An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Paul Atreides denies him an easy death. Feyd-Rautha has to deal with his new position.
tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Slow Burn, Sexual Tension, Explicit Sexual Content (in the later chapters), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, feyd-rauther is his usual little freak self, will include mentions of noncon later on
Read all under the cut:
Paul Atreides denies him an easy death. Feyd-Rautha does not bleed out in front of the emperor and the terrorist’s household, his Fremen filth and whore mother. Instead, Feyd-Rautha dreams of death on the dirty floor of a prison cell.
Blood rusts over his mouth, dries to flakes before his body hits the stone, and Feyd-Rautha tongues at it as his hands try to staunch the bleeding of his wounds. He presses where Paul Muad’Dib Atreides has pushed inside him with his blade, hot from the desert air, a pleasure so close to pain or pain so close to pleasure, Feyd-Rautha cannot name the difference.
He writhes now where he lays in a silence more shameful than defeat. All his life he has fantasised of dying in battle, perhaps in the arena, broken by a stronger hand with the rush of fighting still hot in his blood and the screams of the masses in his ears. Triumphant. Foolish of him. Such wishes come to nothing. This is one lesson the Baron could not teach him, not while he had held Feyd-Rautha under the monstrous wing of his tutelage. Sheltered is what he had been, he realises as flies start to buzz around him, landing on his opened flesh. He swats them away, but they circle him as merciless as any blood-drinking desert bird. No, he rots as any piece of meat left under Arrakis’ pitiless sun.
But he will not die. Or have they thrown him into this cell to find an ignominious end and shame the house of Harkonnen? But what advantage would that bring? Half-delirious, Feyd-Rautha shoves a swath of his leather pteruges over his wounds and pulls it tight against his opened skin to shield it from the flies and what eggs they might burrow into his flesh. A shaky exhale flees his lips as he tries to slow his breathing. What would Uncle say if he saw him like this, disgraced and defeated? Would he have fallen from the favour he clawed his way into? Then again, Uncle is dead. Slaughtered like a pig. The memory stirs Feyd-Rautha’s blood and he moans through his teeth.
The door opens. Feyd-Rautha looks at the upside-down figures, dark-robed, Suk-braids over their left shoulders, a man kneels down beside him, painted lips, cold eyes, and a finger presses into Feyd-Rautha’s mouth with a salve so bitter and tingling he forgets all else for a moment.
Then darkness sears his eyes shut.
When next Feyd-Rautha wakes, it’s in an airy room. Black night outside. Translucent white curtains billow and desert wind scatters fine dust over the luxurious trappings of the room: a massive wooden table shining with polish, jewels set into silverware, finely wrought tapestries depicting one of the Arrakeen beasts, a sandworm—
A figure moves from between the curtains, a slow, irregular step. The tall and lean silhouette of the would-be emperor. Feyd-Rautha feels for his wounds, bandaged, then tests his muscles and grits his teeth as pain shoots through him so incandescent he sees lights behind his lids.
“Cousin,” Paul Atreides says in his slow, dragging voice, a voice that holds witch-power as they all heard when Muad’Dib silenced Shaddam’s Truthsayer.
Feyd-Rautha groans as he tries to sit up.
Paul watches his efforts from above with cold blue-within-blue eyes. Eyes that are not his own, it seems, eyes that shimmer with a strangeness that makes Feyd-Rautha shiver.
Paul slinks closer, desert-creature, false prophet, predator. Killer. Except, of course, Feyd-Rautha is alive and by his wish. Or has he died in that filthy cell?
“You recover well,” Paul says. “But I will need you to heal faster.”
Feyd-Rautha sits up with all his strength, feels one of the stab-wounds’ stitches rip. Blood blooms through the white bandages on his torso. Paul tuts. Then Paul is beside him and pushes him back down, efficient, his hands warm on Feyd-Rautha’s skin, black dusty curls brushing his cheek, and Feyd-Rautha breathes him in, spice and desert and a hint of the acrid stench of stillsuits, and beneath it something boyish and honied. Feyd-Rautha wants to sink his teeth into it, tear him apart.
“Why?” Feyd-Rautha rasps. “Why didn’t you kill—”
“I don’t waste my resources,” Paul says.
The Atreides lets go of him as though he’s handled some unruly hound.
“Resources…?”
“Don’t play dumb, Harkonnen,” Paul says evenly, and after a moment’s hesitation he sits on the mattress beside Feyd-Rautha. The oddness of it strikes him, no-one has ever sat beside his sick-bed, certainly not Uncle, nor maid or doctor. He would have killed any who’d have tried. He looks for a weapon now. His eyes sink to the crysknife at Paul’s hip. Iron tang of blood in his mouth.
“Try it,” Paul says, steel in his voice that he’d already shown when confronting the emperor. Power too, the fierceness of a demigod.
“I just might,” Feyd-Rautha says and finds Paul’s gaze, grins, “Make you kill me after all, cousin.” He bares his black teeth, “All this for nothing.”
And Feyd-Rautha spits his blood into Paul’s face. Paul does not flinch. His blue-within-blue eyes seem to burn in the glint of the glowglobes. He’s beautiful like that, with his blood on his face, and it hits Feyd-Rautha unexpectedly. Time stills around them. Breath does not come easily as he inhales.
“I rule you now,” Paul whispers, dips two fingers into the blood on his cheek and sucks it off his fingers, “Your water is mine.”
A shiver runs down Feyd-Rautha’s spine, humiliation and with it the hook of desire low in his stomach. If Paul notices what it does to him, he does not show it.
“What do you want of me?” Feyd-Rautha curls his fists in the bedding.
“You’ll know soon enough, Baron,” Paul says and stands. “Heal quickly.”
With that, he leaves.
The rush of wind and sand fills the room. The grating of it, abrading all it touches. Feyd-Rautha bites his lip, breathes in deeply until all scent of the boy-prophet has gone and cold darkness envelops him whole.
This planet holds nothing but strangers now. The only family Feyd-Rautha has left is Paul Atreides.
