Author's note: This was written by two people in the format of an RP. It has been converted to a format that allows more fluidity between the characters. There will be several chapters uploaded. Though this mainly revolves around Axis and Rhys, other Teahouse characters are also included in the story. One thing you will notice is that Axis knows that Rhys is engaged. This was a predetermined factor of the RP, and not a mismanagement on the part of chronology of the actual comic. It comes into play later.

Enjoy!

Carriage wheels were always rolling along the cobblestone road outside the Teahouse. It was the sound of upperclass Ivore. The round, befitted stones against grooved and burnished wood; it was the musical accompaniment to the arrival of clients to the most discreet brothel. It was the sound the courtesans that resided there heard day after day. Squeaky wheels, ones that clacked in a rhythmic pattern, ones that mumbled and bumbled over the street. Some carriages rolled on by. Some wheels stopped. These particular wheels that approached the stretch of sidewalk outside the Teahouse's front entrance simply glided.

Axis, whore extraordinaire, was walking through the foyer just as the carriage door slammed outside. He looked to the front door and then to the path that would, inevitably, take him to the kitchen. It was so close, yet so far. He hoped to God someone else was around to open the door to whoever was out there, because he was hungry. It was that uncomfortable sort of hungry, too, the hollow kind that made every growl echo around in the empty pit he called a stomach. Well, fuck; no one else was around.

Bare feet padded over the marble floor and, soon enough, the door was opened to the Teahouse patron. Axis's stomach flipped, but he blamed it on the sandwich he'd been imagining. "You selling something?" the whore asked, a smirk somewhere between arrogant and mean on his face. "We're not interested." He leaned against the door, making it clear the other man would have to go through him to get inside.

Rhys didn't miss a beat. "Last time I checked, you were the one selling something."

Axis couldn't exactly deny that.

"Come on, I spoke to Atros yesterday, and I've got you until this time tomorrow." Rhys jerked his thumb toward the carriage. "Do you need to go get shoes or something? Hurry up."

"...You what?" This was all processing very slowly. Axis stuck his head out of the door to peer at the waiting carriage. There was a door open and waiting, no doubt, for the two of them to climb in. "The hell is this?" he demanded, though his tone was more of shock than anything else. "Why didn't anyone tell me I was going on a field trip today?" Now he was definitely suspicious. And, what the fuck, a little angry. Maybe he'd had other plans that day! Plans that involved a sandwich.

Rhys hadn't moved from the doorway where he was leaning with his obnoxious blue hair and obnoxious smile and obnoxious way of not even flinching at the warning signs that all pointed to Axis being about three seconds from turning right back around and leaving him out there. "I don't know why," he said. "Maybe Atros expects you to obey without question?"

The whore shot Rhys a scowl over his shoulder as he shuffled to a nearby closet and slipped his feet into some shoes. He grabbed a jacket, too, and slung it over one shoulder. Rather than saying something else, Axis expressed his anger through the way he stomped over the threshold and slammed the door behind him, the thing rattling on its hinges. A few more of those stomping steps got him to the carriage, and he was clumsy as he clambered in.

The carriage was lavish. Decadent. It practically fucking smelled like money. More accurately, it smelled like expensive cigarettes and pruned, fine leather. Axis narrowed his eyes, surveyed his new surroundings as Rhys climbed in after him. "Fuck. Atros should charge you more. You've got it." A less-than-graceful hand slid over the seat of the carriage underneath Axis, and it looked a little out of place there. "And you'd pay it for me," he added, shifting his gaze back to the other man.

"I already did pay more for you," Rhys said as he settled into his own seat across from Axis. "At least this outing. I understand it's rare that courtesans are allowed out of the Teahouse without escorts. But I got my way." A short pause. "I want you to guess what I have planned for this evening."

Axis scoffed and threw his coat to the side, lifting his arms and resting them on the back of the carriage seat. "I'm not gonna play a fucking guessing game. I don't care how much you paid for me." The carriage rolled away from Teahouse, started its journey to wherever they were headed. The whore was wary, to say the least. He felt like a fish out of water outside of the Teahouse, because Rhys was right. It was rare he ever left the place. And why should he? He had everything he needed right in one place: food and a bed. And sometimes beer. Unless wherever they were going was a house made of mattresses and furnished in cake, Axis decided he'd remain unimpressed.

"Well, then. I suppose you'll find out in due time," Rhys replied, and Axis tried not to watch too closely as Rhys lifted the curtain of the carriage window. You know, if someone had asked him right then, he would have said that the sun hitting the other man's blue hair looked fucking ugly. And he would have said it with too much conviction, so much that it'd be obvious what he really thought.

Axis slumped in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest like a petulant child. "I hate surprises," he muttered. Despite having refused to play the guessing game, he continued. "You gonna take me to some secluded spot so we can fuck in your carriage?"

"I'd rather not tear up the carriage," Rhys said. His blue-eyed gaze went to Axis's feet. "And I don't want your shoes on the cushions."

Well, if anything would have guaranteed Axis kicking up his feet and plopping them right on the cushioned seat across from it, those words were it. The carriage went over a particularly large bump, and Axis, without the proper footing, was in danger of falling on his ass. It would be worth it, though, if he did. He kept his feet resolutely in place. "This whole thing is weirding me out. And I don't get why you have to be so fucking mysterious about it."

In reply, Rhys shoved Axis's feet off the cushion and back onto the floor. They landed heavily; obviously Axis had been putting all his weight into keeping them there on the cushion. The whore scowled a scowl to end all scowls.

Rhys tone might have seemed sympathetic to some, but Axis recognized mocking when he heard it. "No one has ever wanted to take you out of the Teahouse before?" A cluck of his tongue had Axis's already dark expression turn even nastier until there was practically a rain cloud hovering over his brow. "My, you must really enjoy pissing off your customers."

Axis grunted. "Shut up." Oh, that ever-eloquent whore. Rather than putting his feet back on the cushion, Axis kicked his shoes off and swung rather dirty feet up into Rhys's lap, just to be annoying. It was either his feet on the cushion or his feet in the other man's lap, is what that gesture said. "I wouldn't mind some of my other clients taking me out," he said. "You're just being creepy as hell."

The plan to make Rhys miserable seemed to backfire, then. Instead of shoving Axis's feet away like the whore had expected, Rhys plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and dropped it over one of Axis's feet, then took that foot in his hands. Axis almost jerked his foot out of that grip, to fulfil his villainous and long-thought-out scheme to make this trip as unpleasant for Rhys as possible, but... well, it felt good. Though Axis was wont to deny himself things that felt good where Rhys was concerned, this he let slide. For now.

The other man seemed concentrated in his work as he replied. "How am I being creepy?" He hit a particular spot that had Axis sinking just a little into his seat. "I'm simply taking you to my villa for the day. There's nothing odd about that, aside from the fact that you are, indeed, the last person I'd consider good company."

"How're you being creepy? You just came and kidnapped me and you're taking me to- wait, villa?" That was when the feet came flying out of Rhys's lap to land, again, on the carriage floor with a dull thump. Axis leaned forward to look at the window Rhys had glanced out of before, shoving the curtain aside and studying the passing scenery. "You have a fucking villa?"

The chuckle that sounded in Axis's ear sent a shiver down his spine. He hated it, he told himself. To, perhaps, cover that (and his excitement at the prospect of a villa) up, he threw himself back into his seat and kicked his feet up onto the cushion again.

"What, you didn't think I could afford a villa?" Rhys asked, the chuckle still in his voice. "For the record," he added with pointed look, "it's not kidnapping if I pay for you."

"Fuck if I know what you can afford," Axis snapped. He wasn't the man's goddamn bookkeeper. "Maybe I like to think you're going bankrupt, coming back to meet week after week." There was a sneer in his voice. He paused, another thought came to him, made him smirk. "Does your bride-to-be know about this villa? Or is it your dirty little secret?"

Apparently more concerned with the upholstery than anything else, Rhys grabbed Axis's feet and put them in his lap again. "She knows about the villa, but she is not there at the moment." Axis didn't like the way those blue eyes were looking at him, then. Sort of haughty. At least, that was what he saw. "And I assure you, if I were going bankrupt, I'd not spent my last dimes on the likes of you."

Yeah fucking right. Axis was so sure of the contrary that the comment barely made him bat an eyelash. "Doesn't matter," he said, forcing one of his feet right between Rhys's legs. "You'll have plenty of money when you marry your pair of tits and you can spend it all on me." Axis rolled his ankle forward, pressed his foot gently against the other man's groin. "You can't fucking get enough of me." The fact that they were a carriage rolling over slightly bumpy terrain made this maneuver a little complicated, but Axis managed. Why did part of him like the idea of being some perverse secret to a married Rhys? Though there was some part of him, some very small part of him hidden in the recesses of God only knew where, that couldn't quite swallow the idea of the man being married at all.

Axis watched as Rhys leaned back and twisted that pretty face into an annoyingly attractive and challenging expression. "You seem to be putting up less and less of a fight," he observed.

Not the confession that Axis had been looking for, but his own arrogance softened the blow. Maybe Rhys hadn't admitted to being unable to get enough of Axis, but that much was obvious. To him, at least. The foot between Rhys's legs pressed against the man's groin, started to move, to slowly slide over what was trapped inside those well-tailored pants. "You have me alone in your fucking carriage," Axis said, as if that was some kind of excuse for what he was doing to the other man. "If I struggle, who knows what you'll do?" The whore's golden gaze was intent on Rhys's face, looking for a reaction. "If you like it when I struggle, I can do that. You're paying for me." He was, of course, being sarcastic. Sure, Axis had to fuck Rhys because that was what he was paying for, but beyond that, Axis would do whatever the fuck he felt like. At least, that was what he told himself. The reaction Axis had been looking for in Rhys's expression didn't come, but the man's body reacted, instead. He was leaning back farther in his seat, pressing his hips forward against Axis's foot, rolling his hips to set his own pace. Axis's eyes flickered down to watch that movement, and the words Rhys spoke in reply were secondary.

"You struggle anyway. It wouldn't be any different than how things usually are." Too easily, the two fell into a rhythm, one that Axis had to force his gaze from. "I wish you always took my orders, though," Rhys continued. "Since you now acknowledge that I'm paying for you."

"Fuck that," Axis snapped immediately, though some of the bite in his voice was gone, lost in the back and forth happening between Rhys's legs. "You're paying for sex and you get sex. And if you didn't like it, you wouldn't come back." Case and point? This trip. An unsatisfied customer wouldn't have put in this kind of effort. "But here you are, taking me to your fucking villa."

"Consider it charity," Rhys returned. It was like that asshole knew just how to get under Axis's skin. The whore gave him an entirely unamused look at the word 'charity'. "I doubt you get out much anyway. Maybe that's why you're so unpleasant all the time."

Despite Axis's attitude, his foot was still moving, still rubbing against Rhys's groin, and the body underneath his foot was stirring. "I don't want your fucking charity," Axis drawled. He tried to ignore the fact that Rhys's response to his attentions was warming him, starting that slow coiling of arousal in his stomach. Even when Rhys was saying the things that hurt Axis's so very ample pride, the man managed to turn him on. How was that even possible? "You're hard," Axis said gracelessly. There was no seduction in his voice, no attempt at being sexy. He only stated a fact.

"And you are giving me a footjob. Your point?"

Axis didn't have a point. He rarely did. The whore gave no response, and Rhys continued.

"I have to wonder, though. You don't like charity, but you're perfect fine being a courtesan? I have to wonder if there's a reason for you ending up like this." The foot in Rhys's lap stopped moving. "I know little of who you are or where you came from."

Right, well, that was enough of that. Axis dropped his foot from Rhys's lap. "The hell does charity have to do with being a whore?" he bit out. "I work for the money I get." What, did Rhys think people just came in, looked at him, and threw money at him? No. He had a job to do and he fucking did it. "Only reason I have for ending up like this," Axis added, "is that I like to fuck and I'm good at it." That was all Rhys was going to get from him, and whether or not it was actually the truth, the other man would never know. Axis and Rhys weren't going to be friends. This wasn't a Goddamn counseling session. So that sort of information was going to remain confidential.

They'd been in the carriage for what seemed like a long time. Surely they'd left the city behind them at this point. "When the fuck are we getting there?" Axis asked, making sure to be needlessly obnoxious about it. "My ass hurts from the ride."

Rhys pushed aside the curtain and looked out the window again. It revealed a sliver of glass and a fresh faucet of light that fell into the man's lap, remarkably close to where Axis' foot had been only moments earlier. From what the courtesan could see where he was sitting, they were traveling a road in a countryside far removed from the over-populated city. "Put your shoes back on before we get out," was the answer Axis got, and he figured they must have been close. Had he seen a house somewhere among all that farmland?

The whore, of course, made a show of putting his shoes back on, as if it was the most difficult task in the entire world. "Who the fuck cares if I have shoes on?" he grumbled, making sure to throw his weight around the carriage. Now that he had them back on, he heaved a sigh and threw himself back in the seat. "Can I get out of this Goddamn carriage already?" Such a child, complaining all the way.

"My servants will see. And I want you to have shoes on."

Like that was supposed to be some kind of good reason. Axis scoffed, shoved past Rhys to get out of the carriage as it glided to a stop. When his feet hit the ground, he shifted his gaze to survey his surroundings. The air there was clean and fresh, somehow less thick than the air at the Teahouse, even in their sun-filled courtyard. The countryside was beautiful, breathtaking, certainly something Axis hadn't properly seen in a while. It was far-removed from everything, and a row of cypress shaded the walkway up to the villa itself. They were trimmed fussily into tall figures, touching the clear blue sky, a sky bracketed only by the scribbled line of mountains on the horizon. No tall buildings, no walls.

"Well..." Rhys had gotten out of the carriage behind Axis. The whore could feel him at his back. "Do you like it?"