Admissions 1.6: Cylus
Welcome (back) to Europa University: Admissions! Quick links if you need 'em:
Content notes (chapter-specific):
- Fantasies of knife play and blood play (more vivid than last time, but still not enacted)
- Mentions of sex work (including brief allusion to related trauma)
- Submissive on the floor
Emile laid on the platform right where he’d been thrown, eyes wide.
Cylus considered the scene he’d staged, and what those eyes would see: himself, cast in crimson by the dim walkway lights behind Emile. Looking down at his hands, curled lightly around his closed blades, he savored the contrast of that ominous hue with the blue-green emanating from the water below.
This was a show, after all. If Emile had brought him to a very unusual stage, Cylus had played on worse, for far less friendly audiences.
"Now, first," he said in a voice meant to command both attention and behavior, "A rule. You will stay right where you are while I have these knives open, unless I say otherwise. Because I may not have mentioned this during our impromptu performance earlier," Cylie began rolling through a slow series of openings and closings, "But these are live blades. They're meant to intimidate, and thereby avoid bloodshed," both knives closed, then opened again, "But they’re more than capable of causing it, when that can't be avoided. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Cylus," Emile breathed, worshipful.
Cylie inhaled through his nose, steadying himself with cold, salty air. "Repeat the rule as you understand it."
"I don’t come any closer than this while your blades are open, unless you say otherwise."
"Do you have any questions?"
"Yes, Cylus."
"Ask."
"What would have happened if I'd moved earlier? During the trick, in front of the others?"
Cylus channeled the dark hunger bubbling under his skin, baring his teeth in a wicked grin. "I knew you wouldn't move." After a delicious hesitation, long enough that he could practically smell Emile marinating in his own juices, he added, "And I kept the knife away from you while constraining your range of motion. It's hard to gauge the exact distance of a sharp weapon when it's moving edge-on relative to you.
"So if you target your movements at the right height, and then suggest the dreaded but anticipated arrival of blood—how can you fail to imagine it, when a knife moves in the vicinity of vulnerable flesh?—it's effortless for the mind to see it where it's not."
Cylie whipped both blades out dramatically at the visual level of his own throat, pleased by Emile’s answering flinch.
Over the subsequent moments of silence, though, a wave of embarrassment swallowed that pleasure, the words he’d just spoken playing back in his head. That last bit had been... a little much, even for his showman's patter. He'd sounded more like a villain in an entertainment. Was Emile going to laugh? No, he was too polite for that.
He tried to read Emile’s expression in the dim light. Was he surprised at Cylie’s dramatic choice of words? Or worse, truly afraid, perhaps sensing the cruel yearnings seething in Cylie's stomach even now?
"Thank you, Cylus," Emile murmured. "No more questions now."
Putting him on the ground had been an unnecessary indulgence. The sight of him—a wriggle away from groveling, Cylie's silk dark at his throat, accepting Cylie's authority with submissive grace—was a drug far more potent than the alcohol in his veins.
Marshaling his willpower, he tucked one knife away and raised the other, enjoying the play of multi-colored light in the transparent tacglass. Holding the unlatched weapon parallel to the ground, he let one side drop: creating a right angle of the two handles, revealing the naked blade between. “So the spine of the knife,” he traced the blade’s back, “is the side that won’t cut you. The grip facing the spine,” He tapped the horizontal handle with the index finger of the hand holding it, “Is the safe handle, the one you can hold without worrying about injuring yourself. The one on the edge side,” He trailed a finger of the opposite hand down it, “Is called the bite handle.” Smirking, he tapped the blade with the back of a fingernail. “You can imagine why, can’t you?”
Emile’s swallow was audible, a soft, breathy click in his throat. “Yes, Cylus. Q-question?”
Beating back fantasies of teasing that edge along Emile’s skin, Cylus nodded. “Yes?”
“Is that little... thingie... on the end of the bite handle some kind of... latch?”
Fortune, he’s quick. “Good eye.” He let his tone warm with praise. “Yes, there’s a matching notch on the safe handle...”
They fell into an easy back and forth, then; Cylus demonstrating and explaining, Emile asking questions. "Are you satisfied?" Cylus asked after finishing a breakdown of openings, closures, and quick draws. "Obviously that’s only the basics, but I think it qualifies as 'showing you how they work'."
"Yes, Cylus. Thank you." Emile had remained on the ground, right where Cylus had thrown him. Admittedly the low gravity made that less onerous than it might otherwise be, but Cylus allowed himself to appreciate the sight a last time.
With a final flick, he closed and stashed the knife he’d been using, conjuring a tone of casual insouciance to mask the desire that his demonstration had failed to abate.
"Come here, then, if you want me to touch you again."
Emile crawled towards him, peering shyly up through hair still mussed from their descent, when Cylus left the bruises that must still be ripening on his neck.
Cylus felt unsteady, like there was no gravity at all. "Stop," he commanded when Emile was near enough to reach out and touch his knee. "Show me your face." And your throat.
Emile obeyed, head tilting upward. The scarf shifted, ends wafting apart and exposing the bruises: a series of dark impressions below the soft curve of his jaw, more striking than Cylie had even hoped. He wanted to mark the other side of his neck to match. Or better yet...
His mind ran wild, darker and deeper than before. He imagined tilting Emile's chin up with a knife-tip, ghosting along his jawline before making a precise, shallow cut. Not deep enough to harm; just enough to admit a thin trickle of scarlet. A little rivulet winding down the column of Emile's soft brown throat, highlighting the hollow between his collarbones, finding its way between his breasts, staining the creamy silk of his shirt...
No. No, no, no. He gritted his teeth. Tonight wasn't the first time he'd fantasized about using his knives outside the necessity of self defense. Such thoughts left him deeply uncomfortable with himself; he'd never shared them, even with Cynthia. But only once before had so many of those thoughts assailed him at once, and that...
He swallowed sudden sourness. That time had been nothing like this.
“Cylus?”
Emile’s sweet voice called him back from the threat of unwelcome memories, bringing his attention back to the beautiful boy at his feet.
He sank to his knees, placing their heads at the same level. All he could see in Emile's eyes were dim blue-green reflections. He felt agonizingly aware of his body: the tightness of his binder; the metal grating against his shins, admitting light and air from below; chill humidity threatening to condense on flushed skin; the soft sound of lapping water; salt-tang and that strange cocktail of organic smells he couldn't begin to identity.
The lingering taste of wine, and Emile, on his tongue.
"Fuck," he groaned, the rough syllable forcing free from his lips. They were too drunk for this; any of this, much less all of it. But he couldn't bring himself to try and break whatever spell was over them. "I..." One hand lifted, stroking Emile's cheek with shaking fingers as his other found the long ends of the scarf.
Before he realized what was happening, he was pulling Emile in, their breath mixing in the cool air, one heartbeat away from the kind of kiss that would shatter the fragile façade of his remaining self-control. Recoiling internally, he managed to bring Emile’s head to rest against his chest instead. Stroking Emile’s hair, he forced himself to pause, and think.
His and Cynthia's performances occasionally attracted potential patrons, offering the possibility of money and other forms of protection. They avoided cultivating those who expected sex; one brief, disastrous experiment had proven that particular exchange didn’t... suit him. Cynthia, whose self-knowledge generally exceeded his own, had avoided it altogether. But a handful of times, he’d attracted a patron who only wanted to be hurt or ordered around by a pretty person far younger than they. Such arrangements had proved more sustainable, even briefly enjoyable, though none had lasted long.
So Emile’s obvious masochistic and submissive desires weren't unfamiliar to him. During the first time he’d fallen into such a dynamic, he and Cynthia had been on good terms with a small guild of sex workers. At Cynthia's urging, he'd asked pointers from an older domme who he’d befriended over cards.
You’re creating a fantasy where you're leading them, she’d told him, but you can make them tell you where they want to be led.
"...What do you want?" Cylus managed to keep his voice from shaking. "Tell me what you want."
"I want you to cut my clothes off, and touch me wherever you want to." Emile's voice wobbled but didn't break, half-muffled against Cylie’s shirt. "B-but I also want you to be comfortable, and to feel good too, and that's, that's a weird thing to request, it's okay if—"
An anguished sound ripped from Cylus' throat. The other half of his old teacher's advice asserted itself: just don't get talked into going somewhere you don't know how to get back from.
Guiding Emile down to lie flat on his back, Cylus clambered atop him, acutely aware of where his crotch pressed against Emile's lower stomach. His cheap, matter-printed pants did not feel thick enough; he wondered if Emile could tell how wet he was.
"Close your eyes," he hissed. "And stay still."
Note: Butterfly knives are also known as balisongs, and are Filipino in origin, with a rich and interesting past! But Cylie doesn't know that, and Emile sure as heck doesn't either, so I pass this information on directly instead.
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