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They think him feckless, and that is what makes Zenos such a perfect ally. This is something Fandaniel knows well. Thousands upon thousands of years of being underestimated, both in life and in death, with each iteration cast off and treated as lesser. They’d given Elidibus the task of babysitting him, as if he’d needed it. But he was perfectly fine with being underestimated, because it gave him more power. And he has the sense Zenos was much the same.
He continues to get that sense, even as he parades the body of a dead man around him, teasing him with it. He plays up his own theatrics, his own stupidity, for Zenos as much as he does the rest of the world. And For as useful as Zenos is to him, he is still just a pawn in the grand scheme. And he must be fooled just as anyone else.
Of course, his plan for fooling him is somewhat different than how he might have treated the dear unsundered.
Today, he dresses it up. He takes his time finding the right combination of expensive cloth to cover it in the fashions of its homeland. He drops the shoulders of the kimono to show off the pale shoulders of a man who was always covered in armor. He paints its lips red and its eyes black, painting its face in a way that he thinks is pleasing—but also in a way that will, with any luck, smear once their bodies press together. That he will make a mess of himself for Zenos, and Zenos will think even less of him.
Unambitious, unmotivated, ineffective, worthless—these are not adjectives you assign to a threat. And far better to be underestimated than understood.
Fandaniel drapes himself onto Zenos like the finery he has put on his body. Zenos quirks an eyebrow but, like most of Fandaniel’s antics ignores him. Ignores him as he slides off of him and down between his legs. Ignores him as he opens his pants and mouths at his cock. Preoccupied, Fandaniel imagines, with the damned Warrior of Light.
But he will not be dissuaded. He still gives Zenos as good as this body can. Even Zenos’s massive length it takes with a practiced ease, a simple question of relaxing his jaw in a movement the body has made a thousand times before, though Fandaniel can’t say he’s particularly surprised.
Fandaniel sucks on him until he’s hard. Zenos says nothing, though eventually his eyes do come to rest on him, eventually he starts to watch, and that’s when Fandaniel knows he’s got his attention. But just as he gets him hard, Zenos takes a handful of his hair and yanks, pulling him off his cock.
“What do you want, Ascian?” Zenos asks.
Fandaniel wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing red lipstick obscenely as a reminder of the way he had prepared himself for him. “I thought it was obvious—you.”
Zenos hums noncommittally and pulls him up, his eyes lazily wandering along his body, along the finery and the exposed skin. “I’ve no interest in your games.”
“Oh, it’s no game, I assure you! I wouldn’t have gone to nearly so much trouble for a mere game,” Fandaniel insists, trying to climb into Zenos’s lap even as his his fingers are still dangerously threaded in his hair. “Let me prove it,” he continues, dropping his voice low and conspiratorial now, “I picked this body for you. Do to it whatever you will.”
For a moment, Zenos’s eyes dance dangerously, lighting up with a flash of creativity that Fandaniel was almost certain the prince wasn’t capable of. But he lets the silence linger a little between them, as if silence itself might make Fandaniel sweat. And then: “Anything I want?”
But it isn’t a question, it’s a warning.
Fandaniel smiles that same harmless smile, the one that assures him that he has no motivations of his own beyond his own death. So what did a little danger matter, really? “Anything,” he agrees.
Zenos pulls him up to his lap up turns him around so his back presses against Zenos’s chest. He’s very aware of how small this body is, how big Zenos is in kind.
“Spread your legs,” Zenos tells him, already reaching down between them to force them apart, unceremoniously shoving aside cloth that would have taken a normal family an entire year to buy. Fandaniel finds, approvingly, that this body is already hard and shaking from the excitement. Good. “Reach down to my boot and pull out the knife.”
Fandaniel does, but this time it’s not just the body’s heart that races in anticipation but his own aether that quickens, and pulses. He’s always known Zenos to be a violent man, but he’d never thought he’d actually get him to turn it on him.
“Give it to me.” Zenos holds his hand out expectantly, and Fandaniel hands it over too quickly, quivering with the desire for it. His mind races with ways it might all play out, each one more violent and more wonderful than the last. In spite of himself, Fandaniel’s breath comes a little heavier as he does.
The first thing Zenos does is cut the rope tied around his obi, an aesthetic adornment unnecessary to keeping it together. He hands Fandaniel back to the knife to hold expectantly and removes the belt, fold it a couple times. When the belt is folded so that four lengths are together at any given point he brings it up to Fandaniel’s mouth. “Open,” he says simply and Fandaniel does. He pulls it in tight, until the lengths of rope are securely over his tongue and between his teeth and then he ties it tight behind his head, fingers working deftly to make the knots.
Do you think this will stop my commentary? Fandaniel asks, not with his body but with his soul, easy enough to share with a singular person and doubly so if that person has the echo—artificial or not.
“No,” Zenos replies, unfazed by Fandaniel’s continued ability to talk, “the rope is to keep you from biting your tongue off.”
That, of course, only raises more questions, but no further explanation comes. Fandaniel is sweating now, not out of fear, but from the continued arousal and anticipation. Zenos was doing him a mercy, gagging him like this, though he knows not why. It strangely warms him, to think that anyone would be that caring towards him. While he contemplates this, Zenos holds his hand back out for the knife and Fandaniel returns it.
Zenos hikes up the skirts of Fandaniel’s kimono and pushes his legs further apart, exposing his untouched but nevertheless hard cock and balls to the cool night air around them. And then he brings the knife down between them.
“Anything?” Zenos warns.
Fandaniel swallows thickly, causing spit to gather and soak the rope in his mouth. Anything, he confirms again. Zenos doesn’t wait for another confirmation.
The knife digs into the flesh of this body, and Fandaniel screams, the body threatening to run away, but Zenos’s legs and feet force their way between his, holding his legs open and Zenos’s free hand pulls his upper body tight back against Zenos’s own. Up against his back, he can feel Zenos’s cock pulsing with desire. Though his body struggles, he realizes quickly that it, too, revels the feeling of steel biting into it. And he realizes that he and this body desire so very much of the same. That he was right to have picked it.
“You wanted me, didn’t you?” Zenos asks, the hand on Fandaniel’s chest dipping down past the opening of the kimono to grab his breast and squeeze it far harder than should have been pleasant. But depraved man that Fandaniel is, the touch is filled with pleasure for him anyway. “Then beg me to keep going.”
“Please—” Fandaniel tries first through through the gag, a muffled mess as he forgets himself. And then again with his aether: please, please keep going.
“Hm. If that’s really want you want,” Zenos replies, his tone taking on that bored tone again but he cannot hide how his body reacts, pressed this close up against one another. He cannot hide the slight shake of his hands or the pulsing need in his cock. He cannot hide the hitch of his breath as he cuts deeper.
The pain makes him feel alive. And with Zenos, it is endless, a relief he would never have expected from this exchange. Perhaps he should have. Perhaps he was so wrapped up in showing Zenos how worthless he was, he assumed Zenos would give him nothing he actually wanted in return. But the knife sears white hot pleasure into in skin and the pain pushes his worthless, useless body into a state like shock that forces it to transcend its very limits. He’s vaguely aware that he’s crying, vaguely aware of how damp the ropes are in his mouth, vaguely aware of how he sinks back against Zenos’s large body, head lolled back and whining incoherently for him. His soul cries out the same pleas for him, a chrous of unmitigated desire begging for Zenos to keep going.
And, blessedly, he does.
Fandaniel is certain this body spills on itself more than once. He wonders, vaguely, if the seed makes it more difficult for Zenos to keep going, if the sticky substance drips down and gets in the way of the knife. By the time Zenos is finished, of course, it has no seed left to spill, though once it valiantly shoots out blood like it means it to be a replacement.
Zenos discards severed flesh and the knife and turns Fandaniel around on his lap to face him. Fandaniel’s expression is far away, blissed out on sensation but still coherent somehow, where any other would have been long gone. The smallest of approving smiles plays on Zenos lips for a moment. He holds Fandaniel up while he works on taking off his own pants, a little bit difficult with one hand supporting the smaller man and one hand helping himself but he pushes them down to his ankles at least, which is all he needs. Then he places Fandaniel back on his leg, pressing his open wound against his thigh.
“Almost perfect,” Zenos says, and then he leans forward to bite the breast he’d been fondling earlier, cutting into flesh with teeth until he starts to bleed. Zenos spits out the carnage but watches the blood drip down Fandaniel’s breast and onto the finery of his body and draws in a deep breath. “There,” he says, and nothing more.
Instead, he pulls the rope out of Fandaniel’s mouth. His jaw aches and refuses to close, as if the gag were still part of him. His parched lips long for water but he asks for none. These are problems of the flesh. He is an Ascian. If this body expires, he will simply retrieve a new one.
“I know you aren’t as tired as you look,” Zenos says, bringing up a blood-soaked finger to tip Fandaniel’s chin up towards him, “And as long as your body yet moves, you may use it to my pleasure. But it will be on my terms. Rub the gaping cunt of your wound against my leg until you come again and I might cauterize it for you.”
Fandaniel groans, deep and primal. This is what he likes. These are desires he has not been honest with anyone about since a time before the sundering. Even through the clouded haze of pain the body feels, his eyes still light up at the thought of it. His aching mouth turns up in a smile. He places shaking hands on Zenos’s shoulders to steady himself with what little strength this body has left. And then he does as he’s told, grinding the open wound against Zenos’s large thigh, relishing the feeling of the taut muscles pressing back up him in kind.
“Good,” Zenos says, one hand on Fandaniel’s hip to steady him, but his other goes to his cock, and starts to stroke it as he watches Fandaniel move against him. As he feels the blood coat his skin. “I can see how much you like it.”
“Yes,” His voice sounds all wrong, strained and hoarse from crying out, pained but still aroused, “I wish—” Fandaniel starts, before he realizes it, but then he’s stuck continuing as Zenos stares at him expectantly. “I wish you could fuck it,” he finishes finally.
Zenos clearly approves of that, too. His hand slides from Fandaniel’s thigh and slips between his legs, and when his large fingers press into the bleeding flesh, Fandaniel loses it. Though he has no seed to spill on Zenos’s precious body, he goes through all of the motions, all of his need compacting like a coil tight until it springs loose, every muscle quivering with strain and need and want, screaming and crying as he puts his body through more pleasure than it had ever felt in all its years alive or dead.
And then, finally, having taken too much, it gives up.
---
“You’re awake,” Zenos says, disappointment hanging heavy on his tone from where he sits next to what Fandaniel is sure is a bed he’s woken up in.
Funny, he’d almost imagined Zenos had no need for sleep.
“Should I apologize?” Fandaniel asks, feigning offense.
“Not for that,” Zenos responds, and quick as a flash his hand darts between Fandaniel’s legs to grip his balls, “but for this. Are you some manner of lizard now, Ascian?”
Fandaniel laughs nervously and shakes his head, reaching down in kind to feel the regrown part, “Ah, well, I guess my magic was quicker than me,” Fandaniel sounds disappointed. Then, after a flash of brillance, he follows it up with, “But don’t think of it as such a shame! Don’t you see, this just means we can do it again!”
Zenos quirks an eyebrow and squeezes, as if testing to see how real they were. As if making sure they really had come back whole—perfectly ready to be wrecked again. “Be careful what you wish for.”
Fandaniel grins, sitting up enough to steal a kiss from the surprised prince. “I think my wishes are exactly what they ought to be.”
Zenos grabs him by the neck and slams him into the bed. He and his body both agree that this truly is what they want.