know well anymore." he smoothed elric's sleeve. then he turned down an adjoining corridor with a swirl of his cloak. he vanished around a corner, and the tap of his footsteps went soon after.
elric felt tension leave his body. after standing beside the wall for a moment, catching a breath he hadn't known he was holding, he resumed his walk to the library.
her brother yyrkoon occupied a strange place in his mind. there was no love there, but neither was there hate or fear, with only a handful of exceptions. but he could not say it was apathy. it never occurred to elric to think on it until confronted with the man himself, and things could easily distract him from the matter and keep him from puzzling it out while alone.
for instance, the moment he found the esoteric book he was looking for, all thoughts of anything else flew from his mind as though they'd never existed. he almost forgot that he was feeling ill.
the library was built at an angle and its windows were draped. this way, the books would not be injured by an excess of direct sunshine, but the dim light had a narcotic effect on elric, who never could hold strong against the many weaknesses of his mortal flesh. he'd awakened tired that morning, though he had retired early and slept late, and even the task of climbing the tower stairs had almost been beyond him. but his mind was too restless to give in to his body. he'd managed to read for a little more than two hours. for elric, that felt something like an accomplishment.
now he was dozing with his head in his arms. a soft sea wind relieved the stuffy dryness of the library and grazed his pale hair. someone would come looking for him—tanglebones, most likely—and take him to be dosed with his evening medicines. elric had just started on a mental calculation regarding how much money he cost the realm daily just to keep him alive. too much, he thought wearily before a deep sleep overtook him.
elric dreamed of her—the slender arms and delicate hands and how they felt when draped over his shoulders. often she would creep behind him when he was absorbed in reading, then give him a fright by embracing him suddenly or pecking him on the temple. in the dream, he lifted his hand to stroke hers, but in the dull real world, his limbs were as heavy as stones.
someone was here. sleep fell away from him slowly, like a snake painstakingly ridding itself of its old skin. his neck hurt. his breaths were shallow and his heart worked feebly to enliven him. he murmured something about his medicines. it could not have been time for them yet, but he had to start going back to his rooms soon...
he managed to lift his head. another monumental task.
a raven-haired man was sitting on the other side of the table, his arms folded, his face without expression. it took elric a moment to contextualize him.
"what is it?" said elric. it came out sounding drunk. his tongue felt too large for his mouth and his brains felt thousands of miles from his body. yyrkoon almost never looked for him unless he wanted something, and usually what he wanted was to dispense undesired criticism. already elric braced himself for this, more of this, always so much of this.
but yyrkoon did not answer. he stood, rounded the table, paused. his black-clad arm swept aside the book, which was still open on the encoded poem elric had been reading.
"hmh?" said elric numbly. once more, he wished he could read thoughts. there was a spell for that...
he was lifted to his feet by the armpits. it was easily done—elric was slim and light, and yyrkoon was tall and strong. the movement made his head spun; he thought he might vomit, a strange combination of too exhausted and too offended to speak, let alone raise his voice. he glared, or tried to, as much as one could glare over one's shoulder.
"you are not her," said yyrkoon at his ear, his voice devoid of tone. elric needed no clarification to know who it was he meant. "she is not you."
"oh," elric replied dully. he paused to gather himself. his knees felt like they were made of clouds. he managed to speak after a curiously fraught silence. "happy to talk...after my medicine."
anger crept into yyrkoon's voice. "aren't you your truest self after they've worn off?" he didn't add the word 'weakling' to the end, but it hung over them nonetheless.
elric was already exhausted by whatever game was being played here. he felt more himself after the medicines, but what business was that of yyrkoon's? in any case, his inability to wake up completely was starting to annoy him.
he half-grinned with a distant malice, though it would not have been visible to yyrkoon behind him. "told you...i'm cymoril."
yyrkoon let go. elric propped himself on his hands, catching his breath, then jumped as yyrkoon sent the bench away with a kick. its carved wooden feet skidded against the floorboards, shattering the thick silence of the room.
of course he'd seen rape before, visited upon humans and melniboneans alike, and it seldom moved him to sympathy, though he considered it slovenly and he wasn't inclined to try it himself. it did not come to mind that yyrkoon would do it to him until yyrkoon shoved him down on the table and something poked him in the hip. elric's disbelief made him laugh.
yyrkoon snarled without words and pressed a hand hard between his shoulderblades. breathing out was still possible. breathing in...
elric tried to throw him off, but the leverage of his hands wasn't enough; he tried to twist to one side or another, but even one of yyrkoon's arms had more strength in it than elric's whole body in this state.
movement quickly deepened his predicament. yyrkoon flattened elric against the table with his body with a thud and rolled his hips against elric's backside, as if experimenting. elric made an airless sound at the sensation. dragging. palpable even between their layers of tunics and trousers. he'd seen yyrkoon naked before, he'd seem him aroused, he'd seen him play with human slaves. is this it? he thought, and he did not know exactly what his mind was trying to ask. will this be all he does? will he carry on to his satisfaction? will i be able to forget? will he brag to the whole world? will cymoril hate and scorn me? will i die?
"i haven't had her," yyrkoon whispered. the way he said it made elric sure it was true. "you first."
a rage came on so suddenly that elric felt doused in icy water. his remaining reserves of strength were not for his own sake, but for cymoril's—he thrashed like a dying snake. yyrkoon hoisted him upright, elric's pelvis braced painfully against the table—precious seconds flew away in a drowning struggle to regain some footing, though when he rammed yyrkoon's face with the back of his head, he thought for an instant (beyond the stars he was seeing from the impact) that he could smell iron.
then yyrkoon squeezed the air from his ribs in a bear hug and flattened him against the table once more. pain shot through his arms as weight pressed down on them. the length of yyrkoon's cock dragged once along elric's rear. he'd never noticed how thin and flimsy clothes were until now.
"who knows?" yyrkoon said through a snarl. "if my dear prince is any good, i will not need my sister."
elric did not respond. he didn't want to give yyrkoon the satisfaction, and had calmly resolved to kill him if both lived to see another day, even through his slow suffocation, through the cold sludge of his thoughts.
after a moment, elric felt yyrkoon lower his head further. hot breath at his temple, the sticky sound of a dry mouth opening. the wood surface of the table below his cheek was getting warm and damp. elric waited for an elaboration. for yyrkoon to angrily fill the silence himself. something like, well?!
"so i am practice," said elric. it was supposed to sound light and careless, but it came out as a dry mutter and took too much effort to say. he'd exhausted himself and now it seemed far too late to cool the other man's ardor. holding still wasn't working. yyrkoon had begun to provide his own movement.
elric forced out more words: "she wouldn't...want you like this." he sounded less confident than he'd hoped. the idea that there were depths of cymoril's mind yet unexplored was appealing to him, but could she want a man like this? near-silent, doing what he wanted, enduring how she could? the idea of this being done to her angered him more than the reality of it being done to himself. the peaks of his hips ached where they'd slammed into the table. those would be bruises later.
a tongue flicked against the tip of elric's ear. he shivered. it had never occurred to him to think of cymoril as remotely similar to her brother, though her hair and eyelashes were as long and dark as his. he could handle that. but this, the tracing tongue, punctuated with a nip of teeth, a heated breath—it felt like her. elric's own blood coiled lower, lower. stop. his thoughts moved like dead seaweed, a slow and aimless drift in the dark and cold. his mind's protestations were the vaguest flares of light from strange depths.
there was still no reply. only the rustle of fabric and the sensation of yyrkoon's clothed member sliding persistently against the cleft of his ass, elric still trying in his feeble way to struggle against the pin he was in. his cousin did not look like an old heroic conception of strength—dyvim tvar came closer to that—so, in a completely different situation, elric might have earnestly complimented the ease with which yyrkoon held him fast. cymoril wouldn't appreciate such roughness; she was too sensitive. the thought felt distant and holy and unfit for this moment.
with his tongue yyrkoon followed a vein in elric's neck, saliva cooling his overheated flesh. elric, wrenching his mind away from the confusion of his body, willed himself to speak again—"cymoril," he said, "is not to be won with brute f-f-fohh—"
yyrkoon mortified him into silence—he'd bitten elric with a strange languor. a surge of heat seemed to boil him away for a moment. elric drew up his shoulders and buried his face as best he could into the table with only his hair for defense. yyrkoon hardly had to give chase. he simply turned elric's head with one hand, holding it in place by a tight handful of hair, and roughly reapplied his mouth to the spot before elric could tuck it into his shoulders again. teeth and tongue and wet and pain. "ow," said elric foolishly, and yyrkoon interrupted the rhythm of his hips with a particularly brutal shove, driving elric's thighs into the table's edge and threatening to rake at something important. his cheek scraped against the table's surface. heat from yyrkoon's bloodied nose crept down elric's neck and trickled down his collar. there was no mistaking his white hair for cymoril's black, or his angled shoulders for her narrow ones, but the evening was going darker, darker. through irritation at his own hardness, he wondered obscurely if yyrkoon had closed his eyes.
the heat of yyrkoon's breath came faster, more ardently—elric hurt all over, and every roll of yyrkoon's hips deepened the bruises forming on his legs, but now his own cock ached for relief, straining against his trousers. he tried to maneuver one of his hands out from under himself, but though he'd successfully extricated it—yyrkoon was not pressing so hard now, with one of his hands in elric's hair—this turned out to be a mistake. yyrkoon pinned his forearm to the table. "i think not," said yyrkoon. elric's pain climbed with his need.
to beg yyrkoon for help with it was beneath his dignity. he almost laughed aloud at himself. it came out as a grunt. what possible dignity did he have left? both of them still had their clothes on, at least. tomorrow he would regain it all after killing yyrkoon, running him through with a sword, but today—right now, perhaps—
"wait," gasped elric before he consciously understood what was happening next.
yyrkoon, trusting in his grip on elric's hair to keep his target held, had pulled back just enough to free elric's arm from his fist and slide his hand down elric's stomach. wait, elric said again as yyrkoon went below the line of his belt, but the word did not leave his mouth—no need to wait, he was about to be touched, they could get this over with and leave and elric could kill him later—he held still again, though he did not wish this to be mistaken for compliance—and yyrkoon seemed to have deliberately missed, meeting elric's bruised hipbone and dragging his fingertips down the thigh instead, tantalizingly close but not quite there. elric hated himself for the kittenish sound he made, like cymoril when he teased her, and hated the drop of cooling precome. all evidence he wasn't fit for anything but to be used like a human. his father might have said that, were he to learn of this from beyond the grave. yyrkoon laughed at him—only a couple overheated syllables of it, but it was enough to make elric burn anew with fresh shame.
"shall i?" said yyrkoon. his tone was uncharacteristically indulgent, like elric was his petulant young lover, and not his cousin, his prince, his future killer.
elric refused to answer. yyrkoon could not keep himself restrained forever—the evidence of this was pressed against his ass, the two layers of trousers between them a little damp. sooner or later he would give up on hearing a 'yes' or 'no.' the idea occurred to him, slouching from the dull and colorless mire of his brain, that it might be more unpleasant for yyrkoon to have to take care of him. his arousal was already obvious; denying it would only serve as amusement. solve the problems you cause, said his father's voice in his mind.
his thoughts blew away like dust as yyrkoon palmed elric's cock through his trousers. in pulling away, elric ground his backside against yyrkoon, and there was no direction he could move that would not play into disaster. teeth against his ear. yyrkoon's hand was larger than cymoril's, but the deftness of his touch, the way he ran a thumb along the underside, over the bared head—temporary delirium made elric too dull-witted to do anything but gasp as yyrkoon stroked him—but then, as yyrkoon teased out another bead of precome, elric hissed and struck him with the freed elbow.
in the subsequent fleeting violence, he expected yyrkoon to strip and fuck him: yyrkoon flipped him onto his back with a yank of his hair and a pull of his hip. elric had the caught-rabbit presence of mind to bring a knee up between them, but this was almost immediately no good—yyrkoon, his saturnine face devilish in the dim light as blood dried on his lips, brought his pelvis flush with elric's as though the leg had been no object at all, pinning his arms to the table in both hands. elric thought he'd cried out a 'no' but there was no echo of it in the library. it must not have happened. or perhaps he'd only whispered it.
then, yyrkoon did not move. he stared with dark eyes into elric's red ones, his expression inscrutible. their cocks were pressed together, hardness against hardness, hot and damp. elric was willing himself to remain still in turn, though he trembled. his heart drummed fitfully in his ears over the sound of yyrkoon's heavy breath. acrid blood and something sweet. wine?
i will not need my sister.
he could protect cymoril through his submission. once. before putting yyrkoon to death for the good of them both. no one else would ever need to know. it would appear to all onlookers as a prince's whim.
elric moved just enough for friction. a brief push up and drag down. he was put in mind of swords crossing. yyrkoon met this with movement of his own, and soon elric could stop altogether as the vigorous rocking of the other man's hips was enough to keep them both in a single rhythm. elric's hands were starting to tingle; yyrkoon was still pinning his arms to the table.
"shame—about your—condition," said yyrkoon, panting, teeth bared in an open-mouthed smile. "waste of a—pretty face."
elric's face was hot with indignation. "you—"
he could not come up with a real retort, and he was almost grateful to be interrupted. yyrkoon threw his weight into him, atop him—elric yelped as the table's edge scraped him on his way up—and bit the other side of elric's neck. his very intelligent response was a dry "hnnh," partly a muffled sound of pain, partly a reaction to yyrkoon's quickening pace. "hahh," he added coherently. the maddening friction was sapping him. it felt like all his blood was in his groin. if he'd only thought stupid things before, he felt especially stupid now, far away from the doctor, from his servants, from anyone who might be inclined to intervene.
perhaps the confrontation in the corridor earlier was yyrkoon engineering this in some esoteric fashion. elric wanted to ask it aloud. proud of yourself, are you? but all that came out was another witless noise with no words in it. yyrkoon withdrew his mouth from elric's neck and kissed him. somehow, this was his most perverse act so far. elric did not turn his face away—a perversity all its own. yyrkoon tasted of blood and cloying wine. the fevered grinding felt like nothing elric had ever done before, or had done to him, but yyrkoon's darting tongue and well-formed lips and even his slightly pointed teeth still felt like cymoril's. a forbidden thought: she was not as good at this.
yyrkoon released elric entirely. "no," said elric plaintively, who hated that the moment he said it. his mouth was filled with the taste of bitter blood. yyrkoon unlaced his belt and trousers. elric mirrored this with tingling, bloodless hands, too clumsy to work the clasp of his own belt. after peeling elric's trousers all the way off, yyrkoon undid his belt for him, then wasted no time. seizing his hips, yyrkoon dug his fingers into what little flesh elric had to spare on his slight frame. the rise in pressure made him dizzy, and the slight change in angle stimulated new places, and the lack of fabric between them made the sensations all the more keen and vivid. elric made another sound, 'oh' or 'uh' or something, and yyrkoon made one too, rolling avidly between elric's legs, dark eyes gazing with something like malice at the pale midriff below elric's rucked-up tunic. elric, panting, unable to drink enough of the library's dusty air, felt tears prickle in his eyes. he wasn't sad, or even angry (though he felt he had a right to be), and could think of no reason through the clouds in his skull that he would weep, but there it was.
"yyrkoon," he said in between empty syllables. hah ah yyrkoon hnh hm...on and on they went. he didn't know what he would say afterward. this is the last time you visit such disrespect on me. this is your last night alive. don't look at me with such hatred. beg my forgiveness. stay away from her. kiss me.
yyrkoon did not reply then, his rhythm juddering as he seemed to approached his limit.
a few hard, arched thrusts, a twitch. elric did not immediately know there was a stripe of yyrkoon's seed on his bared midriff until another one followed and disturbed it. the places where their bodies met were cloaked in darkness and he was willing himself not to look. the scent was last to arrive. elric didn't like it—it reminded him of things he'd walked in on, or things done before the ruby throne, things he'd been bored of immediately. as yyrkoon pulled away, his irritation deepened so suddenly that it was almost a physical pain.
still lying on his back, he gazed at the window on the other side of the room, where there was nothing but dusky sky, and stroked himself, pretending yyrkoon wasn't there, hadn't just spilled on his sovereign, wasn't relacing his trousers and fixing the silver clasp of his belt...
yyrkoon circled the table. elric did not turn his head to follow, only hearing and feeling it, the quiet steps, the heat he seemed to radiate. "shall i?" he said in elric's ear. somehow the smirk was audible.
elric did not stop, not wanting to lose the arc of his climb. he was close. "thank you—for—volunteering." it was difficult to say anything loftily in the midst of self-pleasure, with tears in his eyes, saliva on his lips. it might have been someone else who was saying this, doing this, and not elric, who was not himself because he hadn't had his medicines. that elric was far away. he was probably still sleeping.
yyrkoon dragged him into a seated position in half an embrace. this change made him dizzy almost to the point of nausea, or perhaps it was the sensation of yyrkoon's cooling spend oozing down his belly, his tunic sliding along after it and sticking unpleasantly to his skin. elric leaned against him for stability as the table seemed to spin beneath them. a hand batted him away from himself and the other palm rose before elric's mouth, not quite covering it. "spit," he said. in obeying this, elric got quite a lot of it on his own chin. yyrkoon's dark hair grazed his cheek as he leaned them both forward slightly and took elric in hand, nipping his neck. "clumsy." the indulgent tone again. elric replied with an open-mouthed noise. the unoccupied hand kneaded his thigh, his side, the bruises twinging in response, the touches leaving ghosts of warmth.
the arc was building again, the pain of denied release pushing out all other feeling. the rhythm teased him up to the edge, his bare feet curling, his knees drawing together. then, maddeningly, it slowed enough to draw him back.
"please." he loathed himself, and yyrkoon for his lack of self-control, and cymoril, somehow—all of this made a kind of sense and no sense at all. and he loathed his own words. "yyrkoon ah hnh please yyrkoon please." disgusting, undignified. hateful.
that must have been what yyrkoon was waiting for. what was the indignity of being spat on compared to drawing an unwanted paroxysm from an enemy? elric could only guess what his cousin was thinking. that had always been true. elric felt a number of things at once—a fresh flood of heat, everything clenching, his lungs forcing out a mindless cry, his come leaving him sluggishly, thick and searingly hot—yyrkoon was gathering the stuff in his fingers, his and elric's both, and said something he could hardly hear, let alone understand, over the rush of blood in his ears. in the dying half-pain of the orgasm, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lap up his own mess as though obeying an unheard command. it was slightly bitter, akin to but not the same as the taste of yyrkoon's blood. he did not hate it. little arcs were still being drawn on his thigh.
will you need her still?
as if he'd heard the unspoken question, yyrkoon turned elric's tear-streaked face and kissed him. it was impossible to imagine any tenderness in it, to close his eyes and believe it could have been a particularly excited cymoril. what was the point of this? it was something you did to people you loved, not those whom you hated. he closed his eyes anyway.
elric murmured into yyrkoon's mouth. "need my..."
yyrkoon withdrew, still holding him, but now sounding distant; the malice (or whatever it had been) that once animated him now mysteriously absent. "i will fetch your servant."
then his encompassing arms slid off of him and left elric sitting hunched half-dressed on the table. yyrkoon did not look back as he left the library.
cymoril would be safe for a little while longer. or had that all been a bluff? was yyrkoon off to cleanse himself by attacking her? elric's head swam with terrible visions. carefully, he pushed himself of the table. his knees gave out just gently enough that he could catch himself by an elbow on the table and lower himself to the floor. his trousers were a dark puddle where yyrkoon had left them, and wrestling them back on seemed almost too great a task now. after some painful contortions, he managed to get them laced, but then...
when tanglebones arrived, he scolded him gently for sneaking off, then clasped elric's belt. he remarked that it had belonged to elric's great-grandfather, apparently ignorant of whatever circumstance might have taken it off the prince's waist.