It is surreal to be in Solterra's citadel. It is not as he remembers it.
Nothing, it seems, is as he remembers it. Oh, they've tried to explain. They've tried to tell him of the end of Zolin's reign, and Maxence, Seraphina, Raum, Orestes. A list of names that mean very little to him. They've tried to say, you were hidden for ten years and he wonders why it is no one questioned when the screaming sands stopped, and Zolin's reign of torture beneath the citadel within the catacomb crypt had gone unanswered. Of course, someone said, the child soldier's happened after your disappearance, and they go on to describe the fates of orphans, and the lost, and abandoned--
And Zayir's thoughts derail, as they are wont to do lately. Since his emergence. Since daylight spilled across his face like a christening, a rebirth.
As he was thinking, before:
Nothing is as he remembers it.
The palace is polished for the occasion. Noblemen and commoners alike have been invited, and Zayir is astonished to see a gypsy caravan within the great hall of the keep. The marble floors are immaculate, and upon the great room's dais rests a number of lively musicians. They are playing something Zayir does not recognise, and even the music sounds strange.
It feels, almost, as if he is looking at everything from underwater. It is familiar, but strange, nearly unrecognisable. This is not the same citadel he had known, and grown up in, with Lady Marcisa Arisetta in her flowing gowns and King Havieel a stern presence about the halls; no, the current Sovereign is much flashier than that, and a foreigner in addition.
Not of a land like Leisha, no, a sister to Solterra. No, from the sea. Or so they say.
Zayir is offered champagne by a servant and he denies, further surprised to be reminded they are paid employees and no longer slaves. Very few wear collars to express their station in life. He eventually wanders through the dancing, and the bright lamplights and floating lanterns and noise, noise, noise like a river rushing over him--yes, Zayir eventually wanders to a quiet garden, just past the festivities, where for a moment he tries to see the stars. He does not remember how long it has been since he has seen the stars.
But the night is cloudy. The stars are sleeping.
His ears continue to ring with the music. He tugs his cloak tighter about his shoulders, and tries to steel his nerves. He had thought--and Zayir knows it was a foolish thought--he might have recognised someone. An old friend, perhaps. But there is no one at the party he knows.
Zayir thinks he should feel shock, or confusion. Perhaps even anger. Instead, with a guitar and voices rising out behind him, he feels empty. Empty like a dry well. Empty like a dead thing, like carrion torn up for all it was worth. When he turns abruptly to go inside, with a speed and intensity characteristic for him, Zayir was not anticipating another horse to be entering the garden. As he turns he collides sharply with another horse. It knocks the golden laurel at his brow askew, and dislodges his cloak from about his shoulders. Zayir reels backward.
"My apologies." He says curtly, and avoids, momentarily, eye contact.
If they do not know him by face they may know him by reputation, and that is something Zayir is not ready to converse about. Aren't you one of the soldiers from the catacombs?
That is the question that slithers through his mind, wicked as a serpent, stuck within a loop that cannot be broken. Only liquor can quiet its incessant, sinful voice. Only liquor can numb the needles of anxiety that claw through Cairo’s rose-gold body.
He drinks until his eyes grow hazy and their talons are declawed. Then his kohl-rimmed gaze grows soft, soft as butter. The catacomb warrior drinks every new inch of the citadel. It feels strange across his skin. It is a garment that no longer fits him. Do the other Arete feel the same?
He slinks from room to room. His tail weaves a sultry path behind him as Cairo passes all the Fall festivities. A crimson banner hangs, silken and sumptuous. The Arete fighter looks away, for the sight of it is strangling. The cloth no longer hangs from the vaulted ceiling but wraps about his lungs, in tight, constricting knots. It is too much like… Had all the Arete awoken with Cairo? He had heard not all awoke. Worry is a bitter poison upon his tongue.
Inside he burns. Fury is crimson flame that licks against every inch of his being. Aqilline, Cairo watches the crowds in the festival hall and vows to find the pieces of exactly what happened.
His crown of feathers is gilded and bright. He loathes the castle, yet he walks as if he owns it. With feline grace he meanders from room to room lethal and poised. As he goes, he convinces himself he is not searching. But there is only one reason he would be within the citadel: to find other Arete. To find-
- him.
He moves through the crowd, letting skin brush against skin. How many does he touch like this? How many touch him? How often does he let his body brush against others, leaving the memory of him upon their bodies as starkly as gold dust. His crown of feathers is painted this night in midnight blues and golds. Gilded stars shatter through the blue hue of a satin night.
A flash of crimson tells him he needs search no more. Greek and divine, Zayir steps between the pillars of the hall as if they were his temple. He steps outside and the aquiline stallion stops. The lemon glow of hanging lanterns pours itself as ichor across the rose-gold of Cairo’s satin skin. Avian, he tilts his head to watch until Zayir clutches his cloak tight and turns to step back in.
There is an emptiness in Zayir’s eyes, Cairo has seen it before. He feels the cold weight of it settling in his veins. He plucks another drink from a passing tray. In a moment the crystal flute is drained. In a moment the sharper parts of him are singed down to frayed edges.
Zayir bumps into a passing noble. His laurel topples to the side, his shawl slipping down. They do not exchange a look, the noble and the warrior. Zayir does not let them.
Cairo waits.
It happens slowly, but the aquiline stallion knew the moment would come when the pale Arete’s eyes would snag upon his like a sheep within a bramble bush. Cairo holds him there, as if he is a rabbit within his clutch. His perusal is slow, lazy with the hum of alcohol as it taps over the pointed leaves of Zayir’s golden laurel wreath. It then slides down, down the muscular column of his neck and lingers over the exposed shoulder where his crimson shawl has slipped. Cairo does not rush. The touch of his gaze is made to be felt - no longer like talons but like kisses, reminding, reminding.
Remember.
Zayir.
The press of his golden sight over the other warrior’s ivory skin is enough for Cairo to be content that he lives. If their eyes lock, tangling in gold and gold and gold, then Cairo reveals nothing. Instead he turns to slink, leonine and dangerous, back into the crowd.
It was enough to remind them both that they are alive; together.
Zayir cuts through the crowd after him with no leonine prowl; he is pragmatic, a dagger that delves through the dancers as if through flesh. When he finds Cairo again, it is in a throng of dancers. Of course. With charismatic efficiency, Zayir cuts Cairo off from his partner as the next song begins to play.
Everything for Zayir is strategic. This is the first ploy of his tactics. The song is much more rapid, a violin straining into the night. Oh, it screams. He had hoped, and wanted, and known Cairo had made it out of the catacombs. But he lacked the courage, until now, to approach him.
(Because, Zayir, it was your fault) a voice whispers, from the recesses of his own mind. He smothers it for now, in this moment and instead presses his flank into Cairo’s. The brush is feather-light and incredibly brief. His body after so long of misuse, so many years of slumber is nearly electric with uncontainable power. His eyes are on fire; beneath the heat there is anger but a noble, self-sacrificial sort. The anger of a man who would burn for another, and let himself burn.
This, at least, is as it always has been.
This, at least, has not changed.
Zayir clings to it like a man drowning. Like the condemned upon the feet of a saint.
“Companion,” where Cairo’s eyes undo him, Zayir has always had power in his voice. He is a musician as well as a fighter, a singer in addition to a strategist. When he speaks, it is a lilting purr. “You know me better than that.”
I will not be teased.
But, of course Zayir would be. He expects it, and nearly relishes it. Those impassive eyes. The leonine manner in which Cairo left, so blatant, so... infuriating. It was the nature of their companionship. He adds, with a fox-like glint in his eyes, “I hope you don’t mind I stole the dance.” Quite literally. Zayir drops his wing and traces, ever so lightly, the tips of his contour feathers along the small of Cairo’s back.
always in these friendships one serves the other, one is less than the other: the hierarchy is always apparent, though the legends cannot be trusted--their source is the survivor, the one who has been abandoned.
Cairo feels Zayir’s gaze at his back. He feels the shiver that races up his spine, knowing that the other Arete pursues him. Zayir is an arrow swift, silent, cutting through the air. Cairo anticipates the moment of impact.
Cairo could count the seconds - if he could be bothered - that it takes for his companion to reach him. It is not long, yet longer than the avian stallion expected. Zayir affords him enough time to seduce another, to engage them for a night (Cairo’s first night in decades). The scent of his partner’s perfume, the touch of their skin, it is so different from the must of the catacombs. The violins are a far cry from the rattling bones buried with him deep beneath the earth.
Lazily Cairo moves with his partner, his body as graceful as the arch of a palm tree undulating in the midsummer’s breeze. There is an alcohol smile upon his lips. It is hot with the liquor, hazy with the high. His veins hum, hypnotic. His kohl lashes close over his golden eyes as he sinks into the feel of satin skin against satin skin. Ah, to be awake again - to be alive.
His partner’s eyes search his and when they arrive the smile is already gone. Cairo gazes at them with the scolding heat of the sun. It is uncomfortable. It is sharp, an avian beak pecking uncomfortably kisses along his partner’s throat.
And then the song ends and Zayir’s arrow lands at last. It’s strike is a burst of adrenaline. Yet Cairo’s heavy lidded gaze does not widen as it lazily turns toward his fellow Arete. Leonine, he watches Zayir, his former partner forgotten as they fall in step together. Their dance is like fighting, like loving. Their flanks brush, the touch electric, static dancing along his nerves. His crown of feathers tremble in their hues of midnight blue and golden stars.
Slowly he breathes out and it feels more intimate than it should ever be. Zayir speaks and oh how Cairo has missed that voice. “Careful, Zayir, or I might get the impression you have missed me.” A wicked smile darkens the corner of his gilded lips, deepening to burnished sunset.
A chill slithers down the joints of his spine as Zayir’s wing trails along the dip of his back. Aquiline eyes give nothing of his delight away as he tilts his head, his voice a purr, “If I minded, it does not matter, you are already here.” Then, stepping in, until they are breast to breast, his lips tip up to the curve of Zayir’s ear. The fine gilded leaves of his laurel leaf tremble with his breath and the words that trip off his tongue, “Was a look not enough for you, Companion?”
I thought you might have been dead.
They are the words Cairo does not say, for to speak them, to let their truth be known would be to turn his eyes from gold to stoney grey. Darkness, sadness, violence, anger, betrayal, they all broil together in the depths of his gaze and the weighted line of his downturned lips.
In the story of Patroclus
no one survives, not even Achilles
who was nearly a god.
Patroclus resembled him; they wore
the same armour.
Zayir used to lay awake at night and try to quantify their relationship; he would dissect it, each unnerving—and enticing—interaction, until it was over-thought and over-analysed. He used to think he was gasoline and Cairo the spark but, with age, Zayir has learned otherwise.
They are both wildfires. They are both ravaging the wilderness as they speak; uncontainable; proud; apathetic; destructive. All these things and more and, when they collide, it is with the heat of two small suns. Careful, Zayir, or I might get the impression you have missed me. His voice pools in Zayir’s veins, a rush of pure adrenaline, of pure something. Where Cairo’s smile is wicked, Zayir cannot help the lackadaisical, almost boyish smile that flashes across his own face. “Of course I’ve missed you.” There is a fondness there difficult to put into words; but it is there in his eyes, in the way they take stock of every inch of Cairo’s flesh. Possessive and somehow gentle; challenging and yet submissive. This is a dance they know well.
If I minded, it does not matter, you are already here. Cairo gives nothing away in his tone or his expression; but Zayir knows. He knows his touch maddens the other man, just as when two fires meet and converge, they grow. Yet, Cairo will always be his undoing. The other man is more tightly wound; less prone to express himself genuinely. The lips that touch the edge of Zayir’s ear evoke a sudden, startled gasp from Zayir. Was a look not enough for you, Companion?
Zayir meets his eyes. All the unspoken words—all the turmoil—boils between them. I’m so relieved you’re alive and we have so much left to talk about and how are you?
Even that simple question seems too much. Too heavy. Zayir knows Cairo well enough to understand the other man’s liquor-leaden breath is not just for show. It is for escape.
And so Zayir says nothing at first. He simply dances; one dance into the next, until the very movement of their bodies against one another becomes a kind of combat. If Cairo goes to step away, Zayir is there to block him—and vice versa. Where other dancers seek to intermingle, Zayir offers a stiff shoulder or flank. Neither man will allow the dance to end, until one song drains into the next and the night lengthens endlessly. Zayir does not know when or how, but the press of their bodies transforms from polite, to sensual, to violent, to sensual again. The loop of moods is nearly dizzying. Zayir is sweating and although he has not had a drop of liquor, there is a drunkenness to him, a feverish flush of his pale skin. His eyes are bright, and hard, when at least an hour later he finally says in a voice raw with things unsaid:
“You know a look is not enough, Cairo.” And like that, the dance continues—except it is Zayir wrenching himself away from his hawk-eyed companion to stalk lion-like through the crowd. It parts for him as deftly as flesh does for a blade; and then he is taking two shots in quick succession, one after the other, at the bar. He refrains from glancing over his shoulder to see if Cairo pursued.
Zayir refuses to give him the satisfaction. He will be many things for Cairo, but to be a relief, an escape—that is something that has never settled with Zayir. His mouth is dry with it and his mind is full, suddenly, of the Prince in White.
You could always stay, he had whispered, with a softness unknown to Zayir, a softness he had never before touched.
But he hadn’t. He hadn’t. He had come back to Solterra for—well, for many reasons. His mouth is dry; it is not a game he plays with tact. He wants so badly for Cairo to follow him and yet he is too proud to admit it.
always in these friendships one serves the other, one is less than the other: the hierarchy is always apparent, though the legends cannot be trusted--their source is the survivor, the one who has been abandoned.
They have never been anything but wildfires consuming each other within an inferno of searing passion and desire and… love. Love that licked like flames eating away at the soft, vulnerable parts of their relationship. The ash left behind felt so much like the film of bone dust resting upon Cairo’s body as he waited to be awoken. What will they be left with? Nothing but ash and dust upon the wind and a black scar of destruction that scolded its way through their lives, their souls. Their hearts will already be ash.
But for now, Cairo feels it beating, even as it smokes like a torch. Can you see it? He thinks as he holds Zayir’s gaze. Can you feel the heat where our breasts press together? It burns my skin. It hurts Zayir.
For all his vulnerabilities, for all the questions that sit upon his tongue begging to be asked as slaves beg for freedom, so he feels like a god when he sees the way his words turn Zayir boneless. There is power in his voice, in this love. He clings to it, to these moments where he has control over Zayir, for the terrible truth is that Zayir destroys him with every long look, with every touch. Ah, like the tip of his wing now, trailing finger-tip light down his spine. He trembles at the caress. Cairo presses in, needing longing, feeling the way Zayir fits to his body. When they are here, like this, dancing, moving with bodies that know each other, that know the music. It is so easy to believe that they belong. Where, in these moments, Cairo asks, does he end and Zayir begin? It is his foolish hope to think that they are one.
But they are.
And they are not.
Cairo’s gold eyes tumble down and land upon the that boyish smile that gently curves his lover’s lips. It looks at where affection, possessiveness, gentleness and want gleam in the champagne gold that still wets his lips. Cairo’s own mouth still tingles with his words, with the memory of their touch - lips upon the shell of a gold-leaf ear.
Zayir does not answer immediately but their dance is answer enough. It is fighting, it is battle. A part of an endless war that leaves their hearts riddles with bulletholes. Cairo thought he might be weary of the war by now, he is certainly scarred enough, but he is afraid to live without it. He is scared what a truce might mean. He goes to turn, to leave, but Zayir is there to stop him. Zayir moves to go and this time Cairo is not ready. Forever and always they push they pull, they threaten to leave… until Zayir did.
The Prince in White.
A divine and beautiful man. An object upon which Cairo can pin all his hurt, remorse and jealousy.
Zayir left and found a Prince. He leaves again, now. The gilded man pulls himself from their clawing, fighting dance.
You know a look is not enough.
Cairo does know. He knows how Zayir has been trying to get into his bed, failing where all others seem to manage too easily. But the others are not Zayir. They do not drown Cairo in love and fraternity. They will not die upon a sword for him. They will not burn down a city for him when his own wildfire soul putters out. And that is why they do not share a bed, the mere thought is a wild thing within his veins. His nerves spark with the delight, they tremble with the terror. This love is too big, too dangerous.
This time Cairo pursues when Zayir leaves him. This time he cuts through the crowd as he should have when Zayir left to find his Prince. Their war is not over yet, his heart is not injured enough this night. He can still feel it beating weakly in his breast. It is not yet numb enough. It sobs in pain with its want of Zayir.
Cairo catches up with Zayir. His fellow Arete walked too slow. He knows how to escape Cairo, if he wants to. He already managed once. “Then why did you return?” Gods, he plucks another drink from passing tray and drains the crystal glass to numb the sting of such a question. A question filled with demand and a cruel, relentless pursuit of the truth. His aquiline head tilts as he stands, blocking Zayir’s escape like a wild thing, uncatchable, untameable, made for the endless sky.
in the story of patroclus, no one survives; not even achilles, who was nearly a god
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.
Cairo stands before him. He blocks Zayir’s path and alcohol is fanning his ire, his desperation. It fills him with the need to spread his wings forming a greater barrier to Zayir’s escape. Oh, anything to stop him leaving, anything to ease the ache in his soul, his bones. If he were in the catacombs, he would spread his wings, press them deep into the stone, a barrier to stop the gilded warrior ever leaving him. But, it is not Zayir who runs. It never is. Except for once and Cairo will make him remember it, over and over. He will fill Zayir up on guilt and hope he feels the pain of it as acutely as Cairo felt the agony of his leaving and how he fell into the arms of another man.
Zayir’s gaze turns hard and fierce. The gold of his face darkens, shadows drawing fiercely across him. It is the look of Cairo’s Commander, of a man used to being listened to upon the battlefield. His nape arches, his appearance turning godly. A shiver snakes its way violently down Cairo’s spine. He smiles at the way Zayir changes, at the way he sets himself against Cairo and this raging, twisting, rooted love between them. He smiles because he knows it is a front, because there is no place for such a look here, where the war is not for land or glory but love and need. “Commander,” Cairo purrs as the smile slips off his lips as suddenly as a stone dropping into the sea. It was a dig, a warning and he wonders how far it might sink through the armour Zayir has put up.
Zayir deflates, the thousand hurtful things upon his tongue held back by teeth and love. But not Cairo. Always he is the one to hurt and always his efforts hurt him more. But it is safer like this, to hurt others, before he becomes hurt. Or at least it usually is, until Zayir found his way into another man’s bed. The sting of it just will not abate. It festers within Cairo, like a wound earned upon the battlefield.
The wound is eased with the balm of Zayir’s answer. It should last longer than a few numbing moments, but it does not. The smile, however vindictive, however longing, is gone from Cairo’s lips and it does not return, not even with the confession of how much Zayir wants him. Yet his eyes soften, they darken, remembering their bodies pressed together, the weight of Zayir’s head upon his shoulder.
He has more questions, he always does. Each one an arrow straight into Cairo’s maelstrom of fears and desires. It cuts and scatters his thoughts and strikes true into his aquiline heart. Cairo judders with the agony of it. With each ask Zayir’s courage grows and he steps closer and closer until they are nose to nose, breath to breath. Their entities tangle, as they always have. Souls entwined, worlds colliding. Cairo does not waver. He stands bold as an eagle, his gaze trails over Zayir’s beautiful face.
“It’s not that.” Cairo breathes at last, his eyes trailing over Zayir’s face. To merely look is not enough. He reaches out to touch and his lips trail from Zayir’s brow, across his eye and down to his cheek. “You are too much for me, Zayir, and I am not enough for you.” Then, like a thief, he steals a kiss, pressing golden lips to golden lips. It is searing and raw and gone in a moment. Cairo flees with his stolen kiss, disappearing into the crowd.
But that isn’t as important of a question, as to why you always seem to leave. The question remains, aching, unanswered and yet fulfilled, like a prophecy.
~~~
@Zayir
08-13-2020, 12:46 PM - This post was last modified: 08-13-2020, 12:47 PM by Cairo
in the story of patroclus, no one survives; not even achilles, who was nearly a god
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—
