As they lie together in the aftermath everything seems suffused in a startling, stifling languor. And Jowy muses, watching the late afternoon rays filter through the spaces between the heavy, embroidered draperies, that this is probably the closest Luca Blight comes to gentleness. Even sated and resting he emanates ferocious heat, the bloodthirst of a beast that will never be but temporarily quenched. As if in response to his thoughts, Luca laughs, a short, ugly sound, shattering the tenuous peace. "So you think you're a big man now, eh?" Underlying the guttural confidence of his words is, as always, the insidious note of madness that clings to everything Luca says. "And tomorrow, you will be a knight." Jowy closes his eyes and lets Luca pull him close and dig sword-callused fingers into the sensitive flesh beneath his chin. Luca's hand on his skin seems inhumanly large, inhumanly strong. His mouth on Jowy's neck, laying a trail of fiery kisses, feels as though he's trying to eat Jowy alive. Jowy's eyes fly open even as he tries not to seem surprised. Surely, after everything, Luca can't want..? But Luca is flipping him over, to the position that he knows by now to be Luca's favourite- an unmistakable sign that even now, even after everything Luca does want. Jowy keeps his face from smashing into the sheets by his elbows, pressing painfully onto his hair, loose for once and spread in waves on the bed. Insatiable like a beast, Jowy thinks. He has to spare a moment for panic as Luca lowers himself down on top of him, enveloping him in musk and muscled flesh; and, sliding down, forces Jowy's legs apart. With great effort Jowy forces himself to remain calm, to half-turn and look Luca Blight in the face. Then it takes every bit of his willpower to keep his voice cool as he says, "Any more and I won't be able to play my part tomorrow." "Is that a plea, boy?" Luca's face is narrowed in a sneer. It is the expression he wears to look at something he is about to kill. Jowy waits a while before answering, letting the tension stretch just so, no more, no less. "A statement of fact." He stares up into Luca's eyes; pale blue, glazed yellow at the edges. The pupils wider than usual, which is the way Luca smiles. He looks more human this way, but strangely, more terrifying. Jowy thinks, I hate you, but I don't want to be you. As long as I remember that, I'll be fine. Killing you will be like killing your father tomorrow. You might feel betrayed, but not for long. I'm not killing to cause pain. I'm killing to make a better world- like you can, but won't. I'm killing to make a gentle world where nobody will ever hurt again. You have no place in such a world. That is why you have to die. You could be so much, could do so much- What would you be, if you weren't crazy? Immediately he hates himself for the thought, because the answer is so obvious. Luca Blight would be many things if he wasn't crazy- but Luca Blight is many things even if he is crazy; the madness hides his attractiveness, but doesn't cancel it, even adds to it. The charisma that binds so many; his White Wolves, his country, and all he has a chance to touch. The Prince of Highland could have had the world at his feet if he wasn't crazy- and mad, and out of control, and bloodthirsty enough to gorge himself on the ruin of all the world that Jowy knows. Instead, he will have the world by the throat. Luca reads the warring in Jowy's eyes, and laughs again, and presses his mouth roughly down. It's not a kiss but rape, but you cannot rape the willing. Can you? If a way existed, Luca would find it. His mouth screams war, blood, death, pain, passion, and Jowy opens to it, lets in Luca and pushes back at the same time, his hunger suddenly matching the beast's. The ache below melds into the throbbing of his heartbeat. They break apart, panting. Luca has a satisfied smile on his face; Jowy cannot begin to imagine what his own must look like now. He has offered a surrender of sorts. What Luca wants, he can take, and Jowy will not stop him, even supposing that he can. Luca has that much out of him. You cannot rape the willing. He turns around slowly, untrembling; a salve to his pride. His eyes are dry and burning, and his body is aflame, but not with desire. He has no word for this which he feels when he is with Luca, when Luca bends him over and rips him apart from the inside. Then he is heat, and pain, and guilt- thoughts. Arching up, being pressed down, hands in his hair, flesh on flesh. Don't think of Pilika. Don't think of Nanami, of Jillia. But there is one person, only one person he cannot deny. Who taught him that there was gentleness in the world; who took away the loneliness by simply being there. The one person in the world who, perhaps, is strong enough to deal with Luca. Riou, whom Jowy loves. If and when they meet again, he is not sure that he can bear to raise arms against the other boy, not in the hate and death he has immured himself in. And yet Jowy already has, in proxy if not in person, and set them both on a path where in the end, only one of them may continue. For love of a gentle world. That is the only reason why. Against Riou, Jowy can only fight in love, not hate. If things could have been.. even now.. I.. Jowy tells himself not to feel sorry. He knows he can't afford to, that he cannot go back. He tells himself not to think of Luca. Not to think of anything at all. And for a moment, Jowy forgets. Then they collapse, Luca a heavy weight atop him, semen and blood seeping from Jowy's lower body, transformed into a carapace of solid pain, but not something that will stop him from waking to kill a man on the morrow. He feels strangely empty inside. Notes: Hmm.. what can you say when the first thing you think after finishing the first draft of something is "Oh my god, Jowy, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry"? Not that I let it stop me. Luca made me, I think. Although that sounds a silly reason. But I actually had a different ending in mind when I was writing this, one which would let Jowy walk away.. no more unscathed than he was at the beginning of this. But then the story started writing itself, or Luca started writing it. I always liked him, though I never knew why. Maybe it's because I always thought that more happened during the rape of his mother than was explicitly told, and that he had a shitty childhood. Which doesn't excuse his actions, but does help explain them. But it's funny, this story doesn't articulate what I feel about Luca at all. Jowy was poisoning himself to kill Agares Blight when this story took place, which I guess explains why he felt that Luca's touch was so warm. He has /guts/, that boy, if a looming bunch of complexes, and about a hundred years' worth of making up to Riou to accomplish. The having sex with Luca bit in order to accomplish his goals I can't fathom, honestly, but I after I wrote everything I read it and thought about this ancient Greek custom called "arete", where (if I recall correctly), as part of a coming of age ceremony, an older man has anal intercourse with the younger, in order to impart his "essence" and thus some of his virtues and whatnot to him.