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The Ruined Abbe	By : pip Category: M through R > Quills Views: 2537 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Quills, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Two
For at least two weeks, the Marquis rotted alone in his cell. Coulmier busied himself with other things, with the inmates and their concerns. Since they didn't interest the doctor in the slightest he had free reign with them in much the same way as he always did. He encouraged them in their artistic pursuits with a fervour he did not truly feel because one of them was missing, and Madeleine… he avoided her too, since she was given to asking each time they met if the Marquis might not have his clothes and furniture back.
Every now and again, in quiet moments, he found himself wandering close to the door of Sade's cell, almost as if by accident, a quirk of his unconscious yearning. From time to time, he would hear that maddening little tune the Marquis hummed night and day. Indeed, he began to hear it even when it couldn't be there, when he was alone. Was it possible to be haunted by the living?
His self-inflicted punishments had ceased, and several were long overdue for thoughts which were less than charitable, about the doctor in particular. But, if the truth be known, each time he attempted to absolve his sins that way, he imagined the Marquis, and it spoiled the purity of the moment in such a way that it was far better for his faith to forgo it.
When at last his wish for punishment crept into his dreams, and was delivered to him at the hands of the Marquis, he realised there was a choice to make. Uncertain of which way his thoughts ran, he fingered the whip and drew in several long, deep breaths in the privacy of the sleeping chamber which he had come to think of as his own cell. Perhaps, if he were to bestow its touch on the Marquis, it would be cleansed, and his thoughts (and practices) would be his own again.
So it was that eventually he found himself at Sade's cell door, the whip concealed in a fold of his upper robe. He stood there for a long time, just pondering. He'd missed Sade over these last two weeks. Missed his outrageous flirting and humour, his drily delivered comments on God. They were – had been – true friends as well as good-natured adversaries. Now… were they to be enemies?
"Well, come on in then!" that sinful voice broke into his reverie as he stood, so that he looked up, startled, and saw Sade's lips through the small square in the door. "Or are you going to stand out there thinking about me all day?"
With a rueful smile, Coulmier drew in a breath to reply, but the little square of iron was shut suddenly, so he got out his key and unlocked the door, then went in, obedient, closing it firmly behind him. Anyone in the corridor would have thought it odd that the cell door should have been locked from the inside, but there was no one to see.
They were to be undisturbed…

When he had locked the door, he leaned against it for an instant to collect himself, fully expecting to be pounced upon at any moment. When it didn't happen, he turned to survey the room, and drew an involuntary breath at the bareness of it, now stripped of its furniture. And, not least, to see Sade stripped of his finery was a shock to his senses, though he knew nothing had been returned to him. Immediately he began to think this had been a bad idea.
Whatever he had thought before about Sade's situation, and however impure his motives had been in visiting, they weren't so now. There was an outpouring of sheer sympathy and sadness for this man with whom he had known so many stimulating conversations. Was all of this really necessary? Truly? To reduce a man to nothing in order to silence him?
"Oh, please," said the Marquis suddenly, with a frown of displeasure. "Don't stand there with that look on your face, Abbé. It's very unbecoming."
Carefully, Coulmier kept his eyes trained on Sade's, unwilling to look lower because he had a sudden certain impression that after two weeks of silence, any visitor at all would have roused Sade's interest. He frowned himself, and blew his breath out, bemused. He was even having Sade's thoughts for him!
"I'm sorry," he replied, remembering their friendship now again, and seeing the tenor of the Marquis' plight. "I should have visited sooner."
The whip and reason for it forgotton, Coulmier took a step closer, this time with a view to an examination that was purely medical and in the interests of his ward's welfare. As if by unspoken accord, Sade walked to him at the same time, and before he could stop it, Coulmier found himself enveloped in a hug from the naked man.
"It's all right," Coulmier said, returning the embrace, making his voice soothing, wondering what he could do to ease the predicament Sade found himself in. If only he had followed Coulmier's advice and kept his writing to himself!
Worried and concerned in equal measure by the affectionate display, Coulmier failed entirely to notice that the Marquis was being somewhat other than platonic until he felt two firms hands lay themselves on his buttocks and squeeze tightly.
Such was his shock that he instinctively fought Sade off in a rather inelegant scuffle. "Well," he said, on a second or two of further thought, "it seems you haven't become dispirited in your isolation after all."
"Why should I?" the Marquis countered. "When I knew I had you to look forward to?" His eyes twinkled as if they'd never ended their last meeting. "You fall so easily, Abbé, it's hardly worth the challenge." He sniffed. "But needs must…" He winked.
When the devil drives, came the unbidden thought. Devil, indeed. But it was surely an act. The Marquis, he knew, despaired of intelligent conversation even before this present state of affairs. How much worse it must have been while he, Coulmier, stayed away.
"I am possibly your only friend," Coulmier warned. "Do not alienate me."
"Ah!" Sade said with a delighted clap of his hands. "So, you have brought it with you then?"
"Brought what?" he asked, and then he remembered, and his face fell from the easy smile he had been wearing while they sparred in conversation. "What if I say that I haven't?"
"Well, then I fear you have locked yourself in a cell with me, and displeased me. A dangerous thing indeed." The Marquis invaded his space in a way that was becoming eerily familiar, in a way that he had dreamed of time and again, especially the last few nights.
"But then I know the truth," Sade said, one finger running up from his midriff, following the hard line that was the handle of the whip. "I know you couldn't be this pleased to see me."
Strange how surrounded by fine furniture and candles, the Marquis seemed far less dangerous. With so little in the cell, the only thing to look at was him, and Coulmier watched as Sade withdrew that little length of knotted leather to study it, his smile curved slightly, before switching that predator's gaze to him.
"So, my dear Abbé," he murmured intimately. "Have you decided which way around it shall be done?"
Wordlessly, he held out his hand for the whip, and wasn't surprised to see his palm shaking slightly. Sade nodded, and gave it over, turning around silently to cross the cell and stand against the wall, arms outstretched as if he was chained to it. "Make it count," he advised darkly, and Coulmier swallowed.
He stepped carefully towards Sade, his footfalls sounding loud on the stone. Their breathing was loud in the silence too. He fancied he could hear their hearts beating.
It's a potent aphrodisiac, isn't it? Having power over another man?
Those words came back to him now, and he remembered the shame of knowing he was angry enough to enjoy seeing Sade so cruelly reduced. Now there was no bitterness, only sorrow, and it had to be this way, because he needed the comfort of his own cleansing rituals back again. This entire situation had been engineered by Sade so cleverly with words that he couldn't escape it now without leaving Charenton altogether, and perhaps, even then…
Coulmier shook his head, and then took in the sight of the Marquis where he stood, facing the wall. His dark hair curled over muscled shoulders, opened up by the pose he had struck with his arms outstretched. It was the crucifixion from behind, those shoulders tapering into a waist that ended with a dimple just above his – Coulmier's mind tried to supply the word and failed. The Marquis would call it his arse. Two globes of muscle that he had to tear his gaze away from, letting his eyes drift down further, taking in the bare legs, covered with a liberal dusting of dark curly hair.
As he took all of this in, Sade changed position, spreading his legs the same way as his arms so that his body made an ‘X' shape against the wall. As if unbidden, his eyes leapt back up to Sade's backside, seeing that suggestive shadow of dangling flesh between his legs.
Belatedly, he remembered the whip he held in his hand, and looked at that. For such a submissive posture, Sade still had the power to drain all of the positive energy to his own side, leaving Coulmier quaking. They (and he was an accomplice of the doctor whether he had intended it or not) had taken everything from Sade. Every last shred of dignity, and yet… this? It was too much! He was a man of God, not a monster!
"I cannot," he confessed, the whip dropping from nerveless fingers onto the floor, the sound of it breaking the spell. At least until Sade turned around.
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The Ruined Abbe