Wolf's-own: Koan (8 page)

Malick watched him take a gulp of the liquor and then limp back to the bed. “How many have you had?” he asked as he followed Jacin over through the trail of smoke.

Jacin shrugged, dropped himself diagonal across the mattress, and shut his eyes. He could feel Malick staring down at him, trying to figure out how to “handle” him, no doubt. Malick usually figured it out before Jacin did, so Jacin just waited.

"I thought you were doing all right today,” Malick ventured. The mattress dipped to Jacin's right as Malick sat down beside him. “You seemed fine when I left. What happened?” Jacin's jaw stiffened, and he clamped his eyes tighter, lifting his bowl to take a drink, but Malick's hand laid itself warm atop it. “Fen,” he said, soft but stern, “who were you talking to?"

He wouldn't be ignored—that was the thing about Malick. Talking at Jacin, all the time, or touching him, or just doing that staring-and-smirking-knowingly thing he did, Malick
never let up
. Jacin had no idea why he hadn't tried to kill Malick for it yet, but it was almost a bizarre comfort all by itself, so he took whatever Malick offered and kept his mouth shut.

Jacin tugged at his hand—not too hard, so as not to spill the liquor, but just hard enough to let Malick know he was serious. Malick let go, so Jacin told him, “Caidi,” by way of conciliation.

There was a pause. Jacin slitted his eyes and peered at Malick sideways. Malick's eyebrows had jumped up to his hairline. Mild surprise, but not shock. Jacin thought the surprise was actually due to having got an answer, rather than the answer itself. He wondered what Malick would look like if Jacin had admitted to Beishin, as well. He almost snorted. He took a drink instead.

"Did she talk back?” Malick wanted to know.

In other words:
Exactly how crazy are you right now?
Jacin did snort this time. “Yeah, she talked back.” He turned his gaze back up to the ceiling again.

"And, um....” Malick pushed the ashy saucer out of the way and folded down on his side, facing Jacin. He propped himself up on his elbow. “What did you talk about?"

There was no easy way to answer that, and anyway, Jacin didn't want to. So, again, he didn't.

Malick waited for several silent moments before he said calmly, “Fen, these....” He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Caidi isn't there. You know that, don't you?"

Jacin wasn't sure, he kept going back and forth on that one, so he still didn't have an answer. Except he knew how these conversations went, he knew what came next—
it's only your own guilty conscience, you can't listen to what your “ghosts” tell you, blah-blah-blah
—and he really didn't think he wanted to hear it. He didn't want Malick to voice a denial of the things Caidi said, even if Jacin was doing it himself the whole while, but it would be different coming from Malick, and Jacin didn't want to have to hear it in Malick's own voice. Cowardly, just as cowardly as pushing away the knowledge that one father had sold him to another and neither of them had seen him as anything but a means to an end, but this threat of knowledge was
right here
, and he... he just
couldn't
.

Fuck
, he was pathetic, he really did want to believe, wanted to pretend he was flying, even if he knew he was falling. A creeping pressure-fist closed around his heart, and it was abruptly hard to breathe.

"She looked like my mother,” he blurted. He had no idea why, except that Malick usually didn't insist that Jacin talk actual sense, only that he respond, that he recognize reality, and Jacin thought maybe the shock of an answer—any answer—might forestall Malick from making any declarations Jacin didn't want to hear.

"Oh?” was all Malick said, expectant. He laid himself fully to the mattress, peered at Jacin with those tawny, too-knowing eyes, and waited for more.

Except Jacin didn't have more. He didn't have the excuse of the Ancestors anymore, but he hadn't forgotten the lesson about keeping as much of the crazy as he could locked behind his teeth.

"Fen,” Malick pressed quietly, “was, um...?” He hesitated, shook his head, and then sucked in a long breath, like he was bracing himself. “You've been... seeing Asai too. Haven't you?"

Turned from a statement to a question. Jacin didn't know what to make of that, except that he knew Malick said there were no ghosts hovering around Jacin, he'd checked, so Malick must know that it was all the result of craziness, but that had never seemed to bother Malick much before. Jacin could tell Malick no, because he hadn't actually been
seeing
Asai, just hearing him, but he knew that wasn't what Malick meant, so it would feel too much like a blatant lie, and Malick always saw right through those, so what would be the point?

"I don't want to talk about it,” Jacin whispered, tossing back the rest of his liquor and dropping the cup to the bed. He turned to his side to face Malick, except he didn't look him in the eye. Slowly, Jacin snaked out his hand and ran the tip of his finger over the lines of Malick's open collar instead, keeping his eyes on his hand. He wished Malick would take it as an invitation, but he wouldn't, he never did, it always had to be Jacin's idea, Jacin's
choice
. Jacin thought Malick was making some kind of point, and Jacin sort of got it, but sometimes it just made him want to scream and beg,
please just take it all away, I don't know what to do with it
. Jacin had perhaps had little choice when he'd woken to reality one day and found himself in the middle of the ocean and bound for Tambalon, but he'd nonetheless made that choice—retroactively, granted, but he'd thought pretty clearly—when Malick had invited him to share his bed as well as his house and Jacin accepted. Wordlessly accepted, but still. He was here, wasn't he?

Malick's hand came up and took Jacin's, stilled it, and settled it over his breastbone. Jacin could feel Malick's heart beating against his palm, and he thought
, I was supposed to cut that out
, and instead he'd cut out Beishin's, and it still set a light quiver to him that wasn't wholly unpleasant. Still, it made him wonder what would have happened if things had spun out the way Beishin had wanted them to. Would Caidi still be alive? Would Beishin have loved “his Ghost” if Jacin had fulfilled the destiny that had been invented for him?

He shut it away, repeated, “I don't want to talk about it,” and he tugged at his hand.

Malick didn't let go. In fact, his grip tightened. “Are you trying to get around me, Fen?"

It was light, with very little rebuke inside it. Because yes, Malick understood, Malick
knew
, and Jacin had rather suspected as much. Still, it set Jacin's teeth on edge.

"Trying to get around you,” he said evenly, “would imply that you've some sort of right to expect answers from me that I don't want to give.” He gave up on trying to get his hand loose. Instead, he just tipped in and shoved himself right up close, comforted by how the lines of his body met and melded with Malick's. He pushed his face into Malick's chest, breathed in pine and sage, and shut his eyes tight. “I just don't want to talk about it."

Malick let go of Jacin's hand, finally, slid his arms around Jacin and hauled him in tight. Jacin's breath caught, a clogged up little sob that came from nowhere, because it felt so fucking
good
that he didn't know what to do with himself.

"Fen,” Malick whispered, just that, just that one word, and it wasn't even really his name, but it was the one Jacin had given him once upon a time, he wouldn't use another until Jacin gave him that, too, and it burned behind the backs of Jacin's eyes, because he didn't know why he hadn't. “Oh,
hell
,” Malick growled.

Jacin had gotten so abruptly lost that he almost didn't realize Malick was pushing him onto his back, turning him so he could see Jacin's face. Jacin didn't know if he fought it because he didn't
want
Malick to see, or if it was just because he didn't want Malick to let go. It didn't matter; the “fight"—such as it was—was useless, because Jacin hadn't been expecting it, and Malick was too much of an opportunist not to take an advantage when it was handed to him. Jacin's hands were pressed to the mattress on either side of his head, and his hips were pinned by Malick's thigh before Jacin could muster the wits to look for leverage. Caught, trapped, which was stupid, because wasn't this where he wanted to be anyway? Except he didn't want to have Malick
looking
at him like that, so Jacin turned his head and shut his eyes.

"This,” Malick said softly as he let go of one hand and traced the hollow of Jacin's left eye with a gentle fingertip. “This is where you hide yourself when it all gets too much. I only wanted to find you."

Jacin frowned. He knew it was exactly what Malick wanted, but he couldn't help doing it anyway: he opened his eyes and peered into Malick's. He didn't ask,
What the fuck are you talking about?
but he suspected it came out in the glare.

Malick smiled, because glares amused him, which irritated the shit out of Jacin, but this smile wasn't smirky or predatory or even knowing—it was soft and as gentle as Malick's fingers sliding into the hair at Jacin's temple. The fingers of his other hand laced through Jacin's where his hand was still pinned to the bed.

"I admit that I had to learn to look,” Malick said, his voice slicking and sloping over Jacin's nerves, his fingers setting a light fizz to the skin of Jacin's scalp. “You live so deep inside yourself that sometimes I think you get lost in there. And I think some of the time, you want someone to come and find you. So, you need to tell me, Fen....” He paused to set a tender kiss to Jacin's mouth, all fleshy, yielding lips, and the tiniest swipe of the tip of his tongue. “Would you like to stay in there with your ghosts for a while?” Another pause to run his mouth lightly just below the line of Jacin's jaw. “Or would you like to be reminded that you're not one?"

Jacin could have answered, he knew exactly which he wanted, but somehow it all clotted in the back of his throat, and his mouth couldn't form the right shapes to make the right words.
Please
, it wanted to spew, and,
take it away from me, just this once
, and,
I don't know how to do this, I've been faking it and not very well, I'm clinging to this shattered life and I don't know how to let go, pleasepleaseplease show me how to be something other than desperate and directionless and useless. It's so fucking lonely in here.

"Malick,” was all he said, weak and small, because it was all he
could
say.

His vision blurred and his focus wobbled. All he could see was Malick's tea-colored eyes, and the peculiar depth down inside them that Jacin couldn't read. It was almost like something breaking, something hard going soft, but it wasn't pity—
not
pity—so it didn't make Jacin gag.

Malick's face twisted, and he shut his eyes, laid his brow to Jacin's, breathed, “Oh, hell, Fen,” and he very gently slid his fingertips through the tears Jacin hadn't known were leaking down his temples and into his hair. “It doesn't have to be like this,” Malick whispered and laid a long, warm kiss to Jacin's mouth, squeezing the hand he still had pinned to the mattress so tight Jacin
had
to squeeze back, tell him without words,
Then show me how it can be
, because nothing would come out his mouth but, “Malick.” Pleading against Malick's mouth. Desperation voiced in the arch of his body and the tears that wouldn't stop coming. “
Malick
."

"Shh,” said Malick, “just let me,” gentling, comforting, controlling—
controlling
, fuck, could this really be what Jacin wanted?
needed
?—as he cupped Jacin's face in his hand, and he took it all away with breath and touch and the mute command implicit in one long, driving kiss.

Pleading and imperative, like it had been that first night, when Jacin had both blooded and bled and finally bent his neck to this same need that had crouched in his corners then and clawed at his walls now. By no means slow, and by no means gentle. Malick's hands were fierce on him—
grippingtakingholding
—and his kiss was pure power and dominance, sinking into Jacin's soul as Jacin sank into the mattress.

Malick didn't ask Jacin to move, neither with words nor without, he simply did it himself. His hands forced reaction from Jacin's body, forced moans from Jacin's throat, and Malick swallowed them up and demanded more. Jacin rocked his body with Malick's because he had no choice, and when Malick pulled his mouth away for a shaky breath, Jacin spent his own on begging, “Please... Malick, please,” until Malick shut him up again.

Fuck
, yes, the need for this was too strong in Jacin, and he couldn't find shame right now, because Malick wouldn't let him. Jacin was existing only inside this single moment, living for the next touch, dying for the next kiss, and Malick just kept it all coming, he wouldn't let up, wouldn't give Jacin time to think or even breathe, so Jacin didn't bother trying.

He was stripped of his shirt roughly, but with a strange reverence he couldn't credit. Each scar was touched and stroked as it was revealed, a hard press of fingertips that dug down deep for sensation and didn't relent until Jacin was forced to feel it. He couldn't protest, Malick was drowning him in kisses, and every time Jacin gathered enough fury to shove through the outrage of dead flesh brought back to life, Malick drove it away with a press of his thigh to Jacin's groin. Jacin was being played, manipulated, and there was an appalling erotic relief in knowing that it was out of his hands, not his choice, it was all on Malick, but somehow it failed to shame him.

He had just enough wits to try to help when Malick went for Jacin's trousers, but Jacin's “help” was more like disconcerted flailing, and more begging every time Malick let him breathe. So, Malick took both of Jacin's hands and pinned them above his head, kissed him into silence again and did it himself. The position, the near-violence, the urgency and the helplessness—it took whatever sense Jacin might have held in reserve and throttled it down to raw, simple
need
. He was wild with it, trying to drag his hands away just for the reassurance of knowing that he couldn't, moaning like he was dying, and kissing Malick back with a desperation born of every single rejection he'd suffered since he'd known what rejection was—rejection of his kiss, of his touch, of his love, of his
self
—because Malick had never rejected him, had never looked at him like he was nothing.