Viresh Ayyar (viresh) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2009-03-17 12:27:00 |
|
|||
Current mood: | desperate |
Late Thursday afternoon, 17 September 1942, at the Mysteries offices in Londinium...
WARNING: Explicit sexual content.
Joachim Piccard leaned against the doorframe of his lover’s office; he was trying to make it look casual but he’d been waiting for that door to open for what had seemed like hours, and he was relieved to have the wait over and done. “I have to say,” he said lightly, “I’m glad at least that you’re off the floor with Rosier and the rest of the inmates.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I would have done more to help with the moving, if they’d let me. You’re sure no-one’s taken anything?”
Viresh Ayyar looked up from the stacks of files on his new desk and nodded. The office was in shambles, but it was a different sort of chaos than what he was used to. The stacks of files had been moved too carefully for him to believe that no-one had read any of them, and yet, it had all happened so fast. He was almost sorry they weren’t more disarrayed; he rather relished the idea of sorting through everything and perhaps getting a fresh perspective. “Reasonably sure. I’ll have to double-check, make sure nothing minor went astray, but nothing important is missing,” he said. “I’m glad I’m away from them as well, even if I must say, I will miss seeing you judiciously terrorise Rosier on a frequent basis.”
Joachim laughed softly and bitterly; he knew all too well how much his violent temper aroused Viresh. “When I was younger,” he said, lowering his voice, “I’d never have dared. But seeing what he did to you…just brought everything back.” He’d been bullied as a child; what intelligent person hadn’t been? So Joachim didn’t mention the demon. The anger had been his own; but he was uncertain how he had mustered the Will to act on it.
“I could never get him to stop, myself. It’s not much of a shock, however. I think you’re one of the few people who listen to me,” Viresh said fondly. “Come in, if you like. There’s another chair under all of this…” He cast about, then waved his hand vaguely in the direction of a large pile of files. “Somewhere. I’m almost certain of that.”
Joachim lifted a pile of folders out of a chair and set them on the floor. “I have to go up north to the Royal Academy tonight,” he said, and felt as if he ought to apologise; Viresh was in his element, he probably expected to go home tonight and do what they’d done every other night since they’d met… “They’re almost completely sure that the next lightning attack will take place tonight. And that it will happen at the Royal Academy.”
Viresh frowned; his cousins were there, Anjali and Rajinder, and hundreds of other children… “Tonight? At the Academy? That…has the potential to be a massacre. Can you stop it? Like you did the other night? That was brilliant, what you did, can you do it again?”
“We should be able to,” said Joachim, nodding, pleased that Viresh understood, and wanted him to go. “Eliot’s gone over my notes, and we think we know what we’re doing.” He smiled, then, for a moment, brilliantly. “I’d rather save people than kill them, Viresh.”
Viresh felt blissfully warm; something about that smile broke through the fog and cold that was Londinium. “You saved us all last time. And I know you’ll do it again. Whatever you want to do, you’re amazing at it.”
“I’ve done a lot of terrible things,” said Joachim after a moment, uncertain how much more he wanted to say. “But you know that. And you still…love me.” Viresh had accepted his father’s death, but innocent people…that was a different thing. And he knew that some of the people he’d killed had been innocent. For all that no-one had cared about them enough to come looking, they’d done nothing to deserve their deaths—nothing much to deserve their lives, either, but he shouldn’t think that way, should he? It might be difficult, once Viresh knew everything. He glanced down at his hands. “I’m not sure if Taverner doesn’t want me in part because she knows that I’ll do anything, if I have to. And she can arrange things so that I have to, and sometimes I’ll do things I don’t have to do, just to show that I can. It’s a relief, to know that’s not why you want me, too.”
“No, no, not at all,” Viresh reassured him, coming over to crouch by his chair. It felt awkward to be taller than Joachim, even if it was just because he was sitting down. “I just…want you, always. I can’t explain why or how, I just do, because you’re you. Because you made me yours.”
Joachim pulled Viresh up into his lap. “I don’t care how wrong it is,” he said, in a broken voice, “or what God thinks of it, or even if the black smoke comes back, although I hope it never does. I love you,” he admitted, and waited for a moment. What they did was a sin after all; and that could be why the black smoke had come in the first place. Ficino had had something to do with it too, but he’d done the same things with Ficino.
Viresh twined his arms around his neck, holding on. “I don’t care, either. Just so long as I have you,” he whispered.
Joachim kissed him, hard. “Taverner,” he said when they parted for air. “She just waved her hand and I was spitting up black smoke, all pepper and sulphur and ash, and I could remember everything clearly. Things that were dreamlike and perfect were suddenly real again…”
Viresh frowned, shaking his head. What on earth had happened in Taverner’s office? It sounded like some sort of infection, some entity inside Joachim’s body that shouldn’t have been there—not demons, that was ridiculous, but something. “But it’s gone,” he said finally. Whatever it was. “It’s gone now. And…” He didn’t know what should come after ‘and’. Nothing he said would make things seem less horrible, would it? Not if they actually were.
“It’s gone, and we’re here…but she knows who I am. What I’ve done,” said Joachim wearily, and then bent his head and put his lips directly to Viresh’s ear. “When the war is over, we have to go to the Americas, or someplace else beyond her reach. But I don’t think you can win the war, here, without me. And if we lose the war, even the Americas won’t be safe. Say nothing out loud. I am sure they can hear us.”
Viresh nodded, obeying the order to stay silent. When the war was over, yes. Nouvelle Orleans, they could go there, they would go there. Somewhere in the Vieux Carré, somewhere small and beautiful and theirs where nothing would bother them. It would be perfect. They just had to win the war first. What did it say about him, that he wanted victory more than ever before, knowing that now they would leave when it was all over?
Joachim kissed his throat; the smell and feel of Viresh made him hard, like always—so that was still him. “Ward the door,” he said out loud. “We have a little while before I have to leave, but I don’t know how long.”
“Hopefully, long enough,” Viresh said, reluctantly getting up to obey.
Joachim watched him, smiling in spite of his guilt. Viresh was still graceful and beautiful, and at least he hadn’t lost that. He wasn’t the same man he’d been before Ficino had made him a puppet; he wasn’t ashamed any more, even when he ought to be, and he liked this defiance he’d found in himself.
Viresh made a thoughtful little face, wondering if the office was watched; he decided it probably was, but that Taverner would have put it in place herself. He didn’t think he could counteract it, not without time and serious effort. Well, they’d done it before; he didn’t suppose he’d get sacked for this, now. He put the wand up and smiled at Joachim. “Here’s hoping no-one has to leave too soon.”
“They can’t go without me,” said Joachim, shrugging. He didn’t think this would take very long. Not that he couldn’t have drawn it out, if there had been time, but there wasn’t.
“True enough,” said Viresh, with a smug little smile, leaning in to nuzzle along his jaw. “They can’t. They need their genius.”
Joachim stood up and bent him back in a hard, claiming kiss. “And I need mine.”
Viresh made a low, needy sound, clinging to him. Whenever Joachim manhandled him like this, his whole body became deliciously loose and unsteady, as if the heat of desire could melt him. He kissed Joachim as though they were drowning, sharing the last of their air.
Joachim grinned when they parted. “You’re so…” He shook his head; he didn’t have the right words for it; he just kissed him again.
“Yours, that’s what I am,” Viresh whispered when he finally breathed again. Those kisses, he thought, could melt icebergs, or pick them apart, so sharp and demanding…
Joachim reached down between them to stroke Viresh through his trousers while they kissed. Viresh made a soft, whimpery noise and shifted his hips to lean into the caresses. He didn’t ask for more. He didn’t have to, and he always preferred to let go and trust and submit. Even when it hurt, which it sometimes did, he liked it that way.
Joachim wasn’t content with that long; he fumbled Viresh’s clothes open and reached in to caress him in earnest.
Viresh was a little amazed. They really were doing this in his new office. As if laying some kind of primitive claim to the space. He liked that idea, just as he liked being claimed. He was wanted, so much so that the place didn’t matter, and he mattered, somehow. He needed to matter to Joachim. No-one else was really alive. “Yes,” he moaned, the word meaningless, and the movement of his hips became more deliberate, mirroring Joachim’s caresses.
Joachim laughed softly, and began to kiss his throat and jaw, biting softly here and there as he worked Viresh up. “If they’re going to watch us,” he murmured, “I hope they’re jealous.”
Viresh huffed a noise that was almost a laugh, but made more to do with a bite that hit a particular sweet spot, really. “I hope so, too, they should be, they definitely should be.”
“Rosier wants you,” Joachim whispered in his ear. “You know that, don’t you? He’s like a stupid boy who can’t figure out what to do, so he dips your hair in the inkwell and writes rude things all over your homework. But you’re mine, and he can’t have you.”
That hadn’t occurred to Viresh, and he didn’t know what to say. The only thing he thought Rosier wanted out of him was a rise, and entertainment over tea. It was impossible to think with Joachim’s hands on him, his whispers tickling his ear. “He can’t have me, he’s not good enough. I was meant for you.”
“Yes, you were,” Joachim purred in his ear, twisting his hand exactly the way Viresh liked, determined to make him lose himself. “Were and are. Mine. Only mine.”
Viresh hissed through his teeth, a shudder running through his body. That had been exactly what he wanted, and he scrambled to hold onto Joachim because he felt like he might fall. He moaned something senseless in gutter Hindi, and then in Tamil; he always lost his English when he hit this edge.
“Do it for me,” Joachim hissed in his ear, and kissed his cheek softly, still working him.
Yes, there, Viresh wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come and then, he was gone. His hips bucked, he was panting for breath, flushed and warm and claimed from head to toe.
Joachim grinned at him, and held him for just a moment to let him recover himself, looking down at him as though he were something he’d taken apart and rebuilt.
When Viresh opened his eyes, he beamed broadly up at him, utterly blissful. “Yours,” he murmured. “Utterly.”
Joachim nodded. “I’ll have you right there on the desk,” he mused, and cleaned him up with a handkerchief, careful to glance around, make sure no stray drops or hairs had ended up where they might be picked up by Taverner’s staff; he didn’t even trust the janitors.
“Let me move the files, please? Otherwise I’ll never find everything,” Viresh begged softly. He could imagine Joachim tossing things wildly aside, and it was arousing, but then he’d have to search forever for every scrap of parchment, and he’d never really be sure what had been taken and what had been read. He didn’t like it, he wanted just to submit, but that was a fact.
“Don’t take too long,” said Joachim, grinning. “I know how important those files are.”
Viresh used his wand to move the files; it was easier than picking them up, when his kundalini was flowing like this, and then smiled up at Joachim, waiting to be pounced. That really was the description, wasn’t it? Joachim was a tiger, his; they pounced before they devoured.
Joachim carried him over to the desk, set him on top of it lightly. “You should have piled them up that way before, and saved yourself the trouble,” he teased, although he knew that wouldn’t have been allowed; Taverner had wanted her staff in the files, and they’d need to find out what had been disarranged.
“Well, I’m aware of a very compelling reason to keep my desk clean now,” Viresh replied, smiling at the empty surface underneath him. “I’m sure it’s a lesson I won’t forget, either.”
“I’ve taught you a number of those,” said Joachim, grinning as he helped Viresh out of his lower garments.
“You have. Best lessons I’ve ever had,” Viresh replied, shifting to help pull the fabric away, and just being there, sitting on his desk and exposed, was enough to make his cock twitch again, as if he hadn’t just come.
“Eager, are you?” Joachim stood up, fished the bottle out of a pocket—they had, after all, planned on stealing the files and running away when they’d come into the building that morning—and undid his own clothing, grinning as he oiled himself and then pulled Viresh’s ankles up over his shoulders.
“For you? Always,” Viresh replied, shivering.
Joachim thrust two fingers into him, briefly, just long enough to be assured that he could, before he took him, closing his eyes for a moment so the sight of Viresh laid out for him like that wouldn’t drive him completely over the edge with the first thrust.
Viresh moaned, his fingers grasping for the edge of the desk just to have something to hold on to, to give him some leverage to meet Joachim’s hips. He would never be able to sit here without thinking about this, he knew that, and really, he supposed that was the point.
Joachim finally opened his eyes and looked down at Viresh. This was so much better than thinking about his past sins and misdeeds. No more painting the walls in spilt blood, when there were better things to spill. “You’re so gorgeous when you’re abandoned like that,” he said, pushing Viresh’s shirt and tie aside so that he could see more of his body.
“So’re you,” Viresh told him, his voice rough, and he arched into Joachim’s hand. “Your expression, love it…”
Joachim grinned like a fiend. “Good,” he said, “because you’d best get used to it.” He ran his fingernails over the skin of Viresh’s chest, making little runnels through the hair like a child with his fingers in water, and pinched his nipples.
Viresh gasped, the muscles in his legs tightening, trying to pull him closer. “Beautiful,” he said, his accent getting rounder, more fluid, more Chennai than Londinium. “You’re so pale and your eyes and, oh, just beautiful…” He was babbling again, and he couldn’t care.
Joachim wrapped his arms around Viresh’s legs, as if to hug whatever part of him he could, and squeezed for a moment before he went back to playing with his nipples. He knew he shouldn’t be too leisurely—how long could it take to fetch Gardiner and arrange transportation? but surely they had just a little while…
Viresh wanted to tell him not to stop, to not let go, to never leave him, but he didn’t say any of those things. He’d learned not to. “Yours,” he said instead, the s stretching out into a hiss, rocking his hips back against him. “Always, always, made for you…”
“Mine,” Joachim whispered, and then more tenderly: “I can’t make this last too long; we’ll have to leave…”
“It doesn’t matter, whatever you want, however you want it,” Viresh told him, and there was something soothing in his voice.
Joachim nodded, and began to thrust harder, taking his pleasure in earnest; but he still pinched Viresh’s nipples, and smiled when he twitched. “Touch yourself,” he said. “I want you to come again for me.”
Viresh nodded and did what he was told, letting go of the edge of the desk to wrap his fingers around his cock. He started to stroke himself in time with Joachim’s thrusts, his head lolling back and his eyes fluttering closed, loving every moment of this.
Joachim watched him, twisting his hips a little with each thrust, determined. “Mine,” he growled. “Even if I go to Hell with you.”
There was something about the promise and determination in those words that made Viresh feel as though he were burning already. Even though he didn’t believe in Hell or gods, and if he had believed in gods, he wouldn’t have believed in that one. It was good, though, the burning; before he really knew what was happening, he felt his whole body go tight, tingling, right there on the edge. With a shuddering cry, he bucked hard against Joachim and came, gasping and panting.
Joachim watched him, eyes smouldering, and then thrust into him again and again, until his own orgasm tore through him in a thrill of light and heat.
“Mere safed sher,” Viresh murmured, watching his face as he came, enthralled by it, by his expression, by the tension singing through his body and letting go. His, always his. Joachim had promised, and he believed him.
Joachim didn’t quite understand the words—he was in the haze that came to him after release—but he smiled, and wiped the sweat from his brow as he looked down at Viresh, shaking his head. “I won’t ever let you go,” he breathed out.
“I believe you,” Viresh told him. “Completely.”
“Good,” said Joachim, and dabbed at him with the handkerchief again. It was imperative that they cleaned themselves up. “We’ll have to make sure this place is clean,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t put it past Mrs Walsingham to check the desk for stray hairs.”
Viresh sighed. “You’re right, she would. Ugh, that woman,” he said, making a face, then he shook his head. “Tonight, once you’ve saved everyone, we’ll have all the time we could want, without having to worry about her sniffing around after.”
“Tonight,” said Joachim, smiling. “I just couldn’t wait…” He swallowed. “Not after I knew.”
“I’m glad you couldn’t. I’m never going to look at this desk quite the same way,” Viresh told him, smiling. Then, his face softened. “We’ll make everything all right. You can fix anything, and I’m smart enough. We’ll make everything all right. I know it.”
“I hope so,” said Joachim softly. “If I save enough people maybe it won’t matter so much that…” He sighed. “Even your father, I can’t be sorry, I’m glad he’s dead after what he did to you…but…” He wasn’t sure if Vikram Ayyar had deserved it or not; but it had given Lilias Taverner a weapon against him, and also a weapon to use against Ayyar’s widow, whose objections to Ficino’s plans had all been sound.
“It doesn’t matter,” Viresh told him, surprised at how insistent he was, fierce, really. “It doesn’t matter and you will save people, and it will be all right.”
“All right,” said Joachim, flushed. “We should get dressed.” He bit his lip a little, worrying at it. There were a lot of people, he thought, sometimes, who didn’t really deserve the lives they had, and he’d liked the idea of being a predator. But it was wrong: thou shalt not kill. And people liked heroes. He could get what he wanted if he was a hero. He liked the way that people looked at him when he saved them. It meant that he was good enough.
Viresh pushed himself up and kissed him, just a little thing. “We should. The Academy awaits.” He hesitated. “Would they let me come with you, help, if I could?”
“I plan to remind them you helped us the first time,” said Joachim. “Eliot will back me up. You did, after all. I hope he brings his girlfriend, the healer—but if he doesn’t, Agent Hill can do what she did, I am sure.”
Agent Hill. Viresh didn’t know her well. She’d been in love with her partner, an open secret, and then he’d died—Taverner always sent them on missions outside. Viresh supposed it could have been worse. She wasn’t like Rosier, a practical joker, and she wasn’t openly racialist; she treated him and his sister, St James and Kurita, exactly like everyone else. He’d find out, he supposed. “Good. I’d like to be where you are tonight. I just…do.”
“I always want you around,” said Joachim.
Viresh smiled at him. “Then I suppose it all works out.”
Joachim grinned. “Get yourself dressed, help me clean up,” he said lightly. “Before they come back.”
Viresh was happy to obey, and he took the handkerchief, cleaned himself up, then got up to pull his clothes into something resembling respectability before reaching to do the same for Joachim. But he was already dressed.
“The desk,” said Joachim, amused. “I’d make you clean me up if we were at home and had time, but we aren’t and we don’t. I just want to make sure that Mrs Walsingham doesn’t get us by the short hairs. Literally.”
Viresh frowned down at the surface of the desk, a little smudged now. They had to be absolutely careful, didn’t they? He cast a spell he’d learnt at Pantaleon’s in the chirurgery to sterilise it, destroying all traces of what they’d done.
Joachim smiled at him, checking the floor for any fallen hairs. “This is life during wartime, I suppose.”
“Not half as glamorous as advertised,” Viresh replied wryly.
Joachim chuckled. “A lot more glamorous now that you’re in it,” he said. “You must have learnt to do that when you studied as a healer. I hope you’ll teach me; it looks like it could be useful.”
Viresh nodded. “Yes, it’s simple, but useful. I could eat off that desk, if I wanted to.”
Joachim grinned at him. “Could think of some things you could eat off it. Later.”
There was a knock at the door then. Viresh looked himself over, reached out to straighten Joachim’s lapel, then took the wards down with another flick of his wand. “Come in,” he called out in a businesslike voice.
“I can’t,” Linden Hill complained from outside, but her voice sounded far more amused than upset. Viresh supposed that she’d done the same thing herself a few times. “You warded the door!”
Viresh went to the door, took the wards down, and opened the door. “Yes?”
Linden Hill smiled at him wryly. So it was true about the two of them. Maybe they’d have better luck with it than she had. Perhaps it was different when you were already lovers at the time of recruitment. “It’s time to go save the world,” she said. “Kyteler agreed to the boss’s terms, not that I ever thought he’d do otherwise.”
“Sometimes, there’s no telling with the War Bureau,” Viresh said with a shrug. “Unless there are direct orders to the contrary, I’d like to accompany you. I was useful in the last lightning rain, I’d like to think I could prove useful this time around.”
“He helped me the last time,” said Joachim.
“Far be it from me to argue with success,” said Linden. “I thought he was supposed to go anyway, for that exact reason. Although…I was told to tell you to leave the Ziteks alone. Who are they, anyway?”
Viresh rolled his eyes. “Hunters. Thugs, mostly. And they work directly for Kyteler, apparently,” he said. “I’d be perfectly happy if I never saw them again.”
“They don’t like me much either,” Joachim offered quietly.
“That’s odd,” said Linden. “You seem perfectly personable to me. Rosier doesn’t think so, of course, but he’s a cad.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Viresh said with a little smile. “Regardless, I’m content to leave them alone so long as they extend me the same courtesy.”
Linden nodded. “We’ll keep them away from you.” She shook her head. “Come on, let’s go.”
septenary (Linden Hill), madwatchmaker and viresh