"Yes?" Jahir said, mystified at the uncertainty. "Of course. Why wouldn't we?"
"Arii, you've been up most of the night, if I'm not mistaken."
"I've only been here...." He trailed off, noticing the time on the data tablet display. "Ah. Yes, I see why you would worry. I should be fine, so long as I sleep not long after."
Vasiht'h snorted. "Or you could take a nap first. Do you remember—"
"Yes," Jahir said. "Yes, I do recall the time the client's dreams put me to sleep while we were affecting, and I see you will never let me forget it." His mouth twitched. "A nap beforehand sounds pleasant."
"Good. Then you should eat, because you skipped breakfast."
"I'm surprised you did not interrupt me sooner."
Vasiht'h shook his head. "Your head was so thick with numbers I didn't want to disturb you. I figured I'd just take care of the clients and let you get closer to finished. Are you?"
"I wish that I was... but I fear this is a task for a healer-chemist." Jahir sighed and began peeling back the wrapper on the bar: one of Borden's rooderberry variants. "The Ambassador's current health would probably fuel quite a few academic papers. Will probably, once we return."
"'The Ambassador,' is it."
Jahir glanced at him, touched the mindline and found it empty of anything but his partner's warmth. A touch of caution also, maybe, that expressed itself as the ache of a bitten tongue. It made him put the bar down. "Yes. Should I ask now, why..." He stopped, trying to find words that wouldn't scrape the mindline raw. "...why you felt I needed any other aid than yours? You are all the comfort I need."
The mindline colored with Vasiht'h's regret. "Arii..." He sighed, and it felt like defeat in a battle Jahir hadn't known was being fought. "All right. Later, though."
"Because now you will tell me to eat," Jahir said, hoping to restore some normalcy to their interaction.
"Among other things," Vasiht'h agreed, rueful.
Jahir lifted the bar—and stopped. He had gone to Lisinthir's room to run the tests, yes, but also to administer the solution, and he'd left without doing so. And now it was... how many hours since? Providing his cousin hadn't been drinking. That was all he needed: another barbiturate depressing his nervous system, on top of the smoking....
....and the ingestion of poison—regularly? A poison that also depressed the nervous system, but that he was no longer ingesting.
The bar struck the table. Vasiht'h's alarm flooded the mindline, amplified his. "Arii?"
How long had it been since Borden had summoned them because she'd found Lisinthir unconscious? A day? Jahir grabbed the medical kit. "We must go. Now."
Would he be right? But he didn't question it. Everything crystallized so perfectly that when they entered Lisinthir's room, the sight of the Ambassador slumped on the table felt anticlimactic for the whole heart-beat it took for him to realize that he'd guessed correctly. Then the medical kit hit the table, spilling its contents. God and Lady, what could he give that wouldn't react to what was already in the Ambassador's body? Two separate drugs—three preparations—two of which he still didn't know enough about to guess at their interactions—
"What's wrong with him?" Vasiht'h asked, ears flattened.
"I made a mistake," Jahir said. "There's no time—" He took Vasiht'h's hand and reached for Lisinthir with the other… dove into the maelstrom.
The storm was cataclysmic.
/This is just like Mercy!/
/No,/ Jahir said. /But similar. Hold me fast, ariihir./
And then he dove for the center of the chaos and found it resisted him with more agency than any wet victim. The memories that gave edges to the steel were enough to make him blanch and almost back out, but he had precipitated this crisis in his arrogance, and he would force it right. Through the emotional miasma he pushed, doing his best to ignore all that he was seeing and learning; he continued when it bled him, and when everything in him recoiled and howled for him to flee.
But he did not.
Jahir leaned on the frenetic activity in Lisinthir's body and soaked it in calm, spread it with serenity, dripped drop after drop, steady as a drum, until the activity grew ordered, slowed like cold honey, sweet and glassy under his tongue.
And then he was awake.
So was Lisinthir.
Jahir expected the lassitude of someone who'd just had a seizure. Disorientation, maybe even short-term amnesia. But his House cousin blinked once, gleam of low light off pale lashes… and then pushed himself upright and away, frowning. He began to speak, paused when the words came out Chatcaavan, then said in very crisp Universal, "What are you doing here?"
"You had a seizure," Vasiht'h said, his agitation bright as the flashes preceding a migraine. He glanced at Jahir. "Another seizure. Right?"
"Yes. Do you have more of the hekkret?"
"So you can take it away?"
"So you can use it."
Lisinthir eyed him. "You expect me to believe that you now wish me to continue with my addictions."
"What I need," Jahir said, "is to have you continue self-medicating until we can hand you to a treatment center for a controlled withdrawal."
Whatever Lisinthir saw in his face must have been convincing, for the Ambassador said, "In my bag in the other room. The sealed front pocket."
"I'll get it," Vasiht'h said, and vanished into the dark.
"So the hekkret really does keep me alive," Lisinthir said. Not quite a drawl, but close enough.
"This is my fault, I fear," Jahir said. "I didn't realize that you were consistently taking three doses of drugs that have a sedating effect: they have habituated your body to that state. We have already removed one source now that you're not longer being poisoned. I asked you to stop the alcohol, and you appear to have done so and that removed the second source."
"And this is enough to give me seizures."
"This may be enough to kill you, if we're unlucky," Jahir said, quieter. "Is that a side effect of this drug in the Empire?"
Lisinthir snorted. "It is the intended effect. The ingested variety is supposed to kill."
They used a nervous system depressant to kill aliens? Did the ingested preparation have other properties, or was it simply so concentrated that it stopped the breathing? Jahir frowned. "Without a sample… well, it's neither here nor there." He paused as Vasiht'h arrived, handed a roll to Lisinthir. "What does matter is that keeping you on the alcohol may be less dangerous than having you off it precipitously."
"So you want me to drink also," Lisinthir said, mouth quirking.
"It sounds like our choice is between seizures and liver failure," Vasiht'h said, the mindline carrying his nausea. "Both of which might kill him."
"Who would have thought ceasing to be poisoned could be so dangerous." Lisinthir brought a flame from his coat pocket and lit the roll. "So, then, Healer. Which shall it be? The alcohol or… what would you recommend as the treatment course if we were to go the 'surviving seizure' route?"
Jahir shared a sigh with Vasiht'h. /This will go well./ "Supervision."
Lisinthir lifted his brows. "Somehow I doubt you'd enjoy that."
"It isn't about enjoyment, but your safety."
"And how would your supervision permit you to ensure my safety? Watching me pass out doesn't seem very productive. Unless you administered some medicine to me I was unaware of?" Lisinthir glanced at the medical kit.
"We have a technique that works on certain kind of seizures," Vasiht'h offered.
"A... technique."
Perhaps Jahir was more attuned to the nuances of Eldritch dialogue, or maybe there was some other reason he read that pause as menace. But Vasiht'h was continuing, oblivious to anything more sinister than skepticism. "We developed it while working with drug withdrawal-induced seizures, in fact. We use a variant of the same mental touch that we developed to work on patients' dreams to bring them out."
Lisinthir tapped the ash off the end of the roll onto the table. "You were in my mind." Vasiht'h nodded, and the ambas
sador lifted his eyes. Just his eyes. And froze them both in place with them. "Without my permission."
"We... c-couldn't let you die," Vasiht'h managed.
Lisinthir looked at Jahir now, and held him as fast as surely as with chains. "What did you see?"
Jahir flushed and couldn't answer. He couldn't even look away.
Conversationally, Lisinthir said, "I would never. Never have permitted either of you into my confidences, much less my thoughts." He set the cigarette down, his eyes resting on it. "Get out."
"I... I'm sorry?" Vasiht'h asked.
The Ambassador's face whipped up, and his eyes then were inhuman and his lips peeled back from his teeth, and the words were cold and lethal. "Get out now."
Vasiht'h's alarm leaped the mindline to him, preparing him for the hand that grabbed his wrist and jerked him from the table. And then they were fleeing, and flight it was, and Jahir had no idea whose adrenaline was fueling it but they didn't stop until they reached their own rooms. Vasiht'h staggered to the couch and dropped his upper body onto it, shaking. "I... I'm pretty sure he wasn't going to kill us, but... 'pretty sure' wasn't enough certainty for me. I'm sorry I took your hand like that—"
Jahir sat beside him and said, his voice trembling, "Ariihir. Oh, ariihir, I am in trouble."
The cold that smashed through the mindline made him shudder. Vasiht'h looked up at him, wide-eyed. "Jahir?"
He rubbed his hands up his arms, wanting warmth, or less warmth. Wanting to be anywhere but here and anywhere but in this body and anywhere but in this room, where he couldn't escape the evidence of his own senses. And the evidence was under his skin and in it, in his racing heart, in the pulse so loud he could hear it in his own ears. "I am... reacting... to violence."
Vasiht'h was silent, from heart to mindline. At last, he said, "A lot of people react to violence by wanting to affirm life afterwards. A celebration of survival."
"Yes," Jahir said. "Perfectly sensible. And would apply if in fact I was reacting to our reprieve. But my interest began before then." The threat in the voice, in the eyes. Especially the eyes, brooking no defiance and promising much, and none of it kind. He looked at Vasiht'h, still trembling, and couldn't help but let some of it leak through the mindline. When had his tendency toward self-sacrifice become a yearning for self-abnegation? Because that was all he could conceive of receiving at the other end of a threat like Lisinthir's.
Vasiht'h hung his head, then covered his face with his hands.
"This... this is why you went to him, then," Jahir said. "You thought this might be underlying my reactions."
Without looking up, the Glaseah nodded his head.
Jahir sighed and slid off the couch so he could embrace his partner. "Sssh, arii. Be not afraid."
"How can I not be?" Vasiht'h said. "This is... this is serious."
"This is of no moment," Jahir said. "I don't need to act on it."
Vasiht'h drew back enough to glare at him, ears flattened. "Don't give me that. Don't you give me that, who should know better. You want to sit on your sex drive? You know yourself what sitting on any need does to someone. How many clients have we had—"
Jahir rested a finger against his partner's nose, willing his gentleness through the mindline until Vasiht'h's agitation began to subside. "Self-discipline is not repression."
"You like to take it that far," Vasiht'h said against his finger.
That made him smile, and then laugh, until at last his partner's mouth curved too. Vasiht'h didn't laugh, but the mindline relaxed, tender as a bruise but no longer throbbing.
"One day," Jahir said, quieter, "I will marry a woman who will bear my children, and if at that time any of this becomes a problem, then it will be something that needs fixing. Until then, my sexual... proclivities... are of no relevance."
Vasiht'h considered that, his eyes resting on Jahir's. Then said, "You don't need to be fixed."
Jahir didn't answer that, and betrayed himself with his silence. But he was not willing to go there—not willing to examine it any further. He did not want to be this person, and perhaps if he ignored what he'd learned, it would fade and take with it all the work he would have to do to learn to live with himself.
He prayed Vasiht'h would let it lie... and the Glaseah did, resting his head tentatively on Jahir's shoulder. The calm of his partner's aura was a balm; for once, touch was a needful thing, swept away unsavory thoughts and desires and replaced them with a Glaseah's tranquility. Jahir drew him closer and they abided.
"So now what?" Vasiht'h said after a moment. "About Lisinthir, I mean. We still have the problem with him having seizures, I'm guessing. How are we going to solve that?"
"We will have to involve Hea Borden if he will not accept our observation. Or take the alcohol, on a schedule..." Jahir trailed off and sighed. "I'm afraid I am not up to even guessing at the right dose of that. He may just die before we get him home."
"And we're so close...."
"'Close' is relative." Jahir closed his eyes, sorted through all the shames he felt to find the one closest to the surface, the healer's horror. "I should also apologize."
Vasiht'h lifted his head.
"What we did was an invasion to which he had not consented."
The Glaseah huffed. "My question still stands. What did he expect us to do? Let him die?"
"There were other methods we could have tried…." Jahir thought of his near paralysis at the prospect of finding some drug that might have stayed the seizure that would not have also had some other catastrophic effect. "We might have taken him to the clinic, put him on the halo-arch—"
"In time?" Vasiht'h scowled. "The things aren't even on standby anymore. By the time we got him there and woke them up, we might have been too late. We knew the intervention would work. So I still want to know if he would have preferred us to let him die."
"Maybe."
That won him a considering expression. "You think he's suicidal?"
"I think…" Jahir tentatively touched the impressions he'd gathered, felt his fingers bloodied by them. "I think it is less to do with suicide and more to do with… what one feels one can honorably bear before dying."
"This is… some soldier thing," Vasiht'h guessed. "You don't allow the enemy to torture you for information."
"Or you don't allow someone to slight your honor without defending it, and if that defense kills you…."
There was between them a memory Jahir had shared, of a man he had accidentally killed in just such a duel. It had led, indirectly, to his taking up the staff at Vasiht'h's insistence.
"Yes. I can see that, maybe. You think he's treating you like that?"
"I think it is inevitable that he must." Jahir sighed. "We are what we are, ariihir."
"Not always. Or you wouldn't be here with me."
Jahir smiled. "Sooth. And now I should nap, I believe, if we are to see to the crew. Will you also?"
"No, I think I'll take a walk." Vasiht'h grimaced and smoothed his palms down his forelegs. "I'm jittery from the adrenaline. If I try to lie down I'll just twitch for two hours."
"Go on then," Jahir said. The mindline stung him, like friction from static electricity, and he petted it down. "I'll be here. And yes, I'll be fine."
"If you're sure—"
"Very much."
Vasiht'h disentangled himself from Jahir's arms and stood, wearing a rueful smile. "We really do get into some of the strangest scrapes."
"A hazard of our work, and I would not trade it for anything."
Would it be enough? Would Vasiht'h be complicit in his need to put this aside? When his partner smiled, Jahir knew he would. The Glaseah let himself out and the mindline attenuated to a vague hum as his thoughts turned elsewhere, until his presence receded to a sense of safety and camaraderie, present but no longer near.
Which is when Jahir finally allowed himself to turn into the couch and press his brow into his folded arms. The memories that tended to cling to him from his excursions into the minds of w
et victims were inchoate: fleeting impressions, flickering scenes, single words. Sometimes it could be a very vivid impression, but he rarely brought back enough for those memories to linger.
Lisinthir, though—
Blood running down his sides. Tongues licking it up, tongues cooler than his skin. The taste of it in his mouth while kissing past the spars of carnassial fangs, and the hands that smeared it against his skin and the weight on his back—
—at his side—
—on him—
And over and over, the taste of poison, the exhaustion of starvation, of constant exertion, constant peril, and O, God and Lady, but so much love, love unexpected, love violent and terrible and crucifying and exalting, love that transfigured and condemned. There were hands in his hair and hands on his spine and everywhere, there was need.
"God and Lady," he whispered into his arm, too aware of the drag of fabric against his lips as they moved, too sensitive to every touch, "What happened to you, cousin? And what have you done to me?"
Lisinthir didn't follow them out of the room, and he counted this a victory, one he observed with incredulity, for as little as a few days ago he would have broken the horns off of anyone who'd even attempted such liberties with his body, much less his mind. He would never have attacked Vasiht'h, of course—he'd spent so long in the Empire that his first instinct was to treat the Pelted as noncombatants (and perhaps, in all honesty, as non-people, at least in the Chatcaavan sense of being capable of giving insult).
But his House cousin? For not only violating his privacy, but for transgressing against the laws he should have been observing? It was as bad as the Emperor's first rape—no, worse, because the Emperor had been acting according to the culture that had raised him, and had known no other way to act. Jahir knew better.
Lisinthir wanted, very badly, to hurt something… and there was nothing here he could hurt but himself. And what did that matter, when the chances were that he might already be dying? The irony of it appealed to him. To have survived all the Empire's attempts to kill him, only to die for the lack of poisoning… the Emperor would laugh.
Well. No. Perhaps he wouldn't.
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