A/N: Hey all! After reading over chapter 2, I realized that the end was not up to my usual snuff. So...I've rewritten bits n' pieces for your reading enjoyment! So...yes. 'S about it.

Herr Disclaimer:I own nothing here. Maybe the laptop I'm typing it on, but other than that, nope.

Jarlaxle sighed once, draping his colorful cape over a mahogany chair in the mercenaries' shared apartment in Heliogabalus. He sank down onto his bed, removing his gargantuan purple hat and setting it on his lap. A shaky exhale gusted from him as he ran a hand over his head, trying to banish the traumatizing memories that lay therein. However, it was to no avail- the hideous, lisping voice of the most terrifying creature on the face of Faerun echoed in his thoughts, permeating all his delightful thoughts of world domination and mad orgies.

The voice of Old Greg.

Jarlaxle shook himself once, rising to his feet in one fluid motion. There was only one thing that he could do in such a situation- utilize the fine marble bathtub sitting in the bathroom.

He strutted into the room, casually peeling off clothing as he went, whistling a tune as he did so. The notes in his tone seemed to ring long after they had passed his lips, almost visibly hanging in the air. As he whistled, the decorative runes bordering the rim of the tub began to glow with a blue light. Jarlaxle grinned through the tune, and just as abruptly as he had begun, he ceased his keening. The tub immediately began to fill with steaming water, shining all around the room in the light of the sunset. Sighing profoundly, Jarlaxle slid into the water, leaning back against the rim of the tub, closing his eyes.

Ah, yes…bliss.

"I'm Old Greg."

At this proclamation, Jarlaxle's eyes snapped open, his legs attempting to force him upright in a somewhat ungainly fashion.

"AAARRGH!"

"I'm Old Greg!"

Jarlaxle shrank against the far rim of the tub in what a lesser man would label fear. Jarlaxle, however, later referred to it as, 'tactical distancing.'

"Why-? How-? I- AHEM! Good evening to you, Greg," Jarlaxle stammered, regarding the figure in front of him with open horror. It appeared that the deranged lich had foregone his eyesore of a frock in favor of…nothing. The scales present on the lich's body glittered evilly in the fading light, one falling into the frothy water every few minutes.

Jarlaxle swallowed once, pasting on a faint image of his usual cocky grin.

"Tell me, Greg, how in the deuce did you manage to find me?"

Greg's black eyes blinked once, dim red fires shining in their depths.

"Oh. I followed yer cape. Ya can see it flashing from m'tower. All th' colors."

There are very few times that Jarlaxle remembers when he actually considered taking the assassin's advice concerning his wardrobe. This, he found himself deciding, was one of them.

"I see-"

"You got them crazy colors- all swirlin' round in some kinda whirlpool; s' like when you've had a shoe full o' Bailey's and th' room spins- only real, yeah?"

Jarlaxle's eyebrows rose a quarter of an inch.

"That's…nice, Greg. It's not often that my effects are compared to the experience of intoxication."

The lich bobbed his head once, his overlarge mouth twisted dementedly in a disgusting parody of a smile.

"Yeah…so-so I had t'come and find ya. I figured I'd show my appreciation by comin' to ya in my birthday suit."

Jarlaxle suddenly found himself incapable of moving his limbs, the sheer chill of utter doom crushing his nerves with a force equal to a two ton iron weight.

"Ah…ha. Yes. Well-"

"Can we have our time now?"

Jarlaxle's throat tightened.

"Greg…no,"Jarlaxle choked out, his voice one octave higher than usual.

A quizzical look crossed the lich's face as it cocked its dessicated head to the side.

"What d'you mean?"

"I mean no, Greg. No. The negation of 'yes.' A word expressing that an idea is undesirable. In every way," Jarlaxle blabbered, his arms shaking against the walls of the tub. The lich shook its head and fixed him with its unholy stare, slimy black orbs focusing on him with awful clarity.

A stare that promised eternal suffering and the smell of old tuna.

"But y'can't, now you've seen me."

"Yes, well, I didn't ask to see that, did I?"

The thing grins again, revealing its mossy teeth, one actually escaping from the lich's maw to land precariously close to Jarlaxle's knee.

"Yeah. Well, there's what yer say and what yer mean. See, Old Greg can tell yer to 'stop', but he really means, 'more, my fuzzy little man-peach.'"

The lich shakes its head again and slides forward in the tub. Jarlaxle found himself wishing that he'd pressed Kimmuriel a little harder to teach him how to phase through objects.

"Ya know me. And you've seen me. And you love me- I'm Old Greg!"

Jarlaxle groans once, his pain and exasperation apparent.

"Yes. I know."

The lich nods once, its bluish green hair splashing fetid water onto Jarlaxle's torso.

"Yeah. Y'know me. And ya love me." Gregg leaned forward, seaweed flipped coquettishly over one eye.
"That was our first date, hmm? Ya let me out, with your strong arms!"

Seizing what little courage he has left, Jarlaxle's hands clenched on the rim of the tub, steeling himself in the face of danger. The mercenary leader gave the lich across from him his sweetest grin- a tell tale sign to any who knew Jarlaxle well that the mercenary was either contemplating torturing the subject of said grin to the brink of insanity, or engaging it in back-breaking sex.

In this case, the situation called for the former.

"Greg…I consider myself a patient, forgiving, and extremely handsome man; this 'love' business, however, is beginning to get a bit…wearysome."

The lich fixed Jarlaxle with a murderous glare of its own.

"Well…maybe Old Greg'll have to deal with that. Maybe…I'll deal with it…like I dealt with Tiny Jenkins!" At this, the lich rummaged around briefly underwater, pulling the shrunken head of a blond man from under the surface. The eyes and mouth of the head had been stitched up in a haphazard way, but the general weal of the face's expression was that of complete and utter terror.

Jarlaxle's right eyebrow twitched.

"Ah. It's like that, then, is it?"

The lich, never taking its stygian eyes off of Jarlaxle's, nodded grimly.

"Yes sir. It is, sir."

Sometimes, Jarlaxle sincerely regretted the fact that one had to bathe without any kind of protection. He began to draw a symbol in the air that would vaporize Greg (and most of the furniture in the room), when he caught a slight movement near the door to the apartment.

Jarlaxle grinned charmingly, a cunning plan hatching in his mind.

"Yes…well…perhaps I wasn't thinking clearly, Greg. Perhaps now…in the bath…with the bubbles clinging to your," here Jarlaxle paused for a moment, fighting off the look of disgust that threatened to engulf his face, "your, ah, scales…Perhaps I could start our time."

Taking advantage of the lich's lapse in observation, Jarlaxle hung one hand over the side of the tub and gestured hurriedly in drow sign language, my hat. Get it. Now.

"You see, Greg," Jarlaxle continued, his voice rising in volume to mask the approaching footsteps of Artemis Entreri behind the somewhat unfortunate lich, "I was playing a game with you."

"Games?" The lich's eyes were fixed on Jarlaxle's, an emotion uncomfortably enough like raw lust playing through them.

"That's right Greg- games."

Artemis Entreri crept ever closer, silently amused at this morbid mockery of what he usually found Jarlaxle in the bath with. He raised his hand with the horrid eyesore that was Jarlaxle's hat. He raised one dark brow in question, to which the drow nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Love games?" Greg asked, inching closer to Jarlaxle, its eyes burning with primal desire.

"Naturally, " Jarlaxle smirked. Just as Greg leapt forward to claim his 'prize', the assassin ripped forth the extradimensional hole disguised as a cloth circle in Jarlaxle's hat, forcing it over Greg's head.

The horror from beyond the grave disappeared in a matter of seconds, with one agonized, "I'm Old Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeg!" echoing around the washroom.

Jarlaxle rose out of the tub and, without bothering to accept the towel the assassin was offering him, hugged Entreri to his chest.

"I…I thank you from the deepest recesses of my heart, Artemis. Let me just say right now, that if you were a woman-"

"Get off," the assassin snarled, planting one hand on Jarlaxle's chest and shoving him across the room. During his temporary flight, Jarlaxle managed to snatch one of the many towels stacked near the tub, wrapping it around his soggy form.

"- I'd make you my queen and seat you on top of a throne of opals and diamonds, worshipping you day and night."

Entreri's face crinkled into the most profoundly disgusted expression Jarlaxle had ever seen.

"Thank you, Jarlaxle. I'll be off now and attempt to dig out my mental eye with a spoon."

"Oh, you know you enjoy it, my friend," Jarlaxle laughed, tossing a wink Entreri's way.
Entreri snorted once and folded his arms.

"The idea of becoming a woman within a hundred-foot radius of you is one that truly tests the very limits of my sanity. Be grateful that I cannot look at you, elsewise you'd be dead where you puddle."

"Ah, and what a woman you'd make- one that would no doubt keep me on my toes."

A white numbing mist penetrated Entreri's mind at the elf's tone when speaking the otherwise innocent (well, not really innocent) statement.

"Mm. Yes. What a woman you would be. You know, I'm quite partial to the feisty female," the dark elf continued, throwing a wink that could only be described as lascivious.

"As is the case with your lichs?" Entreri returned, a cruel gleam in his mercilessly dark eyes.

Jarlaxle winced.

"Don't say that. Ever again."

A/N: So yeah. Thinking about a chapter 3, but nothing's happening yet. College has a strange tendency to suck up most of the time that I'm coherent. So...much love, thanks and cookies to all who've reviewed!

Adieu!