Work Text:
Love As Thou Wilt
Let me first say that the Service of Namaah is no passing whim, a trifling fancy easily discarded, like the shimmering veils of a First Night costume under the hands of a lover. I myself, twice-dedicated and bearing the dart-pricked mark of Kushiel in my left eye, have never yet forsaken my vows. This, though I have lived more lifetimes than I could ever have imagined when, as a child, I traded lies and promises with Hyacinthe, that Prince of Travellers who lives foremost in my heart. It was for him, and for him alone, that I willed myself to take on the burden of Raziel's runes. Since that moment of mystery and magic, I have seen the passage of ages, more than any of mortal ken have known. I have learned, with the help of scholars and by the will of the Master of the Straits, that Terre d'Ange is but a single world among many, shining like the brightest pearl that glows at the centre of a necklace crafted to match the beauty of Elua himself. I, Phèdre nó Delaunay, anguisette and courtesan, have lived, eternally youthful and eternally bound, and always the Service of Namaah has called to me, drawing me as I am drawn by the fascination of a blade.
There are few, among the endless worlds, who know Namaah's true purpose. Many see the delight that can be taken from her arts, but seldom are there those who see how deep her sacrifice and her selflessness run, that she should offer her body to strangers for Elua's sake. Fewer still are those who truly understand the pleasure in pain of Kushiel's chosen, the joy that betrays all hurt.
They are few indeed who understand these things, but they exist, and I, when I find them, am left breathless anew by the sweet sting of the flagellary, the salt-bright pain of the flechettes.
So it was when I signed the contract of Namaah with Gregory House.
The splendor of the true Terre d'Ange that lies beyond was nowhere to be seen in the world I came to, in answering the need of Gregory House. He himself showed little resemblance to any scion of Elua, bearing no angelic beauty, unless it be the startling azure of his eyes, or the delicate strength of his long fingers, which touched, always, only with perfect intent. From the moment he opened the door of his home and I stepped within, my skirts rustling, I could see that he was nothing like Melisande Shahrizai. He was no scion of Kushiel born, as she was, but driven only to the arts of Mandrake by his own unhealed hurts.
For Gregory House is a man deeply wounded, with a debilitating injury to his right thigh, gained in no battle or through a test of arms; rather, the scars that run deeply from hip to knee were caused by the work of chirurgeons who knew little of their art. Though he was himself a physician, he had not the means to effect a cure. I have seen him take of the distilled extract of the opium flower, which dulls his senses but cannot erase his pain entirely.
Who better, then, to inflict pain upon a Servant of Namaah? Who better, than one who knows only his own endless agony?
Upon his first sight of me, House, for so he prefers to be named, frowned as though the sight of me was less than pleasing to him. I know that my beauty was unmatched in his world, and I had chosen my sangoire cloak carefully, and not a hair of my coif was out of place. Yet he spoke to me harshly; and I knew at once a hurt I had not felt for a very long time, a hurt that was humiliation and satisfaction in equal measure.
"The agency's getting imaginative, aren't they?" he said, speaking as if to himself; but I could tell, from his gaze, that the words were meant for me.
I felt my heart speed, with the curse and the blessing that only an anguisette knows. House nodded towards the hallway leading into the depths of his small apartment. I bowed my head, and followed.
The bedchamber, to my eyes, was nothing more than an antechamber; I, who had known the palaces of queens and the houses of the nobility, saw little here save a rumpled bed, too small by half, and nothing at all that would serve as a method of chastisement. I turned to face House, but he pushed me back, with considerable strength. I fell upon the bed, face down, hardly able to catch myself with my hands.
"Don't turn around," he said, and in hearing his voice, I could now detect some other emotion behind the harsh note. Perhaps it was fear. Perhaps it was desire. For myself, I have never chosen to distinguish them.
House chose that moment to tear open the delicate fastenings at the back of my gown, revealing the full extent of my marque, the twining of black thorn and blood-red rose against my pale skin. I gasped at the touch of his hand, for this was fear indeed, not knowing what he intended, and not being able to read his face, or his body, or his eyes; all my arts of the salon were useless to me. Yet I obeyed, and kept my face turned to the sheets, and I felt the stirrings of Namaah's gift.
House's first strike, when it came, filled me with heat, more from the sudden shock than from any power behind the blow. He had used his cane, the wooden shaft sturdy enough to leave bruises in its wake, and flexible enough that the sting of the hit spread across my back like a warm tide. My back arched upwards as if of a will of its own, as I sought for more than he had offered at first, and House responded quickly, laying his hand along the edges of the lash-mark. The second blow seemed as sudden as the first, for his hand still warmed the edges of the bruise when he brought his cane down only a fingersbreadth away. It seemed as though my breath was stolen from me, but I could not find it in myself to care. Arousal flooded through me, following the lines of reddened and swollen skin, and thence down between my legs, where I could already feel the gathering moisture as my pleasure climbed higher. I could feel the weight of House's gaze upon my turned head as I writhed on his sheets. Again, and again, the blows surprised me, for there was no rhythm to House's strokes; at once, they followed upon each other so quickly that I felt them as one long agon; again, he rested for so long that I thought he must surely have finished. And then the blow would come, and I pressed my hips into the bed, finding solace in whatever friction I could create against the sheets. Once, when he paused, I heard the rustle of clothes on skin as he disrobed, leaving only his trousers, and I both despaired and wished that the delicious torture would end, that he would spend himself in my aching body.
Before the moment could arise, however, there came a sound at the bedchamber's door, and the sound of a voice that rose above my own gasps and House's breathing, swift from his exertion.
"What the hell are you doing?" the intruder said, his voice high with emotion.
"Phèdre nó Delaunay," House said, his accent perfect on my name, though I detected some note of jest that I did not entirely understand. "Meet James Wilson."
I allowed myself the freedom to turn far enough that I might see he who had walked in, unbidden, while a Servant of Namaah performed her contracted services. I saw, to my burning disappointment, House lower his cane, and send a scathing look at the newcomer.
I climbed to my feet to face this new man, who entered Gregory House's apartment with such freedom. James Wilson bore a softer aspect than House, and age sat less heavily on him. His eyes, in the illumination of the bedchamber's electric lamps, seemed as dark as midnight shadows on sable, and yet they shimmered with a light all their own, bright with tears unshed and words unsaid. When he spoke, however, it was only to repeat, "House, what the hell?"
"Distracting myself," House answered him at length. "That was your idea, wasn't it?"
"I didn't tell you to go out and beat a hooker!"
I burned, then, with untamed arousal and humiliation. I was far more than any prostitute, being a dedicat of Namaah's, but there are far too many among the ignorant who would dismiss me as little more than a chattel.
"I'm pretty sure she likes it," House replied, turning to study me with look of calculated interest. "At least, that's what the contract she made me sign says."
Of all things, I knew this: Gregory House was such a man who would push, thinking that he wished that I would let the signale slip from between my lips. Hoping, and yet dreading, that I might tell him that he had pushed even my Valerian nature too far. I say to you now, that despite his harshness and the lines of fire that crisscrossed my marque and the flesh of my buttocks, that I would never have given him my signale. He was a strong man, but I was stronger; and what would have been a surrender for me would have been nothing less than a complete downfall for him. The signale was the last word he ever would have wanted to hear from me, no matter his curiosity and his desire to break me as well as he knew how.
"House, when I said get a distraction--"
House, who I had known so briefly and yet so well, as only a Servant of Namaah can, spoke as though bitterness were the only anchor that held him fast and offered him comfort. "You meant anything except you."
It seemed to me, then, that I, who have known pleasure in pain since I first pricked my palm on the scarlet anemone that marked Elua's choice and defiance; I knew, then, what these two men shared. I thought of Joscelin, who each day he lived with me as my consort, forsook his vow of perfect servitude; how he had made that impossible choice, not once, but in every moment of all the days we loved each other, and those days now seem as numberless as the stars, filled as they were with our shared joys.
And so it was that I said, "I must go."
"Money's on the dresser," House said, with dismissal written in his stance and his voice. He stared only at Wilson, and I saw there the echo of my past, of the dark eyes of Alcuin as he followed the movements of my master, Delaunay, in the last days of their lives. How brief, how fleeting is happiness; how easily it may remain hidden, even from the hearts of those who believe they know their own minds. How simple a thing joy can be, when it is recognised at last.
I gathered my skirts in my hands, and took the flimsy paper notes from where they rested. "Love as thou wilt," I said, Elua's words to his followers, that had never felt more apt or more necessary.
I left them so: Gregory House, aroused, half-unclothed, leaning on the cane he had used to beat the rhythm of his own pain into my flesh; and James Wilson, whose longing I had seen on so many faces during my service, and seen so rarely fulfilled.
I know not what befell them, then; but I believe that they came to an understanding that night, such as that legendary love that the poets still tell of, between Delaunay and his Dauphin; the love that follows from friendship, from devotion, and from the bonds that even the One God could not sever, such as that which grew between Elua and his devoted Cassiel. This is the message that I bring, bearing it like a lit torch as I travel among the worlds. As Elua, who chose Terre d'Ange over the realm of the One God, has admonished us all, be it in this world or the next: Love as thou wilt.
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