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The Dark Urge was not made to be a lover.

He is a creature of spikes, claws, and bone white scales - a monster shaped from the flesh and blood of Bhaal to deliver death to every living thing on this miserable realm, and his father had outfitted him well for the task. His hands can call lightning from the air to sear flesh. His many teeth are sharp enough to pierce skin and tear muscle. He has felt bone breaking between his jaws and savoured the rush of blood down his throat, a sacrament of love for his godly father. 

It is the most exquisite blasphemy now to fist those same claws, made to rend and tear, in the dark, sweat-damp hair of a lover. To bend his neck and accept heated kisses along his throat and at the corners of his too-wide, toothsome mouth. To be desired, ardently, every sharp edge and bloodied point of him. It’s intoxicating. Even still, when he presses his free palm against the soft, unarmored skin of Enver Gortash's breastbone he aches, in his very marrow, to burrow a tunnel through warm meat, and close his fist around the man's pounding heart. The very thought makes his teeth drip with righteous hunger.

There is nothing Bhaal detests more than a heartbeat.

For all that he criticises his sister for her pointless devotion to artistry, the Dark Urge is not above taking pleasure in a beautiful kill. To tear out a living lover’s heart while they’re panting on top of you and watch the shock eclipse the lust in their eyes would be a beautiful thing. It is what he was made for - to kill and kill and kill until there is nothing left. It is the very point of him. 

But Bhaal made him mortal too. 

The Dark Urge wonders sometimes why Bhaal would make him with such a flaw, such an ugly crack in an otherwise perfect creation, and then leave him to his own devices. Why, if he was made to destroy them all, does their warmth sing to something hollow and aching inside him? He has asked, alone in the fetid dark of his father’s temple, but he has never received an answer. Perhaps Bhaal himself doesn’t know. 

He is a loyal son, still, despite his weaknesses. There will come a day when this man will die by his hand and when it comes, the Dark Urge will lay him down in the ruins of the world they have devoured and give him the most exquisite death his depraved mind can conceive - but not yet. Not yet. 

His father’s blood seethes in his veins, bitter at this rare denial, but it is the anger of a spoiled child denied one more sweet. He has killed twice already today - mere spoonfuls in the sea of blood his father requires, but enough that he can ignore his urges without too much guilt. He has other interests at the moment.

Gortash’s clever hand has found the Dark Urge’s cock where it is stiff and aching against his belly. Unlike the Dark Urge, Gortash had not been born with sharp claws; he’d had to make his own. He wears them now, those elaborate little pieces of gold filigree, even when he’s shed everything else on the floor beside the bed. The metal, warmed by the heat of Gortash’s flesh, is a teasing contrast to the relative softness of his palm.

“You like that, don’t you?” he says. The words are hot against the scales of the Dark Urge’s throat. Gortash strokes him with great skill and no little amount of experience, coaxing rough noises from the Dark Urge’s panting throat, and then laughing, pleased at his own prowess.

Arrogant thing. He knows he’s good at this.  

It’s a warm evening at the ripe end of summer, and the heat has made them both lazy, their pleasure directionless. It is enough simply to lie here, amidst Gortash's tastelessly ornate furniture, his damask sheets and soft pillows, and exchange unhurried kisses. 

The bedroom windows have been left open in a desperate attempt to coax a breeze, but the air itself seems too lethargic to stir, and even Gortash’s pretentious red brocade curtains hang limp as a fresh corpse. It was only in the past year that Gortash had managed to acquire a home in the Upper City, and he wears his newfound status with all the class of a former whore that had married well. 

They lay together, naked of everything except for Gortash's little golden claws. The heat of him is incredible. He lays half atop Dark Urge while he fondles him, rutting lazily against his hip and pressing an endless train of kisses against his throat.

“There's something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you,” Gortash says.  “I've always found that the linchpin of any good partnership is reciprocity. When one partner does something for the other, it’s repaid in kind. Tit for tat.”

It takes a moment for the words to penetrate the soft cocoon of his pleasure that Gortash has woven around him.

“Ah. You want something.”

The shape of his evening now comes into focus. Here was the reason he had been teased and kissed and pressed into bed, despite them both having more urgent tasks at hand. How very like a Banite.

The Dark Urge had not intended to spend the evening on his back. They were meant to be discussing their plans to use the Elder Brain to wage a shadow war on Baldur’s Gate. He had taken leave of his father’s temple and the thousand tedious little demands that came with leadership and made his way through the streets to Gortash’s new home in the Upper City with every intention of being back that evening. No doubt Sceleritas would be fretting - a thought that makes the prospect of returning home even less enticing. 

It is always a delicate balancing act, ensuring he upholds the interests of his father without alienating their Banite allies - and it would be easier still if the Dark Urge did not enjoy giving Gortash the things he wants, so very much. A personal failing that he has apologized to his father for more than once. But before the year is out, Gortash will rule Baldur’s Gate in Bane’s name, and under his reign the faithful of Bhaal will stalk the streets without fear, shedding blood in his father’s name with the tacit permission of the city’s law enforcement. The remaining Harpers in the city would fall first - Gortash had already promised them to him. A mass slaughter to celebrate his rule. And as the black hand of Bane stretched itself across the Sword Coast, the blades of Bhaal would be ever in its shadows. Tyranny would pave the way for murder to follow. The future was a bright and shining thing. Under the circumstances, a little indulgence could be forgiven.

Gortash presses another kiss against his scales, just over the Dark Urge's heart, like a reward for his cleverness. “And I am willing to offer something of equal value in exchange. I would never expect you to accept anything less.”

He is still moving his hand, idly stroking the Dark Urge’s cock. Whatever he wants, he must want it badly. The Dark Urge sighs. “Go on.”

“I waited to bring it up until I was sure we were on the same page in this as we were in everything,” he says, lifting his face so that their eyes meet. The sun had set around them, and in the dim light, his eyes were nearly black. “You give in so sweetly when I’ve got you in my bed, my Dark Urge. I find myself preoccupied beyond reason lately with the thought of how else you might bend for me. I want to collar you and chain you to my bed, to have you kneel at my feet with your head in my lap. ”  

A bolt of sickness rises in him, “No.”

“At least give it some thought, will you? Perhaps it isn’t to your usual taste, but-”

For a moment it feels as though he has eaten something that isn’t fully dead, and it is still squirming inside his gut.

“No. I concede much to you because it pleases me to do so, but do not mistake that for submission. A Bhaalspawn is not a guard dog you can muzzle, chain, and train to heel at your command.” There is a warning growl in the words.

Slowly enough that Gortash can feel every finger, the Dark Urge closes his hand around the other man’s throat, pricking the skin with his claws. With the most delicate brutality, like crushing a fine porcelain teacup in his fist, he forces Gortash back, off of him.

“Need I remind you what I am?” The words smack, spit-slick, against the backs of his teeth. “When the children of this city cower in their beds, it is my shadow they fear. When their parents walk alone at night, I am the reason their hearts quicken at every unfamiliar sound. I am the sickness men fear in their own hearts, the rotten urge they do not admit to themselves, made flesh and given will. I am murder itself and I do not bow to you.”

“Gods, you're beautiful,” Gortash says fondly. A low thread of desire makes his honey-sweet voice rougher than usual. “You are utterly incomparable. The stuff of nightmares. You bow to no one, dearest, and nor should you. I am not asking for your submission, merely the appearance of it. Think of it as a game.”

The Dark Urge releases his throat, teeth still bared in distaste. Every blood-red drop of his pride is in rebellion. “A game?”

“What can I say? Idle fantasies are the prerogative of children and lovers. Let me pretend, just for a few hours, that you’re mine. In return, you’ll find me unfailingly generous.”

Did he not give this man enough already? Has he not already placed him far and beyond any other soul - the last living thing to die? Had he not allowed this man to burrow into his own heart, like a worm makes its home in the center of a rotten apple? Irritation leaves a sour taste in the back of his mouth, and yet there is no real fire behind the Dark Urge’s displeasure.

He would not be Enver Gortash if he did not seek to take more than what he was given - if he did not crave the submission of every living thing to his will, as much as the Dark Urge craved their deaths. He may hide it behind a mask of affability, but Gortash is a greedy, grasping, selfish thing. It was his nature to devour everything he touched. The Dark Urge might as well be angry at the sun for rising. 

Neither of them were easy creatures to love. 

The image flares again in his mind, just as it had when Gortash had first uttered the words. A Banite collar around his throat, his knees bent in submission to a foreign god-

“...No. No.”

If Gortash is disappointed, he hides it well. He leans in and presses a kiss against the Dark Urge’s snout. 

“Very well. If that’s your final word, I’ll say no more about it.” 

That kiss becomes two, which become ten, spreading along his face and down to his shoulder, as Gortash seeks to return to their earlier pleasures as easily as if he had never shattered them in the first place. But once his hackles are raised, the Dark Urge finds it difficult to relax. He remains stiff and unhappy. The images will not leave him. 

Submission to his father is natural. Reasonable. It is why he was made - to reap Bhaal’s will upon the world. Submission to another would be heresy. For all that he is an imperfect creation, the very thought unsettles him.

It’s nothing he’s proud of, but he has denied his father before. It had been ages ago, when he was far too young to even understand the nature of his urges. He did not yet know what or why he was -  had merely known that swearing to all the gods she could name that he would be good and control himself was the only way to get his foster mother to let him out of the attic. 

He realizes that his tail is tapping, irritable, against the sheets. Leaning one elbow on the pillow. Gortash strokes the Dark Urge’s face, running the pads of his fingers along hard ridges of bone as if to physically soothe the irritation away. His body is a warm weight against the Dark Urge’s chest - a deceptive comfort.

“I hope I haven’t offended you. Put it from your mind if it bothers you, dearest. It’s just a fantasy.”

In a moment of pique, the Dark Urge turns his head and seizes Gortash’s fingers between his sharp teeth, holding them there as if he is considering biting down. Gortash barely reacts. His hand twitches once on instinct, but he forces it still.

The Dark Urge could snap his jaws shut and sever Gortash’s clever fingers before the other man could stop him. Gold was a soft metal, and there were plenty of little gaps and joints in Gortash’s jewelry through which a sharp tooth could slip regardless. It’s a tempting thought - to violate the trust that had been so carefully built, brick by brick, between them. To bring bloody ruin to a partnership so long in the making. Would he try to stifle his screams, or would the twin shock of agony and betrayal punch through even Enver Gortash’s iron self-control? 

Gortash thought himself secure. More than that, he thought himself irreplaceable, to make such a galling request. It took a skilled cleric to reattach fingers, and even then, they rarely worked properly again. Far too many finicky nerve endings. How delightful that would be, to cripple a man who relied so much on the dexterity of his fingers - and that was if the Dark Urge did him the favor of spitting them back out in the first place…

“Surely there are things you dream about when you lay your head on your blood-encrusted pillow at night.” His voice is calm, but even in the dark, the Dark Urge can tell that Gortash is watching him very closely. After a moment, he reaches out with one captive finger and strokes the Dark Urge’s tongue. “Do I survive any of them?”

A dozen imagined pleasures flit through his mind’s eye. The Dark Urge allows himself to savor the thought of swallowing Gortash’s fingers for a moment longer, like a cherished family heirloom, before setting it back on a shelf.

“Some,” he says around the hand half inside his mouth. Though he doesn’t plan to maim Gortash, he’s not quite mollified enough to release him yet either. 

“There now, see?” Gortash says, leaning over him. “You can’t be angry at me for this when your own fantasies far surpass anything I could imagine.”

“But I did not ruin the evening by asking to eat your tongue.”

“Nothing’s ruined, don’t be dramatic.” 

Instead of drawing blood, the Dark Urge vents the need to bite on Gortash’s jewelry instead. He runs his tongue along the many elaborate rings on Gortash’s fingers and discovers that he can, with some dexterity, hook his teeth around them and pull them off.  Gortash obligingly holds his hand very still, a vaguely amused expression on his face. When the Dark Urge has finished baring one hand, spitting the rings one-by-one in a pile beside the pillow, Gortash offers the other.

He says, “You could, you know. Perhaps not my tongue, but I meant it when I said that I would repay in kind. So long as you leave enough of me to put back in working order afterwards.”

The Dark Urge hesitates. The thought was tempting, as it was meant to be. Gortash has always had a devil’s skill for finding something you desperately wanted and then holding it just out of reach. 

“And in return, I’m to play at being some Banite slave for your entertainment.”

“Not Bane’s.” Gortash strokes his newly-bared fingers over the Dark Urge’s lips. “Mine.”

With dark, hungry eyes, he leans down and kisses him. His tongue coaxes the Dark Urge’s toothsome maw to part. 

“And make no mistake, I would cherish you.”

Low and dark, the words coil in the pit of his belly, making a home there. His better judgement flees.

“Tell me more.”