a fanfiction

The call to summon Ivan to Fyodor’s chambers is hardly a call. He shows up promptly at the slightest invocation, and Fyodor has the sneaking superstition that he could call Ivan’s name when he knows he’s a continent away from the other and his chamberlain would nonetheless appear behind him in a half-minute out of thin air.

But this is not when they’re a continent separate, this is when Fyodor, bored and uncomfortably singular in his own skin, has called Ivan into his room and ordered him strip. This is not horribly unusual a midnight event.

It’s relaxing in a way; there is no instrument Fyodor can play as well as Ivan. The manipulation of others is his preferred pastime, and while Ivan is too willingly pliable to present a challenge, plucking at his strings is mindless and satisfying enough to settle Fyodor’s head. Ivan sits himself straddled across Fyodor’s lap and places his fingers to stroke lovingly (reverently!) over Fyodor’s gaunt cheeks.

Ivan leans over, pulling hands down to follow fingers with his lips, dragging kisses down Fyodor’s jaw. His fingers settle on the collar of Fyodor’s undershirt. He tugs at it lightly and the hand that had just settled on Ivan’s upper arm darts to grab his wrist. Fyodor requires little force to move Ivan away despite the chamberlain’s reluctance. Fyodor’s will is what he shall obey. Instead, Ivan settles for drawing tiny circles over Fyodor’s collarbone with his index finger. He really would enjoy this scenario much more if Fyodor were the one naked-- Ivan wants to see Fyodor flushed, he wants his name to fall off Fyodor’s lips, and it would be worth over a month’s pay to be allowed to suck Fyodor off.

The dreams of an enamoured man; the most enjoyable kind of prayer is the carnal.

Ivan tests his luck, plucks once more at Fyodor’s shirt. “Let me.”

The response is not as bad as it could be. Fyodor’s eyes meet his, combating devotion with ambivalence. “That’s crass,” he says. Ivan is not pure, Ivan is no Mary Magdalene, he is just something to occupy spare time with.

Ivan does not mind. “Perhaps. Indulge me. Let me please you, lord of mine.”

“Is this itself not indulging you?” Fyodor replies, running his hand along the side of Ivan’s chest. “I’ll consider it.” He marks the ridge of ribs as fingers trail down, towards midline. Ivan is better built than Fyodor, something occupies the gaps between skin and bone-- not for lack of trying on Ivan’s part to get his boss to a healthy weight. Ivan’s warmer, too. Heat evident in the slowly flushing cheeks, the tips of his fingers, the thrumming under his skin. Ivan tilts Fyodor’s face up, pushing their lips together, and he is warm here too; soft and burning like half-melted wax.

It’s hardly a chaste kiss, but Ivan kisses him with the devotion that characterizes his every movement; this is an act of worship. Fyodor toys with him idly, it is hardly a difficult guess what will draw soft noises and breathy exhales from Ivan. A stroke along thigh, a dig of nails over bone. Formulaic, almost. Absentmindedly, Fyodor prods among the folded pile of Ivan’s clothing next to the bed for the bottle of lube he probably brought. Might as well be nice. It’s cold on his fingers and it’ll be cold on Ivan but that Fyodor does not actually care about. Ivan hums happily, and Fyodor kisses him again.

Fyodor bites down sharply on Ivan’s lip at the same time he takes his dick in hand. A sharp noise falls from Ivan’s lips along with a drop of blood-- if the exclamation was affront or not, neither of them know. Or particularly care. Ivan jerks backward in surprise, and is met only by Fyodor’s flat gaze. “Don’t be noisy,” he says softly, as he starts to slowly stroke Ivan.

Ivan bites his lip (still bloody, taste of iron not actually unpleasant) and exhales slowly. Quiet, he can be quiet. Fyodor’s gaze feels physical, his attention making Ivan’s skin prickle wherever it lands. Ivan can’t decide if he want’s to avert his gaze, or even if he can. Fyodor’s attention is all he wants-- failing his love, which is impossible, and affection, which is rather unlikely. Attention is the attainable ideal, but once he gets it, it’s overwhelming.Ivan rocks his hips, slowly, ever incrementally trying to push himself closer to Fyodor under the hope that if he does it slowly, it won’t be noticed until they’re flush together, Ivan’s bare chest pressed against Fyodor’s undershirt.

(And, in a small tangential fantasy, how to feel if they’re both bare, Ivan’s hands able to glide over skin and not fabric, draw so intimately whatever reactions he’d like from the lord and master? Ivan smiles to himself, suppressing a soft, pleased moan.)

He leans, cups Fyodor’s face in his hands, and kisses him again. Coppery, bloody still, and it hurts his lip, but Fyodor seems to appreciate it and that’s really all that matters to Ivan. So long as he can make Fyodor happy, he’s euphoric. Ivan parts so he can breathe and Fyodor murmurs after him, soft praises and comments coupled with an extra twist of the wrist around his dick. The words aren’t anything Fyodor actually means, he is still playing his game, experimenting, but that doesn’t mean Ivan has to acknowledge that fact. He gives breathy responses back, meaningless, littered with Fyodor’s name or the titles Ivan has bestowed on him as the pace quickens.

When Ivan moves closer again, near as he can get now, he rocks against Fyodor and knows his master is hard too. He grinds quite deliberately against Fyodor’s crotch, sly grin sliding onto his face.

“Come on, Fedka, why don’t you--”

The rest of Ivan’s suggestion is cut off in a loud moan that he really didn’t mean to let happen as Fyodor’s free hand goes from Ivan’s waist to grab a handful of his hair and yank backwards.

“Obey the rules,” Fyodor says, with absolutely no hint of inflection in his voice.

“A-h, yes, of course, of course,” Ivan replies, still throwing dramatics into his tone regardless of flushed skin and slight shakiness. He arches back (a final graze of hip against Fyodor’s dick-- one day), leaning into the tug at his hair. “You could put feeling into it.”

Fyodor sighs, but he does. It’s done in fair exchange, as the words spilling from Ivan’s lips change into what could be classified as prayers, reverence, muffled expressions of dedication as Fyodor leans forward and grazes kiss and teeth along Ivan’s collar.

Ivan bites his lip when he peaks, muffling noise. It reopens the scrape on his lip and he just lets it bleed as he sits, back arched and legs shaking as Fyodor’s strokes slow. He’s almost mournful when the hand is removed from his dick-- it’s never certain when it’ll next return, when Fyodor will next deign to allow any variety of physical contact. Ivan keeps his eyes closed, enjoying afterglow and the sound of his breathing as long as he can interrupted. There’s a soft ‘hm’ as Fyodor regards his hand and the mess Ivan’s made of it with dispassion. The solution to this is just to wipe his hand off on Ivan’s thigh, Fyodor doesn’t care. Ivan’s cum, Ivan’s mess to clean up.

Ivan sighs softly and looks down at his boss. Fyodor busies himself readjusting his own clothing, nonplussed.

He glances up. “Go clean up, if you want.”

“May I return after?”

“If you insist.”

This was the response Ivan was hoping for. He hums happily and delicately unfolds himself from his position over Fyodor before ambling off to the adjacent bathroom. When Ivan returns, he’s still disproportionately pleased, though now clean and without smears of his own bodily fluids on himself. Fyodor doesn’t make room for him, but that hardly deters Ivan, who finds a spot to sit next to him regardless. Why Fyodor is still sitting up, he does not know.

Fingers tighten around Fyodor’s wrist and tug lightly. “You’re meant to go to sleep now, my lord.”

“Hmm.” It’s noncommittal, but Fyodor lets himself be pulled down regardless. Ivan remains sitting against headboard, preferring to look at Fyodor from this angle for some time. His hands go to Fyodor’s hair and toy idly with it, turning the piece between his fingers back and forth.

“Let me fix your hair tomorrow morning,” Ivan says.

“Why,” comes the tired reply from against a pillow.

“Because, it’ll help if I wash it and cut the ends. You’ll look nicer and it’ll make you happy.”

“It’ll make you happy,” Fyodor grumbles. He really does not care. He has bigger problems than conditioner and the like. “Wake me up at seven tomorrow.”

“I’ll wake you up at eight, you need rest. Unless you let me fix your hair.” Ivan’s hand moves from playing with Fyodor’s hair to drawing idle circles on his shoulder.

“Fine.” He could press the issue, but it’s something insignificant and Ivan can be an absolute nightmare if he doesn’t get his way. He’ll only get more dramatic until he’s appeased, and Fyodor doesn’t feel like dealing with that. Jerking him off was dealing enough, and at least now Ivan’s voice is soft and affectionate when he wants something.

Most plants, as a rule, are fairly good things to have around. They create oxygen, they’re a nice green colour, they have pretty flowers on occasion. They grow along the back fence so I don’t have to talk to my back neighbour who decides that every time he locks eyes with me he has to enter a long-winded conversation on his kids, whom I really do not care about in the slightest. Keeping me from having to see him is really one of the nicer things plants have ever done for me. Some plants produce things you can eat. The ones that produce poison are generally pretty avoidable-- you don’t eat them, they won’t make you puke. You don’t touch poison ivy, it won’t make you itch. Pretty straightforward.

Suffice to say, plants are, if not pretty good, neutral at minimum. I like plants.

There is one plant, however, that I do not like. If a plant could be evil, this is one I would give as example.

It sits, squat and unpleasant, on the left-hand corner of the tiny front yard my house possesses. Other than this plant, my yard is very pleasant. I’ve cultivated its tiny space carefully with bushes, flowering plants near the door, and even a maple tree I’ve managed to squish into the right-hand corner. (I did most of this under the impression I could put enough non-grass plants down in order to prevent having to mow. It did, but in exchange I have to trim them and I’m no longer entirely sure which is more of an ordeal.) The yard is perfectly presented in order to balance being pretty with being manageable. Most people think it’s nice.

The goddamn palm is the only thing I cannot control.

It was there when I moved in, and judging from how it resists every single attempt I make to kill it, it will be there when I move out. Or die. Probably it’ll outlive me. And I could respect that resilience, leave the plant to its own devices, were it not such a pain in the ass.

It’s ugly, first of all, and completely unkillable. Short of hiring an excavator to remove it, I have done everything imaginable to kill it. I have poured bottles of plant killer on that thing’s roots. I have cut its leaves to the point that any less annoying plant would have given up and wilted on the spot. But this one? This plant stays exactly where it is, regenerating after anything I do to it as fast as any plant can possibly grow.

I don’t know what it is, actually. I’ve checked books, searched online, posted pictures of it in botanist’s forums, and all I’ve ever gotten was a shrug. It looks like some kind of sago palm, but not quite. It sits on a massive, fat trunk, with the triangular layers of bark palms have coming off in oddly thick spikes. The trunk is too big for me to theoretically get my arms around-- if I wanted to do something like that, God forbid-- but short, only coming about three feet up. It’s oblong with a bulge in the middle, a little like an egg. The leaves at the top are almost exactly similar to your average palm leaves, but they’re a bit too spiky too. Especially around the base. The tips are sharp and the base of the leaves has protrusions that have actually drawn blood before, gotten shoved into my hand when I try to prune the tree. Getting them out is awful-- and they’ve made me bleed even while I was wearing work gloves. There’s more spiky protrusions around the top of the trunk, in between leaves. It’s weirdly oily when I touch it; even if the gloves weren’t necessary to prevent getting stabbed, I’d wear them so as to not have to touch it directly. I’ve never gotten a rash or anything from the plant, but I’d rather not risk it.

Here’s the thing, though.

So it’s July, right? Hot as hell out, middle of summer, drought, all that. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Everything in the yard looks terrible. I feel bad for it, but I’m not one of the guys that waters their lawns in the middle of a drought warning because I’m your general law-obeying citizen and winning some hypothetical lawn contest really is not that important. Everything’s looking pretty brown, or at least sad, except the palm. Of course. In fact, it’s looking better than ever, the trunk getting even bigger and rounder.

I know desert plants are adapted to deal with drought, but even the hardiest of cacti show that they suffer with astronomical heat and no rain for three months.

I guess it’s better to have something healthy than nothing healthy.

When I go out to prune it, the dog, Hestia, bothers to come with me for once. She usually just gambols around the front yard and enjoys her lack of responsibilities while I do yard-work, but I guess she’s curious. She watches as I grab one of the palm’s leaves, careful to avoid the pointy spots, and inspect it. It’s been leaning down, looking as if it were wilting, though without losing any of the green colour. Hestia stays a decent distance from it, behind me and with her stubby ears pricked in fixated attention.

The frond is drier than usual, lacking the slightly-sticky texture the plant usually has. Must be because of the drought. So the stupid thing is suffering. Good.

I give it a sharp tug, just to see what happens. What happens is the leaf starts to pull away from the trunk, but the second the base separates, it lets out this nasty, pungent smell. I drop the branch immediately to cover my mouth and cough. Even Hestia back off, scrunching her nose in distaste and chuffing, and dogs are never ones to avoid things that smell as putrid as possible. It smells like rot-- not the earthy kind of plant rot, not the kind you smell when you come across a decomposing tree. It’s flesh-rot, something putrid that’s been sitting in a damp corner and decomposing for a few days. It’s maggots and miasma and madid.

The plant must have caught something and started rotting internally.

If nothing else it makes getting rid of it much more of a priority. Out of something-- curiosity, determination to finish a job, masochism, I don’t know-- I grab the leaf and yank as hard as I can. It pops off reluctantly, another wave of the putrid smell following after it. I drop the leaf to the ground in favour of bending over and coughing, trying my best not to gag. After a minute or so, the smell lessens. I rub at my nose with a forearm and stand up once my head isn’t solely consumed with the stench of rot.

Hestia’s there, sniffing hesitantly at the leaf, her big Rottweiler body all bunched up as if she’s prepared to make the fight or flight decision at any second.

“Pretty fuckin’ weird, huh, Hes?” I cough out at the dog. She glances up at me if to agree, then resumes her sniffing. “Don’t roll in that,” I add on as an afterthought. That’d be even worse than the time I had to de-skunk her. She shows no indication of listening to me, so I’ll just cross my fingers.

This is a problem, more so than just if my dog’s going to smell like a charnelhouse for a week. There’s not many ways to get this plant out of the yard. I don’t have the money to call a landscaper and I don’t have any friends who own backhoes who could dig the stupid thing out. If it’s rotted, with that smell the plant must be sick, and I don’t want it giving whatever nasty infection its got to anything else in my yard, if it’s not too late for that.

The problem ets considered for about ten minutes as i stand, hands on my hips, glaring at the plant as if that would make it understand and regret what an absolute inconvenience it’s been to me.

Glaring at it does not make it grow feet and walk, pinnate leaves bowed in shame. Guess it’s all up to me. My neighbour has a chainsaw, I think. I can work with this.

Thirty minutes and one social interaction with the guy next door later, I’m equipped and ready. Nate did, in fact, have a chainsaw. Couple that with my work gloves and I’m ready. The rotting smell probably is going to be even worse as I cut the tree down, so while I don’t have a gas mask or anything, I do have a facemask left over from painting. That and some Vicks smeared under my nose should be fine. It’s no plague mask or air freshener, but I’ll take menthol over decomposition any day.

When I walk out in the yard, warfare gear equipped and ready, something’s different. I can’t immediately tell what it is, but something’s not right. I order Hestia to stay near the driveway to avoid an animal getting close to a running chainsaw, and she obediently plops down in the middle, watching me attentively. The thing that’s wrong with the yard is immediately obvious once I get closer to the tree.

The leaf is gone. The one I pulled out. It’s just completely not there anymore. What sits in its place is a pile of brown, sludgy goop. The smell pervades my paint mask protection, but it’s tolerable. The urge to poke the pile of goop is strong, but squashed with the thought that I might have to throw out my sneakers if I can’t get the smell out.

There are things to attend to that are probably nastier, anyways.

Getting the palm down comes first, then I can experiment with poking tree sludge.

The chainsaw takes a bit to rev up, but after a couple tries it’s running healthily in my arms. I glance back at Hestia to ensure she’s in place, still, no danger, and she is. Her hackles are starting to raise distrustfully, but she’s in place. It’s fine, I don’t like the noise much either, and I’m the one with earplugs in.

I hoist up the chainsaw, angle it to what I think is proper, and set it to the palm.

The blades bite in slowly and with effort. I feel it’s making a noise more laborious than most chainsaws would, but my knowledge on them is limited. A couple wood chips fly off the tree’s bark, and what’s underneath is white and fibrous, paler than any tree I’ve ever seen. It reeks. It’s the same contaminated smell the leaf gave, only it’s more subdued than the leaf. There’s little doubt it’ll get worse the deeper in I cut.

I frown, resolute and preparing to squash my retch reflex, and re-angle the chainsaw to make a v-shaped cut.

There’s a very small noise, just barely audible over the chainsaw’s grinding.

A pop where three things immediately follow.

The chainsaw’s grind changes, like it’s suddenly experiencing less resistance.

Hestia starts barking furiously.

Something thin and pointy reaches from inside the tree to bend over the chainsaw blade.

The third one takes my immediate focus. I lean forward, squinting a little. The chainsaw’s still running, but held completely still now. Another little brown thing pokes its way out of the tree, also balancing delicately against the flat of the chainsaw blade.

“What the hell?” I ask it.

There’s a pause where the world seems to quiet down entirely as I notice a thin crack spreading up the length of the palm’s trunk. My mouth opens to ask something, I don’t even know what, and then the crack bursts open.

A cloud of putrescent white bursts out from the trunk. I drop the chainsaw on instinct, just barely avoiding vomiting into the mask. Teeth gritted, I back away, not even minding the chainsaw still running on the grass. Hestia continues her furious barking and I hear her rush over to me. I try to tell her to back off though the coughing and tearing up, but she ignores me. There’s shapes in the dust, growing clearer as it settles, and I reach for the chainsaw. I don’t know what anything is, but I’ll feel much better against a troupe of amorphous collie-size masses with a chainsaw in my hands. Coughing furiously and squinting, I reach out. Hestia stops barking, settling instead for the muffled growl meaning something’s in her mouth.

I lay a hand on the handle of the tool, and something spindly and pointy presses down on the back of my hand.

I look up as the dust settles. A greenish spider the side of a medium dog scuttles towards my arm. The scream is involuntary, loud enough to be heard down the street, and I immediately fling my arm back and move over backwards as fast as I can, still screaming. A seemingly endless amount of the giant spiders are swarming out of the palm tree, scattering in all directions as I glance to a way I can get away from them. Scuttling backwards only makes me trip over my own foot, landing heavily on my back only a few feet away from the palm. I curl up, trying to put my arms over my head to protect my face if nothing else, screaming. I feel Hestia stand over me, fearless in protection, and the tiny spider-feet I’d felt beginning to crawl up my leg are plucked off in her jaws.

My screeching is joined by someone else’s alarm-- probably Nate’s, checking on me. Whoever it is, they get pleaded at to come help me, save me, pull out a flamethrower or something.

I don’t know what he does.

I don’t know what anyone does.

All I know is that I wake up a couple hours later in a hospital room, Hestia sitting next to me, and with nothing in their IV drip that can make me stop hyperventilating.

I hold onto the dog and tell anyone who comes in to see me that I’m not going back to the house.

They tell me that’s fine, but I need to calm down.

Once I get out of the psych ward and get cleared to go to a hotel without supervision, they tell me my house has been fumigated and put on the market for me. About ten other people on the street have also put their houses up for sale at nicely discounted rates.