Watchmen - King of Kings
Title: King of Kings
Author: smirnoffmule
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Adrian Veidt / OMCs
Rating: NC-17
Summary: 'Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair'. Or, the post-coital emptiness that follows the end of the world.
A/N From the prompt “The many different ways to perceive pain” at weekly_watchmen
Big thank you to azarias for her invaluable work with the beta stick.
“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley - Ozymandias.
Adrian's office was lit with muted gold. It was a nowhere hour of night, and the city below buzzed fitfully in its sleep. His companion was rifling through the books on his shelf, looking, no doubt, for something with pictures. Adrian was content to sit and let him, while his thoughts stilled and his senses wandered.
The bullet scar on his palm was all but invisible now, detectable only as a flaw in the texture of his skin. When he closed his hand, his fingers always found it. In quiet moments like this, he touched it without thinking. When he pressed on it, it did not so much hurt as echo pain, like old bones in damp weather.
As a younger man, Adrian had viewed pain as just another obstacle to over come. He tried for quite some years to school himself to ignore it, to combat the inconvenient things it did to his body. When success depended on a foot landing or a fist connecting at just the right point, and split-split second, a flinch or a stumble could end him. He was fast enough that it probably wouldn't, but probably was a temptress, a tart. He would not betray the name he'd taken by dying stupidly in a gutter.
Some of the other masks had messy fighting styles - loose limbed punches, thrown in anger. Effective, yes, and brutal too, learned on the streets where the one left standing was king, but the more Adrian watched them, the more he could see how he might undo them, or how time might undo them on that day when they just weren't quite fast enough. He worked like a dancer, alone in his room, assaulted by the air, flipping and blocking and kicking with phantom foes. Technically, perfect. Actually, still flawed. The problem was pain was a big cat - still there even when you couldn't see it, lethal at all corners, and liable to pounce.
The solution, as it turned out, was so close to him he couldn't see it. He had known from the start he'd rarely be the biggest fighter in a brawl, so he learned to see big as a hindrance. The more weight they threw at him, the harder he could flip them, and slam them to the ground with all the force of their own poundage and momentum. No energy was wasted. He was the pivot, the centre. He only had to balance, and then use whatever they gave him.
He learned his new trick from getting tagged in the shoulder by a mugger with a screwdriver. He saw the blunt end coming for him just before it struck, and knew in that microsecond he couldn't stop his arm from jerking - but he could change how it jerked. He flung himself forward into his flinch, rolling with the pain instead of trying to block it, and his open palm connected with his assailant's face so hard he cartwheeled. It was all just kinetic energy. It seemed sickeningly obvious once his lesson was learned, because really it had always been so. If his parents hadn't died, he might never have left his home. Pain was a forward force, a shaper, a maker. No one who worked as hard as Adrian could fail to notice that nothing came for free - or that things worth having were worth the bite.
He had made himself feel every death, he had said, but he had not. His effort was sincere, but it was too enormous. Perspective, he discovered, was the perfect numbing agent.
As the months ticked by, and the hyperbole surrounding the death toll became old news, the papers noted in passing that he was less active as a public figure. A document purporting to be Rorschach's journal briefly broke the surface of the media pond like a nocturnal fish, and then plunged back down to be devoured by bottom feeders. Adrian did not dignify it by trying to suppress it. Published copies appeared on shelves next to books on astral projection and the faking of the moon landings. The tabloids scratched at each other like bored children. Adrian attended some functions. He interviewed selectively. Enough to keep his public face ticking over.
His companion was squinting at the cabinet which contained his action figures. His name was Brandon, which was inconvenient. With its harsh vowels, it was the kind of word that sounded his accent the strongest.
“Leave those,” Adrian said.
“You still have the Rorschach one,” Brandon noted. “After what he wrote about you.”
“Nobody knows if he really wrote that,” Adrian said. “No one has heard from him - the real him - in months. Maybe he's retired.”
“Maybe he'll release a rival line,” Brandon said, and prodded at the miniature Bubastis. “Cute kitty. Who makes this shit up?”
“Some marketing guy,” Adrian said. “I just sign the orders.”
He had not replaced Bubastis, though when he sat in repose, his fingers itched for her sometimes. Missing her reminded him to feel sorrow. The silence when he was alone in his room was louder than the purr of her breath and the scratch of her whiskers, and the tick-tack of her neat and deadly claws. A young actor he'd collected at a party, sticky with new fame and margaritas, had suggested he get a dog to fill the gaps in his apartment. Adrian did not invite him back again.
He did not need to. There were always other lovers. None of them loved him, though plenty loved his body. He was not prescriptive about it. Mostly, he let them do as they chose with him, and revisited the ones who had some skill in that regard. It was hard to find one who would dare to assert themselves with him. Even when one wanted to be rough, there was deference still in the lines of their body. He was Adrian Veidt, after all. He was untouchable.
Those of them that were paid received their compensation cleanly via credit transfer, and it was never talked about.
One did ask him once if he would wear his costume, but he declined, politely.
“Well, can I wear it then?” the young man persisted. He had blond hair too, and lithe, cold fingers, and Adrian said that the implications of allowing him to do so were not ones he wished to have cause to dwell on. The young man blinked long eyelashes at him in reply. When they kissed, he tasted of Adrian's good scotch, and Adrian had to clamp a hand on his cheek to stop him from allowing himself to be pushed backwards.
Later, when Adrian was on his back for him at the edge of the bed, it was his own gripping legs around the young man's waist that drove him to thrust harder, and his own hand over the boy's that squeezed crescent moon-shaped indents into the flesh above his hipbones.
The marks had faded fast, and were gone with the boy as Adrian showered.
He did not date as such, and never really had, but he had favourites, who rewarded revisiting. Works in progress. Brandon was one such, who tapped Adrian's bank balance, although he was not rent in the traditional sense. He was a pianist, a prodigy in his youth, plucked from a children's home by a canny promoter and set on the scene. Briefly, he made classical music feel relevant to those who counted on the media to tell them how to be moved. He was not technically perfect, but he lived to play, and did so with the raw passion of the driven. He affected the attitude of a pop star, and took himself seriously enough that the pose remained even in private. Or at least with Adrian.
He played elaborate interpretations of Ashes to Ashes and How Soon is Now on the piano in Adrian's penthouse and sang in a throaty tenor. He allowed Adrian to patronize him - sponsor performances, pay for recordings, tip him a little extra to siphon off for tobacco - and in return, he patronized Adrian whenever they got together. That he found Adrian's body appealing but his company deeply boring was a barely concealed secret. Truth be told, Adrian didn't much care for his abrasive manner either, but he felt a certain kinship for a fellow orphan who derived momentum from pain. He thought of him as a boy still, although he was easily twenty by the time of their acquaintance, and stood taller than he did by a hair.
Brandon straightened up abruptly, bored of the toys. He bored like a cat, Adrian had noticed, his mood swinging in seconds from fascination to disdain.
He approached Adrian at his desk, his eyes a question. He was like the others, Adrian thought with regret. Always waiting for permission. Equality between them an illusion, to hold or fail on his own whim. Had things changed at some point, or had it always been thus?
He flicked an eyebrow and the boy advanced. At least Brandon was not unsubtle enough to have to be told. Adrian rose from his seat to meet him, and caught him his stride like a dancer. There was no etiquette of eye contact before their lips met hard. Lips crushed against teeth and breath smothered breath, but it was rawness Adrian craved, not finesse. Though Brandon was lean, there was nothing soft about him, and within seconds of their locking, he had Adrian's shirt half off his shoulders, and Adrian had his hand down his pants. His hiss of excitement smelled of cheap tobacco.
“Push me,” Adrian whispered, and the boy obliged with a promising eagerness, pressing him up against the desk, shoving his knee between Adrian's legs. Adrian raised his hands, and Brandon caught them and pinned them to his side. Adrian had to calculate his resistance to make it ineffective. If he let himself think about it, the encounter felt as plastic as his action figures. He might as well bump them together in idle moments. He twisted out of Brandon's grip, and held him at arm's length. Brandon squirmed, looking shifty. Adrian took a deep breath and made a conscious effort to repair his mood.
“Shall we start again?” he suggested, keeping his tone neutral. He could have been suggesting croquet as much as screwing. He did not release his hold until Brandon had relaxed.
Disengaged, Brandon watched him for a minute, waiting for cues. When Adrian gave him none, he stepped in closer, and finished the job of stripping his shirt off, tossing it loosely aside to pool on the floor. Adrian stayed passive, let him work. His hands journeyed, tracing the bow of Adrian's collar bone, mapping out the muscles of his chest. His movements grew more confident as each second passed without his being checked again. He pushed a finger hard into Adrian's naval. In a lesser man, he might have won a squirm, but Adrian held still, waiting until his interest was piqued enough to start to participate.
Brandon brought his hands to Adrian's face, and once there, he got rougher, shoving at his jawline with blunt fingers as though testing its strength, turning his head from side to side, catching the light and the shadows. He traced the architecture of Adrian's cheek bones, touched him in the hollows of his eyes. When his fingers brushed his eyelashes, Adrian blinked, a conscious effort, so as not to appear corpse-like. The choice for movement broke his spell of inaction. He took hold of Brandon's hand and pressed it to his cheek. For a moment, they were both still, a tableau parodying affection. Then the boy drew back his hand and slapped him. The sound was soft, but the room seemed to catch its breath. Brandon hesitated for a moment, but Adrian's eyes were a dare, and he took it. He hit him again, harder this time, but harder was relative - to a child, it might have been painful, to a layman faintly intimidating, but to the man who was Ozymandias, it was the bat of a kitten dreaming of a lion. He had made himself immune to touch. The muscles he had once used to flinch had atrophied.
“Harder,” he exhorted. He didn't know what he would do if the boy disappointed, but his blood was rising to something. The next slap was sufficient to echo, a crack like a gun shot; the next one snapped his head around.
“Harder,” he said again, his accent thickening. The tang of blood started in his mouth. “Harder.” Brandon shoved into him again, pushing him backwards onto the desk. The angle, and Brandon's weight, stole the strength from his legs. This was more like it.
“Come on then,” he hissed, and Brandon closed in for his mouth and bit him on the lip. They wrestled - almost - in earnest, friction creating pleasure shocks between them. Brandon's fingers dug and their teeth clashed. Freeing one hand up enough to plunge it in between them, Adrian yanked at Brandon's zipper. He let his legs slide out from under him and found himself on his knees on the floor, pressed tight between boy and desk. Brandon's hand dropped to his head, and Adrian practically headbutted it in his urgency.
He grabbed hold of Brandon's belt loops and yanked, downwards and towards himself. He pressed his nose against the fabric of his underwear, nuzzling the shape of his cock, pinching the cotton between his teeth and pulling it loose. Brandon freed one hand from his head to help, and between that and Adrian's teeth, the underwear came down and was kicked loose. Brandon eased back for a second to savour and regroup. He worked though Adrian's hair, finding a handhold, coiling blond locks like rope around his fingers. He raised a knee, pressed it to the hollow of Adrian's throat. Adrian could do nothing but swallow wetly, a copper taste on his tongue.
When Brandon finally lowered his knee and thrust his hips towards Adrian's face, Adrian did not move. The boy's cock was close enough to twitch at the touch of his breath. Brandon's hands twisted in his hair, an imperative. Adrian glanced up at him, his mouth quirking. Make me. Brandon obliged.
He caught Adrian by the jaw, shoved a thumb between his teeth to open his mouth, and forced his cock inside. Adrian instructed his gag reflex to come back later, and took it, fighting Brandon's hands to twist his head to a useful angle. Brandon pushed into him, backing his head against the edge of the desk, trapping him. He fucked his mouth, raw and breathless. Brandon always fucked like he played, no finesse, but raw energy, tearing up the moment. Adrian rose to the challenge, wrapped his arms around Brandon's legs, took him deeper inside. His head bumped the edge of the desk with every thrust, a counter point to Brandon's rough huffs and thrusts.
Abruptly, Brandon withdrew and hauled him roughly to his feet, mostly by the hair. They unburdened each other of their remaining clothes with a force that popped seams. Brandon drove him backwards until he was flat on the desk, fingernails snagging flesh, with the boy's weight on top of him.
Brandon caught him by the shoulders, shook him, slapped him round the jaw again, pressed his teeth hard into his throat. At that Adrian intervened, a push with his palm to disengage him, direct him lower. He wanted no marks where the public might see them, or at least not ones that couldn't be accounted for by wholesome crime fighting activities. Brandon took the hint in his stride and bit down instead on the muscle of his pec, increasing the pressure as Adrian's fingers tightened.
Brandon was no wrestler, but Adrian helped him to flip him onto his stomach. The marble was cold against his skin, but Brandon's breath was hot in his ear, misting on the cold surface next to his face. Brandon's cock was nudging urgent at the small of his back. When his hand came near enough, Adrian grabbed for his fingers with his teeth, and the boy curled them into his mouth and over his tongue. He sucked, his breath pinched between the hard desk and the weight on his back, forcing air out of his nose. When Brandon withdrew his fingers, he left a line of saliva along Adrian's cheek. He sat up, and the empty air prickled the sweat on Adrian's back. His fingers trailed down to his buttocks, making a path. Adrian heard a wet sound as Brandon added his own spit to his effort, and dipped his hand down, slipping a finger without preamble past the tight ring of muscle and sinking in up to his last knuckle. Adrian growled. It was not enough. Brandon planted his free hand between his shoulder blades to hold him in place, working in a second, then a third. Adrian writhed against him, swearing in what might have been one of a dozen languages, or else an entirely new one.
When the fingers withdrew, he took the chance to slide forward. He leaned over the edge of his desk, flicked a catch on a drawer, fumbled a condom from a pack and flipped it over his shoulder. He raised his legs and locked them against Brandon's thighs, blocking him from moving until he'd heard him put on it - a crinkle, and a soft snap, and the spent packet fluttered past his vision onto the floor.
This done, he spread his legs across the desk, impatient, drumming hurry up with his fingers as Brandon spat again, found his angle, and sank into him. His breathing hit an urgent note. If you come right now, Adrian thought, you're not coming back, but he said nothing, simply held still, until the boy recovered himself and started to move inside him, staccato at first, but picking up tempo. Adrian lifted his hips and pushed back, his fingers scrabbling for a purchase on the smooth surface of the desk. A film of sweat destroyed traction, and Adrian found himself starting to lose limbs off the edge. Brandon hooked an arm around his shoulder to hold him in place, thrusting into him, the slap of flesh an uneven cacophony.
“Aren't musicians supposed to have rhythm?” he challenged. Brandon only pounded raggedly harder in response. Adrian freed a pinned hand, reached back to clamp it on Brandon's hip, urging him deeper.
“Fuck you,” he snarled, and Brandon rewarded him by biting, really biting, at his shoulder. Adrian felt the flesh give, used all the leverage he had to drive back deeper into Brandon's mouth.
“All you've got?” It wasn't. Teeth plucked again at his shoulder blade and Adrian's recoil must have been hard enough to hurt him; Brandon withdrew his mouth abruptly and slammed instead with his palm, hard on Adrian's spine, digging in his nails as he plunged to climax. Adrian felt him shudder, and his fingers slip.
He opened his eyes, and felt detachment. Brandon's weight on his back was suddenly an uncomfortable burden, and his own cock was trapped. Brandon exhaled, withdrew, and leant forward to kiss him on a bite mark. Adrian sighed at the sudden tenderness, sensing it was driven by manners rather than affection. Something akin to boredom washed over him.
He rose on his elbows, and with a flick of his hips had the boy sprawled on his back on the floor, beetling for dignity. He pushed himself off the desk in a fluid movement and landed beside him. He took Brandon's hand, and he stilled.
“Here,” Adrian said, and closed his eyes as the boy grasped him. The moment had burned out of him; finishing off was a mechanical process, and he took himself miles from the room. His brain space felt as wide as the universe, and just as empty. He peopled it with constellations, shadowed it with stars so perfectly faint it hurt. He took himself to Karnak, where the white raged outside his windows like the end of the world, and he was untouchable. He thought of fiery red sand rising in silent waves to meet the sun. Of sleeping on a cold step in Cairo, the harsh angles of the stone a lesson in geometry. Of white flowers on a distant grave, corrupting slowly. Brandon took him in his mouth, and it unmade him from the inside out. He came in shuddering, heaving waves, and cried out as if in sorrow.
In front of the mirror later, he turned his shoulders to admire the bruises pooling around the bite marks.
Murderer of millions, he told his reflection, but it did not flinch.
Author: smirnoffmule
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Adrian Veidt / OMCs
Rating: NC-17
Summary: 'Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair'. Or, the post-coital emptiness that follows the end of the world.
A/N From the prompt “The many different ways to perceive pain” at weekly_watchmen
Big thank you to azarias for her invaluable work with the beta stick.
“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley - Ozymandias.
Adrian's office was lit with muted gold. It was a nowhere hour of night, and the city below buzzed fitfully in its sleep. His companion was rifling through the books on his shelf, looking, no doubt, for something with pictures. Adrian was content to sit and let him, while his thoughts stilled and his senses wandered.
The bullet scar on his palm was all but invisible now, detectable only as a flaw in the texture of his skin. When he closed his hand, his fingers always found it. In quiet moments like this, he touched it without thinking. When he pressed on it, it did not so much hurt as echo pain, like old bones in damp weather.
As a younger man, Adrian had viewed pain as just another obstacle to over come. He tried for quite some years to school himself to ignore it, to combat the inconvenient things it did to his body. When success depended on a foot landing or a fist connecting at just the right point, and split-split second, a flinch or a stumble could end him. He was fast enough that it probably wouldn't, but probably was a temptress, a tart. He would not betray the name he'd taken by dying stupidly in a gutter.
Some of the other masks had messy fighting styles - loose limbed punches, thrown in anger. Effective, yes, and brutal too, learned on the streets where the one left standing was king, but the more Adrian watched them, the more he could see how he might undo them, or how time might undo them on that day when they just weren't quite fast enough. He worked like a dancer, alone in his room, assaulted by the air, flipping and blocking and kicking with phantom foes. Technically, perfect. Actually, still flawed. The problem was pain was a big cat - still there even when you couldn't see it, lethal at all corners, and liable to pounce.
The solution, as it turned out, was so close to him he couldn't see it. He had known from the start he'd rarely be the biggest fighter in a brawl, so he learned to see big as a hindrance. The more weight they threw at him, the harder he could flip them, and slam them to the ground with all the force of their own poundage and momentum. No energy was wasted. He was the pivot, the centre. He only had to balance, and then use whatever they gave him.
He learned his new trick from getting tagged in the shoulder by a mugger with a screwdriver. He saw the blunt end coming for him just before it struck, and knew in that microsecond he couldn't stop his arm from jerking - but he could change how it jerked. He flung himself forward into his flinch, rolling with the pain instead of trying to block it, and his open palm connected with his assailant's face so hard he cartwheeled. It was all just kinetic energy. It seemed sickeningly obvious once his lesson was learned, because really it had always been so. If his parents hadn't died, he might never have left his home. Pain was a forward force, a shaper, a maker. No one who worked as hard as Adrian could fail to notice that nothing came for free - or that things worth having were worth the bite.
He had made himself feel every death, he had said, but he had not. His effort was sincere, but it was too enormous. Perspective, he discovered, was the perfect numbing agent.
As the months ticked by, and the hyperbole surrounding the death toll became old news, the papers noted in passing that he was less active as a public figure. A document purporting to be Rorschach's journal briefly broke the surface of the media pond like a nocturnal fish, and then plunged back down to be devoured by bottom feeders. Adrian did not dignify it by trying to suppress it. Published copies appeared on shelves next to books on astral projection and the faking of the moon landings. The tabloids scratched at each other like bored children. Adrian attended some functions. He interviewed selectively. Enough to keep his public face ticking over.
His companion was squinting at the cabinet which contained his action figures. His name was Brandon, which was inconvenient. With its harsh vowels, it was the kind of word that sounded his accent the strongest.
“Leave those,” Adrian said.
“You still have the Rorschach one,” Brandon noted. “After what he wrote about you.”
“Nobody knows if he really wrote that,” Adrian said. “No one has heard from him - the real him - in months. Maybe he's retired.”
“Maybe he'll release a rival line,” Brandon said, and prodded at the miniature Bubastis. “Cute kitty. Who makes this shit up?”
“Some marketing guy,” Adrian said. “I just sign the orders.”
He had not replaced Bubastis, though when he sat in repose, his fingers itched for her sometimes. Missing her reminded him to feel sorrow. The silence when he was alone in his room was louder than the purr of her breath and the scratch of her whiskers, and the tick-tack of her neat and deadly claws. A young actor he'd collected at a party, sticky with new fame and margaritas, had suggested he get a dog to fill the gaps in his apartment. Adrian did not invite him back again.
He did not need to. There were always other lovers. None of them loved him, though plenty loved his body. He was not prescriptive about it. Mostly, he let them do as they chose with him, and revisited the ones who had some skill in that regard. It was hard to find one who would dare to assert themselves with him. Even when one wanted to be rough, there was deference still in the lines of their body. He was Adrian Veidt, after all. He was untouchable.
Those of them that were paid received their compensation cleanly via credit transfer, and it was never talked about.
One did ask him once if he would wear his costume, but he declined, politely.
“Well, can I wear it then?” the young man persisted. He had blond hair too, and lithe, cold fingers, and Adrian said that the implications of allowing him to do so were not ones he wished to have cause to dwell on. The young man blinked long eyelashes at him in reply. When they kissed, he tasted of Adrian's good scotch, and Adrian had to clamp a hand on his cheek to stop him from allowing himself to be pushed backwards.
Later, when Adrian was on his back for him at the edge of the bed, it was his own gripping legs around the young man's waist that drove him to thrust harder, and his own hand over the boy's that squeezed crescent moon-shaped indents into the flesh above his hipbones.
The marks had faded fast, and were gone with the boy as Adrian showered.
He did not date as such, and never really had, but he had favourites, who rewarded revisiting. Works in progress. Brandon was one such, who tapped Adrian's bank balance, although he was not rent in the traditional sense. He was a pianist, a prodigy in his youth, plucked from a children's home by a canny promoter and set on the scene. Briefly, he made classical music feel relevant to those who counted on the media to tell them how to be moved. He was not technically perfect, but he lived to play, and did so with the raw passion of the driven. He affected the attitude of a pop star, and took himself seriously enough that the pose remained even in private. Or at least with Adrian.
He played elaborate interpretations of Ashes to Ashes and How Soon is Now on the piano in Adrian's penthouse and sang in a throaty tenor. He allowed Adrian to patronize him - sponsor performances, pay for recordings, tip him a little extra to siphon off for tobacco - and in return, he patronized Adrian whenever they got together. That he found Adrian's body appealing but his company deeply boring was a barely concealed secret. Truth be told, Adrian didn't much care for his abrasive manner either, but he felt a certain kinship for a fellow orphan who derived momentum from pain. He thought of him as a boy still, although he was easily twenty by the time of their acquaintance, and stood taller than he did by a hair.
Brandon straightened up abruptly, bored of the toys. He bored like a cat, Adrian had noticed, his mood swinging in seconds from fascination to disdain.
He approached Adrian at his desk, his eyes a question. He was like the others, Adrian thought with regret. Always waiting for permission. Equality between them an illusion, to hold or fail on his own whim. Had things changed at some point, or had it always been thus?
He flicked an eyebrow and the boy advanced. At least Brandon was not unsubtle enough to have to be told. Adrian rose from his seat to meet him, and caught him his stride like a dancer. There was no etiquette of eye contact before their lips met hard. Lips crushed against teeth and breath smothered breath, but it was rawness Adrian craved, not finesse. Though Brandon was lean, there was nothing soft about him, and within seconds of their locking, he had Adrian's shirt half off his shoulders, and Adrian had his hand down his pants. His hiss of excitement smelled of cheap tobacco.
“Push me,” Adrian whispered, and the boy obliged with a promising eagerness, pressing him up against the desk, shoving his knee between Adrian's legs. Adrian raised his hands, and Brandon caught them and pinned them to his side. Adrian had to calculate his resistance to make it ineffective. If he let himself think about it, the encounter felt as plastic as his action figures. He might as well bump them together in idle moments. He twisted out of Brandon's grip, and held him at arm's length. Brandon squirmed, looking shifty. Adrian took a deep breath and made a conscious effort to repair his mood.
“Shall we start again?” he suggested, keeping his tone neutral. He could have been suggesting croquet as much as screwing. He did not release his hold until Brandon had relaxed.
Disengaged, Brandon watched him for a minute, waiting for cues. When Adrian gave him none, he stepped in closer, and finished the job of stripping his shirt off, tossing it loosely aside to pool on the floor. Adrian stayed passive, let him work. His hands journeyed, tracing the bow of Adrian's collar bone, mapping out the muscles of his chest. His movements grew more confident as each second passed without his being checked again. He pushed a finger hard into Adrian's naval. In a lesser man, he might have won a squirm, but Adrian held still, waiting until his interest was piqued enough to start to participate.
Brandon brought his hands to Adrian's face, and once there, he got rougher, shoving at his jawline with blunt fingers as though testing its strength, turning his head from side to side, catching the light and the shadows. He traced the architecture of Adrian's cheek bones, touched him in the hollows of his eyes. When his fingers brushed his eyelashes, Adrian blinked, a conscious effort, so as not to appear corpse-like. The choice for movement broke his spell of inaction. He took hold of Brandon's hand and pressed it to his cheek. For a moment, they were both still, a tableau parodying affection. Then the boy drew back his hand and slapped him. The sound was soft, but the room seemed to catch its breath. Brandon hesitated for a moment, but Adrian's eyes were a dare, and he took it. He hit him again, harder this time, but harder was relative - to a child, it might have been painful, to a layman faintly intimidating, but to the man who was Ozymandias, it was the bat of a kitten dreaming of a lion. He had made himself immune to touch. The muscles he had once used to flinch had atrophied.
“Harder,” he exhorted. He didn't know what he would do if the boy disappointed, but his blood was rising to something. The next slap was sufficient to echo, a crack like a gun shot; the next one snapped his head around.
“Harder,” he said again, his accent thickening. The tang of blood started in his mouth. “Harder.” Brandon shoved into him again, pushing him backwards onto the desk. The angle, and Brandon's weight, stole the strength from his legs. This was more like it.
“Come on then,” he hissed, and Brandon closed in for his mouth and bit him on the lip. They wrestled - almost - in earnest, friction creating pleasure shocks between them. Brandon's fingers dug and their teeth clashed. Freeing one hand up enough to plunge it in between them, Adrian yanked at Brandon's zipper. He let his legs slide out from under him and found himself on his knees on the floor, pressed tight between boy and desk. Brandon's hand dropped to his head, and Adrian practically headbutted it in his urgency.
He grabbed hold of Brandon's belt loops and yanked, downwards and towards himself. He pressed his nose against the fabric of his underwear, nuzzling the shape of his cock, pinching the cotton between his teeth and pulling it loose. Brandon freed one hand from his head to help, and between that and Adrian's teeth, the underwear came down and was kicked loose. Brandon eased back for a second to savour and regroup. He worked though Adrian's hair, finding a handhold, coiling blond locks like rope around his fingers. He raised a knee, pressed it to the hollow of Adrian's throat. Adrian could do nothing but swallow wetly, a copper taste on his tongue.
When Brandon finally lowered his knee and thrust his hips towards Adrian's face, Adrian did not move. The boy's cock was close enough to twitch at the touch of his breath. Brandon's hands twisted in his hair, an imperative. Adrian glanced up at him, his mouth quirking. Make me. Brandon obliged.
He caught Adrian by the jaw, shoved a thumb between his teeth to open his mouth, and forced his cock inside. Adrian instructed his gag reflex to come back later, and took it, fighting Brandon's hands to twist his head to a useful angle. Brandon pushed into him, backing his head against the edge of the desk, trapping him. He fucked his mouth, raw and breathless. Brandon always fucked like he played, no finesse, but raw energy, tearing up the moment. Adrian rose to the challenge, wrapped his arms around Brandon's legs, took him deeper inside. His head bumped the edge of the desk with every thrust, a counter point to Brandon's rough huffs and thrusts.
Abruptly, Brandon withdrew and hauled him roughly to his feet, mostly by the hair. They unburdened each other of their remaining clothes with a force that popped seams. Brandon drove him backwards until he was flat on the desk, fingernails snagging flesh, with the boy's weight on top of him.
Brandon caught him by the shoulders, shook him, slapped him round the jaw again, pressed his teeth hard into his throat. At that Adrian intervened, a push with his palm to disengage him, direct him lower. He wanted no marks where the public might see them, or at least not ones that couldn't be accounted for by wholesome crime fighting activities. Brandon took the hint in his stride and bit down instead on the muscle of his pec, increasing the pressure as Adrian's fingers tightened.
Brandon was no wrestler, but Adrian helped him to flip him onto his stomach. The marble was cold against his skin, but Brandon's breath was hot in his ear, misting on the cold surface next to his face. Brandon's cock was nudging urgent at the small of his back. When his hand came near enough, Adrian grabbed for his fingers with his teeth, and the boy curled them into his mouth and over his tongue. He sucked, his breath pinched between the hard desk and the weight on his back, forcing air out of his nose. When Brandon withdrew his fingers, he left a line of saliva along Adrian's cheek. He sat up, and the empty air prickled the sweat on Adrian's back. His fingers trailed down to his buttocks, making a path. Adrian heard a wet sound as Brandon added his own spit to his effort, and dipped his hand down, slipping a finger without preamble past the tight ring of muscle and sinking in up to his last knuckle. Adrian growled. It was not enough. Brandon planted his free hand between his shoulder blades to hold him in place, working in a second, then a third. Adrian writhed against him, swearing in what might have been one of a dozen languages, or else an entirely new one.
When the fingers withdrew, he took the chance to slide forward. He leaned over the edge of his desk, flicked a catch on a drawer, fumbled a condom from a pack and flipped it over his shoulder. He raised his legs and locked them against Brandon's thighs, blocking him from moving until he'd heard him put on it - a crinkle, and a soft snap, and the spent packet fluttered past his vision onto the floor.
This done, he spread his legs across the desk, impatient, drumming hurry up with his fingers as Brandon spat again, found his angle, and sank into him. His breathing hit an urgent note. If you come right now, Adrian thought, you're not coming back, but he said nothing, simply held still, until the boy recovered himself and started to move inside him, staccato at first, but picking up tempo. Adrian lifted his hips and pushed back, his fingers scrabbling for a purchase on the smooth surface of the desk. A film of sweat destroyed traction, and Adrian found himself starting to lose limbs off the edge. Brandon hooked an arm around his shoulder to hold him in place, thrusting into him, the slap of flesh an uneven cacophony.
“Aren't musicians supposed to have rhythm?” he challenged. Brandon only pounded raggedly harder in response. Adrian freed a pinned hand, reached back to clamp it on Brandon's hip, urging him deeper.
“Fuck you,” he snarled, and Brandon rewarded him by biting, really biting, at his shoulder. Adrian felt the flesh give, used all the leverage he had to drive back deeper into Brandon's mouth.
“All you've got?” It wasn't. Teeth plucked again at his shoulder blade and Adrian's recoil must have been hard enough to hurt him; Brandon withdrew his mouth abruptly and slammed instead with his palm, hard on Adrian's spine, digging in his nails as he plunged to climax. Adrian felt him shudder, and his fingers slip.
He opened his eyes, and felt detachment. Brandon's weight on his back was suddenly an uncomfortable burden, and his own cock was trapped. Brandon exhaled, withdrew, and leant forward to kiss him on a bite mark. Adrian sighed at the sudden tenderness, sensing it was driven by manners rather than affection. Something akin to boredom washed over him.
He rose on his elbows, and with a flick of his hips had the boy sprawled on his back on the floor, beetling for dignity. He pushed himself off the desk in a fluid movement and landed beside him. He took Brandon's hand, and he stilled.
“Here,” Adrian said, and closed his eyes as the boy grasped him. The moment had burned out of him; finishing off was a mechanical process, and he took himself miles from the room. His brain space felt as wide as the universe, and just as empty. He peopled it with constellations, shadowed it with stars so perfectly faint it hurt. He took himself to Karnak, where the white raged outside his windows like the end of the world, and he was untouchable. He thought of fiery red sand rising in silent waves to meet the sun. Of sleeping on a cold step in Cairo, the harsh angles of the stone a lesson in geometry. Of white flowers on a distant grave, corrupting slowly. Brandon took him in his mouth, and it unmade him from the inside out. He came in shuddering, heaving waves, and cried out as if in sorrow.
In front of the mirror later, he turned his shoulders to admire the bruises pooling around the bite marks.
Murderer of millions, he told his reflection, but it did not flinch.