Some Things Transcend

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Steeling himself, Jahir went in search of the Ambassador. And this time he requested entrance, and wondered if he would be allowed it.

  But Lisinthir let him in. The other Eldritch was sitting at the table, leaning back in the chair. Did he ever sit straight? Jahir wondered now if the habitual slouch had helped inspire his need to take Lisinthir to task. The man's posture, his gestures, his expressions were all completely wrong for an Eldritch peer, and the mask of his face had been the only thing allowing Jahir to fool himself into thinking Lisinthir still held to the mannerisms they both would have learned as youths. Apparently, he thought, dragons also wore masks.

  It did not escape Jahir that his cousin appeared to be half-nude. That he must have chosen to change out of the clothing one would have expected of an Eldritch and an ambassador. What he wore now was some sort of dark robe, open on a bare chest. Even in the dim light Jahir could see the evidence of claw marks, gray seams against pale flesh.

  "So." Lisinthir was staring at him, and had not ceased to since Jahir stepped inside. The only thing moving in the room was the curl of smoke tumbling from the end of the cigarette. "Have you come to feed me, cousin?"

  He had chosen this course, knowing it would begin with a battle. Jahir steadied himself with a long breath and said, "That also."

  "That... also?" Lisinthir cocked a brow.

  "And first," Jahir said. "If you will permit."

  "By all means." Lisinthir indicated the free chair and the medical kit that was still lying on the table before it. "Finish what you've started, Healer."

  Dare he trust these elegant courtesies? Had Lisinthir abandoned his rage? He seemed almost cordial, did not move as Jahir drew nigh to take up the discarded AAP and the ampoule he'd failed to load the first time. And yet, something in the tension revealed by the fingers holding the hekkret... the calm was not a façade, but Jahir didn't understand what it might be instead. He sat on the edge of the chair, one foot out for balance and the other tucked beneath, and kept his voice neutral. "Have you drunk?"

  "Other than water? Not yet." A thin smile. "You have not yet advanced me a schedule."

  "I will," Jahir said, quiet. He set the AAP to Lisinthir's arm, at the brachial artery, and watched the solution begin to glide from the long tube. This was as many seconds as he had to gather his resolve. It did not last long enough.

  "Now then. What shall I do with you, cousin?"

  "I hope," Jahir replied, "you will accept my profound apology."

  Lisinthir canted his head. "This should be interesting. Pray, continue."

  Even expecting the sarcasm, it stung. Jahir ignored it and said, "I forced myself on you. That my intentions were honorable, that my aim was only your wellbeing, does not elide the harm I did you. And to you, in particular, when our culture makes it twice a wrongness." He lifted his eyes and willed the other man to see his sincerity. "I brought back from my attempt memories that you did not give me. So, yes. I have come to make apology."

  Lisinthir extinguished the hekkret with a twist of his fingers. "I do not accept your apology."

  He'd already been feeling the relief of having unburdened himself and the anticipation of his absolution. For a heartbeat he heard the words as he'd imagined them said, not as Lisinthir had actually spoken them. And then he froze. "I... am sorry? I did not hear that right?"

  "You heard me perfectly well, cousin." Lisinthir watched him. "Your apology is very pretty and I'm sure humbling yourself to offer it made you feel very good. But an apology is empty without acts that prove its speaker's sincerity. Are you really sorry for what you've done? Then you will offer me restitution. Not words."

  "Res... restitution," Jahir repeated.

  Lisinthir smiled without humor. "Shall I make it more plain?" He switched to their tongue and said it again: "Restitution."

  But in their tongue, the word carried with it the burdens of obligation and sacrifice, and Lisinthir shaded it black for violence and endings.

  When Jahir could speak again, he said, "And what... would this restitution entail?"

  "Well. As I see it, you have exposed my vulnerabilities and now hold them in your hands, to use against me at your leisure." Lisinthir smiled. "You will protest that as a healer you would never do such a thing, but you are only a healer now. You have been an Eldritch noble for much longer, and you know as well as I do that everything that falls into our hands is a thing to be shaped into safety for ourselves and our Houses. So. I want you to grant me a vulnerability in turn."

  Jahir offered his hand instantly. This he could give. Did give, every day, not just to Vasiht'h but to every client they saw. His spirit, his thoughts, his heart... all that was good in him. "Take it."

  Lisinthir's eyes narrowed. "Do you really know yourself so little, Jahir Seni Galare? Or are you insulting me?"

  "I'm doing nothing of the kind—" Jahir halted abruptly, because Lisinthir had touched a finger to his lips.

  "Stop talking."

  He stopped, wondering why every nerve in his body was now raw, so much that even the shift of his clothes against his frame as he breathed was too much friction.

  "You think your thoughts are your weakness?" Lisinthir sighed. "Dying Air, but you'd survive all of a breathpause in the Empire with so little understanding of yourself." He grasped Jahir by the jaw and shook him. "This is your weakness, Healer. Your flesh."

  "I won't..."

  "What?" Lisinthir asked. His smile was... complicated. Sad, somehow. But his eyes were pitiless. "Won't let me rape you? Have you sorted out what you drew from my memories that much?" He leaned forward and said, low, "Tell me what I told you before."

  "You don't rape the innocent."

  Lisinthir leaned back, took his hand with him. Folded them on his stomach and watched him with hooded eyes.

  "Then what do you want?" Jahir asked, fighting irritation. The touch had been presumptuous and shocking. Its absence left him feeling cold and isolated. It annoyed him that he couldn't tell which state he preferred. "My willingness?"

  The smile quirked up, became whimsical. "He can learn."

  "You have to know I would never...."

  "Consent to anything I might ask of you? And if what I ask is a kiss?"

  Jahir eyed him. "That's it."

  "I haven't been kissed in far too long."

  "You have only been gone from the Empire for a handful of days."

  "As I said." The smile went wry. "Consult your stolen memories. Perhaps you'll learn how much kissing I'm now accustomed to."

  "It... doesn't work that way," Jahir said, stumbling through the words as the impressions crowded back in on him. Bloodwarm tears. Feverish mouths. "I don't... have memories as such. Not enough to piece together what happened to you. Except to know that it was violent, and painful and...."

  "And?" Lisinthir asked, arch.

  He almost couldn't answer. "And that you found love there, and passion, such love entwined with passion, and there was no shame." He looked up at the other Eldritch, more alien now than any shapechanger, and whispered, "How? How did you find a love without shame?"

  Jahir had expected mockery or withdrawal, not this silence that lasted too long, achingly too long… and ended within seconds. Then Lisinthir gathered his face in one long hand, his thumb resting on Jahir's lips, and said, "Oh, cousin." And sighed before pulling Jahir to him and kissing his brow.

  There it was, when they were so close, skin to skin. Deep under the maelstrom of Lisinthir's passions, his open wounds, his rage and grief and restlessness... a core of adamant, the strength that was tenderness, that love had made. And somehow, he'd formed it out of a love that could be carnal as well as platonic, and Jahir could not understand, could not, for the life of him, how it was possible. But he saw it, and he envied it so deeply that every joint in his body ached, every fiber in every muscle, his heart as it stroked, endlessly and without mercy. God and Lady, to be in love and have it not be wrong.

  He couldn't even weep. One wept for things that might
be, that were real, and for him this would never, could never be so.

  It had been Lisinthir's intention to keep his cousin on the defensive, to control the conversation so that when he asked for the seizure intervention treatment, it would be from a position of strength. He couldn't conceive of permitting more psychic intrusion without first claiming that advantage. And he'd been doing well—had in fact found it too easy—when Jahir crumpled. The moment he did, Lisinthir's guardian instincts erupted, pricked forth his gentleness. That his cousin accepted the kiss and the shoulder Lisinthir guided him to with such grace....

  Lisinthir rested his cheek on his cousin's hair and suppressed his sigh. Here was a battle he had lost, and his opponent probably hadn't the first clue how he'd secured his victory. But in the face of such naked anguish, Lisinthir couldn't press the attack. He kept the other man close until his sense of Jahir's tumult waned. Then said, very quiet, "Tell me about this would-be lover."

  Jahir's shoulders stiffened. As he pushed himself upright, he said, "Sediryl. My cousin."

  "Not a far cousin, I'm guessing. So you cannot marry her." Lisinthir considered Jahir's downcast eyes. Vasiht'h had confirmed the man was a virgin...what else, from a noble of their station? "She was the first person you ever wanted. Loved-and-wanted."

  "And still the only woman I love and want."

  "So. Your first experience of passion arose in response to someone you've been told it would be perverse to love," Lisinthir said. "Someone who invoked the gruesome stories about serial miscarriages and genetic sports we've been warned about since we were old enough to hear. And yet, despite knowing these consequences, you still cherished and longed for your cousin... and so you concluded that your body was traitorous, that it could not even be trusted to fulfill its reproductive function successfully if it could choose to desire that which would result in a fruitless, tragic marriage. You set all thoughts of passion aside and there they have been festering, in the dark, for decades... centuries. And now here you are. A man who can be incited by being called 'cousin' by someone to whom his body responds. And who answers violence with desire because he longs to punish himself for his needs... and who wishes to be forced, so he can finally sate those needs without being to blame."

  Jahir was staring at him in horror.

  "Did I guess rightly?" Lisinthir offered him a thin smile. "I have no license, I fear. But my ability to grasp psychologies was the only thing that kept me alive for over a year amid sociopaths. The situation was very... incenting."

  "How... no. Oh, God." Jahir covered his face with one hand.

  "I also have the unfair advantage of having recently walked a similar road."

  That won him a shocky look. He didn't like how gray his cousin had gone beneath the pearl-pale skin and rested his fingers on that jaw again, just to steady it. Did the touch help? He thought it only distracted Jahir from his vertigo, but that was something.

  "Ask me about my time in the Empire," Lisinthir said, gentle. "I'll answer now."

  Jahir's voice was faint. "Will I still need to pay you with a kiss?"

  "Do you want one?"

  That answer he read through their skins, a need close to pain. Not for him, but for acceptance. How could he not reply? Lisinthir leaned forward, his thumb tracing his cousin's lower lip and then pressing it down, just a little. He took what he wanted, and gave what was needed, and it was a melting sweetness because Jahir yielded to him: his trust, his mouth, his inexperience, and, moments into it, the saltwater taste of the tear that ran over his lip.

  When he parted it was only just, still close enough to feel the heat of Jahir's skin against his lips. He let Jahir rein in his breath, then murmured, "Again?" and stole it back. He smiled at the sharp inhale, felt the answer under his fingertips... and waited this time.

  Then, strangled, "...yes."

  On the second kiss, then, Lisinthir stroked his thumb to the joint near Jahir's ear and began to press on it. He knew the moment the pain broke past the pleasure for the lightning that shot through his cousin's skin, bringing desire behind it like sheets of fire. Jahir made a sound....

  Oh, he had heard sounds like that in his own throat. Lisinthir sighed and drew back, pulling at his cousin's lower lip just a little on the way, prolonging the contact. But it was enough, for now, and certainly for this trembling virgin.

  His cousin was watching him. Shoulders rising and falling too swiftly, lips swollen, and pupils vast in those honey-colored eyes. But that expression was not desire, and a moment later, Jahir smiled whimsically. "I see. I've gone from adversary to potential victim, and now you want to protect me."

  Lisinthir rubbed his thumb in a circle around the hinge of Jahir's jaw, eliciting a shiver. "I think this vulnerability is well and again enough to pay for mine, given that yours is far more dangerous."

  Jahir winced. "It is just... lust."

  Lisinthir touched a finger to his lips, stilling him. "No. It is the language you use to express your needs. And the needs you express are..." He paused, shook his head minutely. "Very enticing not just to people who would honor them, but to people who would prey on them."

  "But I am not your prey."

  "No," Lisinthir said. "I am not at all moved by cruelty and sadism. Conquest, yes. The contest. Dominance, when I am fighting against an opponent worth the fight. And I'm moved by sweetness, and yielding, and love. But being tortured doesn't incite me, and neither does torturing. I learned all these things the hard way."

  "What then must you think of me?" Jahir asked, quiet.

  "Mostly that I want to put my sword between you and anyone who would abuse you." Lisinthir smiled wryly. "The torment of Eldritch is something I feel should be reserved to other Eldritch. Not to outsiders."

  Jahir managed a laugh. A hoarse one, but real.

  "Better," Lisinthir said, gentle. He tipped his cousin's face up with a crooked finger beneath the chin. "Yes?"

  "Maybe," Jahir answered, but Lisinthir liked the way his cousin met his eyes, despite his obvious awareness of his vulnerability. And when Lisinthir cupped his face in a hand, Jahir leaned into it. "I don't want these things from Sediryl."

  "Of course you don't. She's the girl you love with the purity of your heart and body. You still want her with a youth's innocent love. And if you decide to approach her—" He ignored Jahir's flinch and the reflexive revulsion that stained their contact, "—then you'll find in her bed everything you thought lovemaking would be. Unless, of course, she's been twisted by our culture as well."

  "She's already had two human lovers," Jahir said. "One male, one female."

  Lisinthir laughed, surprised. "Has she! I like her already. By all means, you must court her. She'll be good for you."

  "Lisinthir—"

  "Don't say it. Don't make vows you'll use to bind yourself. If it's pain you want, I'll give it to you. Then you can blame me for it rather than use it to make new whips to lash yourself with."

  Jahir stopped breathing, then gasped in and said, "That... you mean that."

  "Yes?" Lisinthir lit the hekkret again, wishing for the alcohol. "Given that what I'm now accustomed to is far rougher than you'd probably be comfortable receiving. I could force you to find pleasure in my bed. It would be safer than anything you could do to yourself, even; I have much more experience with how far you can push flesh before you court serious injury." He sucked in the smoke and let it trail out between his teeth. "If it would ease the fretwork binding in your head, I'll do it."

  "But why?" Jahir folded his arms, spine rigid and head lowered, as if he wanted to guard himself but couldn't find the aggression to challenge with his eyes as well as his posture. "You have given me nothing but condescension and attack since we met. I know very well what you think of Eldritch from the difference between how you treat the Pelted and how you treat me."

  "You took my tumbler."

  Jahir frowned, looked up at him in puzzlement. "I beg your pardon?"

  "Our first real meeting," Lisinthir said, flexing his
fingers against the hekkret. "Not counting a fire-fight in a Chatcaavan vessel. You took my tumbler. You fought me."

  "That was not...."

  Lisinthir lifted his brows, and Jahir made an exasperated sound and looked away. "I couldn't leave it with you."

  "Cousin. You knew I could have risen the moment you left and gotten a second from the genie. You didn't take the tumbler to prevent me from poisoning myself. You took it to send me a message about how far you were willing to let me push you."

  Jahir began to speak, then subsided. And said, "Yes."

  "And in every conversation since, you've refused to back down, save when you thought yourself in error." Lisinthir considered, then said, "Well, and the one time I told you to leave. And you were right to go. I was... not in control of my anger."

  "So not only am I a potential victim in need of protection, I'm also an adversary worth honoring?" Jahir asked, but he was testing the concept in his own mind. Lisinthir could almost see him tasting the words and thought his cousin had a sensual streak, no matter how ruthlessly it had been suppressed. "Yes, I can see that. But you mean to tell me that on that basis, you'll sleep with me?"

  "No," Lisinthir admitted. "I'll sleep with you because of how you yield to me, and because I miss holding someone in my arms. And perhaps, a little, because I could see myself becoming fond of you."

  Jahir eyed him, and that look was so skeptical Lisinthir started laughing. When he had his breath back, he said, "Think of it this way. If you pay for the story of my time in the Empire solely in kisses, you will chafe your lips to bleeding long before we're done. Letting me tumble you will win you the whole thing with far less pain. Unless, of course, you'd rather the pain."