by Cari Z.
Jason finally tore his eyes away and looked over at Ferran, who was watching him with a pleased expression on his face. “Did you do all of this?”
“Oh, no. My brother did much of it. And this was once our father’s den, and some of it, he made.” Ferran stared contentedly at the vaulted ceiling. “Veyall was two litters ahead of me. We were never in school together, but we could spend time together in here. He taught me many things. He was a good brother.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“I always wanted more siblings, but I have a large extended family. They are good to me.” Ferran held out a hand, and Jason joined him at the table.
An unfinished painting done on an oval piece of wood lay on the smooth surface. It was so jarring to look at that Jason had to blink once, just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. The background was obsidian black, cut through with jagged shapes in bright red and deep purple. It was beautiful, but completely incongruous. “Did you do this?”
“After my brother died,” Ferran affirmed. He stared down at it solemnly, only a sliver of amber iris showing through his long lashes. “By the time I got this far, I did not hurt so much anymore, but I didn’t know what to do with it then.” He looked for another long moment, then moved on to the next table. The painting there was unfinished, just a dark blue circle spreading out into grasping tendrils that crawled across the page.
“What about this one?” Jason asked, slipping his arm around Ferran’s waist.
“I began it when my mother told me to whom she intended to betroth me.”
“It doesn’t look happy,” Jason noted.
“It isn’t necessarily sad,” Ferran said. “I respect the matriarch my mother had in mind for me, but I was not prepared for everything to be so… final. My mother agreed to wait until my return to finalize the engagement, and it was very fortunate that she did.”
“Yes, it was.” Jason leaned in and brushed his lips along the edge of Ferran’s ear, smiling at the sudden flush of color in it. “Because now you’re mine.”
“Yes,” Ferran purred huskily. “And you are mine.” He touched the painting again and then turned away from it and into Jason’s arms. “I will make a new painting for you.”
“Hmm….” Jason wanted to fall into his lover’s very eager embrace, but the sight of the paintings reminded him of one of the things needed Ferran’s help with. “Actually… can we talk for a moment?”
Ferran sighed but obligingly stopped grinding himself against Jason’s thigh.
“I need your help with my demonstration at the end of the week.”
“Of course!” Ferran smiled brilliantly at Jason, who was suddenly very glad he’d asked. “What do you need?”
“I need you to paint something for me, and I need you to help me with rendering it three-dimensional. And,” he winced a little, “I need you to help me talk Neyarr and Garrell into letting me take apart their holo emitter. Temporarily.”
“How will this help you do kata?” Ferran asked. He’d seen Jason do some simple forms back on Jacksonville, but nothing like what Jason planned on showing his admirers and detractors here.
“It will add an extra visual element. I’ll just have to show you,” Jason said. He went back into their bedroom and took his mobile holo out of a bag, looking at it a little ruefully. It would have to give its emitters for the cause as well, but Jason was confident he’d get it working again. Ferran came and joined Jason on the bed, and Jason pulled up an image of a Korean dragon. “I need something that evokes this image. I don’t know if you can be this specific, with your emphasis on working with abstracts.”
Ferran stared avidly at the picture. “You have these on your world?”
Jason laughed. “No, they’re a myth. Dragons were protectors and guardians of the kingdom. Lesser dragons had three claws, greater dragons had four. The greater ones were omnipotent, and they flew, even though they don’t have any wings, as you can see.”
“It’s very beautiful,” Ferran said. “We have nothing in our history such as this. Some demons that live beneath the ground, but very few things that are beneficial. Everything good comes from family.”
“Human history is riddled with myths and legends. Every culture is different. I’ll tell you some of those stories sometime—I always loved them as a child.”
“I want to know all about what you love,” Ferran murmured, and his voice was suddenly low again, more than interested in picking up where they left off.
“Do you now?”
“Yesss,” his husband purred, setting the holo aside and pushing Jason onto his back.
“You had questions you wanted to ask me,” Jason said around kisses, wondering why he was bothering to bring it up when Ferran was lavishing attention on his neck.
“They will wait.”
“And we need your cousins’… the holo….”
“That will wait as well,” Ferran promised him, opening his shirt. Warm lips traced a path down his collarbone and the center of his chest before moving to linger over his heart. Puffs of warm air flowed over Jason’s nipple in time with his heartbeat, eventually replaced by Ferran’s tongue. The fatigue of the day seemed to evaporate as Jason lost himself to the rhythm of his husband’s ministrations. His husband. His.
The primal, possessive fire that Jason had banked earlier flared anew, and after a minute of fighting it, he switched their positions and pushed Ferran farther back onto the bed, so that his body sank into the too-soft bedding. Jason’s grip was heavy as he ran his hands over Ferran’s limbs, touching everything he could reach and clinging to it, almost like he had suction in his fingers and palms. Smooth skin and strong muscle were unveiled as they rid Ferran of his clothes, and then there was nothing in Jason’s mind but owning his lover, touching him over and over again until all Ferran could think about was him.
It didn’t take long. Ferran was primed for handling, as eager to work through tension as Jason after the first full day they’d had, and he reveled in his husband’s attention, purring and mewling and arching into every touch. Jason barely had time to touch his mouth to the tip of Ferran’s cock before he came, and the taste of it just made Jason hungry for more. He licked his lover clean and straightened up, and then Ferran sat up and pulled him forward, pulled his pants open, and swallowed him down to the root.
Jason was utterly incoherent, barely able to manage more than Ferran’s name in between desperate, breathy syllables before clenching his mouth shut over his restless groaning. God, it was incredible how deep Ferran could take him—something that spoke of experience, but Jason ignored that in favor of how insanely fucking good his husband’s mouth felt, tongue just this side of too rough and sweetly avoiding the head, which Ferran had swallowed down his throat anyway….
Jason gasped and came, bending over and dropping his head between his outstretched hands. It was so tempting to collapse, but he couldn’t do it—he wouldn’t until he withdrew from Ferran’s warm, wet grip and lay on his side next to him. Ferran immediately cuddled in close, and Jason gave up the mental fight over getting up and cleaning off before it could even begin. He was tired, he had his lover in his arms, and for now, it felt like his whole world was right.
Everything else would wait until tomorrow.
Chapter Eight
THE HISTORICAL circadian rhythm of a human being was attuned to a twenty-four hour day, with a fairly regular lapse and relapse of day into night throughout the year. As humanity left Earth to travel and populate the wider universe, their biorhythms had to be forcibly adjusted to a life beyond the planet of their origin. Humans, being a highly flexible species, were able to adapt to the demands of almost any new environment with time, if not ease. As medical assistance became better, men and women were given drugs to help adjust their bodies to new times and places, and eventually, over hundreds of generations, that rapid adaptability was bred into them.
That ingrained ability to stretch nature to adapt to a new environment, backed by decades of militar
y discipline, was all that was keeping Jason on his feet a week into life on Perelan. The medications that would have helped him adjust better to the time difference were contraindicated when he was already on so many drugs to help him live in the more acidic environment. In addition, the hours he would have managed to sleep were broken up by the need to ready his demonstration for the Council of Matriarchs and their families—and there was a lot to do for that. Jason had cannibalized Dori and Giselle’s holo emitters along with his own and the twins’, and he still wasn’t sure it was giving him the effect he wanted, but by the ninth day, there was no more time for planning.
Jason supposed he should have been grateful for the nine-day week giving him more time than he’d expected to practice and plan, but he was too stuck on wired to handle much calm reflection.
Katas could be performed as a moving meditation, and that was how Jason generally liked to do them, but this time, he had to perform with utter intent through the whole thing. It was a variation on an ancient Korean form, linear and straightforward, but he was doing it with a jang bong, a long staff. It wasn’t a weapon he was incredibly familiar with, but it was the easiest one to add holo emitters to. Jason was more comfortable with a sword, but according to Ferran, it wouldn’t be a smart political move. So he practiced with the staff, adding spins and twists that made him wince internally, but which he knew would look intriguing when paired with the holographic image he and Ferran had prepared.
As long as it all worked. As long as none of the emitters failed, as long as the smoke flowed the way it was supposed to, as long as Jason didn’t trip and stumble over his own feet trying to do a kick that he hadn’t really worked on since he was in his teens….
The list of things that needed to go right was more than a little daunting. Coupled with the fact that he hadn’t had time to sleep deeply or do more with his husband than engage in pure stress relief lately, let alone meditate, it made it difficult for Jason not to snap at his teachers on the day of his demonstration. He tried to take refuge the way that worked best for him, in silence, but Jlinn was having none of that.
“You are not enunciating,” she snapped after Jason’s fifth try on the word here. “The first consonant must reverberate in your chest if you are to have the slightest hope of producing it well. You sound like a sickly pup.”
“I’ll do better.”
“You will not do better if you do not try to do better. And you are not trying at all right now.”
Jason clenched his jaw and exhaled slowly. “I have a lot on my mind at the moment.”
“You should not be wasting your effort worrying about the future when there is nothing you can do to affect it.”
“Everything I do affects the future,” Jason said evenly. “That’s the whole reason you’re teaching me Perel in the first place, to help shape the future. Immediate and long-term future, in fact, for myself and my consort and possibly for this entire planet. So please don’t ask me to dismiss my thoughts as unimportant when really I could care less about how I roll my r’s when entering into an interrogative versus a declarative. It simply isn’t registering with me right now.”
Tired brown eyes met affronted amber for a moment before Jlinn, to Jason’s surprise, sat back and nodded in understanding. “I do see what you mean. I don’t pretend to fully understand your situation, Jason Kim Howards Grenn, but I do know that if you constantly look to what others expect of you, you will never expect anything of yourself. There is a speech that I give to pups on the cusp of adulthood, and I know, I know,” she held up a hand, palm out, “you have been a human adult for many years, but here I think there is a parallel. If anything, it is more appropriate for you, because you have so much to learn and yet are used to expecting so much of yourself. Are you ready for my speech?”
Jason resigned himself to a lengthy lecture. “Yes.”
Jlinn theatrically cleared her throat, folded her hands beneath her chin and said, with great gravity, “Get over yourself.”
Jason waited for more. When nothing else was forthcoming, he blinked as if waking up out of a doze. “Is that it?”
“Yes. Did you like it?”
“It was very… succinct.”
“Short is good when you are trying to penetrate the skull of an adolescent. Everything is drama, life is all upheaval, and nothing shall ever be the same. One moment there is fear, the next moment there is laughter, and following that is anger. It is all fleeting, even for the most precious and pampered of pups, so it is good to remember that the focus should be on the moment when it can be. If you are lucky, there will always be time to worry about the future.” Jlinn smiled at him.
Jason grinned back at her, an actual wide grin that felt good on skin accustomed to impassivity. “Thank you. I do see the parallel, even though I can’t really find it very flattering.”
“I will never flatter you. I will give you my honesty, though, and my honest opinion is that you are a good student, even if you are a somewhat hopeless one.” She unfolded her hands and grabbed her rod up again, ready to smack his hand. “Now. Say it again.”
PITHY AS it was, Jlinn’s speech did help Jason unbend a bit for the rest of the day. The demonstration was to be held in Grenn’s audience chamber, and matriarchs and their families were being seated now. The limits of his space were clearly demarcated, and Garrell and Neyarr were there making sure no one stepped over the lines, because, as Ney put it, “We cannot let some fool break our holo emitter further, and you had better be able to put it back together, Jason, or else.”
Jason checked the projectors on the staff one last time and then closed his eyes and ran the form through his head again before heading out. He was dressed in a white dobok, which would make him a mobile surface to project the holograms onto while he performed if the smoke wasn’t everything he hoped it would be. He could hear Ferran introducing him beyond the door, but he didn’t really listen to the words.
Some people used fear to motivate themselves: fear of failure, fear of disappointment…. Fear was one of the things that drove Ferran. Jason wasn’t motivated by fear, but by the pursuit of personal perfection. Even after his husband opened the back door to the audience chamber and escorted him in, Jason didn’t really look at the crowd. They were immaterial. All that mattered was movement, concentration, and timing.
A faint miasma of smoke drifted through the chamber—just enough to provide a background for the steady stream of diaphanous blackness that seemed to pour from the end of Jason’s staff as he held it out to the side. This particular kata had been designed, like all of them, to simulate ancient styles of combat. Jason had simply adapted the moves to work against a more mythic foe.
The cloud of silky blackness coalesced in the shape of a dragon over his head. It was a dozen feet long, and more suggestive of a dragon than a genuine depiction like the one Jason had shown Ferran. That one had been detailed, with grasping claws, gaping jaws, and unblinking, jewel-like eyes. This one was mistier and constantly shifting, many of the details forgotten in the balancing act between achieving the right feel and saving the projectors from overload. The image wavered in the faintness of the smoke, but judging from the startled mewls and gasps in the room, it was the sort of illusion the Perels hadn’t seen much of before.
Shiny black changed, shimmering into bright red scales, starting at the head and working their way toward the tail as the dragon seemed to stalk Jason across the floor. Jason leapt and kicked and spun the staff in tight, flicker-fast circles around his body, thrusting it outward at the beginning and end of every pass. His crisp uniform snapped with the force of his movements, the only sound to break the silence that had descended over the crowd. He was falling into the zone, a place of utter concentration as he became absorbed in a form he had perfected as a young man and now revived for the sake of his future.
The dragon dodged and swirled around Jason, its body breaking up and reforming in places as the projectors strove to keep up with the speed of the movements. Their inte
raction melded into a performance of partners, not adversaries. The color of the scales melted into green, and the dragon began to fly more playfully, slowing down and coiling around Jason as he fought, no longer a foe but an ally.
At the very end of the form, as Jason came back to his starting position and ritually bowed, the illusion dissolved over his body like a glittering rain until all that was left were two glowing, golden eyes perched right over his head. As he straightened out of the bow, the eyes vanished, and all that was left was Jason, breathing hard as he waited for a reaction.
There was nothing but silence. Silence could be comforting, but frankly, at that point, any reaction would have been preferable to the empty enormity of not knowing what anyone was thinking. Unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed to stick around and find out what his audience thought. Tradition demanded, for the sake of modesty and deference to his matriarch, that he withdraw and that any offers made by potential students be delivered through her. So once the heart-stoppingly long moment was over, Jason bowed once more to the matriarchs, turned around, and walked back out the door.
He kept walking until he was back in his and Ferran’s den and carefully set down the staff. Only then did he let himself fall back onto the couch, close his eyes, and let loose the sigh that had been beating at his throat ever since he found out he’d have to do this. It was out of his control now. He’d done the best he could, and that would have to be good enough for his new family, because he was tapped out.
The door to their den eased open and shut. Jason didn’t open his eyes, but he did manage a smile as Ferran joined him, wrapping him in a tight embrace. “You were beautiful.”
“You did a really good job on the dragon,” Jason agreed. “The illusion worked a lot better than I thought it would.”
“No,” Ferran corrected him gently, “You were beautiful. You move beautifully. Gracefully. You move like a duelist, only I am not afraid to look at you.”