Work Text:
Britain is cold, and winter seems to go on ceaselessly. The nights in the townhouse are long and dark, and Soma imagines that he might never become used to the damp chill that seems to constantly permeate the air around him. Indeed, if not for Agni's warm body beside him, he would sincerely hate the long winter nights in the English townhouse.
On those nights, when he can convince Agni to sleep beside him, he feels safer than he'd felt even back home. When the damp chill wakes him up, he squeezes closer to his khansama and admires the man's elegant face and delicate white eyelashes in the moonlight. Occasionally, Agni is restless as well. When they'd first begun to regularly share a bed, it had startled the prince. Agni's lips move as if speaking, and his breath becomes labored. On some nights, he whimpers in his sleep, and a tear rolls down his cheek. Each time it comes to that, Soma fearfully shakes the khansama's shoulders and demands to know what he's dreaming about when those white lashes flutter open and grey eyes stare back at him.
"I am revisiting a past life," Agni sometimes admits. "Lady Ratri makes sure that I never forget my sins."
"That was in another lifetime," Soma pouts. He hates to think that Agni is tormented by nightmares, even sleeping beside him. "Try to dream about something else."
Agni smiles, sometimes even laughs. "Of course, my prince. In the morning when we pray, I will be sure to ask the goddess of night to bestow pleasant dreams on me henceforth."
"Good." Soma nods and settles down, laying his face against Agni's chest. It is unfair, he decides, that Agni should continue to be punished in such a way. He's long since atoned for his wrongdoings, and it's cruel of Ratri to continue to bring him nightmares. "I will pray for this as well," Soma promises under his breath.
Agni's body is warm, solid, and strong. Beneath soft white hair and smooth brown skin, Soma can feel the taught muscles in Agni's chest. He can hear his beloved's heartbeat slowing as he settles and begins to forget his nightmare. If only he could order Agni to forget his past life entirely... Because he can't, he sits up in the shared bed and clasps Agni's blessed right hand instead. Even in the moonlight, he can see the blush spread over Agni's cheeks and ears.
"My prince, it is very late..." Agni protests, but quickly gives in when Soma nuzzles his face against the upturned palm and begins to unwrap the bandage with practiced fingers.
"Let me help you forget." Soma speaks plainly. He doesn't like to waste time with phony geniality like all the British people they’ve come to know. "Agni, share kama with me."
Agni smiles, almost meekly, as Soma continues to caress the godly hand. "If the prince wishes it."
"Let me make you feel good, as you do for me," Soma says. Commands it, even.
"If the prince wishes it..." Once the bandage is completely removed, the hand seems to act on its own. The fingers trace the outline of Soma's jaw. The thumb gingerly plays over Soma's lip, but then eagerly enters when Soma opens his mouth to receive it.
Agni moans softly and hides his face with his other hand. The godly hand is particularly sensitive to Soma's touch, so Soma licks at the tip of Agni's thumb and watches with delight each time as his stoic, strong khansama blushes and whimpers beneath him.
It thrills Soma to see Agni in such a way. He can admit, if only to himself, that he loves the way the muscular, imposing man so easily becomes putty in his hands. He relishes seeing the strongest warrior his father’s palace ever had tremble at his touch like a tender maiden.
“You are already excited,” Soma speaks after a short while. He can see the way Agni shifts his hips against the thick mattress, trying to find comfort under the heavy weight of his arousal. The godly hand twitches against Soma’s face, vying for attention once more. He caresses the hand. Kisses the palm. The fingertips shake and brush over his cheekbone. The right hand of God is both a powerful weapon, and one of the man’s most erogenous places. Neither of them claim to understand it, but Soma eagerly gives it the attention that it yearns.
“My prince…” Agni’s breathing grows harsher. The way he moves on the bed, Soma can feel him, so wonderfully close, so delightfully submissive. His left hand slides beneath the blankets but waits for the prince’s permission before moving further.
Teasing the khansama somehow seems out of the question. He remembers the persistence it took so long ago to get Agni to admit that sex was painful without proper care. Agni’s pleasure is always a sensitive subject between them. Soma learned early on not to simply ask what he’d enjoyed in his past life. His confession about the hand’s sensitivity had been a particularly difficult one.
“There was a woman… A woman who I hurt. I remember shoving my fingers into her mouth,” Agni spoke coldly. “Not to silence her cries. It was for myself.”
Any time that Agni admits a crime from his former life, there is a thick air of tension about him. “The man who did that is dead,” Soma insists, and although Agni gives an unassuming nod, there is a certain shame to him that Soma wonders if anyone else can sense. It’s that shame, Soma discerns, that must be the cause of the nightmares that plague his beloved khansama.
Agni’s voice cracks when Soma parts his lips again and takes the first finger all the way into his mouth. While Agni’s place might be to look after his prince, to even give his life for him, Soma finds himself wanting, needing, to offer the khansama as much happiness as he can. When Agni writhes on the bed, throws his head back against the pillows, softly whispers the prince’s name, Soma realizes again and again that they are indeed each other’s reason for living.
The second finger makes Agni cry out. Soma sucks on them the way he knows drives the man nearly to madness. Agni’s deep, masculine voice sounds so beautiful, Soma thinks, when he’s panting and stifling a deep groan. There were times before when he brought Agni to completion by doting on the hand alone. He laps at the fingers and draws them further into his mouth, coaxing a gasp from Agni’s lips, wondering if he can make it happen again.
“Please, my prince…” Agni doesn’t quite beg, but he might as well. “Take your pleasure from me first. My body and heart are for your service.”
Soma doesn’t hesitate to appease him. He too is excited, and eager from seeing Agni so docile, so ready. “If you insist,” he says coyly after drawing his lips from the godly fingers. The hand trembles, visibly even in the dark, groping beyond Agni’s control for the prince’s mouth. Soma moves for Agni’s lips instead, kisses him as he rises from the bed. Agni’s lungi comes undone and falls down his hips, and he clutches it modestly as he crosses the prince’s room to retrieve the oil decanter from the dressing table. The gilded glass stands out against the plain, stark design of the British furniture as boldly as the two of them do in the grey London streets.
“Bring it to me,” Soma folds his legs under him and extends his hand in the most divine way he can. The servile look on Agni’s face as he kneels beside the bed and presents the oil makes Soma suddenly very aware of how hard his heart is beating. Yes, he loves Agni. He loves the man bound, by his own will, to his side. Soma knows that when all the others – his parents, Mina, perhaps even Ciel one day – abandon him, Agni and his godly hand will be steadfast beside him. Always.
Soma accepts the bottle. When he removes the cut-glass stopper, the perfume of the jasmine attar diluted in oil fills the room, and for a few moments the stark British architecture and frigid night air gives way to memories of home. Agni’s shining eyes gazing up at him are the constant, the one thing in his life that makes him feel secure, assures him that he’s safe and cared for, whether they’re in the shady pavilions of his childhood palace, or the Phantomhives’ empty townhouse.
“Make yourself ready for me,” Soma orders, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“Jo ajna,” Agni says, the godly hand placed over his heart. He rises and the lungi, forgotten, falls to the floor around his feet. Soma is breathless as Agni returns to the bed and lays beside him. He’s picturesque. Broad shoulders pressed into the mattress, strong back arched like a dancer. Muscular legs parted. Dusky cock throbbing amidst soft white curls.
Soma carefully pours the oil onto Agni's fingers, envisions himself as his namesake deity, pouring pale moonlight over Agni's fiery body. Agni rolls the oil on the fingertips of the left hand, hesitating for a moment as always, but pushing himself to continue for his prince. The godly right hand trails over Soma's thigh as the left hand plunges fingers inside himself and Agni visibly shudders. The unadulterated devotion visible on the khansama's face makes Soma's heart race even faster.
"Agni, make me ready as well," he orders, tearing off the oversized British nightshirt he’s come to enjoy wearing and casting it to the floor beside the forgotten lungi. Soma can hardly stand to wait. For Agni, it's the least he can do. He wants to hurt the man as little as possible, but Agni's body beckons to him like sweet wine.
Agni is an able man. Soma eases closer and kneels beside him, and Agni takes him in his mouth while continuing what he’s doing to himself.
"Does it feel this good when I suck your fingers?" Soma sighs with harsh breath at the familiar tenderness of Agni’s mouth. Agni makes a soft noise in acknowledgment. Narrow white brows furrow and Soma can hardly feel Agni lift the decanter from his hands as he thrusts into the khansama's mouth. Agni’s hair is soft and lush in his hands. Soma strokes it with his fingertips and guides Agni’s face away long enough to gaze into devout eyes. “Agni, you ignite a flame within me,” he whispers.
Agni practically mewls. “My prince…” He speaks, voice quivering, as he pulls away. He begins to bow but Soma pushes him back.
“If you’ve stopped, that must mean you’re ready,” Soma says. “Does it?” He grasps Agni’s bare shoulders and urges him back onto the bed, clambering between his knees and holding his thighs apart. Agni is blushing again. His brows knitted, his chest rises and falls dramatically and he looks away. He is humble and shy. As Soma takes hold of his cock and steadies himself, he marvels at the man Agni is. Ciel’s strange khansama may be quite talented indeed, but he could never come close to matching Agni’s sweetness, and his sincere, heartfelt devotion.
Agni’s insides are like milk and honey. Like cleansing fire, burning with purity and exaltation. Soma realizes that there are some who would find kama like theirs blasphemous, but he knows it isn’t true. As he pushes into the slickened heat, he knows that a feeling so fantastic can’t be anything but sacred.
Agni clutches the blankets in both hands and a ragged, shattered groan escapes him. His eyes roll back and his open mouth trembles around unspoken words, uttering a silent prayer. Soma recognizes the entranced state, and through his own pleasure, he clasps the godly hand, pries it from the blankets, and presses it to his chest over his heart.
“Agni,” he moans his beloved’s name. He braces himself against Agni’s knees and presses in deeper. With each stroke he can feel Agni’s body receiving him. His entire frame moves to meet him, his strong back arching, his powerful legs tensing around him and pulling him in closer. Soma feels like he can’t get deep enough into the beckoning fire. He could lose himself entirely in the engulfing flames. “Agni,” he speaks to the deity himself as much as to his khansama, worshipping the fire inside the man with as much devotion as Agni worships his beloved master.
Agni's voice cracks. He moans now, letting escape a short, deep groan with each of Soma's thrusts. Soma grasps the godly hand, draws it to his lips, kisses the knuckles and then brings the tips of the first two fingers into his mouth once again. How hard it is to focus when he himself is overwhelmed by the feeling of Agni's burning insides! But he doesn't give in, not yet. When he laps at the fingers, closes his lips around them, nips delicately with his teeth, his reward is Agni’s deep voice trembling, crying out in ecstasy.
The khansama writhes and finishes onto his stomach. Wet droplets shine in the moonlight, scattered like morning dew on Agni’s taught skin. Agni gazes up at him, transfixed, with heavy, half-lidded eyes. The fleeting moment when Soma can’t fight himself any longer and gives in to his own release feels like a lifetime. His desire for his servant overwhelms him. He comes, hard, and collapses into Agni’s arms a heartbeat later. Agni lays spent on the bed, the godly hand slipping tiredly down Soma’s neck and shoulder, resting in the small of his back so comfortably Soma is certain it was fated to fit there.
The jasmine attar and the radiant warmth from Agni’s body tear him from the cold, lonely townhouse. The grey, damp London streets are thousands of miles away, and in the moments when he’s nearly blind from exhaustion, he can nearly hear the peacocks’ shrill call in the shady summer pavilion.
Agni’s face is placid and sated, more peaceful than after hours of meditation. Misty white lashes flutter softly at him and a gentle smile begins to form.
“I hope that it was to the prince’s satisfaction,” he speaks. His voice is tired and strained.
“Did you forget about your nightmares?” Soma demands, wishing he could make the calm and the serenity last in Agni’s heart forever. “Did you forget about your past life?”
“The only life that concerns me is my life with you,” Agni says, and Soma knows that he can trust every word that Agni speaks. “When the prince… when you’re inside me, I think of nothing but the salvation you bring me. I feel nothing but enlightenment and peace.”
“Then it was definitely to my satisfaction.” Soma nods decisively and kisses Agni’s face and mouth. Perhaps this time Ratri will heed their prayers, he thinks, and at last nestles himself closer into Agni’s embrace. He lays his head on Agni’s chest and listens to the steady heartbeat, and when it slows he moves just enough to see those white lashes still at last, and a look of tranquility on Agni’s dreaming face.