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i.
The first time Sethennai kisses Tal, it feels like a miracle.
There is something enthralling about Sethennai. He’s charming and brilliant and handsome in a way that is so painfully Tal’s type that it feels unfair. Tal has always had a thing for older men, and while he is far from short himself, Sethennai is even taller, and broad enough that Tal can’t help but fantasize about how it would feel to be covered by his body.
At twenty years old, Tal has seduced worse men for worse reasons.
Tal knows he’s attractive, and he isn’t above using that to get what he wants if he can. He tries to be interesting for Sethennai. He tries so fucking hard. But he never was any good at academics, and it’s so easy for him to drift off into the sound of Sethennai’s voice while losing track entirely of the words. And Sethennai is so damn hard to read. One moment he’ll smile at Tal, a smile so achingly beautiful and personal, as if Tal is his favorite person on any world, and the feeling of warmth that fills Tal will sustain him for days. Until, inevitably, Sethennai seems to forget all about him, giving all that warmth to some fucking book or, even worse, Csorwe.
So he preens. He dresses his best. He tries to figure out what Sethennai likes and leans into it. He flirts as relentlessly as he knows how. But it never quite seems to get as far as he wants. Sethennai just smiles and gives him a familiar pat on the cheek and leaves him, frustrated and so, so aroused.
Until the Feast of Midsummer.
The day starts hot and miserable, and Tal wakes already sticky with sweat. It only gets worse from there. The air is dry and choked with dust, and the sun burns with an inescapable brilliance, but the feast is happening regardless. And Tal is the Chancellor’s security. So he’ll do his fucking job, but it’s awful all the same. Tal tries to style his hair before they go out, but his curls fall limp around his head within minutes.
“You look ridiculous,” says Csorwe.
“You wouldn’t know fashion if it came swinging at you with a sword.” Not one of his better retorts, but it’s too hot to concentrate on their usual sparring.
“If it had a sword it might actually be useful.”
Tal and Csorwe barely bother to make more than halfhearted verbal jabs at one another, too preoccupied with trying to find any patch of shade to stand in for relief from the relentless sun. And Tal can’t help but watch Sethennai, seeing the way even his charm can barely hold up against this heat and impending dust storm, and the way his face lapses into exhausted lines during any lulls in conversation.
The day seems to last forever, a series of sweaty hours that Tal knows even he isn’t looking good through. It’s too damn hot for anyone to cause mischief, anyway; what need is there for a bodyguard? But Tal would never give up a chance to watch Sethennai.
But finally they’re done. The revelers, if they can even be called that in this heat, make their bedraggled ways home. And Sethennai brings Tal and Csorwe back to his study for a debriefing.
And once Csorwe leaves, Tal lingers. “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” he asks, as Sethennai rubs his temples. It’s barely even flirting; the day has been hot enough to wipe at least some of Tal’s usual ambition away. Besides, he’s certain he looks far too disheveled to be worth pursuing. Though of course Sethennai looks delectable, even through the exhaustion and sheen of sweat on his dark skin.
Sethennai looks up and gives Tal a tired smile. “Come have a drink with me, Talasseres.”
Sethennai pulls a bottle of wine from a cupboard behind his desk and pours two glasses, handing one to Tal. The wine is blessedly cool, and Tal struggles not to gulp it all down. Sethennai watches him, a considering look on his face as he takes a slow sip of his own cup.
There’s something so intimate about this, just the two of them here in Sethennai’s study, leaning over glasses of wine together as evening draws in and the heat finally begins to dissipate. As Tal finishes, Sethennai reaches forward to take the glass from his hand. Their hands brush, and Tal can’t help but take in a sharp gasp of air at the contact, his ears twitching, and Sethennai stops. Tal’s eyes flicker down to where their hands are touching, then back up to Sethennai’s face.
Sethennai smiles, then leans over and presses his lips to Tal’s.
It’s soft, just a gentle pressure of closed lips, but it wipes every other thought from Tal’s head. Sethennai is kissing him. All the faded heat of the day is instantly back within him, burning twice as hot. Sethennai begins to pull away, but Tal lets out a disconsolate little whimper and follows, desperate to keep this kiss going as long as he can.
Sethennai laughs against Tal’s mouth, and holds him by the shoulders so he can separate them just enough to look Tal in the eyes. “Eager, are you?” Sethennai says, but there’s a soft smile on his face, and Tal dares to hope that Sethennai looks fond, taking any sting out of the words.
“I—” Tal tries to speak, but his brain still consists of nothing but mush. He can feel a flush burning in his cheeks.
Sethennai laughs again, his expression satisfied. “I’ve been wanting to do that for quite a while now.”
Tal’s eyes widen, the shock of it ringing through his system. Sethennai wanting to kiss him. Surely he must have fallen asleep and is now dreaming. This is the culmination of all his fantasies. It can’t possibly be real.
And yet Sethennai is before him, looking too imperfect to be anything but real. Still as handsome as ever, but with hair straggling and dark circles beneath his eyes and lines bracketing his mouth that Tal finds he wants quite desperately to kiss again.
So he does.
Tal plunges a hand into Sethennai’s curls and drags their lips back together. There is nothing gentle about this kiss. It’s hot and hungry, and Tal loses himself utterly in it. They separate only long enough to drag clothing off one another. Tal ends up in Sethennai’s lap, hungrily trailing his fingers over the other man’s skin.
They fuck in Sethennai’s chair. They have sex with Tal bent over Sethennai’s desk. (“Mind the papers,” Sethennai says, even as he presses Tal onto them.) And finally, much later, they make their way into the adjoining bedroom.
It is a very long and very enjoyable night.
ii.
It happens again. It almost becomes a regular occurrence. And yet the more they fuck, the more Tal realizes just how little means.
As the years pass, Tal lives between ecstasy and despair. Because he has Sethennai, but Sethennai isn’t his. But this is enough. It has to be enough. Because it’s all he fucking has.
Half the time when they have sex, even before his release is through, Tal can feel Sethennai’s attention wandering. Off to the next puzzle, the next mystery to be solved. Tal is just a convenient hole to use when the whim strikes him. And Tal is fine with this. Well, no, he isn’t fine with it at all. But he has to be fine with it. And if this is all he can have of Sethennai, he’ll take it. Lap it up like a man lost in a desert, no matter how pathetic that makes him. He’ll take whatever Sethennai gives him and he will try very hard to be content with it. Because however little, however lackluster, it’s better than not having Sethennai at all.
Outside of his usefulness as a hired hand and convenient fuck, Tal knows he is nothing to Sethennai. But there is a part of him that hopes that, maybe, if he is just useful enough, if he is just loyal enough, if he just manages to be more, one say Sethennai will look at him and see a person that is worth something. That Sethennai will look and see him at all.
There are times Sethennai gives him a look that he wants to read more into. But he can’t. It’s impossible. It’s all so fucking impossible.
Because Tal loves him. And he can’t even bring himself to stop for his own good.
iii.
Tal is over Sethennai. He swears he is. And if he repeats it enough times, perhaps he’ll even believe it one day.
Anyway. He’s moved on. He doesn’t think about Sethennai at all. Well, hardly ever. Really.
He tries to find someone new, after leaving Sethennai. Nearly anyone has to be better than that lying snake. But he keeps seeing Sethennai in everyone he tries to get close to: this one has Sethennai’s hair, this one his eyes, another his hands, his mouth, his smile. And at the end of the day he always finds himself drinking alone.
Now that he’s had Sethennai, no one else ever compares. Even knowing what the man’s truly like, he can’t help but hope that Sethennai, every now and again, perhaps spares a thought for Tal and thinks how much easier it would be if he still had a handy little lackey to do his dirty work or pull into bed. Tal knows it’s wishful thinking, but he can’t help but hope that Sethennai misses him, at least a little. He fantasizes about all the ways Sethennai should be miserable without him. But he knows, in his heart, that Sethennai doesn’t think of him at all. Now that’s a useless line of thought. It isn’t as though Sethennai ever treated him well. Far from it. He hopes Sethennai is miserable and alone wherever he is. But…
But when his hand once again finds his own cock in the dark of night, it is always Sethennai he imagines, Sethennai whose memory keeps him warm, Sethennai who he will never be free of, no matter how he tries.
It’s fucking pathetic. Here he is, a grown man, and he still can’t stop thinking about the worst possible man in any world to still have feelings for.
But when he is done, it is still Sethennai he dreams of.
iv.
When Sethennai’s hands finally touch his skin again, after such a very, very long time, there’s a part of Tal, horribly, that feels like he’s coming home.
v.
After everything, Tal is well and truly over Sethennai. He has a city. He has Tsereg. He even has his mother and brother and Shuthmili and Csorwe. He is far too old to be mooning after an old flame who tried to destroy his world. Tal has things to do and new men to meet. And as Chancellor, he is far too busy cleaning up Sethennai’s mess to dwell on thoughts of anything else about the man.
But, well. He finds he can’t nurture a 20-year long obsession with a man without lingering effects, no matter how much of a disappointment Sethennai proved himself to be. And there were good times, despite it all, before it all went so very bad.
Even though Tal knows that Sethennai could not have ever truly cared for him, there’s a treacherous corner of his heart that refuses to give up its last shred of hope. And if Tal indulges himself in the occasional fantasy of meeting Sethennai again as he is now, as a mortal man, that is between him and the night.