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“Presents from your dutiful admirers?”
The voice echoes beneath the vaulted ceilings of Zapolyarny Palace’s great hall. Pantalone turns on his heel, his head inclined politely toward the figure standing at the foot of the imperial staircase. In the seconds before his eyes curve to crescents, he catches the distinctive cut of a serrated smile.
“Merely a token of appreciation from the Liyuean delegation, doctor.”
“Is that so?” Dottore says. From the marble tiles below, he observes the Regrator while his fingers twitch absently at his sides.
Against the backdrop of the frosted cathedral, Pantalone makes the picture of a peerless prince. Standing upon the landing with immaculate posture, he’s haloed by the pale light that pours through the stained-glass windows. Wings of cobalt glass outspread behind him in all their sapphire splendor, the roiling rime of the blizzard visible through the frosted panes.
The Regrator appears to have exchanged his customary attire for a set of elegant robes. Black silk adorned with gold embroidery, tied at his narrow waist with a violet sash. Slim shoulders are mantled by a cape of rich plum velvet, its collar lined with sable fur. Atop his head, a floral hairpin secures the luscious strands in place, the purple petals of a fresh mountain orchid afloat upon those ink-dark waves. He holds his gifts in his arms as though they were regalia, like a sceptre or a globus cruciger, like symbols of his dominion over worldly trade.
“I take it your negotiations went well?” Dottore’s inflection implies a question, but he’s already deduced the outcome himself. The evidence of the Regrator’s success lies in the august way he carries himself.
Still, the question earns him a smile. Sly at first and then polite—perhaps simply a trick of the light. “Quite so.”
“Then this calls for a celebration.” Dottore takes the stairs two at a time. Moonrise muzzles over the plates of his mask, carving shadows across his face. “All that time and effort is finally paying off. It would be a shame not to acknowledge the results of your diligent work. Yes, this merits a celebration indeed. A drink, perhaps? Or, hmm, what’s all this they’ve given you to curry favour?”
Curious as ever, he peers at the objects gathered in the cradle of Pantalone’s arms. Framed by sleeves that spill like the syllables of running ink, Dottore spies a bottle of spirits, a luxurious calligraphy brush, a tortoise carved of emerald jadeite. A wooden box sits braced upon a gloved palm, sandbearer panels lacquered to a shine, carved by such an expert hand that it must surely be worth as much as what’s contained within.
“The box,” Dottore says. “What’s in it?”
“Nosy,” Pantalone chides.
He begins to stride down the wide corridor, tilting his head in invitation for Dottore to follow. Dottore does, his feet falling into step at Pantalone’s side.
“It almost seems a waste of breath for you to ask, doctor. I doubt you’ll be satisfied until you peer into it and verify the contents yourself.”
“Why not save me the research and simply inform me?”
Pantalone laughs. Light bleaches his eyes as they pass a row of torches, their pale flames flickering in the early night. Long shadows stretch over the patterned marble tiles.
“Because you would never be entirely convinced, no matter my answer,” he says. “Your worldview is predicated upon observable facts. You and I are both acutely aware that I could invent all manner of mundane and wonderous things to exist within this box—jewelry, gemstones, guides to prosperity handed down from the Adepti of Jueyun Karst. But until you acquire supporting data, the contents will remain in the realm of mere hypothesis.” Pantalone looks over at Dottore. His voice turns to a conspiratorial whisper. “What would you say if I told you that this box contains a serpent?”
“Tch. You do speak nonsense when you want to, Regrator. This is hardly an intriguing experiment.” Dottore scowls, though his faceplate conceals the worst of it. “I was simply curious about what sort of gift the delegates thought appropriate for a man who has everything he wants.”
“Oh, not everything. Not yet, at least.”
Masked Fatui bow as they pass, deferentially murmuring greetings before dissolving into the darkness of the palace’s infinite corridors. If they’re at all surprised to see the Second and Ninth Harbingers ambling amiably at each other’s sides, they have the grace to keep silent.
(Last time Il Dottore and the Regrator had been seen together, they had been at each other’s throats. The time before that… well, suffice to say that all parties learned a valuable lesson in discretion.)
They round a corner. Pantalone sends Dottore an indulgent smile. Somehow, it manages to appear both sincere and effortlessly condescending. “If you must know, the box contains tea leaves. Da Hong Pao, to be precise.”
“Tea? All these theatrics for tea? Was that really worth it?”
“Oh, it’s worth a great deal, doctor.” Pantalone says. “Does knowing what’s inside satisfy your perennial curiosity?”
“Hmph. Well enough.”
But, out of the corner of his eye, Pantalone catches Dottore’s mask tipped in the box’s direction, his head cocked as though he’s listening for the faintest of hisses.
Pantalone holds open the door to his room and gestures for Dottore to enter.
“You can hang your coat on the rack and set your mask on that table,” he says. Despite the genial tone, it’s clear that Pantalone expects no objection. He’s always preferred to be able to see Dottore’s eyes. Ironic given his penchant for concealing his own behind the crescent curves of his lashes.
Inside, Dottore is greeted by gold. Every time he steps into the Regrator’s private quarters, they seem somehow grander than before. Lavishly decorated with treasures so opulent as to border on obscenity. Display cabinets brim with rare artifacts from overseas: polished goblets and jeweled-dipped diadems; hourglasses that flow with burning sand. Priceless luxuries liberated from the vagaries of use, now tucked away by a collector’s hand.
Painted silk screens portion out the room’s furnishings. Giltwood armchairs upholstered in velvet mohair reign in the space before the hearth where the embers of a fire yet slumber. In a corner, bookshelves hold the Regrator’s personal library—not the ledgers and records of the Fatui’s accounting but scrolls and tomes, ancient and redolent with the scent of furfural. Further in, curtains conceal an imposing bed. The way the gauzy drapery obscures this most intimate space from view turns it all the more tantalizing.
It’s a spectacular display of Pantalone’s fortune. Were any other man in command of these rooms, they might have appeared garish. Instead, the effect is one of effortless elegance. Every square metre as beautiful and alluring as the Regrator himself.
Difficult to believe how he had once lived. Pantalone wears his wealth well, presiding over his riches with careless grace. Fortune flipped like a coin: from austerity to affluence, from poverty to power. Fate seized by nothing more than mortal hands. Once, clasped in pious supplication. Now, talon-tipped with raw ambition. In their wake: a trail of vermillion.
“Make yourself comfortable, doctor.”
Pantalone sets his armful of goods upon a table and strides toward the hearth. Unexpectedly, he begins to tend to the banked fire, feeding it, coaxing it into a blaze. It’s the work of a palace attendant, not a Harbinger dressed in his finery, but he seems disinclined to call for an aid.
Dottore uses the distraction to approach the collection of gifts. There’s a sheet of paper there, a land deed. Dottore had missed it in his earlier inventory, this contract, the real prize of the Regrator’s negotiations. He catches sight of the characters brushed in lampblack ink, the careful lines making up a signature he seldom sees.
How very intriguing.
The bottle beside it contains osmanthus wine. Dottore recognizes it and recalls another evening—perhaps not entirely unlike how this one will unfold. Wine had burned their throats and flushed their cheeks, and Dottore had found himself feeding Pantalone mouthfuls of fruit, velvet-skinned plums and luscious persimmons, so ready, so ripe that their flesh dissolved to syrup. Vividly, his memory presents a contrast between a drop of scarlet honey and the coarse fabric of a glove: a thumb at the corner of a smiling mouth, a mouth wrapping around a finger, a tongue flicking out in invitation.
Dottore is getting ahead of himself. He draws his attention back to the table. No expense had been spared on these gifts. The brush is exquisite, the sculpture is peerless. And then there’s the box, even more marvelous up close. Wood decorated with amber gemstones and filigree, the lid engraved with the image of a twined tortoise and serpent. Had Pantalone perhaps after all—
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.”
Dottore startles, his fingers upon the box’s latch. Arrested in the moment before he opens it. His head whips around to face Pantalone, only to find that he’s still tending to the fire, his back to Dottore.
“How—?”
“I don’t need to be able to see you to know what you’re up to. I know you, doctor.”
Dottore huffs and mutters something under his breath. Deftly, he flips the lid up, revealing the tightly knotted ropes of twisted tea leaves, muted greens and deep browns, the most expensive rock tea of Liyue. A familiar fragrance wafts up from the casing.
“So it was tea, after all.” He almost sounds disappointed.
“Precisely as I said.”
Dottore hears the faint fall of Pantalone’s steps, dampened by the plush rug. He’s close now, the lines of his body barely brushing Dottore’s back, his breath grazing the side of Dottore’s jaw. Gracefully, a slender arm reaches out and seizes the bottle of wine, gloved fingers curled around the glass neck. If Pantalone turned his head ever so slightly, his lips would brush Dottore’s cheek, and wouldn’t that be something this early in the proceedings—
Like a shadow, Pantalone stretches away, leaving the scent of qingxin and a lingering warmth over Dottore’s shoulder.
“Come, have a seat by the fire with me,” Pantalone’s tone is playful. “A celebration, didn’t you say? Let us drink this generous gift.”
Dottore follows through the perfumed air and sinks into the offered armchair with easy acquiescence. Velvet envelops him, a stately cocoon that cradles his fidgeting limbs. Upon the mantle, an array of timepieces tick, tick, tick in perfect synchronicity, a metronome for the crack of the fire.
Pantalone pours a ribbon of wine. It flows into the cup as thought molten gold, this weak baijiu sweetened with osmanthus, aromatic with the scent of apricots. One cup and then the next, poured from on high with a virtuosic twist of a wrist.
Dottore accepts the offered glass with both hands, the left braced beneath the brimming cup. “A toast, then,” he says, leaning forward. “To our dear Regrator’s latest acquisition.”
Their glasses touch with a lucent chime. Dottore’s strikes lower, and Pantalone feels a rush of delight at the gesture, the subtle deference of it. Dottore attempting to get into his good graces, perhaps? Pantalone takes a sip.
The fist mouthful of wine dissolves like sugar on his tongue. It warms its way down to his belly, tasting of peaches and gold and triumph.
Even with his head tipped back to drink, Pantalone’s eyes don’t leave Dottore. He consumes the angles of Dottore’s profile, as he takes his own sip. Divested of that sharp-edged mask of his, he appears a little softer, more like his earlier ages with his expressive lips and those dimples lying in wait of a smile.
Avarice swells within Pantalone. It’s wolfish maw fixed upon Dottore: the man who one fashioned a god. Deeply, Pantalone takes another drink.
Avidly, Dottore watches, meeting Pantalone’s attention with his own observant gaze. A paradox, he covets with a boundlessness matched only by Dottore’s intellectual ambition. For all that Pantalone brandishes indulgence like a blade, he moves with considerable restraint, every motion calculated, every smile an act. Even this exchange of drinks must have a goal, though Dottore hasn’t managed to deduce it yet.
Simple curiosity, Dottore had once rationed; that’s what drew him to the Ninth. A pretty puzzle to be solved, a passing amusement. Dottore would reveal what secrets festered beneath that polite façade and derive his conclusions. That would be all. Nothing more or less than the confirmation of a set of hypotheses.
Yes, it had been little more than idle curiosity.
But Dottore is astute enough to know that he has long since lost his researcher’s impartiality. Clinical detachment has dissolved in the face of Regrator’s captivating charms, the unanticipated variable of his charisma. It makes for poor science, this desire to be directly involved in his experiment, to lay his hands upon the subject of his interest.
“You’re staring,” Pantalone says. “Should I take it as a compliment, capturing the fascination of Il Dottore?” Dark lashes flutter above a beguiling smile. Pantalone’s lips are wet from his drink, glossy and all the more tempting for it.
Foolish, the lapse in Dottore’s attention. He clears his throat. “Merely contemplating your grand success. All the schemes you concocted to bring you to this moment of triumph. It’s impressive.”
“You give me too much credit. I’m merely a humble banker who balances Her Majesty’s books.”
Dottore snorts into his glass. He ignores how Pantalone wrinkles his nose at the open lack of decorum. “Isn’t that an amusing thought. Humble banker. Ha! You’re as much a humble banker as I’m a faith healer.”
“Well, there was that time you attempted to cure a so-called divine affliction, wasn’t there? If memory serves me right, you claimed you might one day reach a level of a god.” Pantalone titters. “The hubris.”
“It wasn’t an attempt. I succeeded,” Dottore counters fervidly. Even now, it still excites him. “Weeks of treatments, months of controlled trials. It was an unparalleled discovery. They claimed it was impossible—incurable—but I alone succeeded in proving that to be false…” He trails off, then adds as an aside: “ethics violations notwithstanding.”
Dottore contemplates the crystal stem between his fingers, the way the his gloves bruise the light that slants off it, the distortion of Pantalone’s features through the gold-filled glass.
“At any rate,” he continues, calmer. “You quote experiments from my youth. I see things somewhat differently now.”
“Now that you’ve made a god and found him wanting?”
Dottore scowls. This is not how he had intended their conversation to go, and Pantalone’s self-righteous expression shows he very well knows it.
“You’re unusually playful this evening,” Dottore says with a hint of acrimony. “Answer me outright, then. How is it you always manage to get what you want?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Pantalone says serenely. “I’m in the business of fair exchange. All parties got what they wanted in this transaction.”
“Did they? It appears to me that you struck quite the bargain, coming into possession of Liyue’s last remaining Da Hong Pao trees. Thousands of years old and on the verge of extinction with leaves worth more than their weight in gold. That’s what all this was about, wasn’t it? The acquisition of a parcel of land in Liyue. It certainly explains your delight over that little box.”
“You’ve done your research.” Pantalone surveys Dottore over the rim of his cup. Firelight refracts off its glassy edge and adds flecks of gold to the amethysts of his eyes.
“The cliffs on which they grow also happen to border Fontaine, which I surmise isn’t mere coincidence,” Dottore continues as though he hadn’t been interrupted. He’s swept up in the momentum of his discovery, that instant when data coalesces into conclusion. “Nothing is ever a coincidence with you. Given the faint traces of your accent… Tell me, Regrator, was this acquisition of yours motivated by profit, politics, or something else entirely?”
Pantalone clicks his tongue, but his tone is fond when he speaks. “So rigid in your thinking. Isn’t it narrow-minded to believe all these things are incommensurable?”
“Ha!” That’s confirmation enough. Dottore was right: these negotiations were personal. “Yet you still contend that your exchange was fair when you got all that for a trifling sum of mora.”
“Now you wound me. A trifling sum?” Pantalone splays a hand across his own chest in affront, but the pout on his lips is pure artifice, betrayed by the spark that glitters behind his glasses. “What you fail to understand, squanderer that you are, is that a love of money is not only one of the most profound forces of mortal life, but that money itself is desired in its own right. Not as a means to an end but as part of it. The amount I offered was a generous fortune.”
“A fortune you could recuperate thrice over in the coming year. A fortune a single one of my inventions could procure for you within a fortnight.”
“If that much is true, I should very much like to see what you’ve been up to in Haeresys.” Pantalone’s chuckle reveals a flash of white teeth. “That reminds me, your quarterly expense report is late again. You can have it delivered to my desk tomorrow.”
Below the marble mantle, the fire snaps. Dottore barks out a laugh. “Really, how do you do it?”
“And reveal all my secrets? I think not.”
“Oh, go on,” Dottore coaxes. Reaching toward the table, he captures the bottle and adds more wine to Pantalone’s cup, pouring with both hands. “How is it that you always leave your negotiations the victor? Mora to be sure, but that can’t be all.” His eyes narrow dangerously. “Don’t tell me you’re still plying your trade from the teahouse?”
Were it any other night, Pantalone might have struck Dottore across the face for his impudence, the bite of silver rings adding fresh scars from a violent backhand, cold as the crack of a whip.
But the wine is sweet on Pantalone’s tongue, caressing his throat with the flavours of plump apricots and wild honey. It’s a luxury that reminds him of how far he has come, power poured like liquid gold. It renders him agreeable—permissive of the doctor’s incessant prying and forgiving of the way he oversteps.
Pantalone reaches across the armrest. The loose sleeves of his robes slip down toward his elbow, exposing a glimpse of pale wrist bone, so fine and delicate as to almost appear hollow. Birdlike, even. Distantly, Dottore calculates how much pressure he could place upon it before it snaps.
Then Pantalone hooks a gloved finger into one of the loops of Dottore’s harness and tugs a little to test the give.
“There’s a saying I’m rather fond of,” he offers with a sly smile. “Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him for a profit. But teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.”
“Is that right?”
Pantalone licks his lips. He’s pleased by the way Dottore’s eyes follow the wet drag of his tongue.
“There is an artful balance in giving someone just enough to keep them wanting more. It is about making oneself indispensable.” Up, up, up Pantalone’s fingers dance, climbing the line of shining leather, teasing at the collar tight around Dottore’s throat. His index slides beneath the ring and draws him in. “The well-fed man does not understand the wants of the hungry, doctor.”
Perhaps not. But Dottore can see the hunger enclosed in Pantalone’s eyes. Endless and insatiable, it devours the violet of his irises, swelling out from the yawning maws of black pupils. Apertures of avarice: void, chasm, abyss. Enough to swallow him whole.
Dottore’s voice pitches low. “And what is it that you want, Regrator?”
With a gossamer laugh, Pantalone releases his hold and settles back into his own seat, eyes bowing to merry half-moons. At once, the appetite of his greed is concealed behind thick lashes and cold glass, his polite bureaucrat’s mask.
“Nothing more or less than what I’m owed, of course.” He takes another sip of wine and waves a nonchalant hand. “Same as any banker, really.”
Dottore stoppers his snicker and drinks.
Conversation carries on into the night. Beyond the frost-laced panes of the lancet windows, the sickle moon smiles. Its patient glow wages a petty war against flickering candles and their trembling wicks. Silver and gold, the light coats the Regrator’s private quarters in a decadent vermeil. Steadily, the timepieces track the spill of time.
Wine flows easy between their cups, a different kind of lifeblood poured from the glass neck of a dwindling bottle. Sticky and sweet, it lingers upon their loosened tongues.
How far things have come, Pantalone thinks. Years of work had culminated in this afternoon’s priceless exchange, every string carefully woven, every thread meticulously tugged.
Long ago, an underfed boy had spent springs plucking tea leaves in the mountains settled upon Liyue’s crown. Sun had scorched a path across his delicate features, the same features that later came to promise gold. Sculpted cheekbones and plush pink lips and eyes of the most alluring amethyst. Gaze upon such charming symmetry and see a profit: the shapely dip of a waist, the decadent twist of long, dark hair. Over and over, coins pressed against the meat of a palm, coins left upon a pillowcase, coins scattered like false rain over the teahouse floor.
His own body had been the first thing Pantalone had reclaimed and honed like a silk-sheathed blade. Then his name. Through worldly power, had refashioned himself the Regrator, enthroned upon the Ninth seat at Her Majesty’s table. Now, he claims for himself the very earth upon which it all began. The cliffs, the trees, the terroir from which blooms the greatest of Liyue’s teas—now signed away into Pantalone’s possession.
He could raze it to the ground if he so wished. And, oh, isn’t that a lovely thought.
Victory makes for a heady feeling. Pleasure chases each fragrant sip of wine—pleasure, joy, exaltation. Rare, this intensity. Rarer still how much of it he allows to dance behind his mask, to tease over the pink curve of an alluring smile, to waltz in the warmed violets of his eyes. The easy seduction leaves Dottore rapt with anticipation.
Pantalone sets his empty glass down with a clarion chime. Colours refract off his rings, rainbows splashing over velvet as he rises from his seat.
“It’s getting late,” he says. His tone implies an invitation.
Dottore’s penetrating gaze follows Pantalone as he strides across the room. He tracks the graceful shapes of Pantalone’s limbs, his alluring silhouette, the dramatic curve of the waist revealed when he peels off the dense layers of his outer robe and drapes the black silk over the back of a chaise.
One by one, Pantalone removes the rings from his fingers: index, middle, ring, and so on. Each is a contract forged in silver. Each is deposited into an intricate chalice. The bands clink loudly when they descend into the wanting cup.
“You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden,” Pantalone notes. He nibbles at the fingertip of a glove. With the seam held tight between his teeth, he draws the supple leather down from his hand and sets it upon the rosewood chiffonier. He repeats the action with the second glove, equally meticulous, equally tantalizing. “It’s unlike you.”
“Observation is the first step of any experiment. I would hate to interfere with the results.”
“Mm, so this is an experiment, is it? What results are you hoping for?” Amusement curls over Pantalone’s lips, but he turns his back before Dottore can catch it. Interesting that Dottore believes this to be his experiment. Interesting and arrogant.
“Divulging a hypothesis would no doubt manipulate the variables,” Dottore drawls. He downs the last of his wine and sets his glass upon the table. His fingers drum upon its surface. “I tend to prefer my variables… controlled.”
This time, Pantalone doesn’t endeavour to hide his snicker. “Yes, I’m familiar with your penchant for control, my dear doctor.”
Pale hands rise to release the pin that holds his hair. His white fingers draw negative space against the mountain orchid’s midnight petals. Dottore watches the loose curls tumble down over the curve of a graceful back, waves of obsidian threaded with a garrote streak of cold silver.
“The orchid thrives where others wither,” Pantalone remarks, fastening the hairpiece closed. “So said a certain philosopher from Liyue. Do you know much about orchids?”
“Perennial herbs belonging to the family Orchidaceae.” Dottore almost sounds affronted, as though the question were an insult to the breadth of his expertise. “One of the two largest families of flowering plants. Easily distinguished through their evident synapomorphies: bilateral symmetry, fused stamens, and extremely small seeds. Orchids hybridize efficiently in cultivation and—”
“How dull,” Pantalone interrupts. Leaning against the table, he surveys Dottore, watching the firelight play off the clasps of his coat. “Prodigious though your knowledge may be, it lacks poetry. I’ve always thought that much about you.”
“I have no need for poetry. My understanding of the world comes from exact and logical language, not the accidents and imprecision of metaphor.”
“No?” Pantalone sweeps his arm out with a flourish and recites: “All the world’s a stage, and we are merely players. We have our exits and our entrances—” Sparkling eyes curve to halfmoons. “One man in his time plays many parts.” A beat and Pantalone’s voice becomes his own once more. “Tell me that doesn’t resonate.”
“Very clever. But there is no fact there.”
“Perhaps not.” Pantalone’s shrug spreads the collar of his robe a little, revealing a glimpse of jutting collarbones. “But metaphor is a far more honest and insightful way to explain the world than the rote itemization of hypothesis, method, and results.”
“Hmph.” Openly, Dottore’s eyes scrape over the barest expanse of exposed sternum. Lower, over the diaphanous fabric cinched at Pantalone’s waist. His brow furrows ever so slightly at the strange shadows beneath the silk. There’s an unfamiliarity to the dimensions there. Dottore blinks twice and returns his gaze to Pantalone’s face. “Scientific theory relies on the exclusion of subjective factors. I am first and foremost—”
“A scholar, yes. We are all very well aware.” Idly, Pantalone thumbs over the flower, smudging a streak of pollen along its petals. “You’re quite orthodox, you know. A blasphemous heretic, and yet your methods remain as intractable as those of the Akademiya Sages you so disdain. Il Dottore: a cold-hearted dissector of all things beautiful.” Pantalone’s smirk turns cutting. “The Mahamatra would be so proud.”
Fury flares behind Dottore’s carmine eyes. Pantalone can see it from here, the seethe of resentment, the blaze of temper that has the doctor’s gnashing his teeth.
How easy it is to evoke emotion in a man who pretends not to feel it. Easy because they share the most intimate form of knowledge one can have of another. Not carnal knowledge—although that’s there as well—but the vulnerable underbelly of memory. The intimacy of history. Old wounds upon which they can press against like the pulp of a ripe plum. And Pantalone has pressed. Call it an investment in the outcome of this evening.
To Dottore’s credit, he’s quick to quell his rage, banking its heat behind a dispassionate stare. He leans back in his armchair and unclenches his jaw. “Your diplomatic victory has made you bold as well as verbose.” He sounds intrigued more than irate. “Usually, you wouldn’t dare.”
“Perhaps I should make more of a habit of it, then.”
Dottore laughs. His cheeks dimple. Against the velvet upholstery, his shoulders shake with his chuckles. “You are in a mood.” But Pantalone can tell that his interest is piqued.
For a moment, they take the measure of one another, these two unyielding Harbingers. The heretic doctor and the dissembling banker. Tick, tick, tick—the clockworks on the mantle segment out the seconds, loud without the back and forth of their banter. In the absence of words, other noises make themselves known: the hiss of the fire, the whistle of wind that rattles behind the windowpanes.
Dottore is the first to give. “Very well. Tell me about these flowers of yours.”
The corners of Pantalone’s mouth curl upward at the concession. “That’s better. As I was saying, the orchid is resilient, enduring the hardships of hunger and thirst. Only barely is it tied to the mountains and soils that cultivate it.”
He holds the hairpin aloft, balanced in the vessel of his palm. Three sepals outspread in an intricate triquetra of the deepest purple. Upon them, three petals lie even more delicately, one of which twists around the goldenrod core.
“It’s a clever flower, the orchid. It thrives through the most brilliant deceit. You see, unlike most flowering plants, they have no nectar to trade. So they trick their pollinators by fashioning themselves more beautifully than all the flowers nearby, drawing the attention they seek through sweet scents and a striking allure. By the time the insects realize they’ve been misled, they’ve already given the orchid what it needs.” He sighs as though lost in reverie. “Look, doctor, at how lovely it makes itself.”
“Yes,” Dottore muses. “Yes, I suppose it’s rather lovely.” But his appreciation of the bloom is entirely coloured by the hand that holds it.
“The orchid is not so complicated as people make it seem. Overwater it and it rots. Smother its roots and it suffocates.”
Pantalone sets the floral adornment on the table beside an enamel vase. From its wide mouth rises three orchids, three graceful blooms, their centres tinted with the faintest blush of gold. Among them stands a fourth, severed stem. Decay has only just begun to cling to the cut where its flower had been removed.
“In truth,” Pantalone says, “The orchid asks only not to be killed by misplaced love.”
Over a narrow shoulder, he catches Dottore’s stare and experiences a stunning surge of pleasure. Dottore isn’t looking at the flowers but rather directly at Pantalone, so enraptured that his incessant fidgeting is quelled. No tapping, no twitching, no toying with any oddity he can get his hands on. Perfect stillness.
Very good, Pantalone thinks. Oh, this is so very good.
“Is this a warning, Regrator?”
Pantalone’s lips twitch. From a distance, it’s almost imperceptible. “Not at all. Merely—how did you put it?—an understanding of the world.”
With a final stroke over the lip of a sepal, Pantalone navigates deeper into his quarters. Dottore’s attentive eyes follow his path toward the mirror that stands beside his bed.
Leisurely, Pantalone slackens the sash that holds his inner robes. The collar parts above his clavicles, revealing the fine bones that strain against his skin. He hums. With a dip of his shoulders, he sends the fabric spilling to the ground. Swish! The dark tide rushes, spreading like spilled ink, indigo shimmering around his ankles. Dottore’s sharp intake of breath cuts across the room, so sharp Pantalone can nearly feel it prick his skin.
Illuminated by moonlight and candleflame, Pantalone is despicably enchanting. He stands like a marble effigy while shadows play beneath his jaw, below his clavicles, between his sculpted legs. Mysterious and alluring, this chiaroscuro of shapely limbs. Dottore’s eyes rise from the gravity of the fallen robe, up sloped calves, past his naked thighs, and they latch upon the garment around Pantalone’s torso.
A corset, made of exquisite craft. Whalebone stays enveloped in black brocade, a decadent tableau of silk and lace. Beginning below the peek of peach-pink nipples, the fabric binds his body in, drawing his slender waist tight through a lattice fastened above his spine. Seed pearls and filigree shine when he shifts, gossamer details strung in intricate patterns over panels that end above his buttocks, accentuating its delicious swell.
“From Fontaine,” Pantalone explains. In the mirror, his fingers trace coquettishly over his chest, following the expensive curves of his bound sides. Even loosely laced by his own hand, the corset turns him more delicate than ever. “It’s meant to shape the figure. Do you like it, doctor?”
“Merely a banker, yet he’s dressed like a whore,” Dottore mutters under his breath.
But he likes it. Of course he likes it.
Dottore crosses the room in a shocking economy of steps, discarding his gloves onto the carpet as he walks. He doesn’t even realize he’s moving until he’s standing behind Pantalone, inexorably drawn in. He splays a possessive palm over Pantalone’s abdomen, his fingers settling over the artisanal lacework. The gesture reveals how much bigger he is than Pantalone, equal in height, but broader, built. Honed through genetic alteration and his endless pursuit of enhancement.
Dottore’s breath curls over Pantalone’s nape. It kindles the hunger in his belly, turning him ravenous.
“For once, I find myself appreciating Fontaine’s frivolities.”
Pantalone chuckles coyly. “You don’t say.”
“Mm. I wonder…” Dottore hooks two fingers under the topmost rung of satin laces. He tugs inquisitively. “How much tighter can this get?”
Pantalone meets his eyes through gleaming glass. Violet and carmine and candle fire warming their gazes. His head tilts just so, accentuating the curve of a winsome smile. “I thought you might enjoy assessing those parameters for yourself. Were you not hoping for an experiment?”
Oh, how full of surprises the Regrator is today! How unpredictable his behavior this evening, equal parts permissive and provoking.
Dottore’s thumb smudges over the jut of Pantalone’s collarbones, pressing hard enough to bruise, to hurt. He holds it there until he hears a snag of breath, then lifts his palm and curls it around Pantalone’s throat.
All it would take is a firm grip, the clench of a fist, and those birdlike bones would splinter, cervical vertebrae snapped and severed. Dottore’s fingers flex.
“You are altogether too reckless, Regrator. Taunting me, teasing me, and now putting yourself in my power. I’ve done far worse for far less.”
Undaunted, Pantalone hums. Dottore feels the vibration of it beneath his naked palm, just as he feels the slow bob of a deliberate swallow. “Yet, you won’t.”
Won’t he? He won’t; he wants. Dottore leans over Pantalone’s shoulder and skims his teeth along his jawbone. He tastes the fragrance of expensive perfumes. He licks at the tender flesh below Pantalone’s chin, tracing toward the pulse below his thumb. “You know what I’m capable of.”
Pantalone’s head only falls back further against Dottore, offering unbroken access. He hums again.
Madness. This is surely enough to drive Dottore to madness. It borders on obscene, the way the Regrator surrenders to his hands. Godmaking, lifetaking hands. Fingers that have felt the ways a throat can give, the crush of cartilage, the messiness of a fractured hyoid bone. Fingers that know the precise degree of pressure at the limit of what a mortal body can sustain.
“You won’t,” Pantalone repeats. “I know you.”
Heavy, Dottore’s exhale rushes through the waves of Pantalone’s hair. His burning fingers release their hold around that elegant neck and he snatch up the corset laces instead. Without warning, he tugs the first rung tight and Pantalone groans at the constriction, a single line partway down his spine. Between his thighs, his cock twitches with interest.
“One of these days,” Dottore says, “your credit will run out and your games will get you into trouble.”
Pantalone merely offers Dottore one of his knowing smiles and braces himself with a hand around the mirror’s edge.
Again, Dottore draws the corset in. One by one, he latches his fingers through the rungs, tugging, yanking, following the steps of Pantalone’s vertebrae, a descending staircase of ribbon and lace. The panels knit together across his back and together they witness how Pantalone’s waist pinches in, further, further. Sweat pearls along Pantalone’s hairline at the strain.
It’s different from their usual antics, from fingers wrapped around Pantalone’s neck or a cock shoved so far down his throat he chokes. Less a sudden asphyxiation than an incremental shortening of breath. Pantalone feels himself grow lighter as time stretches, distorted as though seen through a glass bowl
“Now this is lovely,” Dottore croons against Pantalone’s nape. He means it, too. “Inhale again for me.” His palm presses over Pantalone’s diaphragm. “Hmm… Out, slowly now.”
Slowly, slowly, there isn’t much to exhale, but the breath leaves Pantalone’s lips in a soft susurration. The laces draw tighter still. Dottore’s muscles ripple from the force with which he tugs.
“A little more,” Dottore murmurs, and the devotion in his voice feeds the desire that pools behind Pantalone’s navel.
Pantalone moans low at the back of his throat. He fixates upon his own image in the glass, the sumptuous fabric decadently rendered against his skin. He can’t help but bring his hands to his chest, palming over the artificial curve of it, the dramatic dip of his slender waist now shockingly pronounced.
Dottore docks his head over Pantalone’s shoulder, his grin wide and wicked. He runs his lips down the column of Pantalone’s throat and, this time, he sinks his teeth in. He bites at that tender junction at the foothills of his neck. Pantalone gasps. Dottore laps at the mark with languid flicks of his tongue.
“My pretty Pantalone. Look at you, all trussed up. So fragile. I can probably hold your entire waist.” Dottore releases the laces to confirm his hypothesis. The tips of his long fingers nearly touch over the brocade. Oh, how easy the Regrator would be to break! Dottore squeezes.
Pantalone sways. His legs quiver. He whines and the humidity of his shallow exhales condenses against the glass of the mirror.
“You like hearing that,” Dottore chuckles. “If I were inside you right now, I’m certain I’d feel how much you like it.”
Buckles clink and fabric rustles. The wet head of Dottore’s cock drags over the swell of Pantalone’s ass, smearing precum over the laces.
“I want to fuck you like this,” Dottore says into Pantalone’s skin, mouthing messy kisses over his neck. “I want to fuck you while you can barely breathe. I want to see how much you can take.”
“I know you do, doctor.” Pantalone’s back arches invitingly. “Go on then.”
Sight smudges to a gilded haze. Dottore has lifted the glasses from Pantalone’s face. “You’ll be put out if I damage these,” he says. “Sentimental as you are.” Then he steps away to set them on the bedside table. From its drawer, he extracts a vial of oil. The scent of silkflowers perfumes the air.
“Relax for me.” Dottore coalesces in the mirror as a silver-blue blur. He circles a slick finger around the furl of Pantalone’s hole and warm oil wets Pantalone’s inner thighs. His finger works its way inside.
Hot and velvet soft, Pantalone draws him in. Dottore releases the faintest groan at the promising tightness, his knuckles pressing up against Pantalone’s rim. It’s so easy. Like this, he’s so easy. Dottore’s touch is unerring, aimed precisely for Pantalone’s prostate.
Pantalone feels it like a jolt of energy. His head falls back in a waterfall of dark hair, his features pinched as the little air he has leaves his lips in a cry. Against the brocade, his chest heaves, struggling against the constriction. It’s unspeakably lewd.
Dottore repeats the action, pumping his finger in again, again, again. He withdraws only enough to add a second, curling them both with the same infallible accuracy. Meticulously, he scissors his fingers, stretching Pantalone’s rim.
Pantalone fucks himself back on Dottore’s hand as best he can. His knuckles go white around the giltwood frame. Two fingers become three, prodding and teasing, blunt nails scraping over Pantalone’s insides. Between his thighs, Pantalone’s cock aches, dark veins almost purple against the red flush of his skin, the head slick and shiny with precum.
At some point, his eyes fall closed and he pitches forward. His head tips down, knocking gently against the mirror’s glass, shallow exhales puffing against the surface. His tongue feels too heavy in his mouth. The insistent asphyxiation turns him delirious and makes him incapable of uttering anything more than a strangled moan. He’s dazed, dizzy, his legs on the verge of giving way. Only the corset keeps him from collapsing entirely, his back held straight even though he wants little more than to writhe against the onslaught.
Dottore’s free hand yanks him back by the roots of his hair. “Look at yourself,” he commands. “So obscene. It’s spectacular.”
Pantalone can’t see—not through the fog of his weak vision. But he can imagine. The reverence in Dottore’s voice allows him to imagine what a sight he makes.
Dottore withdraws his fingers with a lewd squelch. Pantalone keens, torn from the edge he hadn’t realized he had neared. He feels achingly bereft. He falls, tumbling down, caught by strong arms around his waist.
“I have you,” Dottore purrs at his ear. “I have you.”
Gold shimmers and the room spins. Dottore peels the curtains from around the bed and then silk sheets rise to cradle Pantalone’s damp cheek. Pantalone is folded down, the tips of his toes skimming the rug beneath his feet. A hand presses between his shoulder blades, grounding him, and then the blunt head of Dottore’s cock pushes at his swollen entrance, teasing for a moment before he slams himself down to the hilt.
“O-oh!” Pantalone moans at the stretch. The corset makes Dottore’s cock feel enormous. Filled, even though he’s been made so tight, his body compressed. Dottore’s cock carves through him like a knife and Pantalone clenches.
Dottore holds Pantalone face-down with the ties in his hand and a hand in his hair. Languidly, he draws his cock out and fucks back in, observing how Pantalone tightens around each backward drag, how Pantalone moans when he thrusts back in. Magnetized, he takes in the vulgar sight of his cock thrusting past Pantalone’s pliant rim until their bodies are flush. Withdrawing only to repeat the act again. Amazed by the way Pantalone’s hips seek out more.
“Richest man in the world and yet this is what you want, isn’t it? Fucked like the inveterate slut you are.”
The laces strain. Pantalone can’t breathe through the pleasure-pain of it all. He can only take in air through the briefest of gasps, shrill sounds that shatter into moans. Everything feels magnified: the tickle of Dottore’s hair over his neck, his panting exhales against the shell of his ear. Sweat-slick, he sticks to the sheets, and silk shined through the tight clutch of his fingers. It’s so vulgar, the noises of sex, skin slapping against skin, lewd squelches muting into the rugs and tapestries and the gold-trimmed valences around the bed. Pantalone’s pulse rushes, thundering, a riotous roar in his ears.
“I could draw this out,” Dottore says. He scrapes his teeth over Pantalone’s shoulder before biting down hard. “I could use your tight hole to warm my cock while I watch you struggle for air.”
Dottore ruts in deep and stays there, grinding his cockhead in agonizing circles against Pantalone’s swollen prostate. Pantalone’s own cock leaks onto the bedding, pearly fluid making a mess where it’s trapped between the corset and the sheets.
“At what point would you start to fight me?”
“Ngh—a-ah.”
“Oh, my darling Pantalone. You don’t even know, do you? What a dangerous gamble!”
Scarred fingers scale the length of the corset, creeping up each rung of ribbons to seal over the back of Pantalone’s neck. For a moment, the gesture is shockingly gentle, a ghostly caress over sweat-damp skin, a brand that burns in its tenderness. Dottore thumbs over Pantalone’s carotid.
“Intaking a fraction of the oxygen you need. Eventually, you’ll experience cerebral hypoxia. Do you know what that would be like? Dizziness, disorientation, memory loss… unconsciousness. To say nothing of the lasting effects.”
Catching Pantalone’s jaw in an iron grip, he forces his face to the side. Dottore leans forward, draping himself over the curve of Pantalone’s back, pinning him down beneath his weight. Even if Pantalone had wanted to struggle, he couldn’t move. Too crushed, too dazed.
“Your eyes are so hazy already,” Dottore marvels.
They meet in a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss, Pantalone’s lips are slack and loose, and Dottore’s tongue devours him, licking over his teeth, the inside of his cheek, lapping up the lingering taste of apricot and osmanthus, thieving what’s left of his air. Razor-sharp incisors drag against Pantalone’s mouth and add the tang of copper to the tango of their tongues.
When Dottore retreats, there’s a smudge of red over his parted lips. Pantalone blinks up at him through half-lidded eyes. Tears shine along his waterline and Dottore smudges them away with a thumb.
Pantalone whines. His entire body feels raw. His eyes can’t focus, glazed over the way they are. Maybe it shouldn’t feel as good as it does, but it does. It always does, this lethal surrender, the evocative threat that Dottore could… that he could, but he won’t.
Rapturous, Pantalone ruts against plush bedding in a frantic search for friction. It’s graceless and uncouth, but he needs to come like he needs to breathe, utterly desperate for release.
When Dottore lifts Pantalone onto his knees, he nearly weeps. His head tumbles against his folded arms, his back arching. His cock bobs above the sheets, widowed of that delicious contact, jumping against his abdomen with every thrust.
“Untouched,” Dottore purrs against Pantalone’s ear. His own breaths are ragged with arousal. “You’ll come on my cock, desperate to breathe.” He groans at the way Pantalone tightens around him, his velvet insides clenching around Dottore’s dick. “Ah— I knew it. I knew you’d like that. I knew it.”
Lights dance behind Pantalone’s eyes, a kaleidoscope of candlefire, bright vermillion and radiant gold, the sparks stark against the darkness that consumes his vision. Dottore’s voice swims around his ears with an underwater echo—mine, my pretty, pretty, Pantalone—and oh, how magnificent it is to be wanted, to be favored, to be so openly adored by this heretic who tries to break him under the immensity of his own emotions.
“Dottore, I want,” Pantalone slurs, syllables strung together in barely-there words. He would be panting if he could take in enough air. Instead, all he manages are high whines. “Let me—”
Dottore’s fingers form a ring around Pantalone’s cock, pinching off his release. Pantalone nearly sobs. His entire body throbs in time with his pulse, his heart thundering out its fear. He shakes all over, throat aching with the shape of his moans, antheming a desperate plea for more, more, more.
“Not yet,” Dottore hisses. “A little more. That’s it. That’s it.”
The shrieking in Pantalone’s lungs surrenders to silence.
Dreamlike, reality’s edges go blunt with pleasure. Pantalone soars. The world—the whole world with its gold-heart and its spilled lifeblood and the arteries of trade over which he reins as a mortal god—it all narrows down to pure sensation: the luxe bedsheets sliding beneath his damp cheek; the whalebone stays impressed into his chest; the thick cock carving his insides, fucking him with unrestrained ferocity.
And Dottore, Dottore, Dottore.
Behind him, around him, inside him. Dottore’s warm breath diffusing over his ear, Dottore’s weight forcing him down, Dottore slaking Pantalone’s gnawing hunger, and it hurts and it’s good and it feels like an endless moment of serenity.
“You… you feel…” Dottore gasps out the words. Tighter, tighter, he tugs the laces impossibly tighter. His hand catches Pantalone’s hair and he yanks his head back, far enough for their cheeks to brush, their lips to touch in an almost-kiss. “Now,” Dottore says—
—and Pantalone comes with a soundless cry.
He has no air left to give voice to his euphoria. All he can do is tremble, held together by brocade and bone, staring sightlessly into nothing as his cock pulses out his release. For a fleeting eternity, he yields to the throes of an ecstasy so acute it eclipses his greed. It feels like ascension, a celestial climb that sees him rising above the silver snow, the lying stars, lost in a dazzling cascade of dark wonder—skewered by the scalpel edge of bloodred eyes.
Pantalone is too far away to hear Dottore’s groan, too far away to feel Dottore’s hips shudder when his own orgasm is milked out of him by the clenching muscles of Pantalone’s hole, twitching with the echoing aftershocks of climax. Pantalone experiences nothing but light and bliss and the gradual feeling that he is unfurling like a flower, blooming bright and breathtakingly alive, air returned to his expanding lungs, so pure, so precious, a treasure among treasures. Lovely. Absolutely lovely.
Then warmth rises to caress him and awareness fades away.
Pantalone wakes in the waters of Qingce. He floats in a shallow pool, a cistern of percolating groundwater supplied by the heat that seeps through the earth’s scars. Over its gurgling surface, vapour rises in smoky plumes, mingling with the floral fragrance of qingxin, a sweet breath carried down from the stone-crowned mountains. It curls around his naked shoulders and caresses his skin like a lover’s kiss. Through the blur of his vision, Pantalone bears witness to the gingko leaves’ silent rustle, gold fans waltzing against wispy clouds, jostled into motion by a meandering breeze.
“Welcome back, Regrator.”
Pantalone stirs. He blinks drowsily and reality is reshaped.
He floats not in the natural baths outside Qiaoying Village but the splendid copper tub that conquers his quarters in the Winter Palace. Above him, the gauzy sky solidifies into a coffered celling of white marble and filigree, cornices trimmed with glittering gold-leaf, all of it a blur without the clarity of his glasses. It’s from the lather of his preferred soap that the scent of qingxin lifts—soap that Dottore is currently combing through the silken waves of his hair.
“How long?” Pantalone asks.
Dottore cups a palm over Pantalone’s brow and gently guides his head beneath the water. Loose locks ripple outward as though ribbons unspooling—black satin and shimmering indigo, a curl of silver stark against the shadow-spill. The suds rinse away in the warm currents, foam frothing to nothingness against the bathtub’s edge.
Pantalone is drawn up. Droplets cling to his skin when he crests the surface, a string of diamonds adorning his lashes, his cheekbones, the plush bow of his lips. In the low flicker of the banked fire, his skin gleams like something ethereal.
“Not quite half an hour,” Dottore answers. He cradles Pantalone close, holding his back flush against his broad chest, that pretty head tipped upon his shoulder. Exposed, the column of Pantalone’s throat reveals the imprints of Dottore’s teeth, bright red bites scattered over skin so thin it appears nearly translucent.
“Mm.” Pantalone’s eyes close and he relaxes into the embrace. He inhales. Every breath feels like a gift, a tiny treasure taken into the cathedral of his lungs and held there for a heartbeat’s ransom—so pure, so precious—before it rises up past his lips, returned to the world indelibly transformed, its molecules marked by the transience of possession. A life-sustaining exchange.
What a wonderous thing, he thinks.
Around them, steam swirls in a sweltering chrysalis. The humid haze unfurls toward the ceiling and Pantalone drifts on its quiet currents, loose-limbed and buoyant.
Beneath the bath’s mirror edge, Dottore caresses Pantalone’s torso, his movements slowed by the water’s density. Calloused palms glide over bruises that sprawl like purple petals, fields of orchids flowering across the cage of his prominent ribs, bouquets of blues at once brutal and beautiful. He could press down and it would hurt, but he doesn’t.
“Does it ever frighten you?” he says instead into Pantalone’s damp hair.
“Hmm?”
There’s a pause. A breath. Then: “The way that you give me everything. Do you ever wonder…”
Water sluices over the sloped sides of the copper tub. Pantalone turns in Dottore’s hold, deft fingers rising to trace over the scars carved across his cheeks. Such vile, wretched scars. The marks of the doctor’s mad fears: gruesome, self-inflicted horrors engraved while in the throes of delusion; streaks of white and pink that shimmer silver from the bathwater.
“Does it frighten you, doctor?”
In lieu of an answer, Dottore presses their mouths together.
It’s unexpectedly intimate, this kiss. Their lips meet in an indolent glide, damp and softened with steam. There’s an uncharacteristic timidity to the swipe of Dottore’s tongue—less his usual demand than a cautious request, a sensuous invitation. Pantalone can’t help but smile into it, sucking playfully at the doctor’s tongue when his own lips part in answer. Dottore’s moan dissolves into his mouth, exhales exchanged in the opaque air.
Something rises beneath Pantalone’s breast, a want that surpasses his body’s desire, a hunger so all-consuming as to render him dizzy.
“Dottore,” Pantalone whispers over Dottore’s ear, his breath curling around its burn-marked shell. “My dear, darling doctor.”
Against him, Dottore shudders. His skin prickles with gooseflesh despite the cloying warmth of the bath. “What are you—”
“Shh,” Pantalone hushes. “Shh. I’ve got you, doctor. Let me take care of you.”
There’s something wild in the carmine of Dottore’s eyes, wild and unguarded. Pantalone suspects that Dottore doesn’t even know it’s there, that wild look, that edge of fear. Dottore has always believed himself to be above such petty distractions as human emotion. Yet here he is, so transparently overcome.
Pantalone revels in it.
Cupping his palms, Pantalone scoops up the warm water and lets it trickle over Dottore’s hair. Slowly and meticulously, the pale blue strands steep to cyan.
In the back of his mind, Pantalone is aware that this would be easier with a pitcher, but his preferred ewer sits across the room, cloisonné enamel shining uselessly out of reach. It’s no matter. He contends that using his hands for this is rather intimate, almost erotic in the way his body bobs up and down with every fluid pour. The shallow movements set the bath’s surface rippling. Waves lap against the tub’s sloped sides in quiet susurrations.
Dottore’s eyes fall shut. Pantalone begins to lather soap into his hair. Diligently, he scrubs each lock, massaging from his crown down to his neck. Fleecy bubbles froth over his fingers as he works, tiny rainbows trapped in shimmering suds. They burst in eruptions of light and oil. When it’s time to rinse, he mirrors Dottore’s action, a palm curled over his brow to protect against the foamy runoff.
Carefully, he guides Dottore to sit back up. Flutelike cascades of water drip down from Dottore’s hair and Pantalone’s mouth chases the streams over the lines of Dottore’s throat. Under his tongue Dottore tastes clean and floral, and Pantalone feels a heady rush of arousal at the knowledge that Dottore is now wearing his fragrances—qingxin and almond blossoms overlaying the antiseptic astringency that clings to his enhanced skin.
“That’s it.” Pantalone presses another kiss to Dottore’s wet lips. “For your good behaviour,” he teases. Then another kiss, simply because he can. Another, another. Kiss after kiss between flashes of a winsome smile. How permissive Dottore is like this, accepting each of his kisses, chasing them from Pantalone’s generous mouth.
Here in the bath, Dottore feels too much. It exceeds him, this swell of emotion that threatens the clinical disposition of his rational mind. His hands reach for Pantalone—his hair, his hands, his hips. He reaches and touches and attempts to discern if what he’s feeling is the same hunger he had observed in the violets of Pantalone’s eyes, the violent craving for more, always more. Dottore wants more. Observe, inquire: why? Vapour locks his throat and for a brief, unscientific second, Dottore imagines he might drown in this weighted air.
“Easy, doctor.” Slender fingers splay across Dottore’s chest. Pantalone brings one of Dottore’s palms to his own sternum, the heel of his hand sturdy above his ribs. “Deep breath for me. Inhale.”
One breath, two breaths, an incessant current ebbing and flowing between them. Hearts begin to beat in unison, a settling cadence. Pantalone smiles, his eyes curved, his lashes strung with dewdrops.
The soothing movement of his hands belies Pantalone’s hunger. He massages soap over Dottore’s scars—his arms, his chest, the divots of his hips. Dottore’s cock is hard, jutting proudly from between his legs, but Pantalone resists the urge to draw attention to it. There will be time. For now, he indulges in the simple joy of care, the subtle possession of it, scrubbing at Dottore’s skin the way he might polish an artifact.
There is power in this, he thinks.
The air is redolent with the scent of qingxin blossoms. If Pantalone closes his eyes, the bath might slip away again and cede to memory. Closer, he needs to be closer. Pantalone presses himself against Dottore, their bodies flush beneath the water, skin sliding against skin. Their breathing quickens.
“Take me to bed,” Pantalone says. “Before the bath gets cold.”
As though liquid drapery, the water falls from Pantalone’s shoulders when Dottore hoists him out of the tub. A robe of melting glass, it runs in rivulets down his arms, glittering over the bruises that blotch his ribs. Marvelous, how something as mundane as water becomes so lovely upon his skin.
Pantalone loops his arms loosely around Dottore’s neck. His head settles against Dottore’s chest. Under his ear, Dottore’s heartbeat is heavy.
There was a time when Pantalone hadn’t believed the doctor possessed a heart. Not figuratively, but biologically. Vulnerability in the pulse and squish of muscle seemed too messy for a man who thought of humans as machines. He’d been so certain Dottore had obviated its need in his endless pursuit of enhancement.
Yet here beneath his ear, it pulses and pumps in a steady clockwork: thump, thump, thump. Arteries and capillaries, venules and veins. Lifeblood hushes like a shoreline. A closed fist squeezing, throbbing in the atrium of the doctor’s ribs, unguarded.
“I like this,” Pantalone murmurs. His lips skim over the moisture on Dottore’s skin, fine streams of water like translucent veins, a body inverted.
Dottore carries them into the bedroom. Dusk has steeped into contemplative night. Beyond the windows, the winter gales calm to a drifting breeze dappled with flecks of silver. Snow falls obliquely over the silent city, the cold cathedral, the barren thorns of undressed trees.
The fire in the hearth has burned itself out. In the dwindling lowlight of the expiring candles, the Regrator’s quarters appear drenched in gold.
Gold. The lifeblood of the world is gold.
They lie in the sumptuous bed. Cradled by plush pillows richly embellished with ornamental embroidery. Priceless silks and decadent duvets, coverlets of fragrant fur. Soft throws woven of Liyue’s ramie yarn draped against the footboard. Layers of luxury concealed behind the diaphanous curtains. The bower of Pantalone’s greed.
On their sides facing each other, the parentheses of their bodies bracket the silence between them. Skin brushes skin, pinkened and pruned from the bath. Still warm to the touch from the lingering steam. How unfamiliar, this utter nakedness, so different from their half-dressed hurries, the frantic fucks conducted in the dark recesses of Haeresys. Experiments in boundary pushing they pursue in the name of base bodily cravings. Strange, now, this open stretch of time.
They’re so close that even without his glasses Pantalone can count Dottore’s lashes, gossamer strands so fine and silvery they could be spider silk. He counts them the way he counts his coins, avidly, as though each is a precious commodity to be collected, sealed away by the conquering gaze of possession.
“My dear doctor,” he exhales. He frames Dottore’s cheek with a palm. “Here amidst my treasures. My treasure.”
His lips descend upon Dottore’s. He lavishes him with sweet kisses, delicate little nibbles at the corners of his mouth, soft strokes of a wet tongue. There is no calculation in it. No scientist’s observation tracking the hitch of Pantalone’s breath, no experimenter’s curiosity in the deliberate lick over a row of teeth.
Instead, there is poetry.
Dottore is pliant and receptive. His head tips in the direction Pantalone leads, his mouth coaxed open by Pantalone’s kisses. Open-mouthed, Pantalone trails his kisses over the valleys of Dottore’s scars, the ridge of Dottore’s jaw, the column of Dottore’s throat. Pantalone replaces his absent collar with a coil made of the press of his lips. Such slow, delicate kisses. They’ve never shared such kisses. Pantalone thinks he’d like to kiss Dottore like this forever, exchanging a single breath.
Arousal pools in shallow eddies beneath their skin, warm shores of want waxing with each lick into the other’s mouth. Dottore clings to Pantalone’s shoulders, his nails dimpling the milky skin—not to hurt but to ground himself against the hazy hunger. When he caresses the damp waves of Pantalone’s hair, Pantalone makes a pleased sound in the back of his throat. Their hard cocks slide together in an honest display of desire.
Extending an arm behind him, Pantalone seeks the vial adrift upon the sheets. Over their joined palms, he unstoppers it and the sweetness of silkflower oil embalms the air, spilling, shining, slicking their twined fingers. Pantalone hooks a leg over Dottore’s hips and guides their hands between his thighs.
“Gentle,” he murmurs against Dottore’s mouth. “Gentle for me.”
Warmly, the oil drips down between the cleft of Pantalone’s ass, glistening over his swollen rim before trickling its way inside. Dottore draws careful circles, massaging the fluttering muscle before delving down to the knuckle. Pantalone is still so open from earlier, easy and accepting. His hole swallows Dottore’s first finger, then another, then a third. Languidly, Pantalone’s hips chase the muted ache of intrusion, riding Dottore’s hand. He sighs each time Dottore runs the rough pads of his fingers over his prostate with all the precision of his profession.
It’s at once intimate and erotic. Damp hair curls over Pantalone’s pale, bite-marked throat, his skin stained with the evidence of Dottore’s intemperance. Dottore mouths over the bright bites he had left behind, lapping at the indentations of his teeth.
Indolently, Pantalone strokes Dottore’s cock, thumbing over the flushed head and coaxing beads of precum into his palm. Their mouths rejoin for more kisses, kisses upon kisses, until Pantalone is breathless once again.
Replete with yearning, he stills Dottore with a touch to his wrist bone. Dottore slides his fingers free. Silk whispers. Pantalone adjusts them both until he’s lying on his back, his hair fanned out over the embroidered cushions, tugging Dottore above him. He arranges them so that his slender legs loop around Dottore’s waist. There’s no ambiguity as to what he asks for, no doubt that he’ll get what he wants.
Dottore’s hands roam over Pantalone’s skin. His cock nudges at the pink stretch of Pantalone’s hole, slick and shiny with oil. Wordlessly, he sinks inside, sheathed in a single smooth motion, his balls pressing tight against Pantalone’s ass. Pantalone moans, a sweet song passing his parted lips, his body seized in pleasure.
“Mmm, yes, doctor.” His clean hand tucks a loose strand of hair behind Dottore’s ear.
Burned low, the candlelight limns their profiles in scarlet-gold and blurs their features. Red and gold, all the colors of his schemes, the inexorable flow of blood and money and time. Their skin glistens in the glow of it all.
“Nice and slow,” Pantalone says. He basks in the romance of it all. “Let me savour you like this.”
Like this is Dottore in a near-trance, coaxed into obedience by an intoxicating concoction of neurochemicals. Dopamine, epinephrine, oxytocin. Pantalone is so hot around him, wet and pliant and perfect, and Dottore wants Pantalone with a craving that transcends him, with a tenderness that terrifies his rational mind.
Dottore finds himself falling, pitching ever forward, suffocating in Pantalone’s eyes. Had he ever truly observed the shade of his eyes? Orchid petals and blackberries, a purple hue so rich it hovers at the limit of the spectrum of sight. Frail human retinas unable to apprehend such exquisite beauty in all its complexity. But Dottore can see; with his enhancements, he alone can perceive the impossible—
“Your eyes,” he marvels, low and wonderous. “The color of your eyes.”
Pantalone smiles up at him—genuinely, beatifically, indulgently. His hands slide down Dottore’s sides to guide him deeper. Dottore’s weight blankets him, his hips grinding in slow, sinuous rolls. Each stroke lingers against Pantalone’s sensitive nerves in ripe bursts of pleasure, and it’s decadent, the way arousal pools out from Pantalone’s groin, filling him all the way to the tips of his fingers. The brutality of their earlier sex makes it so that even these languorous thrusts dance that knife’s edge of too much, hovering on that perfect peak of just enough.
“Pantalone. Pantalone.” Dottore whispers his name over and over. This name and another name, a hidden name that makes Pantalone shiver, his skin prickling with the current of his desire, with the intimacy of memory.
Dottore’s thrusts speed up. Subtle, at first. Infinitesimal increases in intensity. But then Pantalone tugs once at the hairs at Dottore’s nape and he slows his pace to the languid erotics of their sensuous tempo.
“That’s it. So obedient, doctor,” Pantalone purrs into Dottore’s ear. His tongue traces the shell of it. “So good for me.”
They fuck like this for what feels like hours, chest to chest, cheek to cheek. Entwined in an intimate embrace, moving together as one. Luscious, luxurious fucking. The kind of fucking that takes place beneath canopies of stars, the heady romance of lovely lovers losing themselves in each other’s arms, drunk on lust and oh—oh!
Pantalone sees it in Dottore’s eyes, that look he covets, that light he craves. Warped and twisted but there all the same.
Love. Dottore looks at Pantalone as though he’s in love.
“Zandik,” he breathes. “Yes, yes, yes, oh, Zandik.”
Dottore trembles. Tears turn his gaze to garnets. His breath comes ragged, his forehead tipping down to press against Pantalone’s—close, close—and it’s everything Pantalone has ever wanted, all this power under his command, all this favour in his hands. Deified by the outpouring of feeling. Affection brims, surges, overflows—ah—into the null-space between them, an unassailable effusion inhaled past parted lips—closer, closer—and Dottore can’t possibly comprehend what he’s relinquishing, but Pantalone collects it all and cradles it in the coffers of his greed: every thrust, every kiss, every sigh—everything Dottore is, everything becoming his—and for the second time this evening, it feels like ascension.
“Kiss me,” Pantalone gasps, and Dottore does, sealing their mouths together.
“Touch me,” Pantalone breathes against his lips, and Dottore does that as well. His calloused palm closes around Pantalone’s cock, stroking him in time with the controlled movements of his hips.
Overwhelming, this warmth, this affection, this feeling of filling and being filled. The unspeakable power of it all. They come together, so entirely unified in their pleasure that it’s impossible to tell who first tumbles into the exquisite throes of orgasm. Drowned under a deluge of sensation, they cling to each other against the cresting waves, calling out each other’s names in the near-dark.
This time, Pantalone feels it, the hot throb of Dottore’s cock inside him, the molten splash of cum coating his insides. Through slitted eyes, he watches Dottore’s features twist in ecstasy, lashes latching shut against the torrent. Pantalone’s release spills between them, glazing Dottore’s knuckles and dripping onto his own bruised torso, milky pearls against a backdrop of plum and blue. His heart thunders. His chest burns, not constricted this time but expanding, extending, light-filled and teeming unbearably with feeling.
And for that timeless moment where all else ceases, Pantalone thinks himself—
Celestial—reshaped, remade, reborn.
Quiet befalls. In the hush of night, a curtain rustles and Pantalone looms over his lavish bed. Dreamily, he consumes the vision before him, his gaze lingering over the shape of Dottore outspread upon the sheets, painted silver by the wan light of the moon. The doctor appears so docile like this, the ever-burning madness of his carmine eyes sealed behind paper-thin lids, his jagged features softened in an almost-doze.
It would be a careless error to underestimate the threat that the Second presents even in repose, but Pantalone finds himself undeterred in his contentment. He sweeps his thumb over a mottled cheek until Dottore stirs with a faint sound.
“Where—?” Scarred fingers venture out toward the space where the Regrator had lain, the silk still warm with body heat. Tendons flex, searching.
A smile slashes across Pantalone’s lips. Delight sears through him, so acute he trembles. “Shh, doctor. I’m right here.” He leans down and nuzzles into the fine hairs at Dottore’s temple. “I have you. Just let me take care of you.”
Dottore relaxes into the pillows. Gingerly, Pantalone wipes him down with a damp cloth, cleaning the cum from his chest, from his vulnerable, softened cock. The gesture is one of such tender intimacy—a lover’s intimacy, a lover’s dream. Pantalone sighs. He washes himself too, collecting the strands of sticky fluids from between his thighs. It isn’t as thorough as a bath, but he’s reluctant to displace Dottore, not now that he’s so agreeable. Not now that Pantalone has what he wants.
Mine, he thinks, looking down at Dottore and brushing an errant strand of hair from his brow. The formidable Harbinger appears smaller in his tranquility, attenuated by the absence of his usual animation. Too arrogant to realize that you too have become mine.
Pantalone pours a glass of water and helps Dottore drink, then refills the cup for himself. It does little to slake his thirst, but it soothes the ache at the back of his throat and tempers the simmer in his belly.
“Pantalone—”
“Mm, it’s all right.” Pantalone climbs gracefully back onto the bed and reclines against the velvet cushions. He gathers Dottore onto his naked lap. Idly, his fingers twirl through Dottore’s hair, waltzing over the curve of an ear, scratching soothingly at his scalp.
“It’s late,” Dottore says.
“You can stay the night, if you’d like.” Pantalone offers the invitation as though he’s doing Dottore a favour, all charming sweetness and calculated magnanimity.
He doesn’t wait for a response. Instead, he reaches for a duvet of ermine fur and drapes it over the doctor’s shoulders, swaddling him in luxury, holding him close.
Into the silence of the witching hour, Pantalone whispers a lullaby of honeyed words. Empty endearments and counterfeit nothings, spurious forgeries of affection. He says these things for no other reason than because he likes how they sound, their gentle scurry over his tongue, the way they hover in the air between, these tender vows they hardly need. Ever so slowly, Dottore’s breathing deepens as he’s soothed into slumber.
A priceless moment of surrender.
What a marvelous exchange this had been. Yet another crowning achievement: the heretic scholar, the mad doctor, the godmaker lying like a lover in his arms. Profit and politics both bowed to the boundless depths of Pantalone’s want. His personal investment returned with interest—over and over—and Dottore now faced with irrefutable proof of the magnitude of his own emotions.
“You’re right, Dottore,” Pantalone says, so softly, so sweetly. He deposits another indulgent kiss upon Dottore’s forehead, then flutters butterfly touches over his eyelids, his nose, his reddened lips. Delicate phantom touches. “I do tend to get what I want.”
By whatever means necessary, I shall become the heart that pumps money around the world.
The lifeblood of the world is his, mora pulsing through the arteries of the Northland Bank—his extraordinary monument to worldly power. Wealth and greed, twin faces of the same coin. Coins for contracts, coins for commerce, obol coins sealing the lips of the dead, the fee to ferry their dear departed souls. Cold, unreciprocal gold.
Upon the mantle, the final candle flickers out, its flame drowned in a pool of its own molten wax—consumed by and of itself. Only the moonlight remains in anticipation of a stainless dawn, a glowing sickle slicing through the satin sky, its silver outpour catching on the cutting curve of Pantalone’s smile.
And beneath Pantalone’s palm, that aching spot where Dottore’s heart beats to the rhythm of his own.
