Chapter Text
The Atreides bride is a boy, Feyd-Rautha is told. He looks like a man and dresses as a man and holds himself tall and proud like a man, but he’s still to be wedded to Feyd, and his uncle and the Bene Gesserit still refer to him as the bride when he hears them speak of him.
Paul Atreides is a man who will fulfil the purpose of the woman he was supposed to be. His body still functions the way the Bene Gesserit needs it to. Feyd’s uncle has mentioned to him that the boy has no cock, but also no breasts. He simply has a cunt.
Feyd doesn’t mind either way. Cock or no cock, he’ll still fuck the Atreides boy the same way. The way that’s expected of him.
Feyd first sees him in a picture. Then again, from afar, when he first arrives on Giedi Prime. Then up close, the day of their ceremony. Atreides has the beauty of both a man and a woman — slender and strong and of a decent height (though not quite as tall as Feyd), with green eyes and dark, coiffed hair.
As they link hands for the ceremony, Feyd-Rautha decides that he wants the boy very much.
-
Feyd-Rautha has kept him at arm’s length since the wedding. The distance between he and his boy bride — both emotional and physical — does not lessen after the night that they both stand either side of their marital bed, and Atreides fixes him with a cold, resolute stare and tells him, in no uncertain terms, that there will be no love between them.
Feyd-Rautha realises shortly after that when he’d said love, he’d meant sex.
“We’re meant to consummate,” he says. “The slaves will check. They’ll report back to my uncle.”
The sound of Atreides’ scoff echoes through the room, as harsh and icy as his eyes. “How will they check? Will they inspect me?”
“The sheets,” Feyd says.
Atreides stoops, then, and draws a short blade from inside his boot. A shock passes through Feyd — whether one of surprise or arousal, he doesn’t know. He presses the sharp edge to the palm of his hand. Feyd watches the blood welling there, watches Atreides smear it over the clean linens between them.
“Let them see that,” he tells Feyd.
“They’ll ask me, you know. They’ll want to hear the truth from my mouth.” Feyd stares at the blood, stark against those white sheets, a hunger rising in him. “What do you say I should tell them?”
Atreides sighs. He looks tired, the way a boy barely of age like himself should have no business looking. “Tell them what they want to hear. That I cried. That I fought you, but you still had me. Tell them you’ve planted your seed.”
“It’ll become apparent very quickly that I haven’t,” Feyd replies, and he fights the odd urge to laugh.
“If it gets that far, then we’ll make something up. We’ll tell them it won’t take. I’m deficient.”
“If it gets that far?” Feyd-Rautha pries.
Atreides does not answer that. He simply returns his gaze, a cold fury in those green eyes that makes Feyd want to shudder. “If it gets that far,” he repeats.
The only warmth of the boy’s touch that Feyd had felt that day was the ceremonial join of their hands during the wedding. They had not kissed. They had not embraced. They had not fallen into bed like was planned for them. Atreides tucks himself tight against the edge of the mattress and sleeps with his back to Feyd that night, and Feyd, feeling what might as well be miles of distance between them, only watches.
The next day, two slave girls strip their bed and hold up the bottom sheet, smeared convincingly with a shock of Atreides’ blood. The two of them watch, standing side by side but resolutely not touching; Atreides’ face is turned down, as though ashamed, but from this angle Feyd-Rautha can see the steel in his eyes. Whatever this is, it’s part of his act.
The slave girls turn to Feyd. He gives them one quick, stiff nod. That’s all they need.
-
His uncle sees him later. Feyd stands before him as he lounges, corpulent, across a chaise - one hand on his spice pipe, the other petting through the hair of his new pleasure slave.
It seems the Baron has taken a liking to this one. The boy is young and thin and waifish, with shockingly green eyes and a head of soft brown curls. The boy is drugged, but Feyd-Rautha can see the deep, desperate sadness in those eyes.
“You’ve done your duty, I’ve been told,” his uncle says. His voice is thick, rasping.
“Yes, uncle,” Feyd answers stiffly. The high neck of his collared robe is stiflingly hot. The slave boy stares up at him, blank, desolate. Feyd doesn’t even know if he is truly even seeing him.
His uncle takes a drag on his pipe, filling his lungs with spice. Feyd watches as he expels the smoke. “You do realise this is a great honour, don’t you, my dear?”
“I — ” Feyd stops. He isn’t sure what he was going to say, whether he’d claim that honour as his own or reject it.
“Yes, a great honour. One that I see you’re about ready to squander.” His uncle looks at him, beady eyes stern and knowing. “Don’t think I’m a fool, Feyd. The boy has a perfectly good cunt. Make use of it.”
The unsaid rings loud through the room.
Or someone else will.
-
Feyd doesn’t mention the outcome of his meeting with his uncle to Atreides that night. They lay at opposite ends of the bed again, but this time Atreides faces him; Feyd’s eyes trace the harsh line that the shadows leave on his face, and he admires the heavy frown that hangs on his brow.
“What did the Baron want of you?” Atreides asks him, his voice barely a whisper.
“I’m sure you could guess.” Feyd shifts under the shared duvet. “We’ll talk in the morning, Atreides.”
“Paul,” he murmurs. “My name is Paul.”
“Paul,” Feyd repeats. He likes how it feels to say.
They sleep facing each other, still miles apart.
-
Breakfast is brought to them and served in their chambers. They are being encouraged to spend as much time as possible here, together, alone in their rooms — a honeymoon period of sorts. Feyd knows that his uncle and those witches hope they’ll spend the entire week in bed.
He imagines it for a moment. Pressing his boy bride hard into the mattress, hand circling the narrow column of his throat, fucking mercilessly into that thin body that had never held another. He’d be warm. He might cry out to Feyd-Rautha — for it to stop, for him to go faster, Feyd can’t decide which when both options fill him with such desire. Atreides has pretty green eyes, just like his uncle’s new slave, but they are not desolate and despondent like that boy’s; they’re hot and imperious. Feyd likes him better when he’s defiant. Maybe he wouldn’t even beg to not be fucked. Maybe he’s above that. That idea pleases Feyd, too.
Atreides — Paul — picks at his food, eats slowly and delicately. He takes small, measured bites, swallows each one before taking the next. Feyd finds he enjoys watching him.
“Tell me what you spoke with your uncle about yesterday,” Paul says.
Feyd breathes in. “He questioned me on our consummation.”
“Yes,” Paul nods. “I thought so. And what did you say?”
“I told him we’d done it. But he didn’t believe me.”
Paul’s eyes shoot up to Feyd, away from his plate. “How do you know?”
“He told me as much. He knows we haven’t consummated our marriage. How am I supposed to — ”
“Next time you lie to him,” Paul spits. “He’s no Truthsayer. You lie, and lie well, and keep lying until…”
He trails off then, hands falling limply to the table.
“You’re my property,” Feyd tells him. “I ought to just take you.”
“Then why don’t you,” says Paul.
The first thing Feyd thinks is because I am better than that. It rings false in his mind. It’s not beneath him to use force to take what he wants. It never has been. Even sex.
Then he thinks because I have no desire for you. That, too, is a falsehood; Feyd-Rautha knows he has been set aflame by the Atreides boy. His insubmissive stares, the petulant tilt of his sharp chin, his thick, dark hair and strong brows and pretty thin lips — Feyd desires all of it.
He lands on the truth, eventually.
Because at some point you will want it. I’ll make you want it. And maybe that will be far more cruel than taking it from you by force.
-
Paul sleeps, and Feyd keeps his hands to himself.
You could take him so easily, his mind tells him, in a voice that rasps like his uncle’s. You could take him now, and no one would even fault you for it.
He isn’t even sure why he doesn’t do it.
Maybe he sees Paul Atreides, asleep and vulnerable in the bed of someone who he knows has lust for him but hopes nonetheless that he’ll be spared from it, and it strikes a chord within him — maybe he is affording Paul a kindness that has never been afforded to him.
Feyd was once smaller and weaker than someone. He was once at another’s mercy. And they had none for him.
Paul sleeps soundly, untouched.
-
When a month passes, and Paul is still without child, the Baron sends for doctors to check over both his nephew and the Atreides boy bride. Separately.
“He’s virile, my Baron,” the doctor confirms. Feyd-Rautha scowls and wishes ill on him, on everyone in this room. “There must be other reasons why it won’t take.”
“The boy, then,” says his uncle. The word boy sets his jowls flapping; he grows more grotesque by the day. “He must be interfering. Bene Gesserit witches can kill the child in their womb if they so wish. If Feyd had bothered to put the child there in the first place.”
Feyd bristles, bites his tongue, but the doctor speaks for him — “There’s evidence of it, my Baron. Of the…act of consummation. We examined the Atreides and found signs — internal abrasions, caused by penetration — ”
“You touched him,” Feyd hisses, his eyes going wide. “You’ve been inside him — !”
“Calm yourself, Feyd,” his uncle commands.
They have touched Paul. He shows signs of having been fucked. Feyd’s head spins. He wants to punch something. He wants to throw up.
When they let him go, Feyd-Rautha stumbles back to his quarters where he finds the Atreides, sitting on the bed, atop the sheets with his legs tucked to his chest, as though he’d suffered a great violation.
“Feyd-Rautha,” Paul says. He looks hopeful, perhaps ready to share in the humiliation of the breach of privacy they’d both just suffered, but Feyd ignores him, staggers close and seizes his shoulders and forces him to their headboard — Paul baulks, tries to shake free but can’t — “Feyd, what, wait, what’s wrong with you — ”
“Has someone fucked you?” Feyd demands of him. He knows he must look wild - black teeth bared, eyes bulging from his head, vein ticking in his jaw like it’s fit to burst — but he cannot even begin to care about that right now. “The doctor said you show signs of penetration — they’ve been inside you, who else has been inside you?”
“No one,” Paul gasps, fighting against his hold, “no one has — not you, not anyone! Feyd, let me go.”
“You’re lying to me,” Feyd snarls. He tightens his grip, the urge to tear Paul’s throat out with his teeth striking him so violently that he almost complies on instinct — Feyd-Rautha can get inside him another way, can make him bleed elsewhere —
“Let me go,” Paul says in that deep, haunted, many-voiced way, and Feyd has released him before the words even compute.
Feyd has heard that voice once before, when Paul had forced a soldier from their room one night. It’s different hearing it directed at him. The sound makes a physical impression on him — even when his wits are gathered once more, Feyd’s hands are still trembling.
Paul smooths down the crease in his shirt that Feyd had left.
“The only one who’s been inside me is me, ” Paul says quietly. “I’ve touched myself. Too roughly.”
“You — ” Feyd gapes at him, mouth dry. “You’ve done this to yourself.”
“Yes,” Paul admits. He can’t meet Feyd’s eyes.
“When?”
“When I’ve been bathing. When you’ve been away and I’ve not been permitted to join you.” Paul breathes in deeply. “I have my needs. I’ll see to them however I see fit.”
“If you have need of it, then I’ll take you myself,” Feyd-Rautha growls. “Let my cock satisfy you.”
“You will not,” Paul says. “You’ll not come near me.”
“You long to be fucked, so I’ll fuck you, and we’ll fulfil our duty while we’re at it.” Feyd says it so simply. It should be simple.
He expects Paul to reject him again. He hopes Paul will accept him. But what Paul does instead is more confusing, and maybe more interesting.
“Tell me how you’d do it,” he demands.
Feyd raises the bare ridge of his brow at him. “How — ”
“How you’d fuck me, if I allowed it,” Paul says. “Tell me. And I’ll consider it.”
Feyd stares at him. He swallows. He hasn’t had to use words for sex before. When he has wanted it, he has taken it, and it has happened; or otherwise, things have been done to him and he has not been expected to speak of them, neither before nor after. It’s hard to ascribe language to the act he wants to perform. He simply wants.
“In our bed,” he begins.
“Yes?” Paul prompts him.
Feyd clears his throat. “I would take your wrists in my hands and hold them down while I fuck you. We’d — still have our clothes on. Most of them.”
Paul frowns, the skin between his eyebrows pinching. “No. Start from the beginning. Walk me through it.”
“Walk you through it?”
“I’ve not done it before. Tell me how you’d start.”
Feyd bites his lip, and stops the instant he realises how childish it must make him look. “I would kiss you,” he says slowly. “We haven’t done that yet.”
“How would you kiss me, Feyd-Rautha?” Paul asks.
Feyd isn’t sure why they’re whispering. He takes a step closer, but Paul only retreats another step, maintaining the distance between them.
“I bite when I kiss,” Feyd explains.
Paul nods, says nothing. So Feyd continues.
“I’d put my hands in your hair. I’ve not fucked someone with hair before. Does it feel good to have it pulled?”
“It might do,” Paul breathes. Feyd’s hands feel cold and empty. He wants to grab the hair at Paul’s nape, to pull him in close, show him how it feels. He likes to think Paul would enjoy it. He hopes that when Paul wants it, he wants it rough.
Another step forward. Paul matches him, steps back.
“I’d push you on the bed and pull your pants down. Get to the part I want,” Feyd continues.
“What part is that?” Paul is staring at him, expression insolent, though his face has started to pinken deliciously.
“Your cunt. You’re untouched by another man, aren’t you?” His mouth is filling with saliva. God, he’s ravenous for this boy. “My cock is big. I’ll show it to you. After you’ve had that, you’ll want for nothing else. Your fingers will never satisfy you again after I’ve been inside you.”
“What’s a big cock worth if you don’t use it well?” Paul shoots back.
“I’ll use it well. I’ll fuck you stupid. You’ll be drooling on it before long.” Paul licks his lips. There, Feyd thinks. Paul is enticed. He goes in for the kill. “I’ll fuck you for hours and pump you full of me. I’m good with my hands, too, and my mouth — I’ll make you come again and again and again until you want to beg for it to stop. You don’t even know how good it can feel, do you? I’ll show you.”
Paul’s mouth trembles over a long, deep exhale. Feyd sees his eyes — wide with desire, cloudy.
He wants it, Feyd thinks.
He takes another step. When Paul doesn’t retreat, he takes another, and presses their fronts together, strong and warm and wanting. They both realise at the same time that Feyd has grown hard.
“No,” says Paul weakly.
“You want me,” Feyd breathes.
Paul squeezes his eyes shut, his hands finding Feyd’s chest and he shoves with shocking force. Feyd stumbles, caught unawares, mind slow and stupid with lust.
“I said no,” repeats Paul.
“You said you’d consider it,” Feyd says dimly.
“I did. And my answer is no.”
Feyd watches him stalk past, the tips of his ears burning red; his shoulders are unnaturally square as he walks into the bathroom and locks himself inside. After a moment, Feyd hears the sound of a bath being drawn, and it doesn’t take long for him to imagine what Paul might be doing in there.
He could count this as a victory, as progress made between the two of them. But his cock still hasn’t been inside Paul. He hasn’t won yet.