Work Text:
What you should have done was this: go back to your own room, and paint ceiling to floor with blood wards, and then spend an hour in your tepid bathtub, dress in your own clothes, and fall asleep in your own bed for the first time in months. That would have been sensible and practical, after everything you had endured. Instead, you wandered the halls and went looking for trouble. You knocked on trouble’s door.
And Trouble said, “Come in.”
You did not bother to announce yourself. You had been Ianthe Tridentarius’s involuntary roommate for weeks by now; she knew it was you before you stepped inside. She was sprawled out on top of her shiny bedsheets, stringy hair loose across the pillows, and wearing a ludicrously tiny nightgown—a filigreed emerald green number that gave her a striking resemble a sickly cucumber. The top button was undone.
“Oh, Harry,” she yawned, stretching her bone arm over her head in such a manner that a second button somehow sprang free, “What are you doing here?”
Your scrambled brain was busy concocting plausible explanations for your presence in her bedroom, some bullshit handwaving even the most senile Ninth penitent would have seen through immediately: zombie Cytherea was shambling about the Mithraeum fresh from her attempt to incinerate the Saint of Duty and there was safety in numbers; you had recently failed your own attempt to murder the Saint of Duty and found it necessary to regroup with your co-conspirator, who you grudgingly respected as a colleague but did not, like, like in that way; you were overstimulated and overtired and weren’t thinking straight (this one was actually true, and also the understatement of the century).
The heart of the matter was this: you wanted to fuck nasty. But the problem was that you were the Reverend Daughter, and the Reverend Daughter had never, ever fucked nasty. You had studied the diagrams with your usual thoroughness and understood the theory perfectly well, of course. But now it was time for the practicum and you just—froze.
Lucky(?) for you, your fellow Lyctor had no such hesitation. She all but sprang out of bed and clomped over to inspect you. At some point, one of the little lacy straps of her teensy nightgown had managed to slide down her meat arm like a limp gold noodle. She looked ridiculous. You felt your face getting warm under your paint.
You could have still backed out at that moment; it wasn’t too late to flee to your room, but you were a horny little idiot and you were past caring. So when Ianthe looked at you with those blue-brown-lavender eyes and almost affectionately said, “Come here, you horny little idiot,” you stepped forward obediently, tilted your chin, and gazed up at the Saint of Awe.
Before, you had turned your cheek when she tried to kiss you back in the hall. Now when she leaned down for the second time—she smelled like wine and rotten apples and sweat—you didn’t turn away. You bit her on the lip hard, slicing all the way down to the bone. Your mouth suddenly felt very dry.
“Owww,” Ianthe moaned in a stupid breathy voice. She wiped away droplets of blood from her lips; you could already see the flesh healing. “Nonagesimus, you freak.”
“You’re a freak,” you muttered, which was the best retort you could come up with in the moment, what with your face practically level with her cleavage and the two strategically popped buttons. She stuck out her lower lip and it took you a few seconds to realize this was meant to be some sort of sexy pout.
The combination was effective; you had to give her that, because next thing you knew, you were flat on your back in her bed and sinking into the mountain of pillows and she was already pulling up your handkerchief-dress with the flesh hand and parting your knees with the bone hand. She paused down there, between your thighs. Then she reached out and yanked on all of your nerve endings at once.
You howled. You had never heard yourself make a noise like that before; Mercymorn, Augustine, and God himself could have walked in the room that very moment and danced naked on the dresser and you wouldn’t have noticed. Even Ianthe looked up, briefly startled. Then she grinned and did it again.
Flesh magician, you thought in a daze, once you were able to have coherent thoughts again. You would never live it down; she would lord this over you for the next ten thousand years. You decided you would have to rearrange her mandible at some point in the near future to keep her from talking. After she was no longer doing…that…with her tongue.
“Oh, you little virginal nunlet, you,” she was cooing. She had paused to wipe her lips before shoving a skeletal finger inside of you. You writhed helplessly, sweating it out on her satin sheets. “Oh, Harry, you are remarkable.”
“Stop calling me that,” you hissed through clenched teeth—a mistake, you realized a moment too late; now she would never, ever stop calling you that.
But it was Harry that brought you back to yourself; it was Harry that gave you the wherewithal to extend your exoskeleton to grab Ianthe by the nape of her neck and drag her across the bed like a hideous overgrown kitten. You clambered on top of her gracelessly and grabbed a fistful of pale hair and were rewarded by a sharp intake of breath. Her pupils were blown; her irises shifted rapidly from lavender to blue to brown. You leaned down and kissed her again—this time, without biting—just to see what it was like.
You didn’t know how to do her nerve trick; that one would require some practice to get right. But you could slide down between her legs and have a taste. You had also never tried this before. Fortunately for both you and her, you were a fast learner—you hadn’t achieved Lyctorhood by being slow on the uptake—and of course you had memorized the diagrams ages ago. Ianthe began making some very interesting noises in response. You reached out with your construct to pull on her hair and she whimpered and arched her back. Fascinating.
You weren’t in any hurry. You slowly brought her to the edge and backed off, and then you did it again. She raised her head from the pillows and snarled, “If Ortus doesn’t murder you, then I fucking will.”
Well, that wouldn’t do: you finished her off on the spot, and did it one more time for good measure. You could be generous, in your own fashion. And when you were done, and Ianthe was utterly spent and stretched out in bed and idly playing with your hair (you almost smacked her hand away, but then you changed your mind), you thought to yourself that you still didn’t like Ianthe at all, but this—this was rather nice.
You didn’t mean to fall asleep, but you obviously did, because when you woke up you found yourself spooning Ianthe Tridentarius. She had her flesh arm draped over your waist and she was snoring. Not even remotely conscious, thankfully. Other people might look softer and more vulnerable in their sleep, but not Ianthe—she tended to frown and grimace as though she was plotting your demise in her dreams, which you wouldn’t put past her. You wiggled your way out of her grasp, dressed as quietly as you could, and put another hex on her jawbone. Then you fled to your room without looking back.
Once the door was firmly shut behind you and your blood wards were in place, you slumped in relief. You changed into your own nightgown and sniffed your skin—you still smelled her sweat on you, and those half-rotten apples. You let the water run and slowly started to scrub away the paint. It had been forty-seven days since you had slept in your own bed and worn your own clothes. And Ortus the First was definitely still not dead and was definitely coming back to kill you at some point, but at least now he’d have to do it somewhere else, and not when you were barefoot and wearing your nightie.
You were almost finished washing up when you heard a soft knock on the door. You paused, towel in hand, and wiped off the last of the paint before crossing to the other side of the room. You put your palm against the cool metal door and waited. You didn’t need to ask who was on the other side.
You opened the door and you let Trouble in.