Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Julian didn’t think that he particularly liked the weight in Asra’s gaze. It was a heavy indifference, maybe pity at most, anger at worst, and it made his stomach turn in an uneasy manner. In no uncertain terms, Asra had made it clear that it was just sex, and Julian knew that the magician was tethered to the ghost of a person who had barely even existed in life–but it tugged at his heart no less. He was overflowing with a misguided longing that was beginning to make him feel like drowning, and as someone who had no qualms about dying, he choked it back and let it carve a home out in his chest, his heart. Each pulsing beat was one closer to the ultimate collision between them both. Julian also didn’t think that he quite wanted to be around for it, the fallout. 

So, for a while he had let himself be held in the embrace of naivety and convinced himself that it could be waited out. That the half-truths and barely concealed apathy would wane with time. That he’d win and finally best the ashen bones that lay a sea away, and ultimately he felt disgusted with himself at the thought. It was bitter and unflattering and would most certainly not gain him any points with Asra. When his original plan didn’t work, he then let himself get lost in their burning touch. Their hands were rough and needy and all over him and he pretended not to know they were so desperately wishing he was someone else, that each grip wasn’t branding him and reshaping–slumping–his heart. He liked to pretend he wasn’t just a warm body who was standing in for a distant memory .

It was always easier to slip into the role when he had a drink in him. Each moment seemed to be an apposite one to tip back a wooden mug and let the buzzing in his veins dull his aching. Asra watched him as he did this, studying and looking and never speaking because if they did, her name would come spilling out rather than Julian’s. They both knew it. In actuality, Asra spoke very little to him at all. Julian didn’t know what they saw in their cards and the permeating magic that lingered in Vesuvian streets, but he knew that it made them like him even less. 

But he was full of life and warm blooded, a hole was a hole, and that’s all it was. It’s just sex. Julian thought it at least a dozen times each morning he had to wake up beside them. A prayer, a song, a mantra. It's. Just. Sex. The words were grotesque to him, three terms that felt like tragedy when strung together. But, he was selfish, he always had been–just not quite as desperate as it was now. It was so fucking selfish and he knew it, he knew he shouldn’t let it go on, but he wanted more. Asra was Oxycodone as a person and he thought the withdrawal would probably kill him, and he knew it was imminent. He was selfish, lovesick, angered, and dead on his feet. Still, each night they’d kiss, and their hands around his throat felt like a noose. 

After they finished, Asra would turn around and Julian felt their overpowering urge to get up and leave. He wished they would, sometimes. He’d rather be ripped apart raw and split in half by Asra–physically and metaphorically–and left to rot with his homeless affection rather than have to sit and stew in their misalliance. Nonetheless, he was part self-serving and part self-loathing, and would fall asleep breathing their scent in deeply. He was a thief and an imposter to the phantom whose side of the bed he fell asleep on each night. Selfish. Julian knew he was being unfair and his expectations were wildly inappropriate–crossing boundaries of all kinds–it was manipulation, plain as day.

And it was just sex, and just everything to him.

Chapter Text

There was something utterly damning in relation to the art of loving; the act of giving yourself over to another person in the hope, misplaced or not, that they could house your affection and put ‘ forever’ into perspective. The price of loving, however, was always, always grief; one cannot go without the other as a shadow, they snaked through life hand-in-hand and could not— would not —be cheated out of that debt. 

Asra feared that they would never stop grieving for they would never stop loving, nevermind that the owner of those affections was claimed viciously by the realm of spirits, ripped away from their embrace the second they briefly let go. It’d never happen again, they surmised. They’d never hold again, it was a trap that gleamed in the light of day like a metal maw splayed across forest grounds but in the trembles of night could quickly seize oneself faster than the pain of the steel bite could register. 

That was their first mistake. A false sense of confidence that naivety bred into them, it was their undoing. The second mistake was when they did risk the touch of another, their mind numbed dangerously. There was no death in such a state unless it was the Little One, but afterward, they were plagued with the haunting visage of another; the feeling of supple skin under their hands post-relations that made them want to recoil and repent since it was so wrong and unfamiliar. They wanted to rip themselves away from the heat before they could get burned. 

The third mistake was the Doctor writhing under them. Oh, how they hated Julian Devorak. They sneered in his face and regarded him coldly but Julian was awfully resilient even when his eyes watered and lip wobbled when Asra snarled out dismissals, because in the very next moment Asra was taking, grabbing, holding just like they knew they shouldn’t. They drew out things from him, they knew; feelings, reactions, noises that sounded like betrayal and wormed their way into their psyche with the sameness of that of a funeral march. If the act of the second was their undoing, then this— this had to be suicide, to some degree. A part of them died with each exchange and left to rot with the charred remains of a past they couldn’t bear to linger on, but did anyway. 

Love was followed by grief cyclically. It waned and waxed like the faces of the moon and Julian could never be the moon, he could never be a star, he couldn’t even be an asteroid, but he was a body nonetheless. Asra was unraveling into something offensively tragic, and Julian would be knocked right over in the wake of Love and Grief tearing through the Magician at once. While Julian slipped out the door at night wordlessly, Asra would sneak a glance at Faust, and one word came to mind: ouroboros. Yes, they were to be damned.