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He fills the bucket with warm water, watching the steaming liquid slosh around, bubbling with a little soap. A good bath is a rarity. He keeps himself clean and groomed well enough—more often in the city's flophouses than at home—but hot water out of the faucet is another matter entirely. He doubts anyone outside the upper city has access to it. They have to boil their water in batches if they want it, and that's too time consuming a luxury to bother with for most. Jack looks at the enormous, opulent bathtub and wonders how long it would take to fill were it not for the heated pipes running through the Banite’s manor.
Not that it matters, he thinks. He can clean himself easily enough without it.
Jack shuts off the water and sets the bucket down, soapy water sloshing out onto the tiled floor. He strips out of the uncomfortable satin clothes, shucking them from his body as if they’ve burned them and tossing them into the basket in the corner. Once he’s finished bathing and the staff is certain the room is safe to enter, a maid will collect them for the wash.
Wasn’t there a stool in the bathroom? Jack looks from the too-large tub to the vanity counter to the wardrobe. Someone must have moved it since he was last here. He looks around, finding it tucked in a corner with several wicker baskets of colored bottles and bars of soap. Picking up the stool, he considers the contents, then plucks a blue bar from the basket and gives it a curious sniff. He can’t identify the scent, but it smells clean and that’s good enough. He brings it with him back over to the bucket.
He doesn't hate it here. There are worse places to be after all. Jack squats down on the stool and dips the rag into the soapy water, squeezing the warm excess over his fingers. Enver's estate is large, but empty. There are things to fill it of course–polished furniture, books, paintings–but not people. The staff, when present, are quiet unless someone addresses them first. Without any voices filtering through the halls or any distractions to keep his attention, the manor feels almost peaceful, in its own brutalist way. There’s space to think, space to breathe, space to exist without the chaos of others creeping into his thoughts.
And that’s the only reason. Jack scrubs his chest and stomach until the cloth rubs his pale skin raw and red. He has no other reason to be here except to seek a momentary respite from the Temple of Bhaal and the burdens of duty.
The bathroom door opens. Jack’s hand stills, the damp rag hovering over the water bucket. “I’ll be done in a moment.”
A pause. Then: “I thought you were going to take a bath.”
Jack lifts his head to the doorway. The Banite stands there watching him, his hand curled around the handle, one foot planted on the bathroom tile and the other in the hallway. Enver’s gaze drifts first to the bucket on the floor next to him, then back up to Jack. His eyes narrow, mouth twisted in confusion.
Jack meets the pinched expression with a blank stare and lifts the rag up. “I am.”
Enver gives him a withering look, the same look he gives Jack for eating with his hands and sleeping in his clothes. After growing up deprived of so much, the other man cannot fathom the thought of anyone lowering themselves back to the mud once they’ve clawed their way out of it. With a sigh, he closes the door and crosses the room, taking care around the spilled water surrounding the Bhaalist. Enver reaches the tub and bends over, flicking the faucet on. The sound of running water sloshing around the large tub echoes against the tiled floors and walls.
Jack lowers the rag again. “...What are you doing?”
“I am going to have a bath, and you are going to join me,” Enver responds, running his fingers through the steaming water. He straightens, crossing the room to the piles of baskets Jack had searched through. He picks through the contents, his hand hesitating over the variety of soaps. For a moment Jack thinks the other man might have noticed a bar missing—as if he might have a mental catalog of everything in the room—but then he fetches one of the bottles from the basket and brings it back over to the tub. He unscrews the cap and empties its contents into the warm water. The scent of something floral fills the room—rosewater and honey, delicate and tangy to the senses. It’s… nice.
Once the tub is filled to his satisfaction, Enver shuts the water off and sets the emptied bottle aside. He slides his coat from his shoulders and sets it aside, then undoes the fastening on his shirt underneath. Jack makes no effort to conceal his curious gaze, gray eyes tracing the line of his arms, the hair trailing down his chest to his groin, the scars on his back. His fingers twitch with the desire to trace the shape of him with his hands.
Once he has finished undressing, Enver tosses his laundry in the same basket Jack threw his clothes in. Climbing into the tub, he lowers himself into warm water and leans back. He makes himself comfortable, laying his arms around the edge of the bath with a relieved sigh. Then he turns his attention to Jack, still sitting on the stool with his rag and bucket.
“Well?” He asks.
Jack’s gray eyes flick to the tub, then back to Enver. It’s a large tub. He wonders if the other man has ever brought anyone else to a bath with him, or if he just enjoys having the space to move. Or perhaps it is grand for the sake of being so, the way some nobles fill their homes with sculptures of nothing and tacky tapestries on their walls. For all his contempt for the Patriars of the city, the Banite shares in many of their indulgent habits.
Grimacing, Jack drops the rag into the bucket and stands up. He approaches the tub on cautious feet, staring down at the water. It will be fine, he tells himself. He isn’t a child who can’t fight back anymore. He doesn’t need knives to kill the other man if he pushes his face under its surface. He inhales a deep breath through his nose and lifts his leg, stepping over the lip of the tub and into the water.
The warmth of it tempts, pulling him in. He lives too much in the cold, denied the comforts of living things. Jack sinks down into the fragrant water and settles himself, bending his legs up. His shoulder tenses when the other man reaches for it—habit prepares him to reach for the hand and snap it off before he reminds himself where he is—and then he finds himself drawn back into the Banite’s arms. His back rests against the other man’s chest, warm skin pressed against warm skin. He swallows, reaching up to curl his fingers around Enver’s wrist as if to soothe himself in this strange new environment.
“If you wanted my attention today,” Enver murmurs, his lips close to Jack’s pointed ear, “you didn't have to make such a fuss.”
Jack frowns. His free hand flicks the surface of the bathwater, watching it ripple and distort the shape of their legs beneath the surface. His own reflection looks back at him, wobbling ghostlike as the liquid shifts and settles again.
“You're rougher when you're mad at me,” he responds at length.
“I can be rough without being mad at you.”
“You're gentle now.”
Enver’s hand takes Jack’s chin and presses upward, until he’s forced to tip his head back against the other man’s shoulder. Warm fingers splay over delicate pale skin, tracing the edge of his jawline, the corner of his mouth. Jack’s lips part with a shaky sigh. Something flutters in his chest, biting holes in his lungs and his stomach in a bid to free itself from the confines of his flesh. He cannot bring himself to pull free, no matter how heavy his indulgence weighs on him when he is alone in the cold, stone-walled chambers of the Temple.
“You’ve had enough,” Enver’s stern voice hisses into his ear, as if the man is disciplining an unruly child. “Bathe and go to bed.”
Jack’s jaw clenches. He scowls up at the other man and thinks about biting the fingers just a little too close to his mouth. “I’m not yours to command.”
“But you are mine.”
“...Yes,” he whispers. “Damn you.”
The other man leans down, his mouth leaving a trail of lazy kisses along the dip of Jack’s shoulder. He is too gentle, too mindful. His teeth don’t scrape at his too-warm skin, flushed red with the delight of their contact. Jack closes his eyes and exhales a shaky breath.
“Soon, everything will be in place,” Enver murmurs somewhere close to his throat. “You and I will bring the Sword Coast under our rule. We will be as Gods.”
“You will be,” Jack murmurs. “I will be the shadow that walks among them.”
“Must you hide?” The Banite’s hand slides down the column of his throat. His fingers settle on the dip of his collarbone, over the purple and blue bruises blooming prettily along his pale skin. “You could stand at my side.”
“As your attack dog?”
“As my consort.”
Jack barks a laugh before he can stop himself. His hand falls away from Enver’s wrist, turning his head away from the other man. “We’re not getting married. Are you mad?”
“Who would stop us?” Enver asks. “Who could stop us?”
My Father.
“It doesn’t matter if anyone could or would,” Jack says impatiently. “I am not a bird you can cage and force to sing when it pleases you.”
Enver’s mouth pauses where Jack’s shoulder meets his neck. For a moment he can feel the faintest hint of teeth against the bruises blooming against his skin. The sensation makes him shudder. “Oh, my dearest–I wouldn’t dream of caging you,” he murmurs. “There isn’t a shackle I could place on you that you couldn’t break free from. But does that mean I can’t keep you?”
“I already told you that I’m yours.”
“Then stand by my side. Tear down the heavens with me.”
Jack opens his eyes and stares ahead. The arms that cage him keep him warm. The room that shields them from the rest of the world suddenly feels too small. Two people all alone at the end of the world might still feel like a crowd. And a chain is still a chain, no matter how pretty its gilded links look around his neck.
“I want to wash my hair,” he murmurs instead.
The other man says nothing. Jack can’t make himself turn to look at him. His fingers fidget beneath the water. He bites at the inside of his lower lip until he tastes copper on his tongue. He’s prepared to yank himself free from the other man and rush from the room when Enver at last uncurls his hand from Jack’s collarbone. His fingers walk a path over his shoulder and down his arm.
“Allow me,” he says.
Jack hesitates. He shouldn’t, should he? He swallows the creeping sensation in his throat and then shifts himself forward in the water. Pulling his legs up to his chest, he curls his arms atop his knees. Enver reaches for his head and coaxes him into tipping his neck back over the vacant space between them. His eyes close. Water trickles through his hair, and the Banite’s hand follows. Gentle fingers massage his dark hair and scalp, taking care not to pull at the strands as he works. The soap he uses smells like the sweet-smelling oil he poured into the water. Will the scent follow him when he leaves in the morning? Will it cling to his skin when he slips out of the manor and into the sewers? Or will it fade long before he returns to the Temple, with no one any the wiser?
The attention and the soothing scent make him feel a little dizzy, floating dreamlike in the warmth. His shoulders lose their tension. The wretched call of his blood grows quiet and stills. Relief and release only ever seem to come through spilling blood in the name of his Father, the darker impulses quieting from a deafening roar to hushed whispers. Sacrifice and reverence are the only things that can grant him peace, and yet–does he not feel at peace now?
Enver rinses the soap from his hair. Those same thick hands that pin him down and choke him now take their time thoroughly caring for him. The pressure of his fingers in his hair terrifies him more than the thought of those same hands pushing him beneath the water until the world ceases to be. If it hurts, if it’s rough, if it all comes down to a purely physical transaction—then it’s fine. It does not sway him from his purpose to have these moments of indulgence, so long as he remembers his duty. But his heart is a traitorous thing, its trembling threatening to choke the blood in his veins.
Enver finishes rinsing his hair and allows him to lift his head back up, fingers combing the damp strands back into some semblance of order. Jack lays his head on his crossed arms and stares ahead of him. He feels his body tremble, his fingers digging into his knees. You have ruined me, he thinks, and white-hot fury bubbles up, lava burning out the fluttering in his chest. The corners of his eyes sting with the churning anger filling him. You have completely and utterly destroyed me. You have defiled the temple of me. I was never supposed to love you.
The words choke and die where truth nestles in his throat. He cannot blame the other man when the sin is his own.
“Better?” Enver asks.
“Better,” Jack lies. He swallows the heat burning him from the inside out. “Thank you.”
The Banite’s fingers brush down his back, tracing the thicket of scars that cut through his skin like broken glass. He has long ago given up on asking Jack where they came from. Jack isn’t even sure he remembers most of them anymore, except for the one Enver touches now. Father’s reprimand, claws digging into him in his sleep, hissing don’t forget your duty in his ear, blood dripping down his back in the cold stone chambers he steals a few hours rest in.
Then the hand retracts, and Enver’s legs bend up, the motion splashing the water around him. He turns to watch the other man climbing out of the tub, hands braced on the edge, so he doesn’t slip. He crosses the room to the wardrobe and opens it, fetching a towel from the shelf. Jack watches him move. He wants to hate him. He wants to do as his father commands and slaughter him, spilling blood into the bathwater and staining it a cloudy red. And yet the water feels so cold without the heat of the other man’s body pressed against his.
Enver makes quick work of drying himself off, glancing up at Jack with an expectant look on his face. “Coming?”
The Bhaalist fights the scowl trying to creep onto his face. He hasn’t moved because Enver hadn’t yet told him to. Pathetic.
Jack uncurls his body, stretching his legs out and pulling the stopper free from the drain. He rises from the water, shivering as his wet skin hits the cooler air. He steps onto the floor, rubbing the water from his hands while the rest of it drips down his back and legs. The other man watches him, examining him much in the same way Jack had while watching him undress for the bath. Then he turns and grabs another towel from the shelf, bringing it with him back to the tub.
“I’m beginning to think you’ve never taken a bath before,” the other man comments, rubbing the towel through Jack’s damp hair.
He hesitates around the response. His arms hang loose at his sides, letting the other man dry him off if it pleases him. He doesn’t think Enver thinks of him as being childlike and delicate, unable to do the task himself. Rather, he is very sure that the other man does so because it gives him the illusion of control. For just a few lingering moments, Jack exists under his care, his ownership. And then once he is dry, the Banite wraps the towel around him and draws him closer.
“I have before,” Jack says at last. “This is the second time I’ve drowned in one.”