Celexes: Hello! So, this is my first time writing a fanfic in a while. First of, some warnings: There will be slash, of both the mxm and fxf variety. Of course, there will also be normal mxf romance as well. Sex scenes are NOT explicit, but since this is rated M there will still be adults themes. Most pairings are OCxOC, though there may be some with canon characters too. Anyway, enjoy reading and remember to review! Also this first chapter is sort of boring since it's just to introduce the characters. More action in the next.
"Finished yet boy?" the old man said as he walked up behind the boy to observe his progress.
"Almost there…" Nisei replied as he concentrated intently on the bottle in front of him. It sat on top of a small flame and was filled with a bubbling colourless liquid. The boy sniffed the contents and seemed to be satisfied with their scent. He doused the flame and used a pair of tongs to remove the bottle from its stand place it on an area of the table to cool. "All done, Doctor!" he said cheerily, watching as the liquid slowly began turning a livid red.
"You're getting better at this," the Doctor replied as he stroked his walrus-like moustache. He adjusted the small round spectacles on his head and peered closely at the bottle, then nodded, as if affirming his earlier comment about the boy's skill. "Though I'm not surprised. How long have you been here? Five, six years?"
"Seven. Started when I was eleven, now I'm eighteen," Nisei answered. "You need anything else, Doc?" The boy had begun cleaning up his equipment, carefully washing them in the nearby sink before placing them back in their appropriate cabinets. He cleaned up some of the Doctor's equipment as well, which seemed to have been haphazardly thrown about the place. Before Nisei and his half-sister, Aylian, had come along, the Doctor's lab had been one of the messiest places in the brothel. Now everything was placed in perfect order—stands in the corner, bottles in the left cabinet, ingredients in right colour-coded by their type and effects. The organization was mostly courtesy of his half-sister, though Nisei had helped as well. The Doctor was now rummaging around in the pockets of his white coat, obviously trying to find something he wanted to give to the boy. Nisei sometimes wondered how the old man had could find things, let alone make his potions in a timely manner, before the two siblings had come along.
"Aha!" the man cried, finally pulling out a small bottle that contained a pale golden liquid. He handed it to Nisei, who immediately smelled the pungent odor of overripe honey. The young apprentice tilted his head questioningly at the Doctor. "Doctor's special super-healthy mead additive!" the man said, as if that would answer all of the youth's questions. "Madame hates the taste of medicine, so I made that for her instead. Tastes like honey but has all the properties of a health potion. Anyway, go give that to her." The Doctor made a shooing motion at him and turned away, obviously intent to start on a new experiment. Nisei smiled and rolled his eyes before taking his leave of the laboratory.
Madame Esperon was the high elf owner of the brothel—a tall, thin, rather unfriendly woman with a constant look of disapproval on her face. Nisei remembered his mother once describing her as "Shrewd as a lawyer and money-hungry as a merchant". Despite her menacing appearance, Nisei was grateful to the woman. The boy and his half-sister's mother was once a worker at the brothel. When she had died, the pair had come to the brothel hoping for some sort of help. Normally, the children of whores could either take up their parents' line of work (assuming they were old enough), or find their own means of survival. The Doctor, however, had taken pity on the siblings and asked Madame if they could stay with him in his flat above the brothel, with Nisei being his new apprentice. Madame had grudgingly obliged and, despite the fact that she disliked children, had given Nisei and his sibling the same care and discipline as a grandmother would.
Nisei actually sometimes wondered if why the Doctor worked in the brothel. The prostitutes were certainly not his only clients, as Nisei was often sent off to deliver a batch of potions to some wealthy noble or merchant. Certainly, the Doctor had enough skill and money to buy and start his own shop. From what he'd heard from the other prostitutes, the Doctor had made some sort of promise to Madame a long time ago, and was now keeping to that promise. The exact details of the contract were unknown, however.
Nisei walked briskly down the stairs and into one of the hallways of the large building. The place was always deathly quiet in the mornings, as the brothel employees had been working all night and were now taking their rest. The building was located a bit out of the way in the Imperial City, and one would have to know their streets and alleyways quiet well in order to find it. It wasn't that prostitution was illegal in the empire, per se, but rather that most of their wealthy patrons did not want people seeing them walking into a whorehouse for a late night rendezvous.
The young man's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of yelling coming from somewhere down the hall. He followed the sound, eventually coming to the section of the building that contained all the rooms for its residents. The door to a room at the far end was open, and in it stood the Madame with her usual sour expression on her face. She was speaking to a young female Dunmer, who Nisei immediately recognized as one of the newest employees of the brothel. Nisei kneeled down and hid behind a corner. As a wood elf, he was naturally talented at sneaking and hiding in the shadows, and he often used this to his advantage by eavesdropping to find out about the various going-ons in the brothel. He couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but from their expressions it seemed the Dunmer girl obviously wanted something that Madame was not going to give her. They argue for a few more minutes before the Dunmer stopped and stomped away in an angry huff. Madame sighed and rubbed her temples, obviously not too happy about having an argument the first thing in the morning.
"Madame…?" Nisei asked tentatively, peeking out from around the corner. Madame Esperon looked up. She still had that dour expression on her face, though it was softer than the one she was giving the Dunmer.
"Ah, you must have the potion I requested?" Madame asked. Her voice was like the drum of an army drummer, commanding everyone to attention. Nisei nodded and made his way over to the woman and handed her the bottle he had been holding. She pocketed without even bothering to see if it was the corrected potion, her gaze now intently scrutinizing the boy who stood at least a head shorter than her. "You look like your mother," she commented in a very matter-of-fact tone. It was true, though—Nisei had inherited his mother's black hair and pale grey eyes, as well as her abnormally fair skin for a Bosmer. She has some Nord in her, I bet, he remembered the Doctor commenting once. The only hint of his father's lineage was the boy's aquiline nose, which spoke of good breeding on that side. Often, Aylian would tell him how jealous she was that he inherited most of mother's looks. Although she shared the same deep black hair, his sibling had gained more of the features of her Breton father than their shared mother.
Madame waved her hand to dismiss Nisei and closed the door as the stepped back inside her room. With his delivery service completed, the boy started walking back towards the Doctor's laboratory.
"Hey you," a silky voice called him from around the corner. The young man looked around confusedly, his eyes finally finding the source of the voice to be the young Dunmer he had seen arguing with Madame earlier. "You're the Doctor's apprentice right? You have that crippled half-sister?" the girl asked as she twirled a piece of her white hair. Nisei frowned. His sister was crippled, yes: Aylian was born without her arms due to a series of bad decisions made their mother had made while pregnant. But despite the birth defect, she was just functional and productive as everyone else (if not more productive, as Nisei liked to think). She was three years older than he was, and had taken care of him since he was born. Nisei certainly did notappreciate the comment about her being "crippled".
"Yes, that's me, and the name's Nisei," he replied, deciding it best not to mention his dislike of her vocabulary and start a fight.
The Dunmer seemed not seem to notice the acidity in his tone. "Name's Camael. I have a proposition for you. You don't make a lot of money working for the Doctor, right?" she said as she leaned back against a wall. Nisei didn't want to admit it, but it was true—his salary was pretty pure, and nearly all of it went into savings in case of an emergency. He nodded silently in answer to her question. A sly, calculating smirk crossed the dark elf's face. The woman sauntered closer to Nisei. For the first time, he noticed how revealing her clothes were. She wore a pale grey robe that revealed a large expanse of chest and almost all of her legs. Really, the only thing it seemed to cover was her stomach. She was probably a year or two younger than him, but her demeanor and outfit made her seem a decade older. "I have a little…business opportunity for you," Camael purred. She reached into the pocket of her robe and produced a little sack that jingled with the sound of coins inside. "Five hundred gold coins, if you could perform a quick errand for me. That's more than you probably make in a month, right?"
Nisei's eyes focused intently on the bag. Five hundred was a lot of coins, maybe even enough for him to buy and start his own alchemy shop so that he and his sister could finally move out of the brothel. Still, he didn't like that sound of her "quick errand". "What do you need me to do?" he asked.
Camael let out a screechy sounding laugh. "Oh, nothing much. I just have a…an item that I ordered, and I need someone to pick it up for me. I would get it myself, you see, but Madame wants me here since I'm new and need to get used to the house. You have to be careful that Madame doesn't see you with it, though," she said. Nisei narrowed his eyes. He could already tell that whatever this "item" that she wanted him to pick up was, it definitely wasn't legal. Could it be skooma? But there were plenty of prostitutes who used skooma, and Madame didn't seem to care as long as they did it in private. He knew accepting this offer was not a good idea, but five hundred coins…
"When do need it picked up?" he asked.
She grinned. "As soon as possible. I have a contact in the market district; they're having a fair today, he should be a Khajit in blue robes. You'll get your money after I get my item. Oh, and try to be careful. It's a very delicate item."
Nisei's frown deepened. A little voice in the back of his mind told him that he should not be agreeing to this, that is was a bad, bad idea. But he needed that money. Besides, this girl was sixteen—her 'item' was probably no worse than a few bottles of Skooma. "Fine," the boy answered. Camael nodded in approval and then briskly made her way past Nisei. The young man stood there for a few seconds and contemplated what sort of trouble he had just agreed to. Can't get out of it now, he thought to himself. He let out a sigh, and began heading towards the brothel's exit.