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“Did it move you? Pray tell, Pickman, what emotions did it stir up in your heart?”
Pickman’s teeth itch when he pins Doresain down upon the silken sheets: his own ghostly body a flickering masterpiece complete with flowing dark hair. He is be a masterpiece created forged from sharp teeth, savior and executioner cleaved between death and life. His finery is draped in tatters thanks to the handiwork of Pickman’s claws—the one flaw in this masterpiece of ghoulish flesh that he could not allow for.
“It was beautiful, yes. I don’t believe I have ever seen such delicate outlines in a work of art before, set upon that yellowed canvas.”
Perhaps his claws will draw blood—oozing black, mingled with Dissolution—as he pries Doresain open. His fingers are wet with spit, flush with need.
“But, as I asked just now, did it move you? Surely you could smell the fragrance of the little clementines, the sweetness of spring from where the wind made those leaves shake and tilt?”
The smoke trickling from those twin blue eyes floods the room, pupils swallowed up under bright irises. Doresain’s responding touch is delicate, ocean waves licking at shore—a touch at Pickman’s scar covered chest, one lone pointer finger reaching down to circle at the edge of a palette knife. When Pickman presses his way inside with the prosthetic, flared red and dripping from lubrication, he does not earn a reaction. Doresain shifts, smiles, flickers—he will not grace Pickman with a response until he receives his answer.
“It didn’t,” Pickman breathes.
Doresain presses himself further against Pickman’s cock with a vice-like clenching of his muscles. Clawed fingers dance upon his bare shoulders, then rake blood furrows upon his skin—a tapestry that is a marriage between human flesh and fluid ghoul form. You who finds no joy in the art of cuisine, he seems to beg, indulge in this feast lying before you. His soft lips curl into a bitter-edged, knowing little smile.
“Why,” Doresain asks, “did it not move you so? Surely, it was breathtaking from a technical standpoint.”
“Because—” he snarls a little, eyes closing as that portrait of citrus fruit clouds his mind, “that’s all there is. It’s beautiful, it’s serene—a perfect depiction of an idyllic, cloudless summer’s day. And none of it is true. It’s an idealized laundry line of some fluffy ideal that doesn’t exist. That is the nature of all works of art that choose to paint nothing but beautiful things.”
Pickman knows he is no judge of flavor, yet the taste of Doresain’s blood warming his mouth when he bites down with each thrust floods him with a rush of euphoria; that tidal wave of ripping apart this painting’s canvas, molding the Prince of Necrovia to his own liking makes his teeth itch. He wants this darkened ghoul blood to stain his teeth, dry between his gums. Pre-cum drips between his scarred thighs with each press inside of Doresain. But his only reward is a little sigh with every strike against that cluster of nerves.
“You know,” that silken voice breathes against his ear, striking pale hair, “the way you describe that painting makes it more akin to how you look at surrealism.”
“Do tell.”
“Is surrealism not about the lack of logic—blurring the lines between dreams and reality? In search of some sweet taste that can only be imagined after probing through the deepest depths of the human mind. That painting of the clementine tree, then, would strike that way to you—a pretty but shallow and flavorless look at something artificial. A cloud on a plate, something that looks sweet but dissolves the moment your teeth sink down.”
He runs one hand over the smooth expanse of Doresain’s stomach, before squeezing around his slick cock—his other hand pinning his lord’s shimmering wrists above his head.
“It’s something ignorant,” Pickman forces out, “A cheap varnish on the world’s reality. Nothing like Rembrandt, whose work showed every little crease of wrinkles and worry lines on a woman’s face. Or the old man Yoshihide from Eastern lands, in his depiction of a Hell unlike our own. They painted reality as it is, and even a crumbling corpse has something beautiful in its glazed eyes—something you need to capture in every brushstroke. Surely, you would agree with me on that.”
His words are rasped out between every bite, every thrust inside. No pulse drums beneath his fingers. Doresain’s kisses drag cold upon Pickman’s lips, the wet saliva left when he pulls away colder still.
“This is why I need to desecrate you.” When he smothers Doresain with a kiss, he ensures that his jagged teeth scrape hard enough to draw new blood—fresh droplets of paint. “The paradise of your body needs to be sullied. I’ve got to leave my mark there, bring you down from your cushy life to reality. I can only do that by making you mine.”
His mouth tastes like bitter smoke, like fruits drenched in syrup. Doresain’s lips hover upon his with all the sumptuousness of honeyed wine, nails digging into Pickman’s shoulder blades with every twitch of his hips forward. Whatever words either have to say fade from their vocal cords; a silence is born in the velvet-upholstered room. And then it dies when:
“Remember who you’re speaking to, and of what status he occupies.”
Pickman moves sinuously by the puppet strings of his lover, carving him open at his behest. He groans, nestling inside of Doresain with a sputtering twitch of his hips. Sweat glistens on his shaky legs, wet the base of his cock. Jigsaw teeth scrape at Doresain’s neck, worrying at untouched skin in search of fresh blood—more paint for this royal canvas.
“I think,” Doresain says, “You have a very narrow idea of what true art entails. And you have a very narrow view of me. Remember that even under the canopy, you speak to the leader of Necrovia.”
Those indigo eyes are newly bright when he flexes back against Pickman’s movements. Where he scrabbles with red eyes agleam, Doresain dances—effortless, delicate, practiced in his movements as he is on the ballroom floor. The sweet music of his deep, mellow sighs fill the room and overlap with Pickman’s scratchy grunts.
“Remember this, Pickman. I sought out a painter. Not a barbarian.”
“Art can be barbaric,” he rasps out. “And I will be barbaric—restless, maddening.”
At this Doresain breaks. He reopens half-dried blood marks on Pickman’s back, unfurling when he bears downwards. His hands press down hard upon Pickman’s stomach, unsullied by even the slightest moistening of sweat. Slick flesh clamps down. Where Pickman wishes to make Doresain’s body his canvas, Doresain wishes to make his painter’s body a feast—he knows that much. His movements stutter—frantic, sputtering, growling, a full-blooded ghoul chasing his way through the night in search of blue blood to drown in. And drown in it he does.
Tidy, sharp teeth hover against the thin skin of Pickman’s collarbone. Doresain looks upon him as a feast, fresh kill plucked from the hunt. And then needle-sharp pain laces through his neck just as bliss floods the pit of his stomach: Doresain biting down till he nearly scrapes bone, lapping up dark blood and sucking scraps of flesh through his teeth. His heartbeat stammers, Pickman lets out a deep noise when dark stars burst behind his eyelids; he leaves even more scratch marks upon Doresain’s bare shoulders—any mark he can leave, any trace of scarring to display that he did not lose this battle so gently.
Dark blood sluices against broken skin as Doresain lies down once more. He plays vulnerable, letting Pickman scrabble for one last feeble victory. Overstimulation warming his nerves, distorting his movements, he obliges: one last brush stroke to leave on this exquisite canvas, mar it so that it portrays a breathtaking slice of some nightmare where there should be beauty, a dance in the graveyard with kisses cold as moonlight.
And Pickman smiles at this. He laughs—throaty, tired, but bold despite tonight’s losses. Doresain writhes under him, dripping red prosthetic still sheathed inside, and raises his eyebrow. His cock leaks against his bare stomach, still stiff.
“Why, Pickman, do you laugh? Do you see my position of authority as nothing more than a frivolous joke?”
He continues to laugh as he mouths along Doresain’s neck during the afterglow, nudging against the fresh bruises he left as imprints. It makes him imagine what might happen if Dissolution dripped down Doresain’s smooth thighs, pooled in his eyes akin to tears. Would he find Pickman’s taste so desirable then, the both of them devoured by that waiting black?
“Not at all. I laugh because I will do this again. I laugh because we’ll keep going around this nonsense in circles for who knows how long—I’m no connoisseur of falvor, but one day I’ll get my wish of tasting your skin in my teeth. The scars I will leave on you when I bother to indulge in such a rare taste—the defiling of Necrovia’s crown jewel—will make you my magnum opus.”