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"Muad'dib," Feyd-Rautha hisses, the ah intonation drawn out and savored.
The boy certainly looks the part of his namesake - brown curls peeking out of his wrapped head, thin wrists and thighs plump enough to strangle with. Slight enough to be blown away with the breeze, his bones surely hollow. Feyd-Rautha can't see his face fully, but his eyes narrow when Feyd-Rautha continues on, "Desert mouse."
"Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen," The boy returns, spice-stained eyes doing their own sweep. Unconsciously, Feyd-Rautha stands a bit straighter, shoulders a bit further back. His ribs seem too small to contain his beating heart, all of a sudden. "I'm afraid there's no title to proceed you."
"Na-Baron," Feyd-Rautha rasps, sand-dusted air having nothing to do with the dryness of his throat. "Or just, Baron. Whichever tickles your fancy."
Muad'ib makes a sound with his tongue; clicking like he's an animal, echolocating the thrum of Feyd-Rautha's heart. "A title I seem to have given you."
Feyd-Rautha tilts his head, curious. Teasing. "I'm in your debt."
"Unlucky you."
Feyd-Rautha laughs - like glass under a hammer, crushed and rough. The sand in the air is doing him no favors, today. "Oh, I'd say I'm rather lucky."
Muad'ib hums, a dismissal and an acknowledgement all in one little noise. "So I've heard," He says, turning back to his Fremen posse. Feyd-Rautha bristles, familiar rage bubbling to the surface and grasping him by the throat. Suffocating, like Muad'ib has settled his dust-caked boot on his windpipe.
See me. Look at me.
Feyd-Rautha takes half a step forward, fingers twitching with the spike of his blood pressure and aching to be wrapped around Muad'ib's pretty little throat. Oh, how little strength it would take for Feyd-Rautha to crush his windpipe.
"Take him," Muad'ib instructs, and Feyd-Rautha's rage vanishes into the wind.
His Fremen break away from following the pair of them a few meters down the halls. Clanking boots and jostling knives fall away into silence, leaving only the hiss of Muad'ib's breathing and the flutter of his worn fabrics in their wake.
Overconfident, Muad'ib is. And perhaps, just. A foolish boy or a man with the skill to back it up - Feyd-Rautha can't quite make his assessment, yet.
"My reputation must not proceed me," Feyd-Rautha edges, a step behind Muad'ib. He can smell the smaller man from here; the dry taste of the desert on the back of his tongue, the tang of unwashed sweat from too many hours under the sun. Maud'ib smells like Arrakis, in the most primal way.
The image of the moment is not lost on Feyd-Rautha. Himself, a step behind and to the left of a witch, on another night - one so very firmly in the past, yet the deja-vu of it all weighs heavy. It is an odd comparison his mind draws; Muad'ib is very firmly a man, broad shouldered and coiled tight like a snake, the polar opposite of Lady Fenring in every sense. Yet somehow, the similarities persist.
"Nor mine," Muad'ib says. The whites of his eyes are washed with the blue-glow of spice, and Feyd-Rautha can't quite determine if the boy is looking at him sidelong when he speaks. "Rabban is a poor messenger."
The angle of Muad'ib is all wrong, an inch or two from where he should be. Shoulders too broad for such a small waist, confidence in every breath where there should be the familiar posture of fear. An inch away from familiarity. A hand rises to rest on the hilt of Feyd-Rautha's knife. "Rabban isn't good for much."
"Except for squirreling away."
Ah, so he had noticed. To let Rabban flee would be a fool's mistake - yet Muad'ib's tone portrays indifference as he continues, "He will not get far. Rabban Harkonnen's life is… coveted."
"And the Baron's?"
"A personal grudge."
Personal. The mouth of the Fremen, this Muad'ib; yet personal could mean so much more. House Harkonnen has hurt so many in its conquest, it's impossible to narrow it down from that. House Harkonnen has reigned terror and diminished the entirety of Arrakis down to nothing but a Spice depot, so it would stand within reason for Muad'ib's rage towards his uncle to be a product of it.
But, perhaps foolishly, Feyd-Rautha thinks - the rumors of Muad'ib's sudden appearance, Halleck, Caladan's own house gone in a single night so recently, as well as the Baron, the whispered Uncle…
"Atreides," He rasps, cracked lips soothed by the dart of a tongue, "Oh, you clever boy. "
Muad'ib - Paul fucking Atreides, maybe, yet maybe not - neither confirms nor denies Feyd-Rautha, wordless in his dismissal. Steps slowing, Muad'ib turns to him.
Pinned by Atreides' spiced-stained eyes, Feyd-Rautha finds himself twitching in anticipation. For a fistfight, a knife fight, a deathmatch; oh, Feyd-Rautha's blood roars in his ears at the prospect of the many twists this conversation could take.
"Would you like to see it?" Atreides asks. "The knife that ended your uncle's life. The knife that will end yours."
An abrupt change; Feyd-Rautha's stuttered breath just as much so. "You intend to kill me?" Feyd-Rautha laughs, delighted at the proposition. "Oh, Atreides. I am much more interested in you than some silly knife."
And ah, there is the humanity in the boy. The pull of Atreides' brows belays his confusion before it smooths out once more, an emotionless mask. "You were not close with him?"
But oh, Feyd-Rautha's caught the boy in his mousetrap; gotten him by the squirming pink tail, and he's not keen on letting go so quickly. Uncle, Atreides had called the Baron as he killed him. Family.
He prods at Atreides' vulnerability like a bruise, "It would be foolish to mourn my rapist."
Atreides - not Muad'ib, not in this moment, not with those startled widening eyes and the curious tilt of his head - clears his throat. "It is of no matter," He lies through his teeth, "You, too, will meet his fate."
"What a lovely liar you are," Feyd-Rautha coos, a twisted smile curling his lips.
Atreides advances to crowd him, kicks the toes of his boots forcefully enough to have Feyd-Rautha backing up a step and grinning. The knock of Feyd-Rautha's kevlar hitting the dust-crusted wall is enough to leave him breathless, excited. "Your mouth is much too big for its own good, Harkonnen."
And what is there to do in the face of such an act but breathe Atreides in, sweat and desert and boy all wrapped into one. This close, the blues of his eyes are so much more vivid, speckled through with flakes of green - the color they were before, no doubt. A rise of freckles decorates the small bits of skin Feyd-Rautha is able to see; the bridge of his nose, the high points of his aristocratic cheekbones.
"And what would you know of things good for me?" Feyd-Rautha replies, arching a hairless brow. Atreides - Muad'ib, now, this man is - shoves him further into the wall, a forearm trapping his throat; strong though its thinness, muscles rippling under the layers of cloth.
"There can only be one," Muad'ib whispers, hot breath escaping his covered face enough to heat Feyd-Rautha's cheek.
Confused, Feyd-Rautha blinks. "Of what?"
"Kwisatz Haderach."
Oh, Feyd-Rautha thinks, eyes fluttering, oh. Muad'ib is a believer. He's heard the witches speak of it - further confirmed by Fenring's meddling. Such a strange thing to be brought up so suddenly; but it's all too clear that Maud'ib is not one to be predicted.
But the sense of deja-vu creeps up on him all at once; the smell of Atreides, the digging of stone into his back, the arm pinned at his throat. Feyd-Rautha has been here before, in this moment - three nights prior, in his dreams.
Kwisatz Haderach, indeed.
"Two are stronger than one," Feyd-Rautha whispers back, more gravel than Atreides' own air. An unusual suggestion from him, of course; never had he worked a day with others without clawing at them - he is a caged animal of a man, at his core.
To be in that cage with Atreides, however?
"Corrine will be my second," Atreides says. A hand creeps to Feyd-Rautha's waist, squeezing harshly. "You are of no importance to me."
Feyd-Rautha laughs - cackles, more like. Muad'ib knows so little of his prospect wife. "Irulan Corrine will lay on her sword before she would be wed to you, Atreides. You are a fool."
The boy clicks his tongue. "So confident, are you, Harkonnen? What happens if I'm not Atreides?"
"Then I will be a fool," Feyd-Rautha admits. He twists into an arch, pressing their layers of cloth and kevlar and sand together. "And you will still be Muad'ib. And Irulan Corrine will lay frigid in her grave on this hell of a planet."
"You will be a dead fool," Atreides corrects, a low hiss, "A dead fool is no better than a corpse."
"Is that so?" He replies, closer than a moment prior, "I think, Atreides, that if you wanted to kill me by now, you would've done so. Or is slaying a second Baron of House Harkonnen a step too far for you?"
"I am merciful," Atreides insists. And his mercy is surely the knife not yet sunk between Feyd-Rautha's ribs, sheathed still at his side. Letting Feyd-Rautha breathe, still. Letting him press so closely to him. "You will be dead the moment I will it so."
Selfishly, perhaps, Feyd-Rautha wishes for the turning tide of Atreides' plans. He craves the knife between his ribs, same blade that fell his bastard of an Uncle. Instead, he resigns himself to bargin, like the politician he is not.
"We have existed this long," Feyd-Rautha says, grinning at the harsher press of Atreides' arm against his throat, "Seventeen years, is it? What's to say we shouldn't have? Who's to say we can't both exist?"
Atreides shakes his head, slowly. Chidingly, like Feyd-Rautha is a particularly stubborn child. Feyd-Rautha bares his blackened teeth back at him. He'd killed his mother for a lesser slight. "I have seen it. You will die, Harkonnen, before the week ends."
"By your hands?" Feyd-Rautha challenges, huffing a laugh. "I have seen your life, Atreides. You think your own visions see all - but you are blinded to yourself. I have seen you - blinded, gnarled, dying. If nothing else, that should be reason enough to keep me alive."
The cloth covering Atreides' mouth moves as he wets his own lips. "Or reason enough to kill you," He pitches, "And let that future die with you. Who are you to tell but whatever God you believe in when you lie cold?"
"So many stories of you," Feyd-Rautha wonders aloud, "And all have missed what you truly are; what you could become. Are you an Emperor, Muad'ib, or are you blind?"
Atreides hisses, jerking back from Feyd-Rautha. He doesn't get far - a hand winds tightly around his throat, tugging him back to Feyd-Rautha's eye level. Wet and fleeting is the press of Feyd-Rautha's lips on the coarse cloth covering Atreides' mouth.
"Take me by your side, and nothing will escape your gaze," Feyd-Rautha promises, and Atreides listens.