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Occtis never knew that nighttime could be so quiet.

They're two weeks out from Dol-Makjar. Tensions haven't cooled but they've solidified. Their strange piecemeal party of travelers has started to ease up around one another, bound tightly by mutual fear and fury. Occtis is coping with the new dead thing, as best he's able. He doesn't want to burden Thaisha too much with it. Her unease around the undeath is palpable, apparent in the words she steps lightly around and the glances he feels on the back of his neck when she thinks he's unaware. Lady Aranessa is sympathetic, but also fighting demons of her own. Vaelus is understanding but doesn't pry, and Julien keeps glaring at him across the campfires at night, so he isn't exactly Occtis's first choice of confidant. 

All of those factors combined have lead to some...interesting gaps in interparty information. Occtis keeps volunteering to take first watch so no one will notice how little the nights are actually affecting him. He's pretty sure that Vaelus has figured it out, but she hasn't actually asked him yet, so the topic stays decidedly unbroached.

He's not quite sure why he isn't mentioning his sleeplessness. It's important, scientifically. Another bullet point on the long list of reasons he cannot be counted as alive any longer. It's probably important tactically, too. It could help them avoid assassins, or suspicion, or traps on the road.

And yet...he hasn't said it. Not out loud. Not to anyone. Every time the words well up on his tongue, he bites them back, conscious of what Thaisha might think. Another bullet point on the long list of reasons he cannot be counted as alive. Another nail in the coffin closing slowly around him. 

It's already closed. 

No. He can't think like that. If he lets himself think like that, he'll start screaming. He'll bang on the walls around him, clawing for escape, and once that breakdown gets going, it might not ever stop. 

Instead of sleeping, he...pretends. It's isn't hard. He already doesn't breathe during the daytime, so no one is surprised that he becomes especially corpselike at night. This particular evening, he's been shuttled into one of the rooms they bought at a shabby inn partway through the Pass. Thaisha is sleeping soundly in the adjoining one, and Vaelus and Lady Aranessa are out on watch.

That's left Occtis sharing a bed with Julien, much to everyone's mild chagrin. Occtis suspects that the only reason the knight is deigning to rest in the first place is because his lady is in Vaelus's company. 

Well. That, and the part where he's using Occtis as bait to murder the rest of the Tachonises. That also probably factors into things. 

The room is cold. It's big and drafty, with minimal furnishing and badly thinned-out bedsheets. In his past half-hour of pretended sleep, Occtis has only grown more conscious of the pallor of his skin, the lack of flowing blood to his extremities. Tingles lance along his limbs as he lies flat on his back, pins and needles that surge up to warn him of poor circulation. They're incorrect. It's a faulty alarm. He won't die or lose a limb, not from this chill. His body will remain intact, no matter how dire the temperature. 

But I'll still feel it. I'll still feel every bruise. 

That part...that part might never go away. In some ways, he's grateful. It's nice to be able to feel anything at all. In other ways...Occtis doesn't know. Maybe it would be easier if there was no sensation left underneath his skin. Maybe it would be easier if he couldn't feel a single thing.

A soft sound, from the other side of the bed.

It's quiet. So quiet that Occtis probably wouldn't have heard it, were he still alive. It would have been drowned out by his pulse and breath, if they were still present. But they aren't. Occtis is a vault of silence; his ears are all the more keen for it, and right now, that means that he's picking up the smallest of rustles. Cloth moving against cloth. Skin moving against skin.

Julien is probably just shifting in his sleep. Occtis shouldn't panic, but even the slightest unusual thing these days makes him twitchy, new fears encoded deep within his deadened nervous system. The bed is surprisingly big for the two of them. Perhaps Occtis has just draped himself particularly far to one side - but as he opens his eyes, staring up at the ceiling, he realizes that Julien must easily be two or three feet away.

It's not that far, comparatively. But it suddenly feels like an ocean, a vast gulf of possibility. Something could be wrong. Someone else could be there. Something could have strangled Occtis's strange bedmate in his sleep.

Wait, is he dreaming? Is he having a nightmare? 

Well, that wouldn't be strange in the slightest. Aranessa's been sleeping poorly for weeks, crying out in the night at the memory of the massacre. For all his ironclad will, the toll it's taken on Julien is just as evident. Perhaps that's the actual explanation here. 

The taste at the back of Occtis's throat at the thought is bitter. Envious, even. How silly, to envy someone their nightmares, but...gods. Occtis is finding himself bizarrely jealous all the same. At least Julien gets the privilege of dreams.

A faint exhale. A hitch of breath, suddenly cut-off; the sound of flesh unsticking itself from a bedsheet. That one sounds bad. Violent, even. If Julien keeps on like this, he might strangle himself in his sleep, and Occtis would rather be the only corpse in their shared room. He swallows down a spike of anxiety and shifts to a sitting position, turning towards Julien to attempt to wake and comfort him.

He does not make the attempt. He is met with a very different sight than he expected.

In the instant of unbroken vision he is granted, he catalogues the sight: Julien's hand, tucked down beneath the waistband of his braies. Julien's knuckles bulge out against the constraining cloth. His stomach muscles flex, slick with sweat as his fist moves up and down - 

The sound that escapes Occtis's mouth is completely unintentional, a crack in the perfect self-control of death. A small squeak, utterly undignified - but more than enough to send Julien scrambling upright as well, hissing in shock. 

"You are awake, Tachonis." 

Uh-oh. He sounds venomous. It's the tone of teachers, and parents, and figures of authority. The tone that means you've gone and done it now, boy. When Occtis was younger, he never understood what the it in question was. Now, dead nerve endings tingle, trying valiantly to paint his face with an embarrassed flush. The pieces of the equation he's been missing fall into place. 

Oh, no. Oh, fuck. He's miscalculated. Badly. He knows this it a bit too well. 

"I'm so sorry," he blurts out. "I couldn't sleep, I was just -" 

"What?" Julien's glare burns like fire against his skin. "Too busy spying on me, wraith-boy? Is that it?" 

"No," Occtis says nonsensically, as if that isn't technically a little bit true. The words stick deep in the mush of his brainspace, digging in their roots. He tastes blood on his tongue, the dead flesh bitten through in his surprise. Maybe the taste is what forces the next set of words out, tripping over themselves as his voice cracks at the edge. "I can't sleep, Julien. I literally can't. I don't know why - it's probably the death thing - but I just, I can't. I thought you were having a nightmare, I swear. I - I didn't mean to intrude."

The ringing silence probably only lasts five seconds, but to Occtis, it feels like a lifetime. If he had a heart, he's sure it would be thudding. 

Is he going to try to stab me again? 

It's possible, surely. It's not out of the question.

"I thought you were asleep," Julien says eventually. Each word is bitten into, considered and menacingly chewed. "I did not realize you were awake." 

"Okay." Occtis's knuckles hurt. He realizes belatedly how tightly he's gripping the bedclothes between them. "Yeah. That makes total sense."

"If I had known, I certainly would not have -" Julien stops his own sentence short with a laugh. "No. I do not need to justify myself to you."

"I - I never said you did."

"I do not need to apologize for my -"

"You don't!" Gods. Occtis did not ever anticipate having this particular conversation. There are many things he fears; he didn't even know to put this on the list. "It's fine. I get it. We're on the road, it's natural to - you don't have to say anything. It was my fault. My mistake. Totally on me."

"All right."

"O-okay."

"I am going to go to sleep now, Tachonis." 

"....okay."

"We will never speak of this again."

Julien fixes him with one more accusatory glare. It's intense but unfocused, like he's trying to pin Occtis to a board through sheer force of will. Then, there's a thud. The bedframe rattles as the other man slumps onto his side of the bed and stares pointedly up at the ceiling.

It seems the conversation is over. Occtis lowers his head back down to the pillow, and tries to do the same. 

The silence returns. It feels...uneasy. The static sound of their room is a kaleidoscope - wind rustling leaves outside the window, wood creaking in the walls and ceiling. Maybe that's only audible to Occtis. His senses have certainly gotten better after death; that's not in question. Strong enough to hear Julien's nighttime activities, at any rate.

The breathing, on the other side of the bed, is far too even. A mimicry of rest, from one unable to achieve it. He's faking it. The same ways that Occtis has been. Almost ten minutes pass, but Occtis can tell the other man is nowhere near close to drifting off to sleep.

Understandable. He was...well. Busy. Which Occtis interrupted. Unintentionally. And now they're stuck here, three feet apart, lying flat on their respective backs, staring at the ceiling, having just had one of the more awkward interactions of Occtis's undeath. Is Julien going to be able to sleep at all, after this? Has Occtis robbed him of that relief, somehow? Adding insult to injury?

He weighs the offer in his mouth for five more minutes. The words taste like salt and danger, but the silence stretches to a breaking point, and finally, Occtis just can't resist. Damn every consequence. This is foolish. This is ineffective. He has to say something, even if the end result is Julien banishing him from bed entirely. 

"You can - continue, if you want?" he whispers. Immediately, regret sours in his stomach - what the hell am I saying, this is stupid, he's going to throttle me - but he pushes forward anyway, resolute. "If you need to - um - you know - I wouldn't say anything, really. It would be fine, honestly, if you had to continue, to get it -" 

"What?" Julien says, his words incredulous. "You want to watch, Tachonis? Is that it?" 

No, Occtis goes to stutter instantly, absolutely not. I'm just trying to make you comfortable. I'm just trying to be good.

But the sentence catches on a hook inside his throat, the line fraying as it goes. The scientific drive, more natural than breathing, rears its head. It's one of the things most engrained in him from the Penteveral - the bone-deep instinct to take a question and chew on it, to consider it fairly and equinaminously without bias.

And suddenly, an image springs to mind. Uncalled for by his brain, but present all the same. Julien's fist, free from braies and blankets, pumping steadily around his hard and aching cock. His eyes fixed on Occtis as he works himself over - desperate and tense, driving towards the edge - 

"Is that it?" Julien says again. The disdain is gone this time, dissolved into midair. His question has the tenor of a genuine one, for some reason, no accusation stapled on the end, which means that...

...no. That can't be possible. He can't actually be asking Occtis, for real. That would be unbelievable. Julien hates him; that's a given fact. He couldn't possibly actually want to...

What if he does?

The question hovers in the space between them. The wood knots of the ceiling swirl in Occtis's field of vision.

It would be so simple. If he turns his head, he'll see Julien again. All of Julien. It would be easy. The knight hasn't spoken again. The question still stands. Branches click against the windowglass like hungry fingers, waiting for the answer. 

".........perhaps?" Occtis gets out, swallowing through the fear. "Possibly. Probably. Yes? I haven't actually ever seen..."

"Dead gods in their graveyards," Julien says lowly. "Are you that mystified, boy? That inexperienced? Do you not know people can touch themselves to feel pleasure?" 

"Of course I do!" If there was living blood in his body, his cheeks would be bright red right about now. "I am aware of the concept of self-pleasure, Julien! I'm just -"

"- a coward?"

He's smirking. Occtis knows it. The other man is laughing at him, throwing the challenge down like a winning hand of cards.

The anxiety in his hollow chest transmutes itself fast, turning towards something more like fury. The fury, conversely, burns into something hot and sweet like a quick-downed shot. It trembles through Occtis's body, waking it from death. It leads him further towards this foolish and inadvisable thing. 

"I am not a coward," he says stiffly, to prove his point. "But I was always being watched before now. I always had roommates. No one teaches you these things. No one told me it was an avenue to experiment with, so...it's not that I didn't try to. I just didn't know how, for a really long time."

"You never read any books?" Julien mutters. "Dirty magazines?"

"Where exactly would I have gotten those?"

A laugh answers him from the other side of the bed, low and disbelieving. Images float in front of Occtis's unblinking eyes, bright in technicolor. The whispers of his classmates; their rumors and innuendo. The covers of books he saw from a distance in shops. His few lackluster experiments, private moments stolen and secreted on his own. The section of novels at the Penteveral library reserved for those older than eighteen. He'd never been brave enough to venture inside it, even after passing the age barrier. He'd always been unreasonably sure that his family would know, somehow, and something bad would come of it. 

"Have you ever seen a man's cock, then?" Julien asks. There's a curve at the edge of his voice - a honey-sweetness, the sharp edge of a slick-coated blade. "Such a famed scholar of the body as Occtis Tachonis has surely encountered anatomy before." 

"Yes," Occtis says. It's not entirely correct, but it's at least part of the truth. 

"....a living man's?"

Well, fuck. There goes his half-truth, gone like smoke.

"Not for long." In changing rooms, and back alleys, and such. Briefly. Faraway. From a distance. But not in bed. Not in bed with Occtis. So far, yet so close. An eternity and half an breath away.

"Well, then. Do you wish to, boy?" Julien says coolly. "Would that heighten the depths of your academic study?"

The question is tossed out easily, as if they're only speaking of the weather. The tone is at odds with everything the words instantly do - to the room, the air, the ache between Occtis's thighs he's been trying fruitlessly to push away.

Gods. He's actually offering. This isn't a dream. Occtis can't even have those anymore. The sentence is barbed. That should make it less appealing. But it doesn't, bizarrely. The mix of mockery and condescension sends lightning down Occtis's spine. His hips twitch upwards, almost without his permission. Needy. Wanting. Yearning for something more. 

He licks his lips, shivering as the tip of his tongue wets and slicks the cracks. It's not hard to think of another tongue, slipping against his. Another hand, taking the place of his unsure experiments. Another body, flush against his own, warm and intoxicating like wine -

He turns his head. It's staggeringly easy, in the end. Just a simple flex of muscles, an unconscious decision fueled by lust and life-desire. 

Julien is lounging on the far side of the bed. One knee is up; one hand is still against his stomach. The fingers rest tantalizingly close to the waistband of his undergarments. He's not even looking at Occtis. The haughty superiority of his gaze is trained on the ceiling, not sparing his bedmate the kindness of a thought.

He's not wearing a shirt. Occtis had recognized that, before, but he hadn't let the details really sink in. The muscles of Julien's chest are hypnotizing. They thread and flex down towards his groin like river deltas, red with arousal, pulsing with warm blood.

Occtis wants to drown in it. In them. In him. Oh, gods. What a strange new way to die.

"S-show me what you were doing?" he breathes. He's rewarded by a hitch of breath, a soft sound of surprise. Was Julien actually expecting him to rise to the challenge? "Show me what you were doing, before I interrupted you." 

Julien's fingers twitch. He blinks at the ceiling. The corner of his mouth tilts upwards in a smirk. Occtis watches the knight's throat work for a long moment, inhaling in preparation. He shifts himself in the interim, turns on his own side and props himself up on one arm, to see Julien more clearly from his part of the bed.

The nervous scream of anxiety - what am I doing, what is he doing, is this allowed - has crested and shorted out entirely. It's replaced by the clinical fascination of an experiment. A live demonstration; a learning experience. Something brand new. 

Fluidly, Julien's hand trails towards his cock. He doesn't burrow below his waistband, though - he seizes on the waistband itself, thumb hooked into fabric, and guides the whole affair down past his knees. A moment later, his cock is freed  - mostly hard still, glistening at the tip. His clever fingers curl around it in a practiced grip, giving it an idle, gentle stroke. Occtis's mouth waters. He has half a mind to be jealous of Julien's hand right now - which is utterly crazy, but also somehow makes a shocking amount of sense.

"Have you ever done this type of thing before?" he says, around the mouthful of spit flooding from dead glands.  

"So many times." Julien slips the pad of his thumb over his cockhead. A muscle in his leg twitches in response. His voice is shockingly even, all things considered. "I have done more things in bed than you could possibly dream of."

"Like what?"

"You must be joking, Tachonis."
 
"I'm deadly serious." Academic study is not a joke. This isn't exactly academic study, but....maybe it is. It's as all-consuming as that other kind of passion. Occtis's entire body is on fire. It's like he's the one being touched, despite the utter and frankly torturous lack of pressure on his own extremities. 

"No, no," Julien mutters. "You are just dead."

The knight's hand moves at a steady pace. Practiced pressure. Not too quick. The smooth jerks are punctuated with sharp flicks, like a staccato note. The sight is intimate, erotic, devastating, but the sounds that fill the space between them are somehow ten times more intense. Julien pants with pleasure, his feet sliding slowly against the sheets. He lazily rolls his hipbones against his knuckles, and there's a gorgeous squelch as he coats them with drops of precome, smoothing his motions even more.

The impulse to lick the fluid off his skin is so strong it's almost nauseating. The punch of arousal makes Occtis feel like a puppet, flayed and controlled by a torrent of desire. 

"What are you thinking of right now?" he whispers, a vain attempt to stave away the madness. He doesn't have the strength to care how ragged and ruined his voice comes out. He digs his nails into his palms until it stings. 

"The house of pleasure I visited after the execution," Julien says. His hand is literally on his cock, so it's absolutely unfair that he can still sound so damned composed. "I saw two workers there who I have prior acquaintance with."

Prior acquaintance. Yeah, that sounds about par for the course. Occtis hadn't met the knight before the farramh, but he's lived in Dol-Makjar for years. He's heard the rumors long enough. "The workers at the brothel. What did they, um. Do with you, exactly?"

The pace of Julien's hand accelerates at the question. The badly-made bedframe beneath them creaks in response. His hips swirl in a circle, sinuous and sure. He should be falling to pieces, but the expression on his face is exultant, somehow. Complete. Occtis's thighs clench in response, a tender-bruised type of need. How often does the knight chase his pleasure like this? How much practice does it take, to be so shameless?

"Well, how much time do you have, Tachonis?" Julien purrs. His mouth curls at the corner, a cut against his skin. "Do you wish to hear how I ate her cunt? How she rode him in front of me, while I toyed with her breasts? How I fucked his thighs, while he begged me to take him harder? How we fell into each other utterly - hands and mouths, loud screams and heated skin? Are you hungry for more? I could truly go all night." 

The world is melting. Occtis's stomach pulses, sick with need. The ringing in his ears can't be natural or real. It's displacement, imbalance - brought about by a haze of desire so strong he can barely remember his own name. 

Between his legs, his thighs are slick as bloodsoaked stone. He only realizes that he's thrust his hand down to his own cock when he makes the first stroke, and hears himself moan in relief. Oh, fuck. Fuck. He can't - it's not - he shouldn't - but oh, gods. It's needed, and it's good. He didn't think he could feel this, after death. He'd been afraid. He's been too scared to try. 

"Harder," Julien says, almost growling the command beneath his breath. "Move your hips, boy. Match the rhythm. Make it hurt."

It's easy to obey. Easy, natural, thoughtless. The best thing in the world. The nightvision of death is mostly greyscale, but colors spark in Occtis's field of view nonetheless. Lurid imaginings of Julien with one lover, two lovers, three. The descriptions echo in his ears, thoughts so vivid they shouldn't be allowed. Somehow, that makes them taste so much better. He tightens his grip on himself. He'll be ashamed of this tomorrow, probably. He's not sure if he cares. 

"You'd like to be in the midst of something like that, wouldn't you?" Julien's voice fractures briefly, then coalesces. "Taking pleasure from partners? Unable to avoid it? It's transportative, Tachonis. Otherworldly. You'll forget your name, your fears...everything but the physical, the feeling. Wet, hot, rough, desperate, alive -"

"Julien," Occtis whispers incoherently. His tongue is heavy in his mouth. Pleasure is building like electricity, bringing him back to life. It's so good. So much better than every time he's tried himself alone. He presses his thumb down and mimics the grip he saw earlier. He writhes as he thinks of strong arms holding him in place, fucks up into himself like a man possessed. "Julien. Julien, please." 

"Have you ever even been kissed?" Julien gasps. "Had someone lick you open as you stroke yourself? Surely not. You pitiful thing. So lonely and unsatisfied. So frigid and deprived."

"Please." Occtis isn't even sure what he's begging for. It doesn't matter. It matters more than anything. "Please, I - need to - it's so very - please." 

"Specify," the knight bites back at him. "I cannot see what you're doing, boy. I don't have devil eyes." 

And - oh. Wait. Oh, gods. Occtis hadn't even realized.

The glares from earlier. The wide-bore stares thrown clumsily across the bed. Occtis has darkvision now, but Julien does not. The candle beside their bed has long since burned down. The knight has been relying on sound and word alone, baring himself shamelessly to an unseen bedfellow. The realization of the unknown power he's wielding is so complete and catastrophic that Occtis has to fight not to come just from the thought.

Instead, a whine wrestles its way out of his chest cavity, with the same uncontrolled energy as Pin emerging in viscera and blood. The mattress shakes as he thrusts against it jaggedly, kicking the foam beneath him like a rabbit in a trap. He wants to come. He doesn't want to stop. He wants the pleasure. He never wants this to end. He needs more of something. He doesn't know what to do.

"Incoherent already?" Julien pants. "So quick. So pliable. So easy. Gods, you've never had proper instruction, I can tell. Such a shame, Tachonis. A shame you never will."

Occtis squeezes his fist around his cock. Wetness coats the webs of his fingers, the electricity begging for release. He's halfway to sobbing, or screaming, or some lurid combination of the two. This must be what true madness feels like. Or perhaps it is simply the feeling of Julien Davinos, because his self-pleasure has never gone anything like this before.

He mumbles some sort of plea through thick and useless lips. He's not sure exactly what he says, but it must be foolish, because the laugh it coaxes out of Julien is nothing short of cruel.

"Ah. Out of your mind entirely, I see," he says. "It's just your hand over there, Tachonis. No one else. I am not actually fucking you right now, in case you needed the reminder."

It feels like he is, though. Logically, some part of Occtis is aware that he's still cordoned on his side of the bed, touching himself alone. But the gasps from Julien's throat are timed with Occtis's own. The sway of the bedframe is shaking them both, and the wet friction of his palm could just as easily be someone else's skin. Everything mixes together into a half-lived fantasy, a blur of pleasurable pain. He's so hot he could die from it, as if he's pressed together with the man lying beside him, the distance between them not insurmountable at all. 

"Though I'm sure you'd love that, wouldn't you?" Julien growls. His voice is bitter, bright with condescension. "I'm sure you'd just adore it, having someone rip you apart a second time." 

Everything breaks. Occtis comes with the words sharp in his ears, choking on the bluntness of them, the images they conjure up like spell somatics. Julien, pressed down upon him like a coffin-weight. Julien, sliding inside him unforgivingly like a knife. Julien going too hard, too fast, to force him over the edge without a thought or care.

It's terrible. It's perfect. It's just right. His ears ring hollow. Every dead muscle in his stomach shakes. Pain spasms through him as he scrapes the nails of his free hand down his thigh, heedless of damage as he stutters through the pulse. Distantly, he's aware of a discordant screech of wood and metal. The bedframe shudders and moves beneath his bones. 

He sucks in air, habitual and desperate, even though he doesn't need it. The oxygen catches in his chest, a makeshift parachute, and he finally relaxes, melting limply down to puddle in the sheets.

His head lolls to one side on the pillow. He's promptly treated to the sight of Julien, debauched. The man's tongue is trapped between his teeth; he's still working his own cock, hard and unsatisfied. A spot of redness blooms at the corner of the knight's mouth. His eyes flit back and forth across the room, unfocused. Ah. That's right. Occtis is the only one who currently has the privilege of sight.

"Um," he says dazedly. "Julien, you're bleeding."

"You can see that?"

"Yes." It shouldn't be possible, but another kick of arousal ignites down Occtis's spine. He sits up, shifting onto his hip to catch the fullness of the sight. The bright color of the wound, the twitch of muscles in the dark. The irregular and desperate thrust of Julien's hips against the air. "I can almost taste it. I - it tastes so good."

Julien groans at that. He licks the blood drop away; his fingers tighten further on his cock. His strong arms, corded from swordwork, tremble at the force of his movements like a tree in a storm.

Occtis rubs the pads of his fingers together, still wet with come. He swallows as he imagines sliding across the gulf of sheets between them, closing the gap. Kissing the skin beneath Julien's chin, squeezing his hip. Taking the knight's fingers onto his own tongue, sucking them clean.

"What - what are you thinking about now, Julien?" he asks instead. "What are you hungry for? You look like you're so close."

"Fuck," Julien spits. His throat convulses, something choked back down beneath the flesh. "You really can see me in the dark, can't you? Devil boy. Ghoulish thing. Specter of the grave." 

"Of course I can see you." Occtis puts one hand on the bedframe to keep himself upright. He doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't know what to say - but it feels like he could say anything, do anything at all. The knowledge kind of makes him want to moan. "Is - is that what you need, then? Someone to watch you? Is that what you think about, when you're fucking your own hand every night?"

"Gods." Julien thrashes, sucking in air like a bellows. His hand moves faster still, almost frantic. The edge of the words is furious, but the center is different. Hatred, half-pleading, gnawing on itself. "You don't know - a single thing about - oh, fuck you, Tachonis. Fuck you and your endless godsdamned list of questions -"

"You could, though," Occtis whispers. His head throbs. His cock is swelling again. He feels bold, drunk, fully hypnotized. "You could fuck me, Julien. You wouldn't even have to ask."

Julien - fearsome, prideful, frightening Julien - whimpers desperately, and comes with a choked cry. Occtis watches unblinkingly, his brain awash in fascination. He wants to catalogue every detail. The knight's head kicks back. His eyes glaze over. His thighs jerk wildly, as he spills in frenzied spurts across his stomach. The nakedness of it is astounding, even beyond the physical reality.

How many other people have watched Julien like this? How many of them have gotten themselves off beside him? Is Occtis special, somehow, amongst their ranks? The circumstances certainly are. Julien doesn't seem like the type to ever let a lover stay the night. He doesn't exactly have a choice now, though. He's stuck with Occtis, every bit as much as Occtis is stuck with him. 

Harsh breathing from the other side of the bed mixes in with the fading squeaks of the bedframe. Julien's eyes flutter closed. He lets his slick hand fall to the sheets, sucking in greedy lungfuls of air. Occtis waits for a few minutes to see the other man's eyes reopen. It's not as if they can actually look at each other through the dark, but the instinct is there regardless. The clawing, crawling need for resolution.

I did something to you. You did something to me. We didn't even touch each other, but I came so hard I almost thought I felt my heartbeat -

"Are you okay?" he says carefully, before the silence can suffocate him whole. "Julien? Are you, uh, alive over there?"

"I am fine, boy."

"You're not, um. You're not really moving very much, though." 

"That is customary after orgasms, in general."

Occtis doesn't miss the implied sneer behind the last sentence. The unsaid "not that you'd know" that drenches it in utter vitriol. It doesn't hit, though. It feels like a giveaway, a tired punch thrown far too wide. So much of Julien seems to be like that. Hurting and hurting others, so that he won't hurt first. 

"Go to sleep, Tachonis," Julien says. The words aren't soft, exactly, but they're exhausted. Wrung-out and worn, like an overused kitchen rag. His teeth worry at his bottom lip, but his eyelids stay locked shut, refusing to open and stare out into the black. "Just go the hell to sleep. We will not speak of this again."

Five minutes pass. Then ten. Occtis counts the seconds. The thumping pulse at the side of Julien's neck begins to slow. His breathing straightens out, his body going lax as he drifts into a half-hearted rest. 

Occtis is left hanging and alone. He turns over the potential of another sentence, a question or a plea. He almost summons the words to correct Julien's misapprehension, almost blurts out pathetically what he somehow needs to say.

I can't sleep, Julien. Didn't you hear me? Didn't you understand?

He finds himself close to abandoning words entirely, letting his body take over like it so badly desires. He could do it, probably. He could roll to the right, press himself flush against Julien's form, hold him through his slumber and watch him till he wakes. It might work. It's a strange night of allowances. He might be able to do it, and not even get stabbed. 

He doesn't, though. The fantasy of action cools, as quickly as the temperature in the room. The soft blanket of nighttime returns, deep and stifling like an ocean of grave-dirt. Occtis can't even pivot into slumber to escape the quiet. His own come has dried between his knuckles, flaky and white. He raises his hand tentatively to his mouth and licks it clean, marveling at the taste.

When he finally lowers himself down to the pillow, he closes his eyes and grasps for visions to sweep him away. He's hard again, the sense-memory of the conversation pulsing through him. It's not long before his hand slips down to wrap around himself a second time.

He presses his lips together until they hurt, forces himself to muffle his desperation as he begins to move. Surely one more time will exorcise this neediness from his veins. Surely if he has another orgasm, he'll be able to be utterly done with the matter.

It would be easier if he could populate his fevered brain with faceless people. Workers at a pleasure-house; legions of lovers forgotten and unknown. He can't, though. The bed is cold, but the presence beside him is warm, hungry, captivating, inescapable. Necessary but separate. So far away. No matter what Occtis tries in the fantasies, it's only Julien's face he sees. 

He comes with the man's name trapped behind his lips, refusing to let it out, to wake him up with the admission. He'll keep the quiet, damn it. Maintain the status quo.

He bites his lip at the climax, and tastes blood. Come morning, he already knows it's going to bruise.