Trickster

by J. C. Andrijeski

  When Dehgoies clicked at him, his mouth hard, Terian sharpened his voice.

  “Perhaps I should ask Galaith for a few recruits of my own to train. After all, as long as I don’t specifically break the rules, it means nothing, na?”

  Dehgoies shook his head, his long jaw clenched now. Staring out over the water, he let his voice drop to a low growl.

  “I promised you. I fucking promised you I would not. We have a goddamned agreement, Terry. Why can you not believe me? Why must we have this conversation, every time I encounter a female you find threatening for some reason?”

  “Because you lie,” Terian said, his voice sharp. His jaw hardened. “You lie, Revi’… so of course I do not believe you.”

  “I lie?” The other male turned his head, looking at him incredulously. “About what, exactly, do I lie? I have never fucking cheated on you! Not once!”

  “What about Nawri?”

  “You brought Nawri to our bed!” Those clear eyes flared with real anger. “Was that some kind of fucking test? Were you screwing with me?”

  “No.” Frowning, staring out over the ocean, Terian thought for a moment. Then he exhaled, a cloud of anger and frustration leaving his light. “Maybe. Perhaps.”

  “Jesus fuck, Terry––”

  “It wasn’t conscious,” the other cut in, raising a warning hand between them. He turned, staring at that angular face, at those glass-like eyes, eyes that seemed to look through him, even now. “I didn’t do it to ‘screw’ with you…” He made quotes in the air with his fingers, clicking in annoyance.

  “…But perhaps it was a test,” he admitted. “Subconsciously.”

  Dehgoies frowned, a harder anger now coiling through his light.

  He stared at Terian, not speaking for a too-long pause.

  That time, Terian could feel the thoughts there.

  “You are tired of this,” he said, his voice hard. “You are tired of me.”

  “I’m tired of this, yes,” Dehgoies retorted, his mouth curling in another frown. “How could I not be? We never move past it. It never fucking changes, Terry.”

  “That is not true,” Terian shot back. “If it were, we would never get past any one of these arguments. We do get past them… and then I know you better. You know me better.”

  Staring at Terian’s eyes, Dehgoies grunted.

  The sound lived somewhere between skepticism and a concession of defeat.

  “We don’t get past them, Terry.” Glancing up at him, Dehgoies surprised him then, giving him a faint smile. “…At some point, I just get fed up and change the subject.”

  Terian blinked.

  Seeing that faint smile in the other’s eyes, he frowned.

  Then he found himself remembering.

  He remembered their last fight in particular, and grunted, in spite of himself.

  “Change the subject?” he said, lifting one eyebrow.

  “Yes.” The other quirked a dark eyebrow in return. “In fact, thinking about it now, I am wondering if that’s why you pick these asinine fights with me.”

  “So you’ll anger-fuck me?” Terian pursed his lips, pretending to think about this. “As far as theories go, it has its merits.”

  Dehgoies snorted a laugh.

  Sitting up, he turned, moving with that liquid, animal-like grace of his. Sliding to his knees, he caught hold of Terian’s arms, gripping his muscle, skin and bone in iron fingers and yanking him closer. Terian was breathing harder even before the other’s light began invading his, spiking his pain high enough that his heart stuttered.

  “Lie the fuck down,” Dehgoies growled.

  “What for?” Terian grumbled.

  Despite the faint humor in his voice, despite the pain in his light, he struggled with annoyance, feeling borderline pouty, even now.

  “Why should I?” he said, meeting that crystal gaze.

  Dehgoies smiled.

  A harder intensity rose to those eyes.

  Sex-pain left his light in a liquid cloud.

  He put his hand on Terian’s cock, watching his eyes and face react as he began to massage him with strong fingers. He put light into those fingers as he felt Terian react, pooling it in Terian’s chest, pulling on his gut, his cock, even his hands and feet.

  After a few seconds, Terian let out an involuntary groan, bucking up against Dehgoies’ palm, feeling his light slide out of his control.

  Gripping the other male’s shoulder, he closed his eyes, pressing his lower body harder against that goddamned hand. Dehgoies pooled more light into his groin in response, and Terian let out a broken gasp.

  “You know why,” Dehgoies murmured.

  Lowering his mouth, he kissed Terian’s throat, putting light in his lips, in his tongue, pulling on him until Terian groaned louder, leaning his forehead against Dehgoies’ bare shoulder.

  Dehgoies’ voice grew softer still.

  “You know why,” he said, gripping Terian’s longer hair in his free hand. “So lie the fuck down. Now, brother. So I can change the goddamned subject…”

  He wasn’t there when Terian woke.

  The bed was empty.

  Such a thing wasn’t unusual.

  His friend was a light sleeper, and often didn’t make it through the night.

  Terian lay there in the dark, his living light scattered around him in a confused cloud, despite having just woken up, despite the fact that his aleimi should have calmed in sleep. His mind returned to the hours before he finally fell unconscious.

  Immediately, the confusion and heat in his light worsened.

  More than confusion––pain rippled through him, catching in his throat, bringing a swell of near-nausea coupled with desire.

  Gaos, how could he still want to fuck, even now?

  Dehgoies had hardly been depriving him in the past however-many hours.

  Hell, his friend had been in rare form.

  Terian must be going through withdrawals from the excess of sex.

  That, or the light connection between them was messing with his head even more than it had in the beginning of… whatever this was. Earlier that night, Dehgoies had been so far inside his light, Terian had nearly lost consciousness. It came back to him now in excruciating detail, the muscular arm around his chest, the look in his friend’s eyes as he spoke to him, coaxing him to open more of his light, demanding it of him in heavy, cajoling words.

  Open, brother… open to me…

  His words had been somewhere between a murmur and a growl.

  As he remembered it now, Terian’s cock grew instantly hard. His breath grew short, shifting into strained pants as he stared up at the ceiling, remembering. Some part of him couldn’t look away from the memory, couldn’t stop wanting to play it over and over in his head, savoring it on his tongue, memorizing it with his light.

  Dehgoies had been so far inside him, it nearly hurt.

  He’d almost blacked out.

  He’d almost blacked out, but he couldn’t remember anything in sex ever feeling that good. Liquid pain coiled through his gut as he remembered, as his light and body replayed for itself how good it felt, how unbelievably fucking good it felt.

  He’d never come so hard in his life.

  He’d come more than once, when Dehgoies wouldn’t stop.

  His friend stayed with him all through both orgasms, sliding deeper into his light, opening him more as Terian lost himself there.

  He’d lost himself… gaos, he was really gone for most of that.

  Fuck.

  Jesus fuck.

  That hadn’t just been sex.

  That hadn’t been like any sex Terian ever had, prior to now––with anyone.

  He didn’t know what that was.

  Or maybe he was just afraid to know what it was, what it meant.

  Terian still couldn’t bring himself to put a name to this thing with Dehgoies at all.

  Some part of him was afraid to do that, too.

  Dehgoies didn’t help. Half the time, Revik still spok
e to him like they were friends, even blood brothers, even when they were alone. He joked with him about past sexual partners, about things they’d done together before Terian got him drunk that night in New Orleans and finally worked up the nerve to seduce him, waking him up with his mouth on his cock. Even the previous day, after they’d had sex on the beach, Dehgoies teased Terian about a past lover he’d had, like he didn’t care, like it meant nothing to him, like he wasn’t jealous…

  Then he did what he did a few hours ago.

  He opened his light in sex, coaxing Terian to talk to him, screwing with his mind, invading his light as he invaded his body… and this thing between them felt like something else entirely. Terian didn’t know what the word was for that.

  He couldn’t bring himself to admit the words that came to his mind.

  He couldn’t go there, not yet.

  For one, he wasn’t ready to broach that with Dehgoies at all. Regardless of the other seer’s answer, Terian was reasonably sure he didn’t want to know, not yet.

  He wasn’t ready to know.

  He particularly didn’t want to think about what it meant to him, meaning Terian himself. It was easier to focus on Dehgoies’ side of things, to obsess on what Dehgoies called this, whether Dehgoies was happy with being exclusive to him, how Dehgoies thought of the two of them together in his mind… whether Dehgoies ever got jealous, like Terian himself did.

  Terian had been out of his head for most of their time together that day.

  He’d been out of his head for most of the sex, at least, which started on that private, Malibu beach, then came and went throughout the rest of the day.

  For most of those sessions, Dehgoies had been patient, insistent, even slow.

  He’d taken his time, forcing Terian to wait, forcing him to ask, holding him off even as he’d been gentle with him, at least in his way, which was as much dominant as soft.

  That night, Dehgoies shifted gears again, tying him to the bed, beating him and using his light to overpower him until Terian lost control entirely. At one point, he nearly came from Dehgoies’ light alone, and would have, if the other seer hadn’t stopped him.

  When Dehgoies finally let him, Terian almost thought he’d died.

  He definitely felt like he lost time––like he’d blacked out for part of that.

  He’d never had an orgasm like that in his life.

  It only occurred to him afterward that Dehgoies had built him up to that throughout the day, that he’d been screwing with his head from that first time on the beach, that he’d been messing with his light, that he’d been coaxing and pushing and pressing Terian to submit to his aleimi from the moment they started things on that blanket in the sand.

  Now, finding himself alone in here, a vague hurt swam over him.

  The hurt wasn’t from the dominance.

  It wasn’t from the pain.

  He’d liked that.

  Fuck, that was the reason he was still hard, after however-many sessions of sex.

  He’d more than liked it. Truthfully, it felt like something new between them, something Terian’s light and body and mind would very swiftly learn to crave.

  No, it wasn’t the dominance that brought the hurt.

  It was being left alone.

  It was waking up with the other no longer in his bed.

  He knew he was being ridiculous.

  This was normal for his friend. Dehgoies normally slept light, and short; his mind rarely if ever stopped working. The high-ranked infiltrator would often wake up consumed with multi-dimensional Barrier puzzles in the dead hours of the morning… he would wake up and get up and pace around and scribble and sketch.

  So nothing about him not being there was unusual, and yet…

  …and yet Terian still felt hurt that Dehgoies had left him in here alone, after everything he’d done with him the day before.

  Realizing he was verging on angry, resentful at least, possibly teetering into the beginnings of a sulk, he exhaled in annoyance.

  Now that annoyance was more aimed at himself than at the other seer.

  Throwing back the covers, he decided to find him.

  Climbing to his feet, he padded out of the bedroom, barefoot and naked, and into the triangle-shaped living room with the beach-facing windows.

  He found his friend outside, which didn’t surprise him, either.

  Dehgoies sat on a long green cushion that decorated a redwood-framed sunbathing chair. Wearing only pants, with no shirt or shoes, the outside cold air didn’t seem to bother him.

  Terian himself shivered as soon as he opened the door.

  Without meeting the other’s gaze, he walked back to the couch long enough to pull a knit blanket off the back of it, and wrap it around his body, wincing at some of the marks and cuts left over from their earlier playtime. Grimacing slightly, he made his way back to the sliding glass door and slipped outside, to find Dehgoies watching him, his pale eyes glowing faintly in the moonlight over the ocean.

  “You couldn’t sleep either?” the black-haired seer said, exhaling a few whispers of smoke.

  Terian noticed only then that he was smoking a hiri stick, one of the expensive ones you could only get in Seertown or in China. The faintly honeyed smell of the smoke reached Terian’s nose a few seconds later, and he walked over to where Dehgoies stretched out, taking the sunbathing chair next to him.

  He didn’t lay down though, unlike his friend.

  He sat up on it instead, the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders and body.

  He watched Dehgoies as the other seer returned his eyes to the ocean.

  “Do you have another of those?” Terian said after a pause.

  Dehgoies started a little then turned, fumbling with a shirt that lay on the redwood deck under his chair. Extracting the packet of hiri, along with a silver lighter, he tossed both into Terian’s lap.

  Terian extracted one of the dark, resin-y seer cigarettes and put it to his lips, lighting it with the silver lighter Dehgoies always carried.

  Exhaling sweet-smelling smoke, he sighed, gazing out over the view of the ocean.

  The moon made a trail across the surface of the dark water, like a road to the full orb at the end of it. Looking at the rolling black waves, the stars filling the sky outside the aura of the moon’s light, Terian felt something in his chest relax.

  He would not say anything.

  It was a beautiful night. That was enough.

  There was no need to speak of anything on a night so filled with silence.

  “I need to talk to you, Terry,” Dehgoies said, his voice low, as still as the night sky.

  Terian felt his muscles lock.

  Turning his head, he looked at his friend. He studied Dehgoies’ profile in the moonlight, maybe in part to distract himself from what he’d heard in his voice. Gauging the hardness of the expression there, Terian felt his gut drop, a sharp pain blooming in his chest.

  “Do you, now?” Terian’s voice came out light––unnaturally and unconvincingly light. “I would have thought you’d be tired after our exertions of this past day, brother.”

  Dehgoies turned his head.

  His pale eyes flashed briefly in the blue-white light.

  He studied Terian’s face, a small frown forming at the edges of his narrow mouth.

  After a long-feeling pause, his next words came out blunt, matter-of-fact.

  “I think we should end this,” he said.

  Terian’s mind cut out.

  “…I think we should go back to being friends.”

  Pausing at Terian’s silence, Dehgoies added,

  “I am sorry to say this, brother. Truly. But it is something I have considered for some time, and I believe I am right in this.”

  He paused, gauging Terian’s face, his light.

  His voice grew more cautious when he continued.

  “I care for you too much, brother.” He reached across the space between the sun loungers, laying a hand gently on his bare arm wher
e it poked out of the blanket. “I do not want to lose this friendship of ours… and it feels to me that things between us, with the added components of sex and exclusivity, are…”

  Exhaling a small cloud of hiri smoke, he motioned vaguely with the hand holding the seer cigarette, gazing back out over the dark water, and its blue-white, mystical path over the slow-moving waves.

  “…complicated,” he finished, releasing Terian’s arm and letting his hand drop back towards the redwood deck. “I thought perhaps it would gradually become less-so, over time. But it feels to me as though these complications are multiplying, not diminishing.”

  Those crystal eyes aimed back at Terian’s, holding a heavier scrutiny.

  “I do not wish to lose you, brother. I fear I will, if we continue this. As much as I am enjoying sex with you… and trust me, brother, I am… I would rather give it up than risk us. Our lives are too long for that. I could not bear to spend most of mine without you as my friend.”

  Terian stared back at those glass-like eyes.

  He stared at him, and fought to form words.

  He knew he should speak.

  He knew he should say something in return.

  But he didn’t.

  He could not.

  Dehgoies exhaled another lungful of hiri smoke, gazing back out through the slats of the deck’s railing.

  “Things are new with us still,” he said, his voice lower, and now holding a thread of sadness, even regret. “But we are at a crossroads now, brother… a cusp, perhaps. I feel it. I know you have, too.” He turned his head, and those crystal eyes were shrewd now, studying his openly, looking for Terian’s understanding. “It is better if we end it before things go any further… before our friendship is compromised for real.”

  Terian could only stare back at him.

  Looking at his friend, he did not doubt the sincerity of his words.

  He felt the truth of them, which only made the pain in his gut worse.

  For Dehgoies’ truth was not his truth.

  All this time, Terian had known that, but he had done nothing.

  He had forced Dehgoies to do it for them both.

  Now he could only sit here, and let Dehgoies decide for both of them again.