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Xellos doesn't have friends, precisely, so much as a handful of humans to whom he is somewhat partial. While the mazoku, writ large, have a vested interest in the business of Lina Inverse, Xellos takes it upon himself to keep tabs on the rest of her merry band of fools as well. Which is to say, he's grown quite comfortable with the goings on of one Zelgadis Greywords and his endless quest for humanity. Moody and impatient, that one. As interesting as he is vexing, and when he finds himself with too much time on his hands, Xellos enjoys dropping in to hassle him. He's done a lot more dropping in, of late. Zelgadis seems unusually restless following a string of failed leads, and Xellos finds the anxious energy of him fortifying.
Zelgadis traveled half the world away, to the far boundaries of the former mazoku barrier, to no avail, only to return so close to what amounts to home in pursuit of an actual cure. Of course, the Claire Bible was always his best option—though certainly a closed door, at this point—but there are still other solutions in the world available to him, if only he can find them. Some are better than others, but the one he's drawing ever nearer toward is the worst of them. How the mystery cult remained off his radar so long is somewhat of a surprise. Isolated high in the mountains above Seyruun City, a strange little collective of Airlord Valwin worshippers, far from his seat of power, created a branch of magic all their own. Impressive, yes, but they certainly proved lacking in the art of harm reduction in their spellwork.
Xellos can't abide the cost of this one.
There is a limit to the effectiveness of Xellos’ meddling. Only so many rumors he can spread. So many misdirections he can plant in Zelgadis’ path. He was always going to find this one eventually, but Xellos is no less sour for the inevitability of it. He's shown his face a time or two—mostly to rub salt in the wound of the failures he's caused Zelgadis, unbeknownst to him, naturally—but he appears now in a last ditch effort to deter him from reaching the isolated mountain temple. One final attempt to self-soothe the sharp recoil in him at the thought of Zelgadis getting his hands on this spell. Discouraging comments on the approaching inclement weather. Barbs on the pointedly mean-spirited side. An attempt to draw a fight out of him, even. A wasted effort, that. Truly the man is as stubborn as they come.
Let it never be said that Xellos didn't try.
Zelgadis lets out a frustrated growl as he enters the inner sanctum to find Xellos perched idly on the central dias with his hand splayed over the dusty cover of an ancient spellbook. After hiking through the pouring rain and driving winds, the mazoku is the last obstacle Zelgadis wants to encounter. Again. He's made a nuisance of himself, more so than usual, this last week. Driven Zelgadis to his limit, really.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Xellos says blithely.
“I'm not doing this with you again today.” Zelgadis doesn't bother to draw his sword or take a stance. In an actual fight, he wouldn't stand a chance against Xellos, no matter how much Zelgadis would love to humble him. “Give me the book.”
“I'm afraid I can't do that.”
It's the Claire Bible all over again, and Zelgadis sees in his mind, for a moment, another pile of ash left to fall from Xellos’ hand. “Why do you need this one?”
“I don't.” Xellos shrugs with an air of indifference that sets Zelgadis’ teeth on edge.
“Then get out of my way.”
“Zelgadis,” he says, smile strained, voice low and serious enough to give Zelgadis momentary pause, “you don't want what you're going to find here.”
It's strange to have Xellos’ particular gravity turned on him without any threat behind it. Not enough to deter Zelgadis, but enough to note it. He's the sole judge of what he wants. “Move, Xellos.”
Xellos sighs, long-suffering, aggrieved—infuriating, always that maddening, patronizing edge to his attitude—but he zaps out and leaves Zelgadis alone in the cavernous silence of the room. In his wake, Zelgadis climbs the steps up to the dias, to the book on its altar. Breathing deeply, steadying, he turns the fragile pages with hands shaking with anticipation. Beyond all reason, the book is written in simple language in his native tongue. That there is holy magic to be found at all, much less comprehensible spell work, beggars belief.
And there it is, unassuming and mundane amidst the immeasurably powerful holy spells illuminated on the page. No gold letters or vibrantly illustrated creatures to herald the most important spell in his entire world. Zelgadis doesn't even have to work to memorize the incantation. He'll need spell components, the use of some equipment, but nothing beyond his capacity to acquire. It seems deceptively straightforward. Only…
“No,” he breathes. Beneath the spell, commentary. A bit of not-quite marginalia that leaves his stomach to drop, blood running cold. Let the abomination be purged from the history of the world. Let no trace of it remain in its victim, made clean and whole, all memory of its darkness forgotten.
After exploring endless artifacts, Zelgadis can read past minor ambiguity. He slams his fist down on the altar with a violent crack. “No.”
Humanity, for the impossible cost of his memories. The whole of his life lived, from the moment he was transformed, gone to him.
He's long since lost the ability to cry, but his chest tightens with the need for it. Instead, Zelgadis roars until his throat burns, the echoes of it ringing out in the empty temple. After, his head hangs heavy between his shoulders, all the marionette strings holding him together cut. Heavy breaths, slow, labored with dread. He wants to hold the frustration fist-tight until numbness sets in, but grief overwhelms everything else in him now.
With great effort, Zelgadis lifts his face to read the inscription again. As if there's anything he missed. As if he didn't understand exactly the price of his humanity the first time. This was his last lead. The sluggish flow of rumors petering out to a final drop of possibility, and it’s this.
What is the point if he loses all of himself in the process?
Zelgadis closes the book and steps away, spell committed to memory. The oppressive silence of the temple closes around him as he winds his way back through the labyrinthine halls. Alone. Xellos might be a persistent thorn in his side, but Zelgadis would take his bitter company, now, when solitude feels less like an anchor in a storm than a drowning weight. If nothing else, Xellos is a perpetual distraction. A seemingly willing target for all the hurt turned weapon-sharp in Zelgadis. He doesn't have to be anything but what he is with Xellos. No need to manage anyone else's feelings but his own. He very carefully denies the spreading emptiness in him with the absence of that easy banter when he grudgingly craves it.
It is strange, though, that Xellos tried to steer him from finding this. No obvious motive for it; no apparent purpose aside from warning off Zelgadis from the gutting disappointment held between the pages. Xellos misleads, obfuscates, bends truth to all but breaking. He may not be a liar, but Zelgadis can't recall a time he approached anything with transparency. It destabilizes him just that much more, Xellos offering him relatively straightforward honesty. And to what end?
His thoughts scatter as he reaches the temple entrance, making his way out to the edge of the overhang that protects the cave structure. Outside, the rain pours down in great torrential sheets, lightning cracking against the sky and thunder shuddering through the rocks beneath his feet. The path down the mountain runs with a river of mud, waist-deep and roiling with its own slow, sucking current. Visibility all but gone in the cloudburst-strength of the deluge, even a Ray Wing out is off the table.
“Dammit.” Amelia would find some silver lining here, but even the convenient shelter from the storm feels crushing.
He'd rather not wait out the weather in this place where his hope died.
Resigned to it, Zelgadis backtracks toward the temple where he can watch the sky at a distance safe from the elements. He wishes he'd brought any manner of diversion with him—a book, an instrument, anything to distract from his own thoughts—but he hadn't anticipated the stranding. He unbuckles his belt to set his sword down beside him as he sits with his legs and arms crossed, prepared to fight off the inevitable mental spiral.
“Well,” Xellos says from somewhere above him, “what will you do now?” So much for a distraction from the matter.
Zelgadis takes his time to answer, turning over the question in his mind as he takes a long drink from his waterskin. No answer comes to him, a blank slate in his mind where action ought to be. With Xellos here, all he finds are questions. Chief among them, “Why did you try to keep me from it this time?” Irate as it still makes him, at least there was some measure of logic to Xellos destroying the Claire Bible manuscripts before Zelgadis could get to them. It had nothing to do with him, specifically. This, though?
“Who knows.” Surely Zelgadis didn't expect an honest answer from him to such a direct question. That's not the game they play. Besides, the real answer is complicated, too revealing. Better to leave Zelgadis eternally searching than given the choice to remove himself from their story.
Xellos is surprised when, after a long stretch of silence, Zelgadis says, “I don't know whether it's worth all of my memories.” It must be dire inside him to voluntarily bare his throat to Xellos like this.
“It wouldn't just be your memories, you know,” Xellos says. “Purged from the history of the world.” Himself included, he assumes. Mazoku are a bit outside the world, as it were, but certainly not its history. Though, one can never quite anticipate the precision of holy wordplay.
“Why are you here?” Zelgadis grits out. It isn't anger—that bright spark of his fury, the familiar heat of his undivided attention—embarrassment, perhaps. Grief, certainly. Cornered animal desperation? Hard to say under such unusual circumstances.
And indeed, why is Xellos here? Trailing after his erstwhile…acquaintance. Entertainment, mostly.
“You're—what is it they call you? Ah, gloomy!” Morose is more accurate right now, but the precision of it is, perhaps, counterproductive with one who seems to fancy himself strange beyond comprehension and amidst an existential crisis. “I find it quite energizing when you get like this.”
“Oh, is that all?” Zelgadis asks dryly, unimpressed and, evidently, too weary to muster any real ire over it.
“That, and it's amusing to watch you struggle,” Xellos answers candidly. “Though I must admit, I find this quest of yours tiresome.”
“No one invited you to join me on it,” Zelgadis sighs, pointing out a fact rather than admonishing Xellos. Interesting. He stretches his legs out in front of him, boneless, and leans back on his hands. Tilts his head back to look up at Xellos for the first time. “Unless someone ordered you to.”
“That's a secret, of course.” In fact, this little diversion is entirely self-serving. A loose thread to pull at out of sheer fascination. That and perhaps a slow buildup of this body’s errant desire, he can admit to himself.
“Of course.”
Xellos teleports from his perch down to sit beside him, closer than is strictly necessary. With Zelgadis so uncharacteristically open, Xellos has his own curiosity to satisfy. “Why would you trade it away?”
“Hmm?”
“Humans are so very fragile, and you've chosen a dangerous life. Like this,” Xellos raps his staff against the granite of Zelgadis’ thigh, “you're much more difficult to kill. Why give it up just to be breakable again?”
Zelgadis is quiet for a long time. The white noise of the deluge outside almost makes the silence feel companionable. “I've forgotten what it's like to be warm,” he says softly, finally, in a voice dull and empty of all his steadfast conviction.
That simply won't do.
Xellos leans his shoulder hard against Zelgadis’, until his tension gives and he drops back on an elbow. He follows the motion, swinging a leg over Zelgadis’ hips to hover there above him. Pressing him back, down—a surprised, querying little oof from Zelgadis as he falls back fully—palm splayed flat over his chest to pin him to the stone beneath them.
It's more suggestion than threat, and Zelgadis plays along beautifully, freezing with a wary, “what are you doing?” rather than a reflexive counterattack.
There had been a slim chance that Xellos misinterpreted what warm was, precisely, but he’s pleased to see his read seems to be along the correct lines. “A favor.”
Zelgadis squints at him, rightfully suspicious, but remains still with tension beneath Xellos’ hand. “And what's in it for you?”
“My motives are my own to keep; you know that.” It’s simply an irritation Xellos wishes to chase out from under his skin. It’s that Zelgadis’ coldest shoulder always lands hot in Xellos’ constructed bones. A low glowing ember perpetually one needling remark away from blazing. So easy to stoke. It's stupid, truly, that he can't see that the warmth is already in him. “You want to be warm, do you not?”
Zelgadis isn't one for wanting much of anything, but this… The Xellos part of the equation might be unanticipated, but he finds it, somewhat surprisingly, not unwelcome. The ever-present threat of him enticing, not for the first time. Sharp-eyed—that uncanny shade of purple, scrutinizing Zelgadis like an insect pinned beneath glass—unfathomably strong and undeterred by the monstrosity of Zelgadis' body. Everything else is falling apart around him; what's one more defense left to crumble.
“Just this once,” he concedes.
“Of course,” Xellos murmurs.
He keeps hovering. The flex of his thighs against Zelgadis’ hips and the weight of his palm, the only points of contact. Waiting. Watching. Zelgadis won't be the one to break the stalemate, holding his ground against the possibility of a prank. Except, Xellos quirks his mouth in a lopsided grin—closed-mouthed and disarmingly authentic, instead of his predictably manufactured expression—and leans down to crowd in close.
“Last chance to back down,” he says lightly, a tone deeply at odds with the way the words ghost over Zelgadis’ lips.
“When have I ever?”
Xellos hums agreeably as he's chasing the words back against Zelgadis’ mouth. The firm press of his lips, the intimacy of it, startles Zelgadis. The first time anyone has touched him in this wretched body. With his nerves dulled by stone, he isn't as sensitive anymore; the experiences of his body always feel a layer removed from his knowing of it. But he feels this: the hot catch and drag of lips; Xellos’ gloved fingers threading through the sharp wire of his hair and scraping gently against his scalp. His breath shudders out of his lungs, and Xellos chases that too, tongue tracing the slope of his upper lip and into his mouth.
Zelgadis had forgotten this, the give and take of a kiss. Xellos mapping the roof of his mouth, the backs of his teeth until Zelgadis presses for entry, tongues swept past each other into the heat of Xellos’ own mouth. He commits it to memory; files it away along with the pleased sound Xellos makes when Zelgadis grasps his thigh, his waist, soft flesh giving just so under the weight of his hands. It makes him greedy for contact. A swoop in his stomach and a knot of heat behind his navel that demands the weight of a body.
Something in the quality of his breath or his expression or the shake of his hands spurs Xellos to escalate. He hooks a finger under the knot of Zelgadis’ cloak and tugs it open to slip off his shoulders. Works a hand under his tunic, fingertips ghosting barely perceptible up the plane of his stomach as the fabric rucks up against Xellos’ wrists. There’s a momentary awkwardness, breaking the kiss and fumbling to get the tunic up and over his head. Dropped carelessly in a heap beside them, and Zelgadis can’t be bothered to protest with Xellos hungrily capturing his mouth again.
Zelgadis reaches for the jeweled clasp of Xellos’ cloak in return. Only, Xellos catches his hand with a shake of his head. “It's all part of this form.” Zelgadis hadn’t considered the logistics of Xellos’ body, its facsimile of humanity. Reality shudders around him briefly, seasickening, and leaves Xellos bare-chested when it settles again. “There.” Hard muscle wrapped around a narrow frame, human as anything except his lack of heartbeat and the unnatural heat of his skin beneath Zelgadis’ palm.
“Not bad,” he mutters, regretting it immediately as Xellos preens.
“You don’t say.”
“Do something,” breathless, in a smear against Xellos’ lips. A redirection, diversion.
“So impatient.”
“Xellos.”
Xellos relents, shifting his weight to slot himself between Zelgadis’ thighs. Hooking his arm beneath one until Zelgadis bends his knee up along Xellos’ flank. Holding him there with a hand firm behind his knee, grip tight enough to properly feel each fingertip through the stone.
“Did you just want to rut like an animal?” Xellos rolls his hips, driving against Zelgadis, the length of him growing unmistakably hard where their bodies rock together. “Because I can certainly oblige a lack of creativity.” He might play as unaffected, but there is color flushed high on his cheeks, and the slits of his pupils are blown out wide and dark. Mouth kiss-bruised with their careless desire.
“It sounds like you don't know what you're doing,” Zelgadis goads. Habitual, reflexive. Comfortable.
“I assure you, that's not the case.”
“I'll believe it,” he groans as Xellos lays the entirety of his body atop Zelgadis, serpentine, in a languid undulation, “when I see it.”
He expects a quip, some slight at his own experience in this. Instead, Xellos chuckles—something hot and threatening in the timber of it—and sets his teeth into the crux of Zelgadis’ shoulder and neck hard enough to feel the sharp sting of them. Monstrous and exhilarating, when anyone else would break.
“Oh, I'm certain you will,” he says, low, rumbling against the gravel of Zelgadis’ throat. “How much can you feel?”
“Enough.”
“Hmm, so helpful,” he drawls.
“I was under the impression you didn’t need any.”
“Suit yourself.”
Xellos traces an open-mouthed path down Zelgadis’ throat, his chest, his stomach, the heat of his breath and the strength of his bite leaving the phantom ache of bruises in their wake. There will be no marks left when Xellos is done, no matter how hard he digs in, and the unfairness, the unexpected disappointment of that strikes Zelgadis momentarily. A fleeting distraction vanishing as quickly as it arrived, chased away by the path of Xellos’ tongue tracing along his waistband. Zelgadis makes no move to stop him as he works open his pants; helpfully lifts his hips so Xellos can shimmy them down to his knees.
“Here too,” Xellos hums as his gaze turns appraising.
“What did you expect?”
Xellos doesn’t deign to answer the question. No warning given, either, except the lowering of his lashes and the heated gaze beneath them—through all this, the most Zelgadis has ever seen of his eyes. He takes Zelgadis into his mouth, heedless of the rough stone. Presses his tongue flat along the bottom, laving it along the length of him. Zelgadis’ breath catches in his throat, a choked off gasp, aborted when Xellos closes his mouth around the head of his cock. Branding heat in stark contrast to the almost delicate tracing of Xellos’ tongue under the flared head of it. Just enough pressure to feel it, but not enough to satisfy. Slowly, gradually—as if he is savoring the act of it—Xellos works his way down, until Zelgadis’ cock sits heavily in his mouth. It’s reflexive, how Zelgadis arches up and grips his hand hard into Xellos’ hair when he hollows his cheeks and sucks in earnest for the first time.
“Hn…” Zelgadis’ breath punches out hard, catching in a hitching staccato with each bob of Xellos’s head. “Ahh—” Xellos’ fingers dig hard into his hips to stop him from thrusting up, grounding him in a body that feels less like a prison under these circumstances. Braced up on his elbow again watching his cock disappear over and over into Xellos’ mouth like it doesn’t sandpaper his tongue—and maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s no different to Xellos in his inhuman body than if Zelgadis had a normal body of his own. There’s a thread there he doesn’t have the wherewithal to pull at—not now, as Xellos drags him ever closer to that forgotten precipice—but it hooks into his chest to examine later.
Everything collapses, narrows, the whole of his focus on the velvet heat of Xellos’ mouth tight around his cock. The wet sound as it slides past his lips in an inexorable rhythm. His eyes are closed once more, and Zelgadis bites his tongue, lest he say something foolish and sentimental like, look at me again. Instead, he closes his own eyes, a shield. Loses himself in the feeling. In the way Xellos’ hair catches between his fingers like spidersilk, and the choked off noises he makes with each pull of it.
For the first time in memory, he burns, pleasantly overwarm from the inside out. Xellos holds him down with bruising strength, each fingertip a solid pressure point, felt as though Zelgadis is in a body made flesh. Such a small gesture. So purposeful in its application. A slow foxtrot of fingers over his hips and up to his waist, splayed wide and warm over his stomach as his muscles clench beneath the stone under Xellos’ palms. That, as much as the pleasure of Xellos’ dextrous mouth, ushers him onward.
He fits his hand to the curve of Xellos’ skull and says, shuddering, “I'm almost— Xellos, I'm—” Everything hot, his edges blurring, vision tunneling as he arches into the possessive grasp of hands as Xellos swallows him down and down and down…
The way Xellos spits, after, is indiscreet, but Zelgadis can’t bring himself to comment on it as he lies flat on his back waiting for his vision to steady and the buzzing in his limbs subside.
“Do you want me to…” he ventures, voice thin and short of breath.
“I would certainly think so,” Xellos says from between Zelgadis’ knees in a tone hovering somewhere between amusement and exasperation.
The stillness he feels leaves Zelgadis empty-headed and feckless, and he doesn't bother pretending he has any notion of where to go from here. Not with Xellos, at least. “How?”
Xellos crowds back down against him, bracing a forearm beside Zelgadis’ head. With his other, he slips his fingers under Zelgadis’ glove, warm against his wrist, pushing it up over his palm, his fingers. There's an unexpected intimacy to this, too, something soft and careful in the slow brush of fingers against his own. A particular sort of violence to it, having temporary tenderness offered to him, and from Xellos no less.
“As you like.” Zelgadis feels another shiver of reality, the full expanse of Xellos abruptly undressed above him. “You can't hurt this body.”
“My hands are too—”
Xellos couldn’t begin to care. His patience wears thin; unaccustomed need building to a breaking point in this form. It isn’t the first time Xellos has done this with a human—the needs of these creatures terribly convenient to his purposes, from time to time—but the occurrence is infrequent enough for him to forget how it feels. How readily this body responds to the right stimulus.
His words tumble out sharper than usual. “What did I say?” The steel in his voice giving away too readily, perhaps, how affecting this is. Zelgadis as much as the physical entanglement, though he can keep that detail to himself. “Just touch me.”
“Excuse me for being considerate.”
“I don't recall you being—” his comment comes up short as Zelgadis wraps his rough hand firmly around Xellos’ cock. Confident and sure, like this isn't some spontaneous novelty Xellos has orchestrated. Whether it’s genuine or simply bravado, Zelgadis moves with a sureness that belies his presumed inexperience, and Xellos tilts his hips up just enough to allow him space to work. His palm is sharp-edged, but it doesn’t register to Xellos as unwelcome pain as Zelgadis clumsily strokes his cock. The action is at once incautious and attentive, a strangely effective dichotomy that slowly turns Xellos’ breath ragged as Zelgadis responds to every subtle reaction he fails to suppress.
Until he simply gives up on the detached act altogether and puts some due enthusiasm into it. “Mmm, a little faster.”
“Done pretending you're not enjoying yourself?”
“Oh, do be quiet,” Xellos says before pressing their mouths together again. Zelgadis obliges both requests, speeding up his hand and opening his mouth to deepen the kiss.
Bowstring taut and hurtling toward a target, Xellos realizes with considerable disappointment that this diversion of theirs is rapidly approaching its end.
Just this once.
Unacceptable. Insufficient to fully appreciate the way Zelgadis moves beneath him; the way desire turns him hungry. It's outrageous, really, that something so primitive—so human—as this wholly disrupts Xellos. Tilts his inner world on its axis. Xellos wants. The physical release of the body, yes, but also to take apart and keep for himself every jagged edge of Zelgadis. That such an impulsive decision to touch him could expose this misguided craving in Xellos. Like so much kindling, an unexpected blaze roars to life as Zelgadis brings him to messy completion, with Xellos’ breath panted warm and humid over his collarbone.
With great restraint, Xellos resists the temptation to bury his face against Zelgadis’ throat. Best not to cultivate the sentimentality he ought not feel at all. Instead, he slowly draws back and away from Zelgadis’ sturdy body, using his propped up knee as leverage to stand. He watches with keen interest as Zelgadis gathers himself—hitching up his pants with his clean hand—and makes his way to the edge of the shelter, seemingly unselfconscious in his state of undress. Perhaps it's a human response to sex, to be so relaxed, after, in the presence of a dubious companion; or perhaps Zelgadis simply has nothing left to hide. Regardless, the unfamiliar slope of his tensionless shoulders, despite Xellos at his unguarded back, settles beneath Xellos’ skin like a burr. Another irritation to ferret out from where it's burrowing into him.
Zelgadis stretches his filthy hand out into the rain to wash it clean, pointedly ignoring the weight of Xellos’ gaze heavy at his back. When he turns around, shaking the water from his fingertips, Xellos looks as composed as ever, perched up on a shelf of rock jutting out from the wall. Despite his closed eyes, Zelgadis still feels that same incisive scrutiny when Xellos turns his way. Once again, the uncanny feeling of being seen straight through.
“I'm surprised you're still here.” Zelgadis keeps his tone neutral as he dusts off and shrugs his tunic back on. Shakes out his cloak and pulls it over his shoulders with a flourish. They'll need to be washed, as is the unforgiving nature of white clothing outdoors, all other activities notwithstanding.
“Yes, well, the weather is quite abysmal,” Xellos says lightly, as though the weather has any bearing on his coming and going.
With Xellos’ dissimulating smile once again firmly in place, Zelgadis allows himself a breath to feel bereft of the way Xellos was real in their dalliance. That momentary lapse of pretense—the briefest sense of seeing and truly being seen—has passed, and Zelgadis lets his disappointment go with it. No sense holding onto such ephemeral things. In any case, Xellos’ motivation for sticking around is of no concern to Zelgadis, but he takes advantage of the delayed departure just the same.
Leaning his full weight against the wall below Xellos, he asks, “how long have you known about the spell here?”
“All along.” The soft thud of Xellos’ heel swinging against the stone punctuates the ensuing silence. It should not come as a surprise to Zelgadis, but given his lack of immediate response, he may as well have admitted as much outright. It surprises him further when Xellos continues, “I have no reason to keep you from the others.”
“Others?”
“You didn't think there was only one last cure in a world so large, did you?” There’s a lilting quality to the tone, but it doesn’t quite veer into mockery.
“I had hoped not,” Zelgadis admits, “before all my information ran dry.”
“Well, there are still options out there. Certainly better than this one.”
“And you're going to be unhelpful.”
“Naturally,” he agrees. “You'll have to find them yourself.”
“Why did you try to stop me from finding this one?” Zelgadis presses once again.
“That's a secret,” Xellos says breezily. Pauses. Adds, “but it would be quite boring for me if you took yourself off the board,” free of his usual insincerity.
For his own sanity, Zelgadis chooses not to examine the comment too closely. “However would you survive it,” he doesn't quite ask, letting the words draw themselves out bone dry.
“How indeed,” and still, the insouciant tone Zelgadis expects from him fails to reappear. Curious, Zelgadis peers up, but Xellos has leaned back enough to obscure his expression from view. The silence that settles between them takes on a new quality in this fresh aftermath, fraught with change, and Zelgadis can't work out how he's meant to feel within the shape of it. Before he can make any headway, Xellos interrupts his thoughts. “It would seem the rain has broken.”
“Finally,” Zelgadis mutters, though he makes no move to depart. Neither does Xellos. Another stalemate; one that leaves Zelgadis flat-footed and wondering at the nature of the game.
From above, he hears Xellos huff a laugh to himself, and it’s the only warning Zelgadis gets before Xellos teleports directly into his space. A hand at the base of his throat—a weight resting there without threat as his gloved fingertips tilt Zelgadis’ chin just so—and Xellos’ mouth hot against the shell of his ear. “I’ll be seeing you.” There and gone before Zelgadis gathers his wits about him to react.
Left alone with his pulse racing and the phantom brush of lips against his jaw, Zelgadis laughs in startled disbelief. So that’s how it is, then. It’s a game he isn’t sure he wants to play, but he’s been invited, for once, rather than relegated to the role of unwitting participant, and that alone is motivation enough to consider it. Armed with the knowledge that there is still a cure out there to be found, and the sense memory of Xellos’ resolute hands on his body, a dangerous hopeful thing ignites in him.
Zelgadis doesn’t trust it, not yet, but he lets it burn.