This is unbearable pain.

It is insurmountable joy.

The two extremes Cairo always evokes in him. He drags them, screaming, to the forefront of Zayir’s soul. Rarely a man of excess, he melts now into the press of skin against skin. Always a man of pragmatic senses, he rests his head tiredly against Cairo’s shoulder as they dance. There, Zayir almost feels at ease. There, the heat of their bodies is a salve. He thinks, tentatively, full of fear: as long as Cairo has lived, I have not failed. 

The thought is only ointment to a burn. 

The thought is a haphazard, too-late-to-help truth. 

And it is too much to bare. So, as always, one of them turns away. He is hardly to the bar when Cairo has caught up to his escape—but you weren’t really trying to get away, were you, Zayir?—and the gold-and-white Arete turns to face him. Then why did you return?

Zayir’s look is fierce and leonine. It is the glance of a general, a commander, a soldier-for-life. He brings that expression, sometimes, into the intimacies of his personal affairs. And it is here now, like an armour. Why did you return? He asks it of himself. His tongue is sharpened with a thousand things he could say; a thousand, hurtful things. Yes, Zayir nows how to deliver a death of a multitude of small, seemingly harmless cuts. Abruptly, he deflates. 


“Because, Cairo.”His answer is noncommittal and stiff. How can the other man not see it? How can he not recognise how badly Zayir needs him? Was Zayir’s head resting, momentarily, on his shoulder not enough? His voice is thick and self-deprecating when he says, “The fraction of yourself that you give me is better than the whole anyone else would offer.” 

Is it a truth?

Zayir doesn’t know. He still dreams of the foreign prince, of running beneath the desert stars together, of hunting lions in the distant Savannah. Of sheets, and gemstones, and feeling—for once—wanted.

But Zayir is not in that foreign city any longer. He is here, in Solterra and Cairo has followed him. He blocks whatever escape Zayir may access; but Zayir stands. He takes another shot of liquor from the bar and, by now, he is beginning to feel the way it makes his entire body burn. 
“But that isn’t as important of a question, as to why you always seem to leave.” His courage is righteous; dignified; burning. He presses closer to Cairo now. The other stallion is slightly taller, but Zayir is broad like a beast is broad; he postures his neck, stiff and snakelike, until they are so close they nearly touch but not quite, not quite.


“So, Cairo, why? Why am I not enough for you?” What Zayir does not say is that he would be enough for anyone else. He would be enough. He does not mean for his voice to break the way it does. 

“speech”

Commander.

With Cairo’s utterance, the transformation is complete. Whatever emotions Zayir may feel slide behind a steel facade; his eyes turn cold, and the line of his mouth hard. There is no telling past that indifferent visage what blow may land, or which blade may sink—only that the surface is impenetrable, is a man of iron, and even his humour is dry. Zayir asks a question he already knows the answer to; and the night becomes one he recognises, again and again.

He was a fool to think that tonight, this time, would be any different. Zayir feels hurt; but the hurt resonates from a wound he inflicted upon himself, from a fragile and bird-winged hope he let fly—
Then, Cairo surprises him. Zayir knows his comment had hurt; he had meant for it too, perhaps pettily. He had not expected it to soften Cairo; to force him closer until they breathed the same air, held close in a moment of intimacy. Zayir closes his eyes, and in that hairsbreadth of eternity he thinks—

You, me

forever, here. 

Your breath, mine.

No blood, no battlefield. Only this, this, this. Then: It’s not that. Zayir keeps his eyes closed against the sudden rain of kisses; except they belong to a butterfly’s wings, they are so soft. He keeps his eyes closed when Cairo admits, You are too much for me, Zayir, and I am not enough for you. 

There are a thousand things on Zayir’s mind—

I won’t hurt you. I promise.

You could be enough, if you just chose to be.

I only want you, Cairo. 

Just you.

Companion. 

My right hand. 

Please, stay. 

He never does. The confession is shared like a thief’s sleight of hand—Cairo pulls away with one last kiss, and Zayir opens his ichor-gold eyes to watch after him.

No, I’m not. That’s only what you devise, in your own head— 

But those words would be an ending, and Zayir is too afraid still to say them. He has so little left in the world that this half-love, this half-shared thing is far better than letting Cairo go. He watches the gold-bright, griffin-winged stallion disappear into the crowd. Zayir knows Cairo will not sleep alone, not tonight, not after that. And it fills his mouth with a taste stinging, and sharp. He realises too late it’s the drawing of tears in the back of his throat—but he refuses to shed them.

Zayir turns away. He takes one last shot of liquor from the bar and leaves the festivities, walking through the citadel into the city, toward the soldier’s quarters. 

He knows, also, that he will sleep alone tonight. And the next. And the next. And that if his heart were a sound it would be a violin reaching a crescendo pitch, unable to rise any higher, alone—


“speech”