Even the illusion of June is enough to send a stabbing pain through my chest

[butnotyet]

Who: Augustine the First and ____________ (This could be you!)
What: A little bit of everything, including Event threads, and who knows what else
When: Throughout June
Where: All around Trench; specific locations listed in TLs as necessary.

Content warnings for this character: Necromancer with visibility issues (still running a little bit Invisible Man) seeking CR for explicit gore/body horror as a matter-of-fact daily occurrence / being jaded AF about life in Trench and otherwise (look, man, he's older than dirt) / needs more people to be slutty at-or-with (bearing in mind he is, again, currently at-least-mostly Invisible, you/your character's kinks/mileage May Vary, player more interested in vague/FTB/finessing a scene than anything explicit). Also, his omen is his brother, and also a venomous snake, and also really chatty.

Specific warnings for this post: Nightmares featuring a lot of violence, including self-inflicted/suicide; various types of religious imagery/discussions, definitely including "taking the Lord's Name in vain"; invisible nude spying on God (might get spicy).

Comments

[butnotyet]

"Wasn't sure if I should," Augustine answers — and that ought to be a knife in the chest, right? That he might have been planning to keep this a secret — from his Emperor, from his God — how dare he? But his voice comes out in the sort of low-and-breathy mumble of a man with a very specific sort of distraction going on right in front of him, and his breath is warm against God's wrist, where His hand is wrapped around Augustine's wrist in turn. It's a weird angle: there's no way that sensation came across by accident —

Nor any way that the brush of Augustine's lips against the pulse point on that wrist is an accident, either.

"You seemed," Augustine continues serenely, as if that touch has grounded him, "awfully fond of the full-body leather suit, after all. I figured I'd just keep wearing it, for now."

(Implied: for you.)

There's a faint and delicate pressure just above John's knee, exploring his rectus femoris, no doubt anticipating the chance to run from insertion all the way up to the origin — his free hand happy to explore for as long as it's allowed such familiarity.

"I'm not —" He stops, uncertain, unsettled, again, by the vaguest of memories of what might have happened after the unfortunately-not-vague-enough memories involving statues, here, in this room — when God was in this chair, to begin with, wasn't he? Wasn't that where He Himself had been afflicted? "I'm — I'm just me, my Lord," is more of a whisper, again.

(He is nothing but a voice and two points of contact: a wrist held in a hand, a hand on a thigh — and the glimmer of his soul, masked and hidden by Pthumerian interference, such that no one could possibly see him, under any circumstances, surely — except that, of course, God raised his soul from the dead; how could He not retain dominion over it? How could He ever not know the shape of Augustine's soul, and perceive it, when He saw it even as a squid?)

[necrolord]

Augustine brushes invisible lips to his wrist, and John exhales a low breath. He's not mad, really, that Augustine wasn't going to clue him in on whatever the new magical inconvenience is. Not at Augustine. The man must've rightly thought he'd be pissed at everything else, and not wanted to see that in him; but John can, contrary to popular belief, control himself. He can focus on what matters, here.

"The plague doctor thing is pretty cool," he allows. "But this seems worth having a look at."

It's a joke: there is nothing to see. He could still make it a very thorough inspection.

Across the room, a ward evaporates, and a sliver of bone folds itself outwards into a skeleton. Politely, it shuts the door, flicks the lock, and crumbles back down to dust. It's only fair that if Augustine can come staggering into his office and lock the door, John can turn it around on him, right? There's no whiskey on Augustine's breath, no slur in his voice but the sweet fumble of wanting it. It's only fair.

"Just Augustine," he echoes, rolling the concept in his mouth: considering it, like he means to assure one of them. Both of them, maybe. "Just Augustine is all I need."

(He doesn't correct the Lord. He doesn't unpack this into all the things Augustine has, apparently, been wanting him to say. He'd rather do something Alfred isn't inclined to watch from the shadows; he'd rather do something just the two of them, and not have to drown in thinking about it.)

He does not discourage the hand on his thigh. His free hand moves through the air, unerring in the empty space, to trace the line of Augustine's bowed neck. There is a new and interesting thrill to seeing nothing, visually, and still finding heat and the shiver of thalergy beneath his fingertips. There is a reassuring certainty in being able to map out this familiar body beneath his hands.

casually nsfw

[butnotyet]

It's going to hurt, later.

Later, when Augustine will have eaten something else, will have had something else to drink, will have cleared the obsessive effect from his system — when the grape-colored tint finally falls away from his gaze, where it's currently coloring everything he sees as he stares up at John — it's going to hurt, to think that those six words could have such an effect on him as this: the way he's shuddering, just a little, at the warm certainty at the back of his neck; the way he wants to cry, and laugh, and throw himself into John's lap, maybe all at once; the way those six words are all he needs to hear —

It's going to hurt, because they aren't all he needs to hear; there's so much more that he needs, that he's owed, maybe, after centuries and millennia of we can talk about this later when the later never comes — it's going to hurt, because he may be, as it were, under the influence, but he isn't drunk; he isn't drugged; he is, in fact, just Augustine, without even a scrap of fabric to hide behind and claim some kind of modesty or dignity — it's just that 'just Augustine' is not the same, at the moment, as 'Augustine in full possession of all his memories and senses'.

This is just Augustine who adores God, and just Augustine who adores John, and it's going to hurt, later, when he can remember every part of this perfectly, every sensation, every sound, every moment — when he can shut his eyes and replay the sights of this interlude, as he watches John react to him — eyes open, eyes closed — reacting to touches that Augustine himself can't see, even though he remembers touching John; reacting to the sight of his own flesh falling prey to the magic ensorcelling Augustine's body, disappearing when it passes those boundaries, and no matter that he could still feel everything —

It's going to hurt, when he replays all those sights, every desperate moment as his eyes were watching God, watching John — because he won't be in a single one of them.