Vasiht'h flinched, looked away and hugged himself. "I'm willing," he said with obvious reluctance.
Lisinthir glanced at Jahir and lifted a brow, received a slight head-shake. Would their language be transparent to the Glaseah through the mindline he shared with an Eldritch? The possibility must exist, or Jahir would have said something. He let the pause lengthen instead, and when he saw no change in their body language, said, "I will have water. If you will excuse me."
The moment his cousin left, Vasiht'h hissed, /I didn't mean now when I said I would do it!/
Jahir folded his arms, head bowed. When he was sure of his tone, he said, "If not now, then when?"
"Later. When we're home. Where we're—"
"Safe?" Jahir looked at him then. "Now is when we need it, arii. Not on Veta in a month when you have the luxury of confronting your distress at the necessity."
"It's not necessity!"
"It is now." Jahir flexed his fingers on his arms. "Now, Vasiht'h, in this moment. When we might need the practice, the mindset, the recent muscle memory of the actions. Later you and I can both take on the training in a safe environment at our leisure. But the time between ourselves and our freedom is limited and growing more so, and between ourselves and that outcome there is the possibility of combat... and if we are not engaged in it, then we need to be able to avoid it. When, then, if not now?"
Through their link, the words squeezed as if past all his partner's desperate attempts to prevent them: But I don't want to!
Jahir shook his head and said, quiet, "Arii. We do what we must. Or we may not make it home."
"That sort of thinking might work for a Lisinthir," Vasiht'h said. "I don't know that it will work for me. I'm not like you. Either of you!"
"You would have me believe you are incapable of sacrifice?" Jahir said, tasting the frenzied fears behind the words. "This from the person who nearly bled out while trying to hide a dagger that would start a war?"
"That was a dream!"
"It was real to you," Jahir said, amazed that his partner could suddenly seem so alien to him. Had this been what Vasiht'h was feeling on seeing him evince his unnatural desires? And yet he could not love the Glaseah any less, and he let that soak the mindline, fill it with something warm and clean, sparkling with moonlight.
"It's not the same." Vasiht'h stepped back, toes splayed. Jahir could see a hint of claw at their tips. "That was for you. To save you and your family, because it means that much to you."
"Then I say to you what you said to me," Jahir answered, quiet. "If you love me so, then do this for me. I already contemplate a future without you. Don't make me live through that grief before time."
That rendered Vasiht'h speechless, wrung the mindline with anguish as if Jahir had stabbed him. It hurt so to feel it that Jahir was grateful when his cousin returned, wearing his Chatcaavan—Eldritch—mask of an expression, his emotions kept too close to reach even his eyes.
He was even more grateful that Lisinthir's first words disordered both their thoughts.
"Can you dance?"
"I'm... sorry?" Vasiht'h said, the mindline flecked with the sparks of his confusion as he tried to back away from their previous conversation and make sense of the new one.
"Dance," Lisinthir repeated, unruffled. "Can you?"
"I... yes?"
"May I see?"
Bewildered, Vasiht'h said, "Just... like that?"
"I'm sure we can order music from the ceiling or walls," Lisinthir replied. "The Alliance being magical as it is. Tell me a favored piece."
Jahir wanted to ask very badly what on the world his cousin was thinking, but held his peace. Better to see his partner jarred from his distress and rejection than to chance breaking whatever spell it was Lisinthir was weaving.
His cousin was at the wall, waking the interface with a splayed hand and looking back at Vasiht'h with one of those subtly challenging expressions, all lifted brow and canted head and ever-so-slight smile. "So? Music?"
"Ah... I... guess... there's a pronk channel out of Alpha that's fun—"
Jahir said, "I like that one."
"He dances too," Vasiht'h said, straightening his shoulders.
"Of course he does," Lisinthir said, paging through the interface now. "He was taught to dance the moment he left the nursery. So, pronk out of Starbase Alpha. We won't be able to reach Alpha without a Well drive to pull down distant streams, but there should be something stored locally in the ship...." His fingers played the display, though Jahir noted that at speed Lisinthir defaulted to something less like a quick stroke and more like the flex of claws. "Something like this?"
The drums came first, low and quick, more a vibration felt in the soft core of the body than heard. Everything else spilled onto it in swift succession, layers of rhythm and melody. Pronk was named for the springing of gazelles: happy music designed for bouncing and written to be looped with melody lines that evolved like DNA across generations. Jahir enjoyed it, but there was little music he didn't. If healing was what occupied his mind, it was music that whispered to him of the passions he kept constrained, carefully channeled.
Perhaps Lisinthir was destined to cut through all the channels they'd made and free everything in them to find a new equilibrium. He and Vasiht'h together formed a stable core, settling into peace and calm. A little disruption now and then... that was the story of life, wasn't it? The unexpected, the breathless, the unplanned-for, the unwanted. The challenge.
"Effervescent," Lisinthir observed of the music, head tilted.
"I like happy songs," Vasiht'h said, and then backpedaled when Lisinthir joined him and held out a hand.
"So teach me."
"Teach you?" Vasiht'h managed, ears flattening.
"To dance to this, if you would. I assume it requires bouncing."
"Ah... it's easier if you have paws—"
"I am sure my cousin makes do?"
"He does," Jahir said for himself, amused, arms folded.
"Well then, I shall as well." Lisinthir bowed. "If you would."
How tentatively his partner put his hand in the Eldritch's! But there was power in music, and an inevitability somehow to its working on them. Jahir backed off the mat and put his spine to the wall and watched, and thought that he would live many years and never forget the sight of a Glaseah stotting alongside an Eldritch heir. Vasiht'h's dancing was all the innocent happiness of a body in motion... Lisinthir's, informed by far more dangerous and sensual understandings. The mindline cleared of grief and fear and revulsion and sang purer melodies, and Jahir closed his eyes and drew it close.
"So... ah... I think you have it."
Lisinthir waved the volume down. "I do, yes. And I know too what I wondered."
"Whether Glaseah can dance?" Vasiht'h asked, finding a flutter of amusement.
"Whether you were aware of your lower body with the same precision you are the upper," Lisinthir said, strolling behind Vasiht'h. An abrupt motion, boot to the heel of Vasiht'h's back leg, and the Glaseah twitched away. "Excellent."
"You wanted to watch me dance to see if I could move my own body?" Vasiht'h asked, too puzzled to be offended.
"Not move it, but be aware of it even when it's out of sight." Lisinthir finished circling him, coming to a halt behind and to one side. "More than half of you is over your shoulder. If I stand here, you can't see me, but I can attack you—can, in fact, disable or kill you. Without situational awareness, you have a grave vulnerability. But I think you might, and in fact—" The Eldritch feinted toward Vasiht'h's tail and again the Glaseah recoiled. "In fact, you may be using your abilities to sense it in advance of the actual touch. That would make all our lives easier."
Appalled, Vasiht'h said, "You used dancing to see how good I would be at fighting?"
"Both begin with motion," Lisinthir said, unperturbed. He came around to the front, beckoned to Jahir. "Now we shall test a new assertion."
Obedient and curious, Jahir joined them on the mat, woke the staff in r
esponse to his cousin's nod. Perfectly at ease, Lisinthir waited, hands folded behind his back, the yoke of his shoulders without tension.
"Now," his cousin said in a tone conversational enough to lull them both, "Vasiht'h, defend!" And lunged for Jahir with one of those poured-water swiftnesses that Jahir found so disarming. Before he could react, Vasiht'h had slammed him out of the way—rather too forcefully—and ducked, then leaped back in alarm at Lisinthir's advance. Jahir went for his cousin then, tasting ferocity like bile, like some hint of hidden angers.
How long did they do this? He lost track. Lisinthir did not relent, not to allow them their wind or evaluate their performance or explain how to better it; he worked them until the mindline stretched taut and empty of words, filled only with a bone-deep cognizance of where Vasiht'h was in space, where he was in relation to that, what hurt on the Glaseah's body, what hurt on his own.
"Stop," Lisinthir said abruptly.
They did, panting.
"Drink something," their tutor said, voice a rasp. He wiped his hair back from his brow and chuckled. "Now that was proper exercise."
"You're... in... sane..." Vasiht'h said, the mindline finally filling with a trickle of something: anger, confusion, exhaustion. Jahir ignored it and went to get them both water, passing the cup to the Glaseah once he'd had a few tentative sips. Vasiht'h took it, drank, then asked, arch, "What was the point of that? Do you just like to beat people up?"
Lisinthir remained unmoved. "I was doing as your beloved asked."
"How was that training me to fight!"
"By giving you something worth fighting for, so you would no longer make protest," Lisinthir replied, unperturbed. "And to demonstrate that you cannot be trained alone. Neither of you can. Your greatest asset is your link to one another: what others need to communicate in words, or spend months training in order to simulate, the two of you can do effortlessly. You work together when attacked." He smiled thinly. "If you truly cared to, you could become frighteningly formidable."
"No, thank you!" Vasiht'h muttered, but his anger had transmuted into puzzlement, and just a little, into interest.
"I apologize for the unorthodox methods," Lisinthir said. "But I think by now it should come as no surprise to either of you that you must embark on most everything as a team. It is the path you've chosen."
/And I do not regret it,/ Jahir added, soft.
Vasiht'h glanced at him and flushed, wishing he felt worthy of it.
Lisinthir interrupted the moment, casual. "Cousin? I believe I am about to faint."
So successful had he been in sounding unperturbed that Jahir almost didn't catch him when he staggered. Almost. Wrapping his arms around the body, sliding to one knee, he called, /Arii!/
/Here!/
Jahir put an arm around Vasiht'h's shoulders, pulling him close, and tipped into Lisinthir's mind, and the disorder there, and it was... oh, it was extreme and vicious, chaos armed with fang and tooth, a savagery that promised an utter undoing. He was stunned by the magnitude of the work before him to calm it—
/No,/ Vasiht'h said behind him, bracing him. /We won't let the dark have him./
Jahir breathed out his acquiescence and gathered the screaming unsense into himself, peeling it forcefully from Lisinthir's mind, imposing himself on it over and over with his partner a silent bulwark behind. It became a battle—he felt the sword in his hand and didn't question the overlay his own consciousness had put on the fight—and in the blood-shrouded dark he cut away the demons until there was stillness and a cool wind blew over the field, carrying away the miasma of death.
When he found himself in his body at last he was trembling. Vasiht'h was behind him with his arms threaded around his waist, and that was well, it was keeping him upright. Lisinthir was in his arms, breathing... God and Lady, breathing. Had it been close? It had felt close.
/It was,/ Vasiht'h said, subdued. When Jahir wondered at the low tone, the Glaseah said, /I've been so angry at him for exposing something about myself that scared me. But in no universe do I want him dead./
Jahir sighed, his breath ruffling Lisinthir's hair.
Muzzy now: "...cousin?"
"Here," Jahir murmured.
"…feel rather vague."
"You had a seizure," Jahir said. "But you're safe now."
There was a faint smile in this answer, though Jahir couldn't see his cousin's face to be sure. "Brave healer."
"Say it in our tongue," Jahir said, using that language. "So that I'm sure of you."
"Brave healer," Lisinthir answered, voice low with fatigue. He had shaded it gold and white. "I saw you on the field. You had Seni's sword."
Jahir quelled his tremor. "You saw it?"
"I have the memory of it. Was it not real?"
Jahir kissed the pale head, tasted sweat. "Real enough," he said in Universal. "You should rest a while. We'll ask Triona to watch you while Vasiht'h and I see to the rest of the crew."
"And then?" Lisinthir asked, keeping to their tongue, all quicksilver changes of mode: pure white, bright gold, the hope of silver, the suggestion of red flesh. "Will you be what I need?"
He couldn't help himself in response to that complex a question so effortlessly couched... because of course, what could Lisinthir do anymore without twining the spiritual and the moral and the physical together? He laughed, soft, and it was delight in finding something new and unexpected in a people from whom he had come to expect stagnation. "Oh cousin," he said. "As if you could be denied."
Lisinthir pushed himself free of the embrace and smoothed his hair over his shoulder, each motion careful until he'd proven he could make them without falling. Then he smiled, and while the merriment didn't quite lighten his eyes, it did his voice. "You know I prefer my companions willing."
"Or bloody beneath you."
"But not you." Lisinthir touched Jahir's cheek once, then smiled and said to Vasiht'h over Jahir's shoulder, "And not you. So come more willingly to these practices, as many as we have left."
"All right," Vasiht'h said, meek. And to Jahir, resigned and rueful, /You were right./
/Then we are even, yes?/ Jahir replied, and touched the hands clasped at his waist. /Let's get our patient to a bed. We have work to do./
/Yes./
CHAPTER 12
They left Lisinthir not only with Triona, but with Cory and Sharil, whom he'd been coaching on the bridge earlier in the morning... because they'd all asked if they could come along, and an all-too-amused Lisinthir had waved one of those gaunt hands of his and said 'why not.' When the door slid shut on them he already had his head in the Tam-illee's lap and Goddess alone knew what was going to happen once they'd been gone long enough. Vasiht'h didn't put it past the Eldritch to decide what they all needed was a nude cuddle. Or more. He had a terrifying magnetism even now, looking like a wasted wraith. Once a proper clinic took care of the rest of his health problems, he could probably have a different person in his bed every night for all ten centuries he had left.
And, Vasiht'h thought with a sigh, he wouldn't want any of them. Because he was in love with his dragons... and with Jahir, too, if Vasiht'h was any judge. And by now he thought he was fairly good at figuring those things out.
The idea should bother him more. He wanted it to bother him more. A world where he could be jealous of Lisinthir was a world where all three of them lived somewhere safe and Vasiht'h would have time to worry about fighting for his share of Jahir's hours. It would have meant Lisinthir wasn't the center of some empire-breaking romance that required a war for consummation, and Jahir wasn't acting as if he had to plan for his own involvement in that conflict.
Goddess, give him a lover's quarrel about relationship primacy any day over that kind of drama!
The scene in the gym hadn't helped at all. He'd backed down from a promise he'd made Jahir and would probably have broken it completely had Lisinthir not forced him into keeping it. And instead of coming out of that lesson feeling more confident about his ability to follow through
on his vow, he felt less so. Worst of all, he still wasn't sure Jahir would be able to forgive him for his most secret thoughts... thoughts Vasiht'h knew would inevitably be revealed at some point. Knowing how things tended to go, probably at the worst possible time.
The most heart-rending, ridiculous, painful part of all this was that he couldn't regret their coming. Not after seeing Jahir start to... to unfurl, like some night-blooming flower. The pieces weren't all in place yet, but there was a vitality to him that had been locked away somewhere, and it was in him now, a quickening. Vasiht'h could feel its echo in his own body, a spring to the step, an awareness of the taste and texture and smell of things, a breathless wonder, not at the miracles of the Alliance that Jahir had once found so astonishing, but at the shock of living in a body. It was painfully affecting to know that his partner was capable of revivifying that awe when Vasiht'h had thought its loss an inevitability as the Eldritch became accustomed to his new home. And yet here his partner was, pacing him down the corridor with his face tilted up for all the worlds as if he could feel the sun on his face... and the tint in his cheeks was a flush of pleasure and interest, not some borrowed glow from the emergency lighting.
More than anything, Vasiht'h wanted his partner to see that transformation to its end and claim that long-denied sensuality. Especially if it meant he'd be able to see Jahir's children before he died.
That he could want the fruits of this entire horrible episode while still hating what it was doing to him....
He guessed that was love. The shadow side, anyway, that he had rarely faced.
As before, he let Jahir lead in the sessions that awaited them; his partner had the energy and the focus that he didn't. By now, Borden gave them names and trusted them to find their way to the right cabins. The doors opened for them as registered medical personnel, and they went to their patients, slipped into their dreaming minds, and smoothed their anxieties. Tonight there were fewer though: what awaited them instead was the nervousness of anticipation, the sort of agitation that made it difficult to sleep productively. They saw to three people before they found themselves at the last door.
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