*
Charismatic, intelligent, skilled, and above all pacifistic, the general stands firmly in the way of their goals, and so he must be removed, albeit as delicately as possible. An assassination would drum up sympathy for the man's cause and prove counterproductive in the long run. They have been over that countless times, and they do not go over it again now; Father simply answers Envy's suggestion with the firm no he usually reserves for Gluttony, and Envy sulks and drifts back into the bored inattention he usually reserves for the same. The man, this general, champions a wave of faddish anti-war thinking that could set their plans back years. The removal of his person will do nothing to lessen the impact of his words. No. This calls for a much more thorough annihilation of his place in human society.It's in a place far removed from this society that they meet now. Cogs turn slowly in their directions as far as the eye can see, like huge clanking orreries. Envy doesn't know or care what most of them do. Pipes covered with dust and flecks of caulk hump up out of the sea of metal and concrete and then vanish again below it into mystery; it's on one of these that Envy sits, slouched over onto his own knees, brushing dust off of his calf with the palm of his hand and then off the palm of his hand back onto his calf. The pipe suddenly comes to life beneath him with a roar of liquid, startling him and drowning out the sound of Lust's approaching footsteps.
"Nothing," she says, above the din, and Father lifts his head to regard her. He looks weary.
"Again?"
"Absolutely nothing. The man's a homosexual—"
"He's not," interrupts Greed, and he sounds like the voice of disinterested experience, and it's clear that no more needs to be said about his own success on this mission.
"Then he's a eunuch! What does it matter?" She's on a short fuse, annoyed with her failure to bring this pillar of society to ruin—rare and amusing treats for Envy, both her apparent uselessness and her flash of anger. He's reminded of Father's increasingly frequent hints about the birth of Wrath, how Wrath will be something new and very special, and then Envy is seized with his own burst of irritation at that thought and turns his attentions back to Lust's incompetence. He offers his input.
"Losing your touch, you old hag? Is that a wrinkle I spy—"
Her nail punctures the pipe with explosive force a bare inch from Envy's leg; the pipe expels a jet of warm, highly viscous fluid onto his feet, drenching them, gluing them to the floor, and Envy stands and sends up crackles of sharp ozone-smell from his skin as he begins to shift forms. "Bitch—"
"Children." And Father seals up the argument with one soft word, just as he seals up the pipe with not even a flick of his wrist, without even turning to see where the damage was done. His children listen in silence. Only Greed does not look up with rapt attention. "Children. Do not subject your own father to petty squabbles. It saddens me to see you act this way. Be happy, for the end of this predicament is at hand."
"Father," Lust asks, her wrath forgotten, "what must we do?"
They're left in suspense as he rises from his chair, slowly, the white back of a swan unfolding its great wings.
"We do not need to corrupt this man if we want to break their trust in him. We need only for them to see that he is corrupt."
When he turns, his eyes fall upon Envy.
*
Envy first visits the brothel on a breezy spring afternoon, and he smiles amiably at every single person he passes on the street, smiles with General Griffin's lined, still-handsome face. He walks proudly and conspicuously inside, sizes up the giggling girls on display—for sale—in the lobby, winks at those who meet his gaze, and simply walks out again after ten minutes of consideration.They wait.
Nothing comes of it. Five days later, there's been not a peep in any newspaper of what dozens of people must surely have witnessed. Envy passes the time impersonating a formerly respected merchant they had killed weeks earlier. On the afternoon of the fifth day since his trip to the whorehouse, he's gift-wrapping a very real and very loaded gun he's just sold as a toy to a very young child, and all at once he realizes his mistake; he is so used to hiding in plain sight that he's done it this time without even realizing it. What could be less suspicious than a beloved public figure taking a stroll in broad daylight? Why did he not realize? Envy fumbles, drops the gun, accidentally puts a bullet hole in the neighboring fruit stand; when the authorities arrive to calm the outbreak of violent accusation along that block of the market, they take no notice of the skinny stray dog slipping between their legs and away from the commotion.
*
The second time Envy visits the brothel, he goes at night, wearing a cloak and General Griffin's looks. He darts through the streets with a distinct, hurried discomfort, a fish struggling upstream. He does not make eye contact with the passersby, but he feels upon his back the suspicious eyes of the midnight throngs, and he smiles inside himself. They stop and turn, watch and whisper as he goes by; he is sad to be rid of them when he stumbles across the threshold of the brothel, but there are witnesses here too, women who fall silent and take him in with eyes that will remember, this time, who exactly paid them a late-night visit.It hits him suddenly that there is no helping it. This will be no mere ten-minute flirtation.
Envy shrugs off his cloak with believable hesitance, lets his gaze dart from girl to girl and linger on one in particular. He chooses her at random. They are all equally vapid and unattractive, all equally human, and Envy thinks of stinking pens of sows ripe for slaughter. He deliberately takes in her curves. A flush begins in her cheeks and creeps clear down her chest, rosy under white, white skin; he thinks of carving knives and of draining that blood into a hot pool at her feet.
His cloak is taken by the madam, who is pushing fifty and has the experience, or at least the good business sense, to appear unsurprised at her newest patron.
"Good evening, General Griffin. Our finest room?" She recognizes him; who wouldn't?
Envy's not sure what comes next. No matter; it's the general's first visit too. "Money is no issue," he croaks stupidly, locking eyes with the blushing young prostitute. Young indeed; she can't be more than fifteen. She could be classmates with General Griffin's daughter. Envy knows he's chosen well. But this girl too is a professional, already rallying enough to give him a sultry wink as she gets to her feet and ascends the half-hidden staircase at the far end of the lobby. She takes the stairs slowly, flexing and stretching her legs, and the message is clear: I'll be waiting for you.
*
It is a fine room, shielded from society in its own lush way; the window is large, but its thick velvet trappings form a solid barrier between the world inside this mock house and the world beyond. Behind them, the window offers a panoramic view of nothing of interest. Patches of overgrown wild grass simply march off into the distance until they touch the sky, meeting no resistance. Everything you could want is inside, not out here it says. Why not stay awhile? No one is out here to watch you. Nothing out here loves you.There is no roar of intricate pipework here, but Envy looks up from the task of unbuttoning his shirt at the unmistakable soft whisper of liquid. The girl is pouring two glasses of red wine; she smiles at him when she catches him watching. He ignores her.
The act of unbuttoning is presenting a problem. It takes Envy a few seconds and one very close call, thankfully unnoticed by the young prostitute, to remember that he can't simply will this clothing away as he does his own. The fabric scratches against his protruding potbelly as he fumbles with it, producing a feeling nearly as alien to him as the motions involved in pushing a button through a hole. All at once the girl's hands are on his—he hadn't even noticed her approaching—tugging them away and to his sides, and then skittering up his chest to work his shirt open. "Aw, baby," she coos; apparently she's taken his clumsiness for an attack of nerves. Envy bites his lip on his automatic reply, focusing instead on the way the brush of the rough fabric hardens his—General Griffin's—nipples. Geez, that's weird.
He considers, and not for the first time, simply killing her in this moment and escaping through the window into the boundless fields of nothing of interest below. But there would be no witnesses, no proof of the general's culpability.
And he's curious, sure.
The shirt slips away at last, and she kneels in front of him to work on his belt, face level with his navel. Envy wonders if he should have an erection by now; he figures it can't hurt and wills General Griffin's cock to harden with a moment of concentration. This part of the disguise is only an approximation, but it doesn't matter. If they knew what this bastard's dick looked like any better than I do, Envy thinks, I wouldn't be in this situation, would I? So here's to you, old man! If you're not going to use it—
But something wet flicks across the tip of his cock, which is weird, and he looks down to make eye contact with the hooker; she has one hand curled lightly around the shaft, difficult for Envy to see over the alien curve of General Griffin's belly, and is gazing up at him hopefully, her tongue poking out between her lips millimeters away from another soft lick.
Can I eat it? he thinks in Gluttony's voice, and he laughs, because really, everything about this is fucking hilarious.
Hurt flickers across her eyes. For an instant she's a child—not a professional—a weak-willed little child, fighting the urge to tear up at a playground insult. Envy watches her fight it down, a long-suppressed smirk finally stealing across his face, and to his surprise his erection throbs a little in her hand. If she feels it, she shows no sign. Her decision to try again is already made, a matter of pride and professionalism, most likely the product of intensive schooling by the madam. He imagines her bursting into tears of humiliation on the madam's broad, bare shoulder, distraught at her inability to satisfy; I can't even do this right! I'm worthless!
He licks his lips, unconsciously, and pushes his hips forward into her hand.
She takes the cue, wetting her lips and fitting them around the head of Envy's cock, darting her tongue back and forth to stroke him. The sensation is new and very pleasant, although he fails to see why Greed wastes so much energy in pursuing it. It's mostly wet, in a soft, slippery, hyper-aware way in which Envy is unused to thinking of wetness. Slowly the hooker slides her lips down along the shaft, working them against the skin, seeking out a vein with the tip of her tongue and tracing it. It's—nice.
"Hey," he says suddenly, and then pauses to inhale, his breath having gotten away from him somehow. "Hey, why do you do this? I mean, you're just a kid, right?"
She stops, obviously considering whether or not to reply. A nervous flush begins to spread across her cheeks again, and Envy places a hand on the back of her head to prevent her from pulling off to speak. "Keep going," he says. The roughness of his own voice surprises him.
She keeps going.
"A kid like you, doing something like this? That's pretty sad. I wonder what it's like, this job? No—forget the job. I wonder what it's like to have no other options?"
Envy's hand tightens in the girl's hair; the pressure forces her to take more of his cock into her mouth, which she does with expert ease, gathering saliva in her mouth and dragging her lips wetly up and down the shaft. His hips rock, briefly, into the slick heat.
"After all, if this is where you ended up, that must mean . . . you're not good at much else, are you? Not school, not trade . . . the only way you can please anyone is by sucking his cock! Am I right?"
The girl doesn't flinch. She closes her eyes, increases the suction of her mouth, bobs her head as freely as she can with Envy's hand holding her in place.
"In fact, you've—" And he loses his breath again, takes a moment to breathe hard through his nose, drags his fingers roughly through locks of soft brown hair without really realizing he's doing it. "—You've probably heard this before, haven't you? It sure looks like you're used to it. You probably wouldn't say anything back even if you could. So . . . you've accepted how worthless you are? That's great! After all, if you were anything more than—a collection of useful holes—maybe your family would actually give a shit that you're—"
And that's it; Envy can feel her lips quiver weakly around his erection, can hear her breathing become sharp and shaky. She's trying not to cry. His cock jolts with the realization, jolts again when he feels her fingernails sink into his hip—in anger or in some desperate attempt to ground herself, he doesn't know which, but it's so sweet, this poor slut's struggle to keep her composure with his cock in her mouth and strands of her hair snapping off in his balled fist. Envy would swear he could feel her mouth heat up with the blood that's rushed into her beet-red face. When he laughs it's breathless and eager, and he gives an insistent little thrust of his hips, because suddenly this hot slick feeling has become strangely urgent.
She begins moving again at that. Fast, because she wants it done with too; her hand quickens on Envy's shaft, fingers squeezing and pumping where her mouth can't comfortably reach; her mouth is slack and wet, and Envy watches his cock disappear in and out of it, helps it along with ragged thrusts. The girl brings up her other hand to cup his balls, ridiculous things, he'd always thought, he'd wished he could leave them out entirely, but of course that was out of the question, and now he was glad, so glad—
"Y-yeah—that's right, you disgusting little human bitch, this is all you're good for, isn't—it—what would Daddy think, or wouldn't he care either—i-if you can't please anyone else without getting on your knees, who's to say he's any different—"
The words come in a hot, whispered rush of breath, and Envy can't tell if she's listening until she chokes around him at last, furious, and her mouth and throat convulse with it and it's good and he comes into them, holding her in place with both fists until he's finished. She swallows more by necessity than choice. When he releases her, she pulls off of him hastily and dissolves into a coughing fit, her eyes red and raw-looking. Envy braces himself on the wall and sucks in sharp gasps of air, eyes squeezed shut, until he regains his composure.
Then he tucks General Griffin's softening cock back into his pants and smiles.
*
He settles the bill with the madam herself after she disappears into a back room with the raw-red-eyed girl for several minutes. The total is high enough that he expects he's being gotten at somehow, but he pays it without questioning it. It is General Griffin's first time making use of such an establishment, and money is no issue. That much Envy had not lied about.When they shake hands, the look she gives him is nothing like disturbed or scandalized. Nor is it exactly friendly. It's knowing. All at once Envy feels completely exposed. Who does this piece of shit think she is, looking at me that way? Just because I came in her useless little bitch's mouth, she thinks she knows something about me? She thinks she's actually worth something? He drops the madam's hand with a scowl; she smiles indulgently, as if to a naughty but slow child, and then Envy's hand is a blade at her stomach, sliding noiselessly through the fabric of her expensive gown, biting the skin and pressing—
"General," says a familiar voice behind him, and Envy lets his hand drop to his side, drawing only the thinnest stream of blood from the madam's belly. "General, it's time we were on our way." And it is. To let his temper get the better of him now could jeopardize the entire operation. He knows that. Shit.
He lets Lust lead him out of the brothel, which she inhabits even for these brief instants as if she's at home, drawing the attention of the entire lobby despite the careful neckline of her dress. After they've left, more than one of the clients asks to set up an appointment with her, but of course the madam knows nothing about the dark, mysterious woman who saved her life; she knows only that somehow, narrowly, she's lived another day to tell her story.
It hits the newspapers eight hours later.