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"Terzo," Nihil is saying. "Are you listening?"
Terzo's pretzeled in one of Nihil's office chairs, trying to rub a hangover out of his temple with one knuckle. He had not been listening.
"Totally," he rasps, audibly dry-mouthed.
"You know," Nihil snips, "we wouldn't even have to be doing this if you'd just gone to the meeting with the High Council. I mean, I had this whole speech. I'm not going to do it again."
Terzo hadn't gone to the meeting because it was scheduled for ten o'clock in the morning, and he was a little preoccupied with still being drunk from the night before. He'd slept until two and had some crusty old ghoul screaming in his ear all the way here. He hadn't really meant to miss it. He just hadn't tried very hard to show up.
There aren't a lot of perks to being the third heir, but Terzo hasn't made it through the last twenty-five years without finding a way to maximally exploit every existing loophole. As soon as he'd figured out he didn't actually need to have any real power to throw the family name around for personal gain, he'd done it with religious zeal. You could get a lot of free drinks just by saying the name ‘Emeritus’ in an exaggerated Italian accent. He'd gotten the entire waitstaff at a bar in Greece to call him "Prince" once with only a smile and a lie. The whole world was there for the taking if you knew how to weasel your way around corners.
But third place mostly involves a lot of truancy. Terzo's perfected the art of skipping out on every single mandatory appearance, meeting, and assembly he's ever been ordered to attend. Everyone would rather see his factory-standard brothers anyway. Why bother bringing the B-team?
Unfortunately for him, Primo and Secondo are two weeks into a yearlong mission trip, which meant that the B-team was literally all there is.
So. Here he is, melting under fluorescents and his father's withering gaze.
"I mean, would it kill you to take some interest in your future?" Nihil's saying, stabbing a cigarette butt into an overflowing ashtray with the kind of force that suggests he's imagining it's Terzo instead. "This could be big for you."
Terzo just looks at him. "It's a hole in the wall."
"It's a hole in the wall that leads to another dimension," Nihil corrects, his lighter sparking ineffectually. He holds his cigarette out expectantly to one of the stony-faced ghouls flanking his desk until they silently lift a flaming finger to the end.
It's all anyone can talk about. Apparently, some third-shift janitor found a dusty old portal in one of the basements downstairs behind the Halloween decorations from the mid-eighties. He’d thought it was a prop until he went halfway to Hell trying to mop the floor underneath it.
It's ancient and creepy, but it's not actually anything major, according to the ghouls who did the survey: just a little aperture to a pocket dimension. The sort of thing you could lap in ten minutes and brag about to your friends. The sort of thing that is now, apparently, Terzo's problem.
"We're going to have you do the initial assessment. This is a good opportunity for you, Terzo," Nihil says, flipping through the paper on his desk. "It'll teach you some responsibility."
"Is it even safe?"
Nihil eyes him with suspicion, perhaps running through a mental tally of every risky activity Terzo's ever engaged in at the abbey. Terzo stares back coolly, knowing that Nihil's twenties at the abbey were just as messy. "Safe enough. And Imperator's sending you with someone, just in case."
Terzo perks up a little at that. There are plenty of high clergy he'd like to get a little face time with. It almost sounds like it could be good, clean, unsupervised fun, until Nihil tells him who he's going with.
"Can't I just go with a ghoul?" he whines.
Copia. That bishop with the dewy, sad eyes of a Dickensian orphan and the sexy freckled nose of a hometown pinup girl. He's been a tertiary figure at the abbey for years. Imperator's absolutely crazy about him for some reason.
He mostly gives Terzo the creeps. He's dead center in the Venn diagram between 'suspiciously good-looking' and 'haunted doll silent," a no man's land of Clark Kent and hot librarians that both unsettles and piques some obscure erotic interest in him. Normally, Terzo tries to avoid Copia as much as he can, which isn't easy when he's clearly desperate to climb the grimy Emeritus ladder and has a tendency to silently round corners in otherwise empty rooms, his eyes enormous in some wordless plea to be noticed.
Terzo tries to explain all this to Nihil, which goes about as poorly as any conversation with his father normally does.
"For fuck's sake, Terzo," Nihil says, like he usually does when Terzo asks for anything. And then he gets the speech about the bloodline and his brothers and how Secondo and Primo did everything better and faster with half the complaining and none of the special treatment, and there's a great deal of stamping around and whining until Terzo says fine, Jesus, fine. I'll do it.
*
The next Saturday, he tramps down the steps into the summoning room in the basement with a scroll of instructions in his pocket and Copia at his heels, looking bug-eyed and radiating anticipation like steam from hot pavement. He's brought a sandwich with him, like it's a field trip.
"You're taking that with you to another dimension?" Terzo points to the sad cellophaned lump of bread and cheese that Copia's currently trying to jam in his pocket. "Isn't all the nonessential matter supposed to get zapped away?"
"You have a flask on your hip," Copia says, stung, so Terzo calls him a narc, and then Copia asks him what that’s supposed to mean, and it somehow ends with Terzo slugging back a mouthful of coppery, warm vodka at 9:00 AM.
Maybe, he considers, coughing while Copia pounds his back, this pattern of behavior is what Imperator meant when she said Copia represented 'the next generation' for the future of the clergy, even though Terzo was literally standing right there, brimming with virile Emeritus blood.
"I'm fine," he splutters, while Copia continues to slap him merrily on the back. "Jesus, stop." He looks up from where he's got his hands on his knees. "Do you lift rocks in your spare time?"
"Rowing," Copia says, embarrassed. He gestures, nervous, to the portal in the corner. "Um, should we—"
"Yeah," Terzo croaks, struggling to his feet, newly dizzy. He pushes the hair off his forehead. "Yeah. Let's get this over with."
He hasn't talked to Copia one-on-one all that much and has absolutely no idea where to start. Most of their interactions have consisted of Copia making big, obvious moon eyes at every member of the Emeritus family, like he hoped that enough direct eye contact would gradually pull him into their inner circle like iron filings to a magnet. It makes Terzo feel itchy. It’s the kind of thing you’d do to a role model, not— whatever he is.
Their footsteps echo on the stone floors as they approach the portal together in silence. The way Nihil and Imperator talked about it, all awed and reverent, you would think the portal was the eighth wonder of the world, but it's really just a crumbly, smoky old arch in the wall, surrounded by flat-pack boxes and bulk beeswax. At its center swirls a vortex, purple and shimmery.
The arch crackles a little at the edges, like a cut wire spitting sparks.
"You think it's supposed to do that?" Terzo nudges a stone with one wingtip. It crumbles a little on impact. A very real ribbon of fear zings through him that he can't quite tamp down.
"Are you nervous?" Copia blurts out. "I mean, what if— you've seen The Fly, right."
Terzo ignores him. He takes a step closer, palm held out in front of him, like he's trying not to spook a deer. From this distance, the aura around the portal feels kind of like an old analog TV screen, crackly and electric and warm. It's sort of nice, like hot grass in the summer.
And maybe it's the osmosis of magic bleeding into the basement like spilled ink in water, or maybe it's the vodka, but for a second, he swears he sees the surface of the portal pulsing in time with the beat of his heart.
Curiosity edges out fear. He stretches out a finger, almost within reach of the surface, and takes a step closer.
"Wait." Copia's yanking him back by the sleeve, flapping a scroll in his face. "Terzo, the incantation. Papa Nihil said— we're supposed to—"
Terzo shakes him off. "It's already on." He gestures to the swirly, glittering void. "Like we need some Latin couplet."
"But— at the meeting—"
"Jesus," Terzo says, irritated now. "Are you for real? Look, I'm the Emeritus here. I know this stuff. It's all pageantry. Let's just go."
"No," Copia says, all indignant and puffed up like a bird. His hand on Terzo's sleeve moves to his wrist, holding him fast. "I don't think we should."
Anticipation and alcohol are coalescing into something ugly in Terzo's belly, blooming into the kind of self-sabotaging stubbornness that he knows that somewhere, deep down, comprises the foundation upon which all his problems are built.
He feels it rise inside him, knows it’s stupid, and chases the rabbit anyway.
"Oh my god, what do you think is going to happen?" Terzo yanks his arm back, making Copia stagger forward, but he doesn't lose his grip. "Stop being— weird— and just— go."
"I'm not being weird." Copia grits out, trying to haul him bodily away from the arch. "Magic has rules."
They're really grappling with each other now. The scroll hits the floor, and with a hollow, metallic ringing, so does the flask.
The sum of Terzo's irritation toward Copia flares hot and mean. God. Him and his fucking rules, and his law-abiding citizen routine, and Imperator, and the fucking next generation of the church bullshit. He’s a little buzzed and very annoyed, and worst of all, Copia looks… disappointed. Like he somehow thought better of Terzo than to pick a fight like this.
It hits him somewhere knotted and sore, a deep-down bruise that makes him want to scream.
So he does what he always does: he makes it worse.
"If you would just stop being such a—" Terzo splutters, but he loses the insult at the same moment as his balance.
With a shout, he stumbles backward through the electric crackle of the portal, taking Copia with him.
*
So it's possible they needed the Latin couplet.
Terzo groans into consciousness an indeterminate number of hours later, tasting blood and feeling like he invented a new fatal brand of hangover.
"Am I dead," he rasps, eyelids fluttering.
"Not yet," a voice calls out, sounding disappointed.
Blearily, he rolls his head along the floor's uneven surface to chase the sound. Through gummy eyes, he sees Imperator, standing with a group of ghouls clustered in the far corner, not bothering to look at him. She's got her phone between her shoulder and her ear. Probably calling in an airstrike to finish him off for good.
"Believe me," Omega says, appearing like a watercolor smear in Terzo's field of vision, "that's the last thing we need. We’ve already got half the High Council involved."
Terzo’s relief at seeing a friendly face outpaces the concern that he’d apparently been talking out loud.
"Omega," he slurs, happily. “Hiiii.”
“Hi,” Omega says, distracted. “Try not to move, please.” He’s patting and poking Terzo all over, which would probably be erotic if he didn't currently feel like his body had been boiled and strung out on laundry wire.
"Trying," Terzo croaks. "Sorry. It’s just. What's happening."
"No memory?"
Terzo fumbles around for the last thing he remembers. The stairs. The sandwich. A minor disagreement with Copia that just barely turned slightly physical with no clear instigator.
Then—
A force so unwelcoming and hostile that he felt it like a living thing between his teeth, swarming into every gap and pore and the spaces between his bones like black smoke, then the whipcrack impact of his back on the stone floor of the basement.
Something must be registering on his face, because Omega gives him a tight, pained smile. “Yeah. A ghoul found you two unconscious and bleeding. We’re still putting the pieces together.” The next look he fixes Terzo with is absolutely withering. "Terzo, how many times have we talked about not cutting corners? Especially with magic?"
Terzo's face burns. You’d think getting caught red-handed wouldn’t sting so bad with a record like his, but it sucks absolute shit every time. "Who said anything about magic?"
"Seriously?" Omega sighs. He does a complicated hand gesture, and then a mirror materializes between his palms. "Here. Look."
Terzo peers hesitantly at his reflection. He looks— well. He's looked better. Okay, no, he looks bad. There's dried blood crusted around one nostril that cracks and starts to ooze when he grimaces. Both eyes are swollen and sore and the kind of purple you only get from a sucker punch. He feels his throat burn like he’s about to cry, but he’s sort of worried his whole face will fall off in one big piece if he does.
And then Omega leans forward with one big hand and pushes the hair up off his forehead and makes everything worse.
"What is that?" Terzo struggles to sit up, awash in such acute adrenaline that he feels almost drunk with it; Omega presses him back down with one finger on his sternum. "Why do I have a tattoo on my forehead?"
It’s a black five-pronged symbol, sort of swirly at the edges, with a diamond at the center. When Terzo scrubs at it, it doesn’t budge.
"Yeah, it's not a tattoo. As far as I can tell, it's a sigil. Looks like you took something nasty back with you when you bounced off the portal. Which, again," Omega says, pressing little healing spells into his skin as he goes, "was what the instructions were for."
Terzo wilts a little, looking back at his reflection. "So can we like... cover it up, or magic it away—"
“You can’t magic away a flesh hex,” he says, carefully guiding Terzo back down to the floor with a grimace. “I’ll let you guess how to resolve it.”
Probably Terzo’s concussed, because it takes a little longer than it normally would for him to catch up, but then— oh.
Oh!
"Omega," Terzo coos, as best he can with a mouthful of blood. He finger-walks his way up Omega's arm, except his fine motor functions haven’t quite kicked back in yet, so it’s more of an open-palmed upward slap. "If you wanted to play doctor, all you had to do was ask."
Omega puts a hand gently on his chest. "I’m flattered. But the hex? It comes in pairs."
He gets to his feet and steps back, and Terzo’s wondering what the Hell’s going on until he sees where Omega’s guiding him to look.
Propped against one of the basement walls with a ghoul at his side, looking bruised and bloodspattered, but conscious… is Copia.
He gives Terzo a nervous little wave when he notices him looking.
In the middle of his freckled forehead is an identical sigil.
*
"This is very embarrassing, Terzito."
Nihil's basically got his hand on the entire ass of some random Sister overhearing this family argument, which Terzo finds the more embarrassing of their two fates, thanks.
“It makes us look bad,” Nihil continues, gesturing at Terzo with his free hand. "Sloppy. I mean, skipping the incantation? Do you listen at all?"
“It was already on,” Terzo says, lamely.
They’re sequestered in Imperator’s office after a brief Quintessence triage. Pretty shit fate to be patched up just in time to be killed by the titanic force of Imperator’s disapproval, but Terzo always kind of assumed she’d find a way to murder him someday. It’s just a shame it has to be when he’s so young and sexually available.
Maybe they’ll martyr him. That would be nice. Here lies Terzo, patron saint of sluts. Tribute in the form of bras and condoms encouraged.
He fidgets in the uncomfortable chair. From here, he can see his reflection in the hammered gold mirror behind Imperator’s giant brutalist desk. The worst of the bruising’s gone thanks to Omega, but the sigil somehow stands out even blacker against his forehead.
He smooths his bangs down, trying to hide it. They spring back up, undeterred.
“Terzo,” Nihil sighs, throwing a hand up in exasperation. The movement jostles the Sister perched on his knee, who just barely hangs on to her habit. Imperator, to her credit, looks just as disgusted by this whole tableau as Terzo is. “I never had these problems with your brothers, you know.”
Terzo wants to say that it’s actually pretty fucking easy to stay out of trouble when you’re afforded the diminished scrutiny of being the main heirs. It’s even easier when you’re busy on a mission trip that, based on the letters Primo and Secondo send back, seems to consist entirely of the kind of “problems” that get Terzo stuck in these humiliating little meetings in the first place, all on the abbey’s dime.
He doesn’t say that. He settles for an uncooperative: “Whatever. Sorry.”
The world’s greatest apology it is not, but Nihil never had much taste for discipline. He waves Terzo off in disgust and lets Imperator take the floor. She steps forward, hands locked behind her back.
“Copia,” Imperator starts, her voice not exactly gentle, but defanged, if only a touch. She’s looking down at Copia with a pinched expression. Terzo only belatedly recognizes it as actual disappointment. “I expect far better from you. There are consequences to magic this powerful. You know that."
Copia’s face crumples. He’s biting his bottom lip white, and those big eyes are getting all glassy, and, yeah, no, Terzo's not doing the whole public crying thing.
"I made him," Terzo cuts her off. Copia shoots him a strained, startled look, mouths don’t, but Terzo keeps going. "I know. Big surprise. My bad."
Imperator barely looks at him. “Predictably disappointing behavior from someone who seems to do nothing else. I’m not addressing you.”
Terzo turns to Nihil in wordless disbelief, all are you seeing this shit? But Nihil’s busy looking for something he’s lost in the Sister’s cleavage. A burble of hurt coalesces inside Terzo before he can tamp it down. He flounders, trying to transmute it into something useful.
Finally, he manages, somewhat limply, “Well. I keep it consistent, don’t I.”
Imperator whips around, suddenly explosive. “Do you consistently need to enact schemes to copulate with your inferiors? Because that’s what’s going on here.” She jabs a brutal finger at Copia. “That’s what you’re going to have to do. That’s what a flesh hex is. Do you understand what you’ve implicated him in?”
“Imperator,” Copia cuts in, meekly. His neck is blotchy. He must get red before he cries. “I’m sure he didn’t mean—”
“Stay out of this,” she snaps, with practiced ease. Copia falls back, cowed.
“Obviously I wasn’t – trying to do that,” Terzo says, a little wrong-footed. God, it’s so hard to keep his composure around her. He tries to catch Nihil’s eye, but he’s looking away pointedly like Terzo’s some rabid dog being dragged behind the shed for a mercy killing. For fuck’s sake. “I didn't hex your little golden boy on purpose. I was just—"
Just before Imperator crowds in around him, he thinks he sees a flicker of hurt on Copia’s face.
“You stupid child,” Imperator says, and it’s so matter-of-fact that it genuinely chills Terzo a little. Behind her, Copia looks like he’s just been told that his entire family died in a fire that Terzo set. She straightens some perceived wrinkle on her immaculate skirt before continuing. “It doesn’t matter what you were trying to do. As always, we’re now left to clean up your mess.”
“I—”
“That’s enough.” Imperator gestures sharply at something over Terzo’s shoulder, and he’s shaken enough that he doesn’t notice the pair of ghouls at the doorway until they’re already tugging them out of their chairs and ushering them into the drafty hallway. “The preparations are already underway. Out.”
*
“Everyone knows, don’t they?”
Terzo jerks from his sprawl on the tufted velvet couch. Copia’s standing at the window, his posture rigid. He’s said it so quietly that Terzo almost didn’t hear, but it couldn’t possibly be anyone else — there’s nobody else on this entire floor.
They’ve been quarantined to one of the penthouse suites of the guest wing, which Imperator claims is in case the hex “catches,” but which Terzo privately thinks is to intentionally deprive him of sunshine until he loses his summer tan.
The last few days have been a blur of borderline military rations from the kitchen ghouls and a parade of increasingly bizarre visitors. First, there was a Quintessence ghoul who checked under their tongues and examined the marks on their foreheads in some kind of arcane vitals check.
Then there was a tailor to fit them for some ceremonial robes that were supposed to protect them from the worst of the hex’s effects. From where Terzo was standing in front of the full-length mirror, a hand over his groin in a simulacrum of modesty, they looked more like sheer bathrobes. Privately, he’d always thought Satan was sort of a pervert, looking for any excuse to make nubile young clergymen prance around in see-through negligees and rub their dicks on each other or whatever.
The worst was the Hex Rep from the High Council, who had a pointer and an easel and the kind of chipper endurance Terzo assumed only hardened torturers and maybe Imperator possessed.
“Now, we have everything set up to be as safe as possible for you two,” she’d said, with pristine corporate cheer. “Thankfully, we have the infrastructure not to just let hexes run wild. Back in the old days— wow. Skin sloughing off, penises exploding. I mean, yuck.”
Copia and Terzo had stared at her vacantly. She continued, undeterred:
“You should only have to engage in intercourse once. But it’s very important that there’s skin-to-skin contact. Full penetration. To completion,” she’d said, tapping an extremely unnecessary anatomical diagram with her pointer. “Ejaculation.”
“Got it, yep.” Terzo wondered if it was possible to talk about sex so much that your body reached some maximum internal threshold from which there was no return and your dick withered and fell off like an umbilical cord.
She’d gestured between them. “Have you decided who’s going to be…?”
Copia looked at her in muted, red-faced horror.
“That’s fine, that's fine,” she’d said brightly, scribbling something in a notepad. “Plenty of time to decide. Just, again, and I can’t stress this enough: full penetration.”
Copia hadn’t exactly been chatty with Terzo after the meeting with Imperator, but the Hex Rep drove him into a kind of half-mad, mourning widow’s silence. Terzo would’ve offered to break the tension with a friendly handjob if he didn’t think it might actually kill him.
Now, Terzo joins him at the window. Imperator’s preparations for the consummation ceremony apparently involve ghoul blood, so all the ghouls are lining up in the manicured lawn to get their fingers pricked. It is very public, he has to admit.
Terzo drops a hand on Copia’s shoulder. He’s aiming for friendly, but Copia flinches so hard that Terzo does too.
“Jesus. Sorry,” he says, stepping back, hands up. “I was just going to say, you know. Look on the bright side. You’re finally getting some of that Emeritus family fame you're always gagging for.”
Copia looks at him like he’s just been slapped.
“I mean, it’s your first scandal.” Terzo nudges Copia with one elbow conspiratorially. Copia cedes absolutely no ground. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
Copia’s stare is apoplectic. “Are you serious?”
Terzo blinks. “Yes?”
It’s the wrong answer. Copia shoulders past him roughly, his face vermillion. The door to his bedroom squeals on its hinges like he means to slam it, but at the last minute, all Terzo hears is a demure little click as it gently closes.
“What a bitch,” he mutters, stung.
He doesn’t have long to stew. Minutes later, there’s a rap at the front door, then Omega’s carefully easing his way past the entryway and into the kitchen, arms laden with dinner and what looks like a stack of Sex Ed pamphlets. Terzo cheerfully disposes of the latter and gets out the cutlery for the former.
Copia doesn’t reemerge, which Terzo decides means he’s forfeited his dinner, so he bribes a reluctant Omega to stay with a half portion of stroganoff.
"So," Terzo says, stabbing a sausage round with his fork. The imagery, all things considered, is somewhat unpleasant. "The whole flesh thing. What's the deal."
Omega looks up at him from his own plate. “What do you mean?”
“Why that? Like— of all the things to be hexed with.”
It’s been nagging at Terzo since he woke up on the basement floor. Of all the things to be cursed with, it seems pretty mild.
Omega chews, thoughtfully. Terzo feels his eyes alight on the sigil on his forehead. He wishes, not for the first time, that the proof of his mistakes was written in something less permanent than ink.
“It’s not just about sex,” he says, evasive. “It’s about fertility.”
“So, what? You can’t have kids?” Terzo shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He’s not exactly prime parent material, but having the option taken away from him entirely feels weirdly final.
“No, not that. Kind of, uh. The opposite.”
Terzo blinks, suddenly looking down the barrel of a lot of risky hookups. “You have too many kids.”
Omega sighs heavily. When he leans back in his chair, Terzo can see his tail flicking irregularly around his ankles in anxious, jerky movements. “No, it’s—it’s an ancient hex. It’s intended to be a punishment. A humiliation." He looks significantly at Terzo. "Ghouls are sterile on Earth. Most clergy in the fledgling days of the ministry were assigned male at birth. The hex is intended for participants to be forced to attempt conception until successful. Or, in the absence of success due to incompatible anatomy,” he pauses, “um. Death.”
Tendrils of black dread creep cold and slimy into Terzo’s belly. "Oh,” he says, dumbly, because he feels like he should’ve guessed this. That at the heart of even the abbey beats a rotten core of some truly fucked-up shit.
He feels a sudden prick of very unwelcome guilt, thinking of Copia, miserable and alone in his room. Copia, who probably already knew all this, because he actually pays attention to his lessons. Because he tries. Because he’s not Terzo.
“Yeah,” Omega agrees with a grimace. “We’ve got everything in place so that shouldn’t happen, but— yeah.”
An exceptionally loud silence follows.
"This is why, Terzo," says Omega, gently, "we say the Latin."
*
It ends where it started: in the dusty, deeply unsexy bowels of the abbey.
Copia and Terzo descend the stairs together in hideous mutual silence. They haven’t talked. They haven’t planned. They are literally about to fuck around and find out.
Thankfully, the ghouls have already done the work drawing up a sigil on the floor. It’s a giant version of the one on their foreheads, inked with blood. Around the corners of the room are scattered discrete little bottles of oil.
Like, so many of them. Jesus.
Terzo unrolls the parchment slipped in one of the translucent robe pockets and reads the instructions the ghouls left them:
Step 1: ANOINT BODY W/ HIGH SMOKE POINT OIL. PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO GENITALS.
Step 2: BECOME CONDUIT FOR SEX MAGIC.
Step 3: COPULATION.
Step 4: HEX RESOLUTION*
* IF UNSUCCESSFUL, SEE: BIOHAZARD CLEANUP PROCEDURE
Well. That’s grim. He picks up a bottle of oil and gets to work.
Copia is silent. He's anointing himself with the brisk efficiency of a sunbather. Terzo stands, watching him, as the silence grows longer and more awkward. Finally, he can’t take it anymore.
"I don't top," Terzo says. The stone floor is cold and rough on his bare feet. "You want the macho daddy thing, you'll need to go to one of my brothers. So."
Copia goes instantly pink. He says nothing.
"Really," Terzo says. "You do?"
"I have before." Copia's so red his freckles are disappearing, subsumed in the blush.
"Congratulations," Terzo says, baffled by how this is sort of doing it for him. "I didn't think you had it in you."
You could fry an egg on Copia's face. "Why are you being so mean to me?"
"I'm not being mean, I’m just saying—"
"You know what the clergy calls you," Copia says, his shoulders up by his ears. "You're a brat."
He's all up in Terzo's face now, and huh, the freckles are still there when you look close enough. There's a whole bunch of them dusted on his nose and forehead and even one on the very edge of his lip.
Terzo eyes him coolly, with as much dignity as he can muster in his ceremonial bathrobe. "Anything else?"
But Copia's clearly ready to monologue. He steps closer.
"I defended you, you know that? To the other bishops. To Imperator. I figured you were just acting out. That you wanted attention. But this whole week, you’ve just been awful—” he makes an exasperated sound. “You’re just a brat, and this is your fault, and now I'm going to have to— god." He turns away and scrubs at his mouth.
It’s fucking embarrassing to discover that Copia’s reluctance to do this actually hurts. Terzo feels it twist into something hot and mean in his belly.
"You don't have to sound so disgusted,” he snaps.
Copia throws his hands up in frustration. "That’s not what I’m even talking about— you just— you don't even know what you have!" he blurts.
He's walked Terzo into the far corner of the basement. They're getting worryingly close to the three thousand or so candles the ghouls lit. God help them if this oil isn’t fireproof.
"It's easy for you. You can fuck up and not go to meetings and not follow instructions. You can do everything wrong on purpose! And you don't even have to work for it! And you just— take and take, and—"
“I might be a brat,” Terzo cuts him off, desperate for a toehold, so he punches as far down as he can. “But you’re a lapdog.”
“You don't know anything about me.” Copia’s voice cracks on the last word, like the rage is trying to punch its way clean out his throat.
“I know enough,” Terzo says, stepping forward, and fuck, why are his eyes stinging like he’s going to cry. This is so humiliating and he doesn’t even fucking know why. “All that work, and look where it’s got you.”
Copia closes his eyes. “Just stop, Terzo.”
“You’ll have to tell me,” Terzo says, and he knows it’s a mistake before it’s even out of his mouth but here he fucking goes anyway. “How’s Imperator’s boot taste?”
He never gets his answer, because Copia tackles him to the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
For as good as he is at picking fights, Terzo’s never actually been in one before. Actually, he considers, as they thrash and roll around like alley cats, he probably still hasn't. This is nothing like a choreographed movie fight. There's a lot more slapping and hair-pulling involved. And Copia is much stronger than he looks. His robe’s slipped down to his elbows, and Terzo can see in his shoulders exactly how much all the rowing’s paid off.
"Get off me," Terzo gasps, smacking at Copia's arms and face.
Copia's got his full body weight on him now. One wrist gets pinned above his head, then another, until he’s pinioned like a rabbit. Terzo kicks his legs, uselessly.
"Say you're sorry!" Copia grits out through set teeth.
Well, now he's definitely not going to.
"I didn't know this was going to happen!" Terzo shrieks, trying to buck Copia off, but he’s holding him down pretty effortlessly.
Copia makes a sound of fury. He must be squeezing pretty hard, because the bones in Terzo’s wrists are starting to grind together. The pain is distracting enough that he almost doesn’t notice that his own robe’s almost entirely off now. Not that it covered much, but there was at least a gauzy whisper of deniability between his dick and Copia’s bare thigh. Not anymore. He wriggles, but that just puts more of Copia’s body in contact with his nascent erection.
Copia either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care. “Why are you like this?” he asks, hoarse, chest heaving. He’s almost panting. The wet swell of his tongue nudged up against his bottom teeth makes Terzo’s cock throb humiliatingly.
When Terzo doesn’t answer, Copia shifts his weight to bear down harder on him, pinning him even flatter against the ground, but all the oil means that it’s more of a slippery grind, right where their bodies meet. Terzo’s dick is all-the-way hard now, rubbing slick and obvious against Copia’s belly.
“I don’t know!” Terzo finally snarls, with the ferocity of a trapped prey animal. Sweat and oil sting his eyes. His face feels sparking, firework-hot, all scrambled-up shame and desire and the slow, wet drag of his dick on whatever part of Copia’s body he’s pressed against. They’re jammed so tightly together he can’t even see, but he’s pushing back into it all the same, even though Copia’s basically screaming in his face. “I don’t know,” he echoes, limply.
He wants to put his face in his hands, to hide in the crook of his own sweaty arm, but Copia hasn’t left him a lot of room with his arms over his head. God, you fucking freak, he thinks, eyes screwed shut, his head pounding, his dick flat against his belly, you idiot, you stupid fucking useless slut—
Copia kisses him.
It takes a minute to register because Terzo was honestly expecting a punch. But Copia’s – right there, his face mashed against Terzo’s, and his lips are undeniably involved. If it’s a punch, it’s a pretty bad one.
Copia kisses like he tackles: brutal, shocking, from total stillness into action. Terzo reels like the air’s been stomped out of his lungs. He knew they’d have to fuck, but he didn’t expect this: the wet shock of Copia’s tongue against Terzo’s. The grip on his wrists loosening, but not letting up. The weight of his body, keeping Terzo immobilized, easily, like he’s a child.
Terzo hears himself moan, from a place deep in his throat. There’s so much adrenaline in his body that it still feels like a fight. He kisses back.
There’s a flash of bright light at the corner of his eye. Copia must see it too, because they both pull apart and turn to look. The sigil on the floor is ringed in fire.
“Terzo,” Copia says, in wonder. “Your forehead.”
When Terzo turns back, he sees what Copia must see too: the sigil in the center of his forehead, lit up luminous and purple. His own is reflected in the pupils of Copia’s eyes.
“I think it’s starting,” Copia whispers, blinking sluggishly, and then Terzo feels it too: woozy, a guttering heat starting at the base of his neck and trickling its way down his body. And he doesn't hear anything, but he feels it ringing in his chest all the same, as deep and resonant as a struck gong.
Magic is here.
They just stare at each other in the creepy light. Copia's flushed and breathing hard. Terzo must look exactly the same to him. For a moment, they’re motionless, a fucked-up mirror of each other.
Then Terzo yanks him down by the collar and they crash back together.
There’s fresh urgency in the way they kiss and slot together. The heavy weight of Copia’s dick is a relief; Terzo presses into it gratefully. And maybe it's the hex pushing them together, making them want to touch and kiss, but it just feels so good. Better than anything Terzo’s felt in longer than he can remember. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, he thinks deliriously, rubbing their dicks together, relishing in the shivery hard-hot slide of it and the sounds it’s pulling from Copia.
“Stop, stop,” Copia says, voice frayed. He pulls back onto his knees. Terzo can’t hide how he stares at the arc of his cock, flushed dark and wet all over. The candles must be burning hotter; the room’s getting smoky and indistinct at the edges like an old mirror. “I can’t – can’t finish yet.”
“Let me suck you off,” Terzo blurts, crazy with it.
Copia’s breath stutters at the question. He says nothing; his lips are pressed white-thin. There’s a fine tremor in his shoulders, but only barely.
Fuck, he wants to get his mouth on that cock. To rub the tip all over his lips, his tongue dumbly chasing it, until Copia grabs him by the chin with a thumb on his teeth and forces the whole thing into his mouth.
Would he actually? Maybe not. Then again, Terzo didn't think he’d knock him to the floor until it was already happening. The buttoned-up ones were always a surprise.
He could really throw that strength around when he needed to, couldn’t he? He could back Terzo against the wall, his fingers latticed behind his head, pushing, bullying his way inside his throat until he choked, deep and wet and cracked open like an oyster. Finally shut him the fuck up.
Terzo squeezes a hand between their bodies and fists his cock, just thinking about it. The sound of the stroke is obscene. Copia watches him with naked desire.
Choking made it better. It pulled up something wetter than spit, something thick and slippery and primal, like an animal. He could just close his eyes, serene, and let himself be used.
“Terzo,” Copia moans, voice brittle. “Please – focus.”
Terzo blinks, woozy, and stills his hand. Things are getting foggy. The room’s swimming in front of him. They need to do this now before they lose their chance.
“How do you, ah—” Copia manages, on trembling arms now, muscles corded with strain. “How do you usually—?”
Terzo has to close his eyes. “Hands and knees.”
And he’s not sure if it’s the magic or his body giving up the ghost, but he’s so weak and limp that Copia has to help him. One hand at the back of his skull, another at his back, guiding him like a poseable doll. Gently, so gently, even with the roar of magic in his skull and the flaming sigil and candles burning high and hot.
The instructions had called it a conduit, hadn't they? He feels like it, on all fours, presenting himself to be mounted. There’s no other word.
His cock is dripping on the floor. When Copia guides his robe out of the way, almost politely, and puts his fingers inside him, slick from the oil on their bodies, the rightness of it shocks him. Like this is what he was made for.
"I'm gonna—" Copia pants, kneeling between his legs, right as Terzo feels the blunt head of his cock nudge at his hole.
“Do it,” he gasps. He’s spread like an animal, his head hanging between his shoulders. The imprint of the stone floor feels die-cut into his palms.
“Sorry, sorry.”
Terzo’s going to blow a gasket or throw up or something. “Stop apologizing and just—”
He does, finally. Copia guided that big stupid cock into him, an inch at a time, one hand deathgripping into the meat of Terzo’s thighs so hard he can feel the bite of his fucking fingernails like four little sizzling brands. But there’s barely any burn, just the thick, overwhelming pleasure of it.
“Wow. Okay. Wow.” Copia’s babbling desperately, and on any other day Terzo would love to preen and luxuriate in the whole blushing tongue-tied jock thing and really embarrass him, but he’s too busy embarrassing himself. He puts one hand over Copia’s on his thigh, smacks at it, willing him to do something.
“If you don’t move,” Terzo gasps, “we are both literally going to die.”
Mortal terror finally does it. With a shuddering breath, Copia pulls almost all the way out, slick and shivery, then pushes heavily back in. They both groan. He does it again, and again, faster, until the obscene slap of it is relentless and Terzo’s making these hysterical hiccuping sounds that are literally being fucked out of him, because he’s never been so full, so stretched open, so—
Oh god, is he crying?
Copia’s drapes himself over his back, panting by his ear, hauling in these big, shaky breaths like he’s barely keeping himself together. When he catches Terzo’s mouth and kisses him again, lush and slow, Terzo tastes salt. He tries to laugh and sobs a little instead.
“Terzo, it’s okay,” Copia says, petting his hair, clearly distressed but also unable to stop the movement of his hips, pushing Terzo further and further onto his own crossed arms. “It’s okay, I’m sorry, don’t – it’s okay.”
And Terzo can’t explain that he’s not upset, he’s just having a moment to end all moments naked on the basement floor. Is this what teenage religious martyrs felt before the pyre went up? Is this Satan? Is this just being twenty-five?
“Shut the fuck up,” he moans wetly, sniffling. “Don’t stop. Idiot.”
Copia’s free hand trails its way down to splay over the soft part of Terzo’s belly.
“What if we tried to let it take,” he says, sounding weirdly strained, and Terzo has no fucking idea if it’s the hex speaking or if Copia’s just a secret freak, but it makes his knees go liquid underneath him. He never got the whole Prime Mover thing before, but it knocks him fucking sideways now, because Copia’s talking about him like he’s rich soil for something to be planted in.
A fantasy hits him, briefly, of actually being inseminated. Heavy with it. A useful, fertile thing, the ownership obvious and undeniable. He moans.
Please, he thinks, or maybe he says. He can’t tell anymore. Please, make me good, make me whole, make me not myself.
“Terzo,” Copia groans, his hips going jerky. The fire on the sigil blazes impossibly bright, the flames crawling higher. And Terzo closes his eyes to the pleasure, to the magic, to the white-hot immolating blaze. He lets it all break over him in a warm, lapping wave of analog TV static until he’s gone, gone, gone.
*
“Want one?”
They’re slumped against the basement wall, their ruined robes on their laps in a hilarious attempt at modesty. The sigil is inert, the room quiet, and Copia, the fucking Boy Scout that he is, is holding out… a granola bar.
“I brought an extra,” he explains, a little shyly. “I thought we might be hungry after.”
Terzo doesn’t exactly have a point of reference for this particular interaction. It was a lot easier when he had some freaky sex curse guiding him on marionette strings. When he just stares at it, Copia seems to give up handing it off and settles for sliding it across the floor, the way you’d feed a nervous foster dog. And some part of Terzo wants to make fun of him, to give in to the kneejerk reaction of random cruelty that got him here in the first place. But for once, he does the normal thing. He accepts what’s offered.
“Thanks,” he rasps, only somewhat churlish, peeling the wrapper with clumsy fingers. His voice is thick from crying. They both politely ignore it.
Copia has a water bottle too, because of course he does. When he passes it over, Terzo hesitates for a moment, but there’s no way it’s any grosser than what they just did. He drinks, gratefully.
They crunch in mutual embarrassed silence for a minute or two. And forget the ostentatious Emeritus holiday feasts. After all the stress of the last hour—the last week, really—it’s maybe the best thing Terzo’s ever eaten in his life.
“Sorry,” Copia says to the floor, breaking the silence. He’s fidgeting with the crinkly edges of his wrapper, clearly nervous. “For fighting you, I mean. And saying all those things. And – yeah. Sorry.”
“No,” Terzo sighs, because as much as he doesn’t want to, the time has well and truly come for him to do this. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a dick to you.”
There’s no response. Terzo looks up from his lap and finds Copia staring at him. His eyebrows are basically touching his hairline.
“Don’t look so surprised, you bitch.” Terzo’s face is sparking hot again. Being sincere is so humiliating. How do people live like this? “If you make it weird I’ll take it back.”
“No, sorry, I just – wow.” Copia rests his head against the basement wall, eyes shut, clearly contented. “I’m just basking in it.”
After a moment, he nudges Terzo’s calf with his bare foot.
“What?”
“You can keep going.”
Terzo rolls his eyes, trying to beat the stupid smile threatening to creep across his face into submission before he embarrasses himself. He exhales and ruins a hand through his ruined hair. “I’m sorry. I was a dick. I was careless. It was my fault.”
And it was. All of it, really. He’s not going to sit here and self-flagellate for Copia’s pleasure any more than he already just did, spread-eagled on the basement floor.
(Though he’d liked that plenty, hadn’t he? The memory makes desire spark hot and bright, just for a second, like an arcing flare across a night sky. If anyone was gagging for it, it was him.)
“And?” Copia prompts, swigging from his bottle.
And I’ve been like this for so long I’d forgotten how not to be, Terzo thinks, with a little stab of sober clarity. When you’re told all you do is ruin things, you get pretty good at living up to expectations.
“And it would've been fine if we just did the stupid incantation,” he settles on, because this, at least, is an easy truth. “Latin all the time from here on out. I promise. I’ll start now.”
He searches for fragments of his half-remembered classes and comes up empty.
"Mea culpa?" Copia suggests.
Terzo snorts. “Don’t get cocky.”
Copia grins, and the rosy white of his freckled skin is enough to make Terzo go stupid in the head all over again. “We’ll get there.” Then, with an energy that Terzo, fucked-out and squeezed dry as he is, personally does not possess: “You know what I want to do?”
Terzo shifts unpleasantly, feeling all the places where he’s sticky. “Take a shower.”
They probably need to report back to Imperator and the High Council and wave the bloody sheet too, before they send someone down to come looking for them. The last thing he needs is another witness.
“No, the portal,” Copia says, eagerly. “We never got to go. I was hoping— I really want to see.”
Terzo looks at him in flat disbelief. “After all that, you still want to see what’s in that crummy old thing?”
Copia shrugs, chewing on a cuticle. “Yeah.”
Who is this fucking guy, Terzo wonders, not for the first time. Every time he thinks he has his number, he’s wrong. And he’s not about to do something as insane as agree with Imperator, but there’s something weirdly compelling about him. He has a way of getting his freaky little claws in you. Also his dick.
Copia’s smiling at him, his excitement obvious, and Terzo knows it’s because he hasn’t learned to tamp it down before someone can use it against him. He’ll learn, if this life is what he wants. But maybe he doesn’t have to yet. Maybe Terzo can just make a fucking effort.
“Well,” he sighs, “I guess there’s no way we can fuck up more than we already did.”
Copia’s blush is instant. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s a 'fine, whatever,'” Terzo insists, clinging onto the scraps of his pride. He moves to rest his head on Copia’s shoulder. A warm thing unfurls in his chest when Copia permits him. “But you’re saying the Latin.”