"How... big a difference?"
"Forty-five percent. Perhaps more."
The yawing vertigo in the mindline made him rest his palms on his knees and focus on them to keep the hall from lurching.
"Nearly half of the food you put in him isn't getting used?" Vasiht'h asked, dismayed.
"It looks that way, yes."
"So you're saying… unless you feed him intravenously, he might starve. Or have some complication based on lack of some vital nutrient or something."
"Yes." As Vasiht'h stared at him, he added, "I suspect this is part of what's fueling the alcohol abuse."
"He's self-medicating with sugar, because he's starving for energy."
Jahir nodded once, slowly.
Vasiht'h stared at the wall until the knife-sharp horror receded back into his own mind. He shook himself. "Goddess. Yes, then, we absolutely do have to go back in there. Before he can be some other therapist's problem he has to be alive."
Jahir let some of his tension out with his next breath. "I had hoped you would agree."
"Ten minutes?"
"Should be long enough, I think."
Vasiht'h nodded and rested his shoulder against the wall, and then his head. Jahir was relieved; he hadn't feared his partner's censure for how he'd wanted the conversation in the room managed, nor for his suggested course of action... but he'd expected to have to make more explanation for himself, and wasn't sure why. They'd already discussed his concerns, so why did it feel like he had apologies yet to make? The easy silence between them, and the warmth in the mindline, were a balm, and he accepted it humbly.
"It is eerie, isn't it?" Vasiht'h said after a moment.
"The lights? Or the silence?"
The Glaseah grimaced and rubbed one forepaw over the other. "I hadn't even noticed the silence until you mentioned it. It is quiet, isn't it?"
"The floor doesn't hum," Jahir agreed. "It's like the difference between a sleeping body and an unconscious one."
Vasiht'h shivered.
"A few more minutes," Jahir said. And added, "It is easier, with you."
That won him a smile. "I feel the same way." And then another grimace. "Still... I want cookies."
"I doubt there are enough cookies in the world for this," Jahir answered. It was an old joke, and a good one, and through it they shared the implied years of camaraderie. It brought him back to the pledge he'd made over a decade ago now, when he'd decided to embrace the Alliance and the Glaseah's offer of friendship: to dwell in each moment as completely as possible, rather than looking ahead to an inevitable future where his shorter-lived friend was no longer at his side. He could inhabit this moment now and be happy, because the future where neither of them might survive didn't exist... and never would, unless and until it happened.
"It is good, isn't it," Vasiht'h said softly.
"Always," Jahir said. "Even when it's not." He smiled, then pushed himself upright. "It's time."
The Glaseah nodded and joined him as they walked back to Lisinthir's door. "Any thoughts on how to tackle it?"
Jahir considered. "As quickly as possible?"
Vasiht'h laughed.
/Ready?/
/Go ahead./
Jahir faced the door, inhaled, and keyed the medical override. Before the door had half-opened he was through it, aware first of the smell, more distinct than any sight in the artificial twilight. But Lisinthir he found easily by the pale length of his hair, moving as his House cousin turned to face them, faster than any striking drake... and then Jahir was within arm's length, his eyes locked on the thin brown cigarette.
"I've come for that," Jahir said.
"Funny. I didn't take you for a smoker."
Jahir met his eyes. "Should I try courtesy? Ambassador, may I have the drug for analysis? It may help me find—"
"A cure?" Lisinthir said, with what Jahir thought was amusement.
"A reason for your deteriorating health." Jahir tried not to stare at the ember smoldering at the end of the rolled leaves. He could just see their texture against the other Eldritch's pale fingers: varicose veins against the satin finish of the plant, ominously swollen.
"This isn't the reason for my deteriorating health," Lisinthir said. "Fortunately."
"Just like the alcohol isn't a problem."
Lisinthir lifted a brow. "Have you come to admonish me for my vices, cousin? If you have, I'm not interested."
/Ariihir./ His partner's voice was a distant stream, relaxing but so hard to hear. /He's trying to bait you./
/I know,/ Jahir said, forcing himself to relax.
Lisinthir took a drag from the roll and met his eyes while letting the plumes seep from just parted lips, and the challenge in it....
All the training he'd ever received, as a youth to win the inevitable duels that defended the Seni's honor, and as an adult in his defense classes, all of it informed the speed that allowed him to snatch the burning cigarette from Lisinthir's fingers. And none of it saved him from his cousin's answer, honed by a violence that branded itself on his body when Lisinthir grabbed him, and he was still reeling from the borrowed taste of blood in his mouth when the wall smashed in his cheek and every joint from his shoulder to his palm shrieked. Lisinthir was pressed against him, holding that arm twisted behind his back; the other was pinned to the wall under his cousin's. It had happened so quickly. He hadn't even had time to drop the cigarette.
There was a scream in the mindline, but he said, /NO./ A shocky pause and he said, trying to fight his tremors, /No. He won't hurt me./
/He's got you trapped against the wall!/
He did, but Jahir could feel the ragged breath against his neck, the utter control in the body against his... and the calm through their touching hands. Calm and other things, some fascinating, some appalling. That predatory interest again....
/No,/ Jahir repeated, ignoring the flutter of his heart. /I'm fine. This is important./
Lisinthir's nose brushed against his neck, just beneath the ear. "Do you always provoke everyone so, cousin?"
Jahir closed his eyes, trying not to react to the word and finding it hard. When had he ever had a body fitting so fast to his? He flexed his fingers, trying to keep hold of the roll. "Don't do this, Lisinthir."
"What exactly is it that I'm doing?"
He managed a smile. "Upsetting my partner."
Lisinthir snorted, but Jahir felt the flexure of unwanted responsibility through their skin. "Is that it."
"What else?"
His cousin leaned in. His voice was quiet and appallingly intimate, and that was nothing to the words. "Should I tell you?"
All the skin up his spine seemed to flush cold and then hot. The sensation was so distracting he didn't stop Lisinthir from plucking the roll from between his fingers.
"If I let you up, will you behave?" Lisinthir asked, and that... that was not mockery, if his skin told truth. Amusement, yes. But gentle.
"Somehow I doubt if I wanted to be otherwise that it would accomplish much."
"Probably not." The heel of Lisinthir's palm was still pressed against his wrist. He eased the pressure on the wrenched arm and added, "I am sorry. The response was out of proportion to the insult. It... is a bit of a conditioned reply. You did not merit it."
Their joined hands were just visible at the topmost edge of his vision. The trail of smoke was falling down his hand, gray smudge against white sleeve. "I'd like the drug back, please."
A very long pause. He tried to soak into the emotions washing into him through their touch and found himself unable to do anything but experience the pressure along his back and the pain of his wracked arm. The pain was particularly distracting, because of how alive every nerve ending felt, crawling from wrist to shoulder.
"You can have it when I'm done with it," Lisinthir said at last.
The smoke kept falling over his wrist. He thought of the wreckage left behind by addiction... the broken promises made by addicts. The cases he and Vasiht'h had suffered through, t
rying to help families destroyed by those broken promises, trying to save souls that refused salvation in favor of self-destruction. Thought of the pain he'd fought, over and over, bearing witness to those shredded lives.
Stared at the smoke and felt something break in him.
/ARII, NO!/
Jahir hooked his foot around Lisinthir's ankle and yanked with all his anger, sublimated so long on behalf of those victims, with all the resentment that he hadn't been able to fix it, fix anything for any of them, with all the pain of the years of witness. Here, now, finally, he could act, and he put everything he had into it, succeeded in knocking Lisinthir off balance. The other man fell—
—and took him with him—
The act that had seen him slammed against the wall had seemed so fast, but it was nothing to this. He was on his stomach on the floor—he lost a moment, couldn't breathe—
There were knives.
Jahir swallowed carefully, watching his jaw tremble in the reflection of the blades arced over the hand that had a grip on his throat. The only thing keeping skin from grazing the metal edges were the fingers Lisinthir had knotted in his hair. He couldn't move because there was a weight on his back, a knee pinning his forearm to the floor. Where was his other arm? Trapped beneath his body.
He was completely helpless. He had never felt so peaceful in all his life.
It terrified him.
Vasiht'h dove for them, pulled up short, his desperation and fear pounding in the mindline like a migraine at the temples. "Ambassador, no!"
Lisinthir was shivering. Slowly he released Jahir's throat and flattened his palm against the ground, the knives arching like a cat's claws.
The blood racing so impossibly fast beneath his skin—was that his? What about the fear? The fear was too complex, clouding his thoughts.
Lisinthir said something—Chatcaavan—but Jahir heard it through their touching skin: No. And then in Universal, "No." And then, with an effort Jahir could feel like his own, in their own tongue and shadowed, "No. Your fear is different from mine." He carefully rolled away, leaving Jahir free... and bereft. Addressing Vasiht'h now, in Universal again, "I am sorry, alet, I am very, very sorry."
"You're wearing claw-knives!" Vasiht'h said, aghast. "Claw-knives? In the Alliance?"
"I have only been in the Alliance a few days," Lisinthir said. He began removing the weapon with deliberate movements, pushing up his cuff so he could peel each sheath and its accompanying sleeve off his fingers. "And in the Empire, rather more than that."
"Besides," Jahir managed, wondering how he'd regained his voice and why he found it so hoarse. "I was the one who sent them him."
/Your accent is showing,/ Vasiht'h whispered, fretful. /You feel vague. Did he cut you? Are you bleeding!/
"No," he said aloud, losing the difference between the mindline and reality for a moment. "But I am rather bruised." And added in response to the mounting indignation beating on his skin like heat on a sunburn, "He pulled the blow. And I should have known better."
"I almost didn't pull the blow," Lisinthir muttered. He was standing now, and far enough that it would take more than a lunge to bring him within distance of either of them.
"Don't..." Jahir tried to push himself upright and discovered the right wrist wouldn't hold his weight. He tried the other and managed. "Don't..." He trailed off when he couldn't find the words for what he wanted Lisinthir to forgive himself for, or stop doing. That unnerved him but not quite as much as the sense that he was floating. Had he hit his head on the way to the floor? "You've been conditioned to violence, Ambassador, and I attacked you. Willfully. I have some responsibility to shoulder for... this."
"This," Vasiht'h repeated, shifting from foot to foot in agitation. "You're sure you're not hurt?"
Was he? He must not be, because otherwise Vasiht'h would have been at his side, checking. He could think of no reason his friend might be staring at him like this, as if he had become a stranger. Instead, it was Lisinthir who came closer, cautious, as if approaching a wounded creature. The other Eldritch crouched and began to reach for him, then stopped, fingers curling in, as if remembering that their kind didn't touch.
Vasiht'h stared at the Ambassador, astonished. Jahir would have also, but couldn't find the focus... and whatever it was Lisinthir saw in his face made him complete the arrested action, touch the bottoms of his fingers beneath Jahir's chin, and lift his face just enough for the dim lighting to filter through his lashes. Checking his pupils for symmetry? It's what he would be doing... but no. His cousin was looking past his eyes and at him.
"What do you see?" he thought to ask.
Lisinthir let his fingers glide up turning until their backs were resting against Jahir's jaw. In their tongue, he murmured, "A man who doesn't know himself... and wants to."
"What do you know that I don't?" Jahir answered, shading the question silver, for hope of an answer... but there was none, only his cousin's appraisal, and the density of experience he could sense but not touch through their skins.
Vasiht'h crept closer, body low and wings partially spread. "Arii. I think you should stop by the clinic."
"Probably wise," he murmured.
"And you too," Vasiht'h said to Lisinthir. "Because your Goddess-cursed stomach isn't working and you need a halo-arch to feed you. Understood?"
Lisinthir let his fingers fall off Jahir's face and rose. "The halo-arches may not be functional given the ship's power constraints."
"We're going to go find out."
Jahir expected another argument, but instead Lisinthir bent and retrieved the smoldering cigarette. He presented it to Vasiht'h, who took it, surprised. Answering the expression, the Ambassador said, "He risked a great deal for it, and fought well."
Well enough that he'd lost both times, but Jahir decided saying so would be counter-productive.
Lisinthir watched the Glaseah help his partner up, wondering if the former knew just how guarded his body language had become... and why. Would Vasiht'h recognize Jahir's condition the way he did? Because he knew that languor, knew it intimately. The Slave Queen's body had softened with it beneath his touch: trust and want and that river-running passion, so deep. But she had become yielding in response to tenderness and strength.
Jahir had in answer to violence and pain.
Not in response to the contest, the way the Emperor had. The way Lisinthir did. Arousal as a byproduct of fighting a worthy opponent was something he'd come to accept. That it reflected on him he also understood, but the Queen had been his helpmeet, leading him out of self-loathing and into a place where he could receive her attraction to him, not because he was cruel, but because he was capable of cruelty and withheld it; because he was strong, and she responded to his strength. But to want pain....
He knew there were those who needed it. But he couldn't imagine that road being walked by an Eldritch, and an Eldritch lord besides. Not carrying the weight of their culture on his shoulders. And definitely not Jahir, whom he barely knew but could see had bound himself to a beloved who could not help him, who might not even be capable of admitting his partner's needs. One had only to look at the crabbed footfalls and tightly-constrained movements to see the wall Vasiht'h sensed around the other Eldritch, and could not pierce.
God and Lady and Living Air, but what a mess, and he had stumbled into the middle of it... with only a few draws from the hekkret to ward off the headache that was now re-entrenching.
In the clinic, Lisinthir allowed himself to be directed to the second bed while the Glaseah chivvied his Eldritch into the first. They were talking: he couldn't hear the dialogue, but he could see it shaping their bodies, until they lost their stiffness around one another and Jahir sighed and put his head down.
"There will be nothing wrong."
"I just want to make sure you didn't hit your head. Or break anything vital." Vasiht'h threw a glance over his shoulder at Lisinthir. "And you. Lie down."
"I would rather not," he said, because between the head
ache and the mounting nausea he didn't want to shift position. Sitting on the edge of the bed was enough work. "But I promise I shan't move, if that will please you."
"It'll do."
"Which is it?" Jahir asked. His voice was losing its vagueness, but it retained a soft quality that made Lisinthir miss his lovers painfully. "The gut or the head?"
Had they earned that answer? Did it matter? The halo-arch, if they used it, would tell them. "Is 'both' allowed as a response?"
"Yes, though I don't envy you it."
Lisinthir snorted. "It will pass. It always does."
"It has before? There has been a before?"
Vasiht'h growled. "Let the cursed halo-arch finish with the tests before you start rolling off of it to go poke in his innards."
"He needs fluids—"
"You need your head examined. Literally."
"My head is fine—" Jahir paused as the test results appeared above and behind his head. His eyes flicked as if reading, though he couldn't see the projection; fascinated, Lisinthir glanced at Vasiht'h and found the Glaseah's eyes on the display. "See, it so says. You can let me up. The only thing wrong with me is a little bruising."
Vasiht'h backed away so Jahir could sit up and swing his legs over the side of the bed. They were close, almost close enough to brush against one another, and the look they exchanged made it clear they were talking again, and that what they were saying was affectionate. Vasiht'h was chiding, perhaps, from the flattening of his ears, but there was relief in his easy shoulders. Jahir was smiling with a tenderness that made the revelation of his other needs all the more incongruous. When the two of them looked at him, Lisinthir was wearing the mask he'd perfected in the Empire, where spontaneous revelation could destroy more than your honor, but he wondered what they were saying in response to it. Something, he knew. He could sense it in the way they were staring at him, and yet both so perfectly still.
"So," Jahir said. "What Vasiht'h said about your gastrointestinal tract was true. The damage is significant, to the point of doing a poor job absorbing nutrition of any kind on your behalf."
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