"Love you." Kiss. "One of the chefs' kids died. Little girl. She was three."

Some day he will figure out how to bring people back to life and then Asher will never have to be sad about that little girl again—

Yep. He's in a magic frame of mind, all right.

Time for slow sweet sad snuggly sex?

Time for slow sweet sad snuggly sex!

His Asher, his beautiful precious Asher, is sad about this awful disease—and it's all tied up in the terrible thing where people like Asher have everything worse and people like Tazalkyran have everything better—and it's really hard to do anything about that thing because it's all made of people and doing things right when it's people is hard, but this, this is clean and bright and simple, this is perfectly straightforward, there is a thing that is making Asher sad and no one will miss it and it needs to be gone.

He holds himself there as long as he can, kissing Asher deeply, fucking him, pressing as close to him as it's physically possible to get—he has to get this right, for Asher, to make things better, for Asher, just this one simple little thing, just curing one disease so it never hurts anyone again and there are no more little girls being bitten by bugs and dying for Asher to be sad about—

It's hard to tell if it works. Would he even know if it did? But it's okay; he's not really thinking about that anyway. He is thinking about Asher and about curing malaria so Asher never has to be sad about it ever again.

Afterward he says, "it's hard to know if it worked."

"Yeah. We'll find out, though. And if it doesn't we can try again."

Kiss. "You know, since you can heal me pretty reliably, a lot of the stuff you did is actually pretty safe. If you wanted to do it."

"Mm." Kiss. "You're gorgeous when you're covered in blood." Kiss. "And when you're drowning." Kiss. "You're gorgeous all the time, actually." Kiss. "What do you want me to do to you? Or does it ruin the fun if I make you pick?"

He thinks. "I want you to do whatever makes you happiest. I want you to do things I don't like because it's really hot to suffer for you. I think you have put considerably more effort than I have into thinking about how to torture people, I mostly just go in for blackmail."

"You're such a sweetheart." Kiss. "I kind of want to scare you but when I do scary things to you it seems like you just make that beautiful face about it and go all soft and trusting, which, you know, is also really hot, so..."

He thinks about it. "I bet you could scare me but it's hard to think of something other than 'threaten to cut me with one of my kitchen knives' and even then I trust you not to do it so I don't think it would work."

"Yeah. That's the trouble, isn't it? I want to scare you but I don't want to—do things you're scared of."

"I feel like 'I trust you' is doing more of the work here, there's lots of things you could do that would terrify me if not for that. Like drowning me."

"Well, yeah, but—you trust me not to cut you with your kitchen knives because you know I'm not going to. And I'm also not going to kill you. Well. Not on purpose, not unless I was really really really really sure I could get you back afterward."

He kisses him.

"...proooobably it is a bad idea to try to use the all-powerful magic that most people only get once or twice in their lives for kinky sex."

"Probably," he agrees. "On the other hand, it's worked for me every single time I've tried it. ...I think I'm still not confident enough I could resurrect you if you died to actually try killing you, though. It would be the worst thing to get wrong."

"I was actually thinking about you scaring me-- if you could convince it to take away my memories for like four hours--"

"...ooh. Oh that's nice. —how much would I have to take away, though—and how would I know if—if you'd be okay afterward—"

"I mean, I want to now, I think it would be hot, and I trust you--"

He kisses him. Passionately.

"I love you so fucking much. Okay, how much of your memories should I take away—I feel like if I go too far back I'd have to fight you and I'm not sure I'd win—but I might have to go that far back for you not to trust me anymore—"

"Tie me up first?"

"Mmmmmm." Kiss. "Yes. Good plan."

Asher has some rope and an erection.

Then Asher can be naked and tied very securely to his bed, with Takai on top of him, kissing him and stroking his face and his hair and his neck, not fucking him but not at all far off, murmuring you're so beautiful and I love you and—

"—I'm not sure I can," he says softly, "I'm not sure I can want it enough, I keep thinking about—having you all pretty and scared and then it wears off and you're still scared of me—"

"You're sweet."