Healer's Heart
Section 5
by
Ann Marie Olson
Story © 2002 Ann
Marie Olson
Chapter 22
Dimitri turned his face to the wall. He'd let Sevrin talk him into moving into an apartment in town, but he had no way to pay for it. The empty rooms mocked him for his impotence. His stomach growled at him, but he didn't really care. It wasn't as if there were anything he could do about it.
Mitka was curled against his chest, although curled was a bit too strong a word. He lay against him as if dead. Not that Dimitri'd moved for anything but the bathroom in three days. And even that had been under protest. He didn't know where he was and didn't care. Oh, he knew where he was, physically, but compared to anything else in the world?
Someone came in. He could hear the door. It opened, and then it closed. He didn't care about that, either. Blinding white light stabbed into his skull. He blinked. Mitka raised his head, moving for the first time in days. Since Danyel'd put him at Dimitri's side. Mitka didn't have to get up on a regular basis. Dimitri ran his tongue around in his mouth, trying to remove some of the worst of the slime. Not that he really cared.
"Have either of you moved?" Danyel bustled around, full of life and energy. Dimitri threw his arm over his eyes. He itched, not that it was worth scratching either his face or his scalp, two of the worst offenders.
"Gah!" Danyel yanked at the blankets. Dimitri wanted to protest; tell Danyel to fuck off. It was too much effort. Mitka's claws dug into Dimitri's ribs as he crawled over Dimitri's body. Even the cats didn't dig in quite this badly. Mitka's claws were sharp. Dimitri grunted in protest, then gave up any further effort as a lost cause.
"I made the mistake of betting Sevrin you wouldn't give in to self pity."
"Stupid bet." Dimitri muttered. He grabbed a pillow and curled around it, well aware of the futility of trying to replace Mitka with any inanimate object. The long hours, alone, lying here with nothing to do and nowhere to go had only driven home his odd symbiosis with Mitka. Neither of them could truly survive without the other.
Not that it did him a whole lot of good now. It was too late for everything.
"So, since I lost, I guess I have to give Sevrin his forfeit." The door open and shut again. What was going on? Dimitri tried to pummel his brain into working.
He rubbed some of the worst of the junk out of his eyes. His fists came away crusted with days worth of debris. Gah, if any patient of his had gotten themselves into such bad shape, he'd have committed them to Sergei's observation ward. Not that he'd ever be able to go back.
Diomid, for all his seeming change of heart after seeing his son raped in front of his eyes, hadn't changed a bit. He still hated Dimitri. Still wanted to see him fail. And now his failure had come so far away from home, he'd never have a chance to return. There was no way Dimitri could afford the exorbitant fees for air travel past the limits of the Techton.
Mitka cocked his head at the door.
"You forgot these." Danyel came in with Dimitri's suitcase in one hand, his bag in the other. On his head were Dimitri's glasses, not that he required them now.
"I still owe over a hundred days on those glasses."
"What will happen if you don't pay?"
"I'll pay." Dimitri'd never defaulted on any loan yet. "I don't know how, but I will." He looked away from the suitcase. "Its empty." He admitted, shame tightening his skin all over until it felt as if it would split from the internal pressure. Dimitri caressed Mitka, again, finally, able to take some comfort in his presence.
"I packed for you." Danyel spoke so softly Dimitri had to lean forward to hear him. When the meaning of the words came through, Dimitri shook his head.
"No," he said, two or three times. "I own nothing other than these few things I'm wearing." Although he'd stripped down to the single shirt he'd kept since Moskva. "Even the bed and pillows are rented."
"How did you get the credit?"
Dimitri held out his arms.
"No!" Danyel yanked him to his feet. "Where did you pawn them?"
"They were mine." Dimitri's shame grew. He was naked before a lord. His hands tried to cover his own wrists without prodding either of them into some foolishness. Now he couldn't defend himself, painlessly, from a Sime's desires. Not that his bracelets had done much to stop Salkov. But Danyel didn't know how to get through them, much less leaned the habits necessary to deal with bracelets without thinking of them.
"No," Danyel's eyes blazed. "They are held by you in trust for your family."
"No," Dimitri shook his head. "A Sharm Lord's bracelets belong to them, alone. They are not something any Sime can determine the disposition of."
"This Sime can." Danyel looked down. "I recommend you wear some pants."
"They don't really fit." Dimitri closed his eyes for a moment, resisting the sway of the room around him. A nasty headache throbbed behind his eyeballs. Danyel's hand grasped his elbow. It was burning hot, as if Dimitri'd gotten a chill. Mitka rested his chin on Dimitri's forearm and was staring at Danyel's hand. He looked up at the Sime, as if begging for attention. Dimitri didn't stop him.
"Then wear some of your new ones. You left them behind." Danyel dug the chains in deeper.
"I didn't earn those." He growled.
The bed came up to meet him as Danyel shoved Dimitri in the chest. "You are so spoiled, Dimitri."
"I know it." He spread his hands. "Why do you think I didn't take the clothes?"
"No," he shook his head. "I'm not talking about things." Danyel unbuttoned Dimitri's shirt. "You're filthy."
Dimitri shrugged.
"I'm not going out with you like this." He yanked on Dimitri's hand. It was too much bother to get back up. Dimitri sat. Danyel yanked himself into Dimitri's lap. This wasn't what he'd intended. The heat and vibrance of Danyel's body and nager was pure Sime. Dimitri's palms sweated with the desire to run them over Danyel's sleek skin. Mitka looked back and forth between them, the faintest possible twinkle reappearing in his still milky eyes.
"No, I'm not going out at all." He tried to cross his arms over his chest. Mitka bit him! Hard. On the wrist. Dimitri yelped, not wanting to shake him loose for fear of hurting him further. He'd never been bitten by Mitka like this. It hurt. Not only were Mitka's fangs sharp, but they burned like acid where they'd broken the skin.
Dimitri looked down to see two tracks of blood trickling down toward his hand. He hadn't thought Mitka could bite him in protest. "How's your hand?" Dimitri didn't really want to know, but he did feel responsible for Danyel's injury. He'd been stupid to ever leave Mitka alone with any Sime.
"Shut up, Dimitri." Danyel scowled, turning his injured hand over. Two cent deep craters, partially overlapping, marred the base of Danyel's thumb. He wiggled his fingers, but his thumb moved a bit behind them.
"Don't you play?'
"I did." He didn't glare at Mitka, only gave him a sad smile, as if he were apologizing. Dimitri spread his hands, wanting to wring Mitka's neck. Mitka trembled, hiding his head beneath his wing and shaking violently, all over. "Stop it, Dimitri." Danyel slipped his hand between Mitka and Dimitri's body, neatly peeling him off. "Yes, you're my fine beautiful lad." He smiled as Mitka licked his cheeks. "I missed you."
"Really?" Mitka's voice held the faintest sense of tone, unlike the whisper it had been before their banishment. "Oh, Danyel, I missed you so much. I missed everyone!"
"You did nothing but sleep." Dimitri growled, wanting to curl back up himself. His whole body ached with wanting to sleep. It was as if he couldn't get enough. But then he normally woke five and six times a night from nightmares.
"I woke up." He turned his face toward Dimitri. His eyes had nearly cleared and the faintest hint of color had returned to his scales. "I was awake when you cried."
"I didn't mean to make you feel guilty."
"I didn't." Mitka licked his lips. In moments, in Danyel's company, his skin had reknit, no longer giving the illusion of his being a walking corpse, or a living skeleton. "You hurt me. I don't feel guilty for your crying over something you did wrong." Mitka's often brutal truth telling scored him to the bone. Dimitri gasped, doubling over with Mitka's so harsh, if true, rejection.
"You're getting cleaned up and coming with me." Danyel sighed. "Right now."
"Where are we going?" Dimitri forced himself to his feet again. One step at a time would get him to the shower. Once he'd set the taps on the shower, he looked into the other room again. Danyel held the pawn tickets for his bracelets. Dimitri shook his head.
"We're getting them back." Danyel put them into his shirt pocket, along with his cards, and, from his absence, Mitka.
Dimitri was the strangest mix of maturity and childishness. He'd cleaned up so well, Danyel nearly didn't let him get dressed again. Nude, completely nude, his body really was a work of art, even with the recent abuse Dimitri'd heaped on it. Also, without clothes, there was no mistaking Dimitri for anything at all but Gen.
He cocked his head to the side, as if looking at Danyel as a bird would, first one eye, then the other. His eyes tracked over the room. The blankets really hadn't had a chance to get filthy, but the symbolism of Dimitri's descent into sleeping all hours of the day and night was not lost on Danyel.
"I thought your bracelets were gorgeous." If nothing else, Danyel didn't want some idiot getting their hands on a pair of Sharm Lord bracelets who couldn't appreciate them. Once he'd gotten used to them, Danyel'd actually been rather fascinated and had desperately wanted to examine a few.
"I don't have the cash to redeem either of them." Dimitri glanced at Danyel's pocket. He'd only scanned over the tickets. They really had cheated Dimitri horribly. They were worth ten times the amount printed on the face. "I didn't want them to go to some collector."
"So instead they'll get melted down for the metal?" Danyel snorted. He'd set out clothes for Dimitri. A loose pair of trousers and a pull-on knit shirt. Danyel'd never seen or zlinned Dimitri ever wear underwear.
"Better than hanging on someone's wall as a trophy." Dimitri held up the trousers and raised an eyebrow. "What are you going to do with them? You know what they are."
"I'd give them back to you if I thought you'd keep them." Danyel snorted. He really had no earthly use for a pair of bracelets, no matter how beautiful.
"You could give them to the Donor you marry." Dimitri tugged the shirt on over his head. His short beard shone in the late afternoon sunlight streaming in the filthy window. Dimitri rubbed his chin, obviously thinking of something. "I think I'll leave this for now."
"Since you already put on your shirt." Danyel snorted, glad to be let out of the sheath on the question of his ever finding someone to marry. It would never happen.
"Oh, I can shave in clothes. I'm not that messy about it, yet. My beard hasn't quite finished coming in." He moved his hand back to his throat.
"Looks like you're doing pretty well." Danyel leaned against the bed.
"Do you think I should shave?"
"I don't care." Danyel rolled his eyes. Mitka squirmed against his chest, resettling himself in Danyel's crowded pocket. "You're putting it off."
"You're putting me off." He turned. Danyel blinked. Eyes the color of the center of a huge storm caught his, over a face unmistakably both male and Gen at the same time. He backed a step. His butt hit the wall. A tiny squeak escaped. That eyebrow rose again. Dimitri's hands caressed his own wrists. On a Donor like him, the gesture looked obscene.
"Sorry," he shook his head and spread his fingers. "I don't mean to play with myself."
"Its only your wrists." Danyel said. Mitka froze. Danyel glanced down. Mitka was blinking up at him, as if Danyel'd said, "Its only your dick." Mitka nodded, his whole body bouncing up and down with the gesture.
Dimitri merely shrugged and returned his attention out the window. He looked so good in the sapphire blue shirt and gray trousers. The high collar and skin tight nature of the shirt showed off Dimitri's startlingly well developed upper body. Although without sleeves, which was the style this year, it only made his shoulders look even broader, far broader than any Sime's could ever get.
"You're gorgeous." Danyel said, caressing Mitka as he said it. Mitka trilled, for Danyel alone. A tiny grin, just for Mitka, turned his lips upward.
"My mother helped a great deal." He returned the smile, with interest. Dimitri rubbed his temple with one hand. His headache was making Danyel's eyes cross.
"Before we pick up your bracelets, I'm feeding you." Danyel blinked at his own statement. He'd never, ever had to make a Gen eat. They made him eat. Danyel ran his tentacles through his hair, trying to settle the unease that had sprung to life so suddenly. Yes, he was here and he did still have tentacles. Dimitri definitely did not.
Dimitri echoed his gesture. All of Danyel's ability to think came to a grinding halt. He stared at Dimitri's forearms, corded in strong muscle and so beautifully defined. His nager turned bright pink.
"Didn't mean to stare." Often enough even Sevrin wouldn't mention Danyel's habit of zlinning all the time, as long as Danyel didn't hold the focus on him. Sevrin called it staring otherwise and had repeatedly growled at Danyel until he'd finally remembered to not irritate him so badly. It was hard to do. Sevrin's nager was so much more brilliant than any Donor Danyel'd ever zlinned, it was too tempting. With Dimitri it was worse.
"I'm flattered, actually." Dimitri's cheeks pinked, as if he were a young woman, not a young man. There was a timidity to him, under the surface bluster, that called to Danyel to wrap his arms around Dimitri and protect him, as he would have a young woman. Why couldn't Dimitri have been born female? He shook his head a fraction, eyes wide and staring.
"I have no right to stare at you." Danyel clearly remembered Sevrin saying it was a violation of his privacy. Not something Danyel would have wished on anyone. After that, he'd tried to always be carefully about zlinning anyone too closely. But right now, he couldn't help it, and zlinned Dimitri again. His headache churned the ambient into a sickening whirl. Danyel stopped zlinning altogether. "Food."
"How am I going to afford this?" He waved his hand toward the bed.
"You can come work for me." Danyel said, without thinking it through, of course. Good thing even a Sime couldn't physically kick themselves. Although it seems Gens could, from the success Dimitri was having.
Chapter 23
Dimitri wanted to look away. The owner of the pawn shop had promised him his bracelets wouldn't be sold. Not until the first month up. There they were, however, in the very front of a glass case. The craftsmanship of the two pieces of jewelry was unmistakable compared to the tawdry junk next to them.
A young woman, a channel no less, was zlinning them as well as she could through the glass. A low growl threatened to overcome his composure. Danyel'd just about forced a skewer of roasted vegetables on him. The sweet corn and peppers now sat like lead in his belly.
He almost elbowed her out of the way, then saw the swollen roniplin glands. His mouth almost overflowed immediately and Mitka's struggles to free himself from Danyel's pocket had to be zlinnable to a renSime.
"Excuse me." Danyel interrupted her reverie. She turned on him, tentacles flicking out in protest at his rudeness.
"No," Dimitri went to hold him back. Danyel snorted, pulling out the claim ticket, Mitka coming with them. He'd shrunk to smaller than Danyel's hand again. He seemed to like living in Danyel's pocket. The intimacy between them, with Mitka's damage still obvious on Danyel's hand, also bothered him. The woman turned on him, her eyes black with hard need.
"What are you doing here?" He asked, making his voice and field, what there was of it, as smooth as he could.
"Mind your own business." One of her laterals flicked out. The obscene gesture, in the public part of a store, shocked Dimitri down to his toes. He backed away a step.
The owner of the store bustled forward. A renGen, she was no use in this situation. Dimitri ran his hand over his own head, probably making all his hair stand straight up. The channel focused on the gesture. He flicked his wrists, forgetting he no longer had his bracelets. Her eyes locked on his hands. Oh, hell. Then he reached and realized he was far too low field to even think of giving selyn to anything but a renSime.
He didn't dare back up, but he did fist his hands, trying to reject her as calmly as he could. Without his bracelets, there was little he could do to ward her off short of shenning her. A low growl filled the air, from her.
"Danyel?" Dimitri didn't want to hurt the woman. What was she doing out here like this? Dimitri'd thought Techton channels never left the Centers like this.
"You're teasing her." He murmured. Then he turned his attention to the clerk. She'd vanished, as if she'd never been there. Smart lady, even if she'd been naked. Dimitri set his weight on the balls of his feet. He might be able to avoid her rush. His muscles knotted with disuse. A cramp in his calf brought a hiss of pain to his throat. "Stop it, Dimitri."
She lunged, eyes wide with selyn blindness. Her weight caught him full in the chest. She was so much faster than any Sime he'd ever known. Mitka's panicked yelp startled him badly. Fear joined the muscle cramp and he fell, heavily. The woman landed on him, struggling for a grip on his forearms.
"Get off him!" Danyel's shout only charged the ambient further. Dimitri finally managed to get a knee in her gut. Rock hard, purely selyn fired muscle bruised his knee. Her tentacles found his wrists. Desperate, Dimitri shoved. The woman's eyes widened and she lost her focus. Blinking, she stared into his eyes from less than a meter away. Far less. Dimitri gave her a grin.
She shook her head and let go. His wrists turned icy with neither bracelets or tentacles on them. Tiny traces of roniplin stood all the hair on his arms on end. Moving slowly, carefully, he sat up and put his head between his knees. He was shaking all over. It had been too close. If he'd been high field, he'd probably have been unable to refuse her advances.
Shaking, he kept his head down. Danyel's hand brushed the back of his neck. Too light, he shuddered all over. Danyel yanked his hand away. Dimitri could feel the breeze of the quick movement. He shook his head no, arching his neck, inviting the touch. Danyel's hand came to rest on his scalp, holding him protected as no one had. Dimitri guarded people, they didn't guard him. It felt wonderful. Wishing he could purr like a cat, he settled for pressing up against Danyel's hand.
Danyel chuckled softly. His fingers caressed the tight muscles in Dimitri's neck. If it wouldn't have been provocative, he'd have moaned with the sheer sensual pleasure of being touched so intimately by any Sime.
"What are you doing here, Cami?" Danyel's question made no sense. His name wasn't anything like that. Then he remembered why he was sitting on the floor. Oh, Danyel must know the woman. Dimitri studied his own ankles, bare between his pants and his shoes. Why hadn't he worn his boots? Probably because they were too small. "You shouldn't be out of the deferral suite so close to transfer."
"You shouldn't do this." Dimitri tried to look up. Danyel added tentacles to fingers. Dimitri groaned, giving in to the caress and rubbing his head back against Danyel's arm. He found himself looking up at the badly water stained ceiling. His head was spinning, with more than just hunger. At least for food. It hadn't been her fault. He'd goaded her with his foolishness.
"I'll be fine." Her voice shook. Dimitri glanced over at her. She stood, leaning back against the cabinet. Her tentacles were wrapped around her fingers, whitening them with tension. He longed to soothe them, touch the silky soft skin. His fingers tingled with wanting to know her touch. Her eyes caught his again, hardening. "I'd be fine if he could keep control of himself. He's the one who shouldn't be out of training." She pointed at Dimitri with one dorsal. He looked away, trying to regain some semblance of discipline.
"That's complete crap, Cami." Danyel snorted.
"You're only a second." Her dismissing glance toward Danyel raised the hackles on the back of Dimitri's neck. Mitka hissed, mantling from behind Danyel's head, one wing tangling in his hair. There was no way anyone who could zlin would overlook him now.
"Don't I have any say in this?" Dimitri thought about levering himself up off the floor. It was too comfortable, despite being completely unpadded tiles. He leaned against Danyel's thigh, unable to move further. His head spun so badly he had to close his eyes. This didn't help matters much. Cami's dismissive glance was too much the echo of Lord Salkov's. Why did he keep attracting mad Simes? It was not at all fair.
"I can get you stuck in the worst Center in the Techton for life, no matter how long that might turn out to be." Cami was ignoring him completely. Dimitri pried his eyelids open. She'd straightened, no longer leaning against the glass. She glanced down toward the bracelets. "If you don't get those for me."
"Do it." Dimitri had no use for them here. "I'll never be able to wear them again." He spoke to Danyel alone.
Danyel's field twisted in a question. "I don't think so." He straightened, even as his hand continued to stroke Dimitri's hair, as if he were a hound at Danyel's feet. The analogy didn't hurt. Actually to be cherished, even with such bias, warmed Dimitri. "You'll wear them out of here."
"How disgusting." Cami's nager writhed, greening. "You can't possibly wear those things." Her reiteration of the truth Dimitri knew hurt. He hadn't wanted to hear it so blatantly.
"They're his." Danyel said. "And you're from out-territory."
"I'm a first." She straightened.
"You'll be dead before he's adult." Danyel's words must have hurt Cami badly. She hissed, striking out at him in blind fury. Danyel brushed off the strike as if he'd grown up in Russia. Dimitri cocked his head, wondering how he'd managed so easily with another Westerner, but was so vulnerable to him and his kind. "You're junct, Cami."
"So am I." Dimitri muttered under his breath.
"Not for long." Her field hardened. Then it sang to him. A siren call, Dimitri tried to respond. But he was too slow, too low field. His chest burned with trying to display a need he couldn't possibly have. "I'm going to disjunct."
"It doesn't matter." Danyel's field was as flat as ice. "You'll never work disjunct."
"The Techton promised me ..." Her nager went mad, hammering at him and Mitka.
Mitka landed on his shoulder, hissing. Dimitri could feel his pain aching all through his body, even though he'd darkened to a dull ash gray with improving health. He reached up and stroked him, as he'd done so many times before. Mitka's caress of his hand truly was more precious than any other thing in the world. Love, light, desire and a warmth he'd nearly forgotten washed through him, welcoming him back to life.
"Don't believe everything the Techton says." Danyel scoffed. "It promised me no more than selyn and work."
"I ..." her head swung from side to side, like a baited bear. Then she focused on him again. A Sime's hunting snarl filled the tiny room. This time it was for real. Dimitri levered himself to his feet. His once shattered leg ached under the stress. Dimitri'd not fought once since he'd struggled for his freedom against the Lords of the Demenses, but his body remembered. He pushed Danyel back behind him.
Three days of starvation and months of denied need faded to inconsequentiality. He focused his whole will on the Sime threatening him. She shivered, eyes widening out of her madness. Her shoulders hunched and she looked up at him. She shrank back, fear sweat stinging his nose. "She killed?" Dimitri'd never seen anyone live so long after a kill. At home, such a one would be dead before they went into hard need again.
"Her mother, two months ago." Danyel supplied, not holding him back, but not freeing him to advance, either. Mitka trembled against his neck, obviously weak and ill, but comforting all the same. He was here, and alive. "If she chooses, she can disjunct."
"They promised me I would live if I disjuncted." The woman snarled. Bells rang from the door. It slammed again. The sudden loud noise startled him and Mitka badly, even though he'd seen the man's panicked reaction. Cami whirled, tensed for the new threat. Dimitri tried to lunge for her. Danyel's grab for his collar would have succeeded, if it hadn't been for the leverage. Dimitri choked, however, and did come to a halt, a bare meter from the lord. From here, he could see her pulse pound in her throat.
"You'll live." Danyel shrugged nagerically. How could he be so calm? Dimitri was frantically trying to keep up with everything going on. "Ferris." He muttered, for Dimitri's ears alone. He blinked, not having thought there were any benefits to southerner's syndrome. Dimitri's thoughts of the older man underwent another radical revision.
"You said I would die." Her hands slid against the case, dampened with her own sweat.
"You will. Young." Danyel's words were backed by razor sharp nageric pulses. With each condemnation, Cami's shoulder's jerked back. "Five years, maybe ten if you're unlucky." Danyel added for him, probably in response to his stiffening at the use of unlucky to live longer. "The Techton does not believe in giving peace. All medical care is to prolong life, as 'when there is life, there is hope'." The quotation marks around this last were clearly audible. Dimitri shuddered.
"I don't want her to suffer more." He glanced back. Danyel's mouth was drawn down, heavily lined. His black eyes were as hard as Mitka's scales.
"Because you have the heart of a healer." He glanced up at Dimitri. The hurt behind the hardness struck Dimitri to the core. "This is not the time or place for such things."
Dimitri swallowed his questions, turning his attention back to Cami. Her shoulders were shaking in the dry sobs of someone in need. He longed to put his arms around her, comfort her.
"She'll never have transfer from a Gen." Danyel's words shocked him out of his complacence.
"No," he protested, looking at Cami with new won compassion. His heart went out to her. For a lord to be condemned to impersonals, well, his older brother Tzer had been condemned to the ban. He'd lived for two years, only because he'd held the hope of rejoining Mikhail deep in his heart where few had been able to see it.
Dimitri had, even as a child. He and Tzer had not been close, as there'd been many years between them, but they had talked some. Even going so far as confidences, Dimitri now knew. But then Tzer was an easy person to know, really, at least to those few he trusted. And he'd only lost most of that ability to trust in his time under ban. "She's to be under ban?"
"I suppose you could call it that." Danyel murmured. Cami seemed to fold in on herself. "Its channel's transfers, right?"
"Yes," Dimitri nodded, not wanting to explain the ring used on Simes to physically prevent them from taking a Gen in transfer. This was not the time or place for such explanations. He also did not want to give the Techton such a tool. It was already cruel enough. "Few live more than a year, some two."
"Simes you mean?" Danyel's voice trembled a fraction. Cami looked at them, her eyes reddened with unsheddable tears.
"No," he shook his head. "I'll be dead before winter." Dimitri caressed Mitka, feeling his keen through his fingertips rather than hearing it. Cami didn't focus on him, even so, glancing over Mitka as if he weren't there at all. It was like being haunted, where only he and his family could zlin Mitka at all.
"No, you won't." Danyel put his hand over Dimitri's. Danyel's tentacles twined around Dimitri's bruised wrist. The combination of pleasure and pain brought a hiss of shock to his throat to match Mitka's. Only for this one thing did Dimitri enjoy the nearness of pain to his pleasures, and it had grown stronger with having bled himself so extravagantly.
"What are you going to do about it?" Dimitri'd meant the question to be rhetorical.
"You'll zlin." He nodded toward Cami. "Oh, the Techton will make you as comfortable as possible."
"Why?" She shook her head, eyebrows lowered in obvious confusion. "Why did they lie to me?"
"They never promised you work in a Center?" Danyel's nager turned the statement into a question.
"They did."
"Taking donations and giving transfers?"
"No," she shook her head. Dark hair fell over her sharp features. The shadows beneath her eyes grew. The scent of roniplin was on the air, but now it turned Dimitri's stomach. It wasn't a smell of lust or longing, but of loss.
"I'd give thee peace." He murmured, in Russian. Then he said it in English.
Danyel hissed his shock, tentacles tightening on Dimitri's wrist hard enough to make him gasp. Dimitri hadn't thought he'd have known the language. Oh, right, he did know Russian. Unutterable weariness dragged at his mind. Unable to stay entirely upright, he leaned back against Danyel's shoulder. Danyel staggered slightly, shifting under Dimitri's weight. He blushed, struggling to stop leaning.
"You're fine." Danyel had set himself, it seemed. Dimitri leaned, eternally grateful. Although he could feel Danyel's body thrum as he augmented slightly. Dimitri hadn't thought he weighed quite that much.
"Peace?" Cami asked, her eyes widening.
"Death," Dimitri said, no longer directly offering, but not rejecting, either. It had to be her own, unbiased choice.
"You can't ask her this in need." Danyel growled in his ear. Mitka's talons curled around it as well, reassuring him he was making the right choices. He'd not worked like this with Mitka since he'd recovered at Sergei after Salkov. It was like having a joint, dislocated for months, returned to place. Would he never be able to integrate all the many pressures in his life at once? His chest tightened with his own painful conflicts.
Cami was silent, looking at him, then zlinning him. He'd not warned her off, so he accepted her scrutiny. "You're a Donor." This time the word came through without his automatic translation. He flicked his attention to the bracelets, and she followed the gesture. "No, you're something else. Gypsy?"
"Close enough," the rush of information with her question nearly overwhelmed his mind. He'd not heard of them before, but with the single reference knew the place of those called gypsy in the West. Very much like the Veiled, they directed the history of these people. Although they seemed far more kindly, if also more remote. "From elsewhere."
Her eyes widened even further. If the situation hadn't been so tawdry, he'd have smiled. Danyel's warmth at his back, even with his nager so uneasy, steadied him despite his internal shaking. "Get me out of here." She begged.
"Where I come from, you'd have been dead two months ago." He gave her the truth, as he'd have wished to be told the truth in her place. She gasped, turning even paler, dark freckles standing out plainly on milk white skin. "I don't want your death, Cami, unless you chose it, of your own free will."
Dimitri could feel her indecision. It roiled in the air between them. She glanced at his wrists.
"I want to think about it."
"Then let the Techton do its best for you." However poor that best may be, Dimitri added, silently. Her need shadowed the ambient, a black vortex of desire, but it was tainted and choked. Dimitri could see the ties to pain which made her junct in all ways, not just in potential, as all Lords were. She'd not live long, no matter what choice she made here.
"I want to know what sex is like first." Her shocking statement brought him up short. He blinked, glancing down at her in total surprise. This was not a request he'd ever thought anyone would make.
"Sex isn't that big a deal." He said. Mitka bit his ear hard enough to make him yelp. "OK, so I'm probably the only one here who thinks so." Danyel's snort had not been complementary.
"I liked what you did to me." He murmured. Dimitri blushed all the way down to his butt. He'd only given him the barest taste of release, almost purely physical, without any true nageric interaction. Cami blinked, glancing between them.
"I thought there were no gay channels." She said.
Danyel groaned, a sound more pained than embarrassed. In this context, Dimitri realized they used the terms here differently. He filed the comment away, with its exact intonation, for future reference. He didn't have time to worry it to threads right at this moment.
"I don't know if you will get the chance." He frowned, wishing he could examine her further before trying to make a true diagnosis. "If you're on channel's transfer alone ..." Dimitri felt someone wave the lights on in his brain. He hid the sudden smile trying to escape onto his face. It had nothing to do with Cami.
"You may not mature at your fourth." Danyel seemed oblivious to Dimitri's apotheosis. "I don't know."
Dimitri shook his head. "There's a good chance you'll never mature enough for sex." He said, listening to his inner voice for the first time in months and reveling in it. The words were coming to him as sweet as spring water. "However, you will die young, no matter how it goes."
"I could attack you." Her feint made him blink. Now that he was prepared for her speed, she had no chance of getting through his defenses.
"I was scared because I didn't want to kill you by accident." He blinked, then drove the knife home. "Now if you attack me I will accept your choice. You know your own mind; no one else does." Oh, certainly he could have ripped the thoughts from her head, but they would not truly reflect her willful decisions. Only in this sort of interaction could he bring out the truth in someone.
"My first, my kill ..." Her mouth tightened to a fine line, white with stress. The smell of roniplin grew as her body remembered its mistaken pleasure in another's death. Dimitri could not sympathize with anyone who killed for their own pleasures, but he could empathize and did. The door handle turned behind her back. The shopkeeper was returning.
"Now, Cami." He straightened, not willing to lean on anyone for this. Dimitri didn't offer himself. Mitka was as still as he'd been these past three days, but now vibrant with renewed life. His breath was sweet and warm against Dimitri's throat, not to mention the selyn he drooled down Dimitri's front.
Cami's attention flicked to the door, then back to him. He stood, staring into her eyes, not offering, but not rejecting. She had a choice to make. Would she do it? Dimitri braced for her rush, knowing if it came, it'd be too fast to duck. Her gaze moved to Danyel.
Dimitri nearly fainted. Cami did. He caught he before she could bang her head. The floor rocked beneath his feet, even as his whole body threatened to lock in one huge cramp. Careful not to drop her, or himself, he let her down to the floor.
"The Center van is on its way." The shopkeeper said, breathless and wide eyed, although there was something odd about her too. Dimitri didn't have time to deal with it right now. He checked Cami's pulse, heart and nageric.
"I sure hope there's a channel, a first you'd say, with the van."
"Me too," Danyel murmured. "I don't want to have to go back with her."
"Oh shen, Danyel," Dimitri snarled. He turned and nearly passed out himself. A wave of blackness rolled in and then receded, slowly. Dimitri panted in reaction. He'd not worked like this in too long, and the skills he used atrophied rapidly. A yawn, part shock, part release from tension startled him. Mitka yawned as well and then sagged over Dimitri's shoulder, completely limp.
Wonder at Mitka's obvious change of heart made him stop everything he was doing and ease Mitka down off his shoulder. He was so limp he didn't even curl, just sprawled over Dimitri's arms. He'd darkened to a gunmetal gray, his scales returning to their earlier lustre and his flesh filling out his body. Tears burned in Dimitri's eyes and ran down his face, entirely unheeded. "Oh, Mitka, my love." He crooned, cradling him, and lost in the wonder of having him returned to him, whole, if not entirely well yet.
"I never stopped loving you." Mitka's wonderful eyes opened again, now gold and brilliant, as they'd once been, if still shadowed with unexpressed pain. "I love thee, Dimitri."
"I'm sorry." He whispered, unable to force true speech through his tight throat.
Danyel's hand came to rest on his shoulder. Cami was not asleep, but unconscious. Dimitri shuddered at the memory of Hari, lying before him so similarly. He put Mitka on his shoulder again and knelt at Cami's side. She was still breathing. Relief made him slump. What would he have done if she'd died while he'd played with Mitka? A sharp bite on his ear made him lock himself in place, despite the cramps this caused.
He realized what he was doing and tried to pull back from the abyss. His emotions were beating him toward a path he did not want to return to in any way. Sweat beaded his brow as he fought to regain control over his feelings. Danyel's hand tightened a bit. Before he could fear what this meant, Mitka crooned his approval in Dimitri's ear, stroking it with his soft, if wet, tongue.
Dimitri put his hand on Cami's chest, as he'd done with Hari, and monitored her pulse. Her heartbeat was as strong and steady as he could wish, showing no signs of the degeneration that often came with someone who'd killed. Her nager, however, was folding in on itself with each pulse, destroying itself rather than accepting need. He put his other hand over his first and reached down for Cari's vriamic node. She had selyn in her public field, blocked off for her use by her lack of training.
He grabbed at this, threatening to rip it away as well. Her nager spiraled down to a point, utterly still for a fraction of a second. Dimitri released his hostage. Selyn flared across Cari's vriamic node, just enough to reset her consumption. Low, but now stable, he watched closely as she continued her descent toward attrition, normally this time, not with the destructive autolysis she'd displayed earlier.
Danyel whistled softly, a sound full of wonder in and of itself. His field was still in a way Dimitri'd never sensed it. He looked up at him, amazed at the precision he showed in his manipulation of the ambient. There'd been no sign the three attendants had come in, all in Techton gray coveralls and one with the odd badge Dimitri'd learned meant a channel. Although he didn't have the strength to deal with Cami.
"I'm going to have to go with her." Dimitri did not look forward to any trip in the back of one of those awful boxes. The back of the cars he'd ridden in had been bad enough, although there he could at least see things passing outside. He'd forgotten his glasses, of course. He could see them on his table in his memory.
"You have to eat, Dimitri." Danyel grumbled, tugging at his elbow. Mitka caressed his ear, crooning more.
"Go with Danyel." He said. Dimitri didn't know if this were because Mitka wanted to be with Danyel, or because it would be what would be best for Cami. Her eyes blinked open, unseeing for need. Her field dropped with nightmare speed into attrition. The new channel leaped forward and elbowed him in the chest. Dimitri blinked at him.
He grunted and just leaned against Dimitri anyway, as if he were a piece of furniture. With a metal tube, he sprayed something into Cami's mouth. She slumped, asleep this time, not so far under she'd become disoriented. "Get out of my way." Then he muttered, "stupid Gen."
Dimitri blushed, his ears burning in shame. He'd had no right to offer Cami anything. He had no standing here in the West other than as a temporary aberration. He slunk backwards, not even getting a second glance from the channel. The man waved over his assistants with a simple litter. They piled the woman onto it, leaving one of her arms hanging over the side, tentacles lax.
"No," he shook his head, stopping them by force with his field. They froze, staring at him and nearly dropping Cami. "Hold her." Dimitri kept his voice soft. One of them, a woman, glanced at his shoulder and her eyes widened.
"Our secret," Mitka trilled, probably looking as cute as possible, which he very well could. The woman nodded, a sudden impish twitch to her field lightening the ambient. No one else even flicked a nager in Mitka's direction. Dimitri would have to look up Miz Vera Glin some other time and find out why she could zlin Mitka when so many others couldn't.
Dimitri put Cami's arm up on the litter, smoothing the tentacles back into their sheathes with an easy flick of his fingers and field. Miz Glin mouthed, "Thank you."
Mitka nodded, ruffling Dimitri's hair, and he just grinned at her. She flushed, looking down for a moment, but still zlinning them. Her attentions weren't rough, but they were blatant. Dimitri blushed, turning away, trying to stop leading her on. The ambient fluttered around them for a brief instant, making him feel as if the floor had dropped a few cents under his feet.
Stepping back, he tried to stand behind Danyel as he'd seen Donors do. It seemed to zlin well enough, for the channel hustled his crew out the door without a backward glance. The door shut behind him, with those harsh bells announcing their departure. Dimitri would have put more melodious bells on a cow, personally.
"What can I do for you, Hajene?" The shopkeeper turned her attention to Danyel, as if Dimitri'd suddenly become invisible. This was all to the good, in Dimitri's opinion. He reached up and stroked Mitka's back.
"Miz Glin is cute." Mitka murmured.
"We're not chasing a ren." Dimitri muttered, not wanting to think about such things at the moment. He was still sweating and shaking with reaction.
"No," Mitka wasn't disagreeing with him, for once. "I don't want her in that way." He snorted, wetting Dimitri's ear further. "But she's nice and likes me." His weight shifted and Dimitri could see through his eyes again. Mitka was looking through the door and trying to resolve Vera's form through the distortions of the glass.
"Then we'll talk with her some other time." He promised, wanting to speak with her as well. Mitka trilled, his happiness brightening the world around them.
"Oh, love," he petted Mitka some more, amazed at how warm he'd grown. "Have I really been so restrictive?" Mitka didn't answer. Danyel did. He glanced back and nodded, nager softer than silk. Dimitri, ashamed, glanced down at his hands. He'd saved a lord's life today. A lord condemned to a painful death. But it had been her choice. He straightened, looking Danyel in the eyes. Danyel nodded, in approval, hopefully.
"Yes, I do approve." His nager lifted Dimitri out of his doubts. Dimitri took a deep, shuddering breath and then let it all out. He'd managed to do right, for the first time in far too long. Mitka too hummed his approval, tail coming around to hold Dimitri's neck in a scaly caress. It felt wonderful. As did Danyel's warmth, soothing his unease away as if he were Sime and Danyel Gen.
Danyel held the bracelets, still dickering with the shop keeper, She'd insisted Dimitri'd sold them outright, not pawned them. Danyel held the pawn tickets. "I wouldn't expect one Gen to cheat another." He played his final card. Danyel didn't have the money she asked, which was twice what she'd given Dimitri, if half what she'd been trying to sell them for.
Dimitri's hand came to rest on his shoulder. Through the contact, Danyel could feel his bone deep exhaustion. "They aren't worth it."
"You are." Danyel growled, in Russian, so the owner couldn't figure out what was going on. "The legal limit for pawn items is fifteen percent."
"Those aren't legal pawn items." She waved a hand at the case. There were no other bracelets in there, which was only to be expected. No one Danyel'd seen wore such things, except for the very powerful Russian Donors, what they called Sharm Lords.
"Then why did you give him pawn tickets?" Danyel let his eyes narrow. Mitka growled, threatening the woman. Danyel gave thanks, again, so few could zlin Mitka. Almost enough he'd thought there might well be a God, or Gods.
"Because he wouldn't sell, outright." She sniffed, glaring over Danyel's shoulder at Dimitri. His fingers tightened on Danyel's shoulder. "Said he'd be back for them." Her glance held only contempt, as did her nager. "Figured if he was so poor off to sell something so dear, he'd never make the pawn."
"You figured wrong." Danyel wanted to step between them, to hold himself between Dimitri and even the inconsequential threat of a renGen. Although from the ache in his nager, having pawned his bracelets was hurt enough Danyel wanted to guard him from all else. "I'll give you twenty percent over pawn. You've only had them for three days."
"Twenty-five."
"Twenty, and I don't bring the police in here to see what else you've stolen." He spread his hand on the counter, showing his knife fighting scars, and his channel's ring. The latter would probably do little good, but the former might well earn him a dynopter's respect. "Take it now or I call them to examine all of your stock." He stared into her eyes. "Addict." He added, finally zlinning the heroin in her system.
She snarled, "Take them and be shenned to both of you." Her nager whipped out at both of them, oddly distorted from her destructive habit.
"To what?" Dimitri asked, thankfully in Russian.
"What's he saying?" She jerked her chin up. "That shidoni fool din't have no accent."
"He's a healer." Danyel pocketed the bracelets and tried to drag Dimitri away. It was like pulling on a tree, a very well rooted tree. "Heroin," he told Dimitri. "Nothing either of us can do."
"Or won't." His eyes narrowed. He put his hand into his pocket, looking for something. Then he glanced at the counter. Before Danyel could stop him, he'd grabbed a business flick and written his name on it. "Tell anyone at Kaon you want me." He added a short note, in some language Danyel'd never seen at the bottom.
"Like they'd have anything to do with the likes of me."
"They may not. I will."
"You won't be here." Danyel tried to pull him out of this mess. He had no business trying to heal the world. Dimitri turned those ancient eyes on him. No, Dimitri did. Danyel flicked a tentacle back at the woman.
"I'll be leaving sometime this summer. Someone at Kaon will help you if you require it." He pointed to the flick. "Only Sosu Sevrin can read the note. Don't worry about being turned in. He'll help you or know someone who can."
"No Techton?" She pocketed the flick, eyes narrowing, even as a cold sweat broke out on her brow. Danyel could zlin the needle tracks all the way up her arms now that he was looking for them.
"Just help," he nodded. This time he let Danyel tug him free. The woman put her hand over her pocket, her nager shattering with the first stages of withdrawal, but thinking behind it.
"Don't worry about someone comin' te shake your wrists." She turned away from the counter and went to the door. "Have 'em free and clear."
When she'd left, Danyel blew out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He'd zlinned she'd been hiding many things, and he'd immediately worried she'd have some kind of enforcer track down Dimitri and beat him for cheating her. Relief made him dizzy for a moment.
"Thank you." Dimitri murmured. Mitka was focused on the bracelets. Danyel studied them for a moment. They were incredible pieces of artwork. Both were almost an inch wide and quite heavy. He brushed a dorsal over the iridescent green and blue one. It was slippery, as if pushing away the contact. He blinked, studying it further. His nager slid over it, not quite contacting the metal.
"Niobium," Dimitri's field flicker in a chuckle. "It resists selyn and you still have enough to make it react." He'd not put out his hands, so Danyel wasn't quite sure what to do with them.
The other one, made of some shiny metal that was not silver, but had a silvery sheen was set with an odd cabochon. The stone flickered in a rainbow spray when he zlinned it, as if it had caught on fire.
"Firestones," Dimitri supplied. "They were made a long time ago. We no longer have the technology to make more. Beautiful, isn't it."
"Very," he breathed, fascinated by the shifting lights deep within it. Danyel thought about just handing them to Dimitri, but as he did so, Mitka looked away, as if to tuck his head beneath his wing. Not the right thing, obviously. Well, Danyel couldn't wear them. They jangled musically in his hand as he fiddled with them. Dimitri's grin grew, showing off his dimples.
"I don't think the sidewalk is quite the place for you to propose to me." His nager sparkled with some inner laughter.
"Propose?" Danyel choked. He'd never even come close to marrying anyone! Mitka hid his head, tucking it beneath his wing. "Oh, I'm not rejecting you, silly creature." He laughed, tickling Mitka's taut neck. "I'm just confused."
"The gift of a bracelet is often a proposal for transfer." Dimitri took a deep breath, his eyes gleaming. "I know you aren't Rus."
"Then how can I give these back to you?" He didn't want to put them in his overstuffed pocket. If nothing else, they wouldn't fit.
"I wouldn't find your proposal entirely amiss." His field had gone stone gray, lifeless. The obvious unease knotted Danyel's tentacles in their sheathes. Danyel grimaced, stopping their little party and pulling Dimitri back into a doorway.
"Then tell me what I can do to give these back to you without obligating either of us." He growled. "I don't want to force you into anything, Dimitri."
"Only eating, working, breathing." He said. Mitka was trembling, fading again as Dimitri shoved Danyel away. Maybe he should have let the issue pass. Then his eyes flicked down, glancing at the jewelry.
"I want you healthy and happy, Dimitri." He set his jaw. "Here," he held out his free hand. Dimitri put out his left, the one that had held the niobium piece, onto it. Danyel decided to put them back where they'd come from. The bracelet was a tight fit, despite the size of the thing, and he had to push it over Dimitri's thumb, catching the scrape he'd gotten when he'd taken it off. It had to have hurt, but Dimitri said nothing and shook it into place with a flick of his wrist. The relief he felt, as it settled against his wristbones, was unmistakable.
Danyel looked at Dimitri's other wrist. He could see where the bracelet had been. There was the faintest line in the muscles, where it had rubbed a groove. The tension built in the air. "Here," he gave in, trying to hand it to him.
Mitka trembled so hard it looked as if he'd fall from Dimitri's shoulder. Dimitri raised his hand to him, the replaced bracelet making his field twist in the ambient around his wrist. Danyel didn't want to hurt Mitka. That was the last thing he wanted to do. Dimitri held his eyes, a sorrow in them showing to vision, if not to zlinning. He held out his hand, slowly, as if afraid Danyel'd reject him.
"Traditionally, the right wrist is a promise for transfer the next month." His voice was softer than the wind between the buildings.
"I can't promise you any transfer." No matter how much he might wish for it, deep in his heart. Dimitri's body was producing selyn so fast Danyel fretted he'd burn out with it. As if it were straining to match him, even as he knew it couldn't catch up. "Not this month."
"Then ... " he glanced around, swallowing heavily. The worn, filthy brick of the stoop seemed to loom over both of them.
"Not here." He put it over his own hand. Dimitri blinked, staring. Danyel's tentacles came out and kept it away from his sheathes.
"That's very strange looking." Dimitri stared.
"It works." He shrugged, leaning a bit to try to compensate for the sensory distortion. Before long, however, his body had adjusted, even though his tentacles kept fiddling with it in protest. "More or less." He grinned.
Mitka glanced down and blinked. He looked up into Danyel's face and them back down at his arm. "What are you doing?"
"Holding it in trust." He said, trying not to laugh at Mitka's befuddlement.
"Are you going to give it to us?" Mitka's wings fluttered, poking Dimitri in the ear. His mouth opened and his fangs dropped. The intent of the gesture was clear. "Oh, please." He panted, selyn streaming from his open jaws. Danyel stepped back.
"Don't be rude." Dimitri growled. Mitka yelped.
"Stop," Danyel growled, holding up his hand. Mitka'd retracted his fangs and was huddled as far away from Dimitri as he could get on his shoulder, nearly falling off. "He wasn't." For Mitka, he added silently.
"That isn't good enough." His brows lowered and he turned his face to Mitka.
"Stop it." Danyel yanked at the ambient, as he'd seen so many of the Russians do. He nearly fell on his wrists. Unbalanced, he fell against Dimitri. It was like falling against a wall. Admittedly a very nicely padded one, in all the right places.
"And this is supposed to accomplish what?" Dimitri arched his neck to gaze down at him. Now Danyel wasn't that short, but Dimitri was very tall. He felt as if he were talking with a draft horse. Dimitri laughed, throwing back his head and giving over his whole body to it. His joy was as fascinating as the sunrise on a bright winter's morning, full of glittering sprays of light over a snow covered meadow.
"I tried to hit you." He blinked. It would be so easy to put his arms around Dimitri and hold him. He wanted to. Mitka put his head over Danyel's shoulder, pressing him in tighter. Sharp fangs, not his venom fangs thankfully, dug in below his shoulderblade.
"Would you quit?"
"No," Danyel gave in to Mitka's request. He didn't mean to dig his fangs in, they just stuck out below his jaw. He couldn't help poking Danyel with them. Dimitri's sigh blew Danyel's hair into his eyes. He'd never just hugged someone so massive, not even in friendship. Simes were never so big, not having the bulky calorie fired muscles of Gens. "I've never simply hugged any Gen before." The soft, sensual feel of so much living human being beneath his hands and against his cheek was intoxicating. They'd slept together, but somehow, this was different. Especially since, standing, Danyel came up to Dimitri's nose.
"Never?" Dimitri's arms came around him. The sensations were so different from a Donor's professional concern, his knees turned to water and he could hardly stand. Dimitri chuckled, a sound low and full of promise. Of what, Danyel wasn't quite sure. "Then perhaps you should make up for lost time." His voice was low and deep. It caressed his spine all the way from his skull down. His hips flexed, mostly against his will. Dimitri chuckled, deepening his daze.
"I'd like that." His voice trembled.
"You aren't ready." He said, still holding Danyel in those amazing arms. It was as if he could break Danyel in two with a thought. Well, from his experience in the weight room, Dimitri probably could!
"I want to be." He said, breathing in the scent of him. He'd used some harsh, cheap soap, and he had recently been ill, but even so Danyel could smell the dark, earthy scent of warmed Gen skin. Dimitri's heartbeat raced beneath his cheek. Then his stomach growled, so loudly Danyel jumped.
"Oops," he chuckled, this time lightly. "I think we'd better find food."
"You weren't hungry, earlier." He leaned back, nearly falling again as Dimitri released him as soon as he moved. Danyel rolled his eyes at Dimitri.
"I am now." He purred, looking down. His eyes were heavy and half-lidded. "We're being zlinned."
Danyel chuckled this time. "Like I care." He reached up and caressed Mitka's enraptured face. A long, slimy tongue caressed his fingers and moved down to tangle with the bracelet he wore. "Mitka's tongue is nearly as long as my tentacles."
"Exactly as long." Dimitri grinned, petting Mitka as well. This was safe. It wasn't the awkward physical closeness, even though Danyel was well aware of Dimitri's body so close to his own. From the evidence prodding him in the gut, Dimitri was quite aware of him as well. "Loose pants." He arched away, unlike their hug.
"I'm not offended." As a matter of fact, hundreds of tiny wriggling somethings had taken up residence in his middle. "Not at all."
"You remember what it was like?" Dimitri made it a question with a flick of one eyebrow.
"No, actually," he took Dimitri's arm and steered him from the dank alcove. "When I was Cami's age I had little interest, physical or otherwise, in women." He didn't dare say who had caught his eye. Before he'd learned he could never approach another man, he'd longed to touch Sosu Patrik's smooth skin. The other young man'd had grass green eyes and a flamboyant laugh.
"I can tell you're thinking of someone." Dimitri murmured.
"Only a thought," he looked into a clothing store. The woman inside glanced at him, his mostly black shirt, which proclaimed his Ferris status, then flinched away. Danyel averted his glance as well. "His name was Patrik."
"Something wrong?"
"He was killed." Danyel's tentacles knotted in their sheathes. "I don't know what else to say." There was far more to the story. Danyel didn't know if he'd ever be able to tell anyone the tale.
"I'm sorry." Dimitri put his hand over Danyel's, warming away the sudden chill. "I don't know what else to say, either." Ever since their time in the car together, Dimitri'd lost the coolness to his nager Danyel'd zlinned when they'd first met.
"You don't have to say anything." They walked into the bright lights of a nearby grocery store. Danyel blinked away the spots before his eyes. Dimitri nearly stumbled on the threshold. His cat like grace was amazing. Then he hissed, reaching down to knead at his calf, the scarred one.
"Bothering you?"
"It does." He winced. "It never healed completely."
"I thought you could heal amazing things?"
"Not nerve damage." He shook his head. "My leg wasn't just broken, it was shattered. Six distinct breaks, double compound."
Danyel winced.
"Then the person who'd done it refused me healing." Dimitri glanced down at him. "He was not healthy."
Danyel snorted at the understatement. "He was the one who raped you?"
"Yes," Dimitri nodded. "He's dead now."
"So is Rik." Danyel looked up at him.
"But the memory haunts you." He said, eyes soft. Mitka too looked at him, gold eyes shining again and bright, but soft as well. "Is that why you didn't pursue Patrik?"
"Because he was male." Danyel looked at the aisles of food, remembering shopping with Dimitri's family the first time they'd come to Kaon. A noisier, more expressive group of people he'd never met. He remembered Mikal so withdrawn and quiet, very much in his own head, when Danyel'd first met him. He'd blossomed in his relationship with Tzer. "How can you partner, male to male?"
"Because a channel can not live on channel's transfer alone, we say two channels can not handfast." Dimitri's gray-blue eyes twinkled. "Channels can not be gay."
"What?" Danyel stopped and stared at him. He opened his mouth to say something. Nothing came out. He wanted to swear and laugh at the same time. "All this time?"
"Probably," Dimitri grinned, all three of his dimples showing clearly. "There can be no gay channels because they can not bond permanently to their own larity."
"But what about sex?"
"Sex is different from larity, Danyel." He spoke as if to a child, although from the bright twinkles in Mitka's eyes, he was teasing. "Two channels can not share selyn. They must get selyn from Gens. Have intercourse with Gens, not each other."
"You ..." his heart was pounding in his chest. Had all his heartache over the years been entirely for a mistake?
Dimitri must have seen his confusion. "No. Most male channels, here, are imprinted so strongly against same sex relationships, when they are very impressionable, they never think of it. Vanesa can, but then I doubt the Techton imposes such a strong restriction on the concept of lesbianism."
"No, it doesn't." Danyel thought back to his training. "I went to a third tier channeling school. Not Rialite, or one of the other great ones. A tiny one in the middle of nowhere. We were taught to heal, care for people, care for our bodies and nagers well enough to survive, and that was about it. We were told it was impossible, but nothing more was done to us."
"Which is probably also why your anti-kill failed." He spoke the words as if they held no import. Danyel hushed him. Dimitri chuckled. "We're speaking Russian, silly Sime."
"Oh," he blushed, having forgotten entirely the fact no one around them could understand them.
"Its convenient." He shrugged, then glanced around. "You want me to cook? I never did feed you dinner."
"If you feel up for it." Danyel wondered what Dimitri would come up with. Danyel himself was an indifferent cook at best, often burning his own dinner more than making anything remotely edible. "I get distracted and forget what I'm doing."
"You are very Sime, Danyel." Dimitri gave him one of those hot looks. Mitka licked his lips, drooling again. He'd nearly returned to onyx black. It had taken so little attention and affection. Danyel brushed his hand over Mitka's back. He arched into it, thrumming. "He likes that."
"Do you like being petted?" Danyel hoped Dimitri wouldn't laugh at this clumsy attempt at flirting. He still felt very self-conscious about it, as if someone would jump out from behind the grits and scream, "Pervert!"
"Very much," his thrum matched Mitka's, but far lower. "I think something easy." He looked around. "Hmmm," they went through the store with hardly a chance to breathe. Danyel could see little rhyme or reason to Dimitri's selections. None of it was very expensive, although why he wanted eggs, flour and cream, for a dinner dish, confused him completely.
"I usually end up cooking for myself, long after the sharm commons have closed for the evening." He added some dry, nutty cheese, broccoli and a few carrots.
"I know Domi was being trained to be a cook at Mir." Danyel wondered at this sudden burst of domesticity.
"I'd be a poor Gen if I couldn't cook." Dimitri snorted. The total was half that of dinner out. Danyel considered himself quite lucky. He'd spent a great deal on Dimitri so far, none of it wasted, however. Dimitri's glance warmed him to his toes. He wondered if Dimitri could hear thoughts, as it was said, out-territory, Simes could.
"Sometimes," he murmured. "Your shields are very good and your Techton training makes it so you don't project as most people do."
"Then why could you hear that renSime's?"
"Miz Glin?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," Danyel nodded, even as he blushed for not having remembered her name.
"Don't know." Dimitri didn't offer to take the bags, letting Danyel grab them and then have to scoot after him. "Sorry."
"Different expectations," he offered Dimitri his arm again.
"Different worlds," he pressed against Danyel's side. "But the world of the heart is the same anywhere."
"What happens if two Simes form a relationship?" Danyel didn't want to be crude about it.
"Oh, their head doesn't explode or anything." Dimitri chuckled softly. "They do sometimes, often with a pair of what you'd call Donors to go to for transfer. Its not as deep a relationship." The longing in Mitka's distant gaze was unmistakable.
"I don't know if you'll find a deep relationship here." Danyel didn't want to think of how different they were, but the fact they were so very different was inescapable.
"We have a good start." He grinned. Danyel turned right at the next light. Dimitri stopped him, nearly yanking him off his feet. "That way." He pointed down the street. Danyel blinked, checking his sense of orientation. He shook loose some of the dust from his brain. Dimitri chuckled. "I do know where I am and I've slept in the same bed for three nights now. I should be able to find my way home."
"Is it home?" He grimaced. The horrid little apartment had little to recommend it other than being obviously inexpensive.
"The best I could do." He shrugged.
"Come to my place." Danyel's wigglies multiplied. He tried to still them. They didn't listen. Mitka stared at him, sending them into even wilder acrobatics. Dimitri raised an eyebrow. "Its clean and plenty big enough for two."
"Do you have a big couch?" Dimitri's question surprised him. He'd have thought Dimitri'd want to share a bed. "I don't think you'd be getting as much sleep as you require with me in your bed. I'm a restless sleeper."
"I know." He smiled, thinking of the two nights they'd shared a bed. Both had been delightful, even if the reasons behind them had not. "I'd like the chance to be with you when neither of us is ill, with heartsickness or otherwise."
"Then it may be a while until I move off the couch." He said, even as he fiddled with the key in the lock. It took a bit of jiggling, but eventually he managed. "I'd rather a sticky lock than uninvited guests." His eyes tracked over the room, as if checking for said visitors.
"I feel the same way." Danyel took the bags into the kitchen. Cracked and worn tiles, uncleanable with age and wear were not a pleasant sight. Although there were a handful of heavy, old cast iron pans hanging over the antique stove.
"This is better than the two spot hot plate at home." Dimitri bustled Danyel out of the way. He sat at the bar at the end of the kitchen, watching. "If nothing else I have enough counter space here." He poured out a pile of flour on a smooth stone surface he'd pulled out from under the counter. "Whoever left their cooking things here had excellent taste."
"Oh?" Danyel watched, fascinated. Dimitri cracked a few eggs into a well he'd made in the flour. What was he doing? He kneaded the mass into a ball, then rolled it out quickly with a stone rolling pin.
"They were a gourmet level cook." Dimitri snorted. He grabbed a knife out of an oak block and sliced the thin dough into long strips. He draped them over a couple of wooden spoons.
"Oh, damn," Dimitri growled when he opened the cream.
"What's wrong?" Danyel sat up straighter. He'd dozed off a bit, watching Dimitri work.
"The cream is bad." He showed it to Danyel.
"Looks fine to me." He got a bit of it on his finger and tasted it. "Its fine."
"Its dead white." He peered into the carton. "What did they do to it?"
Danyel chuckled at Dimitri's dismay. Mitka peered into the container with a matching expression of concern. Although he blinked a few times and swayed slightly, as if he too had been mostly asleep.
"Taste it." Danyel told him. Dimitri sniffed at it, obviously not at all sure. He raised one eyebrow, at Danyel this time. He stuck his finger into the cream and then licked it off. The gesture, with Dimitri's pink tongue wrapping around his own finger had all of Danyel's attention. Mitka's eyes twinkled and he gave Danyel a wicked grin as Dimitri suckled on his own finger for a moment longer than absolutely necessary.
"A little bland." He purred, his voice sweetened with the thick cream, and probably his own enthusiasms. "But you're right, its fine." He shook his head. "Weird. How did they get cows to give white cream?" He grimaced. "That's a contradiction in terms."
"So it is." Danyel'd never thought about it. "Cream used to be cream colored, I suppose."
"I hope so." He poured it into the pan where he'd melted some butter already. Soon the smells of garlic, butter, cheese, broccoli and cream filled the air. Dimitri dumped his noodles into a pot of boiling water. Without a single measurement, of time or quantity, he'd proclaimed dinner done. He drained the noodles and served both of them. "I almost forgot." He reached into the icebox and pulled out a bottle of wine.
"I hope this is decent." He pulled the cork and sniffed at it. "A bit dry," he grimaced. "Sorry about the miss." He poured two glasses and set them out as well.
"Sit and eat." The food smelled delicious. At last Dimitri sat. He raised his glass, "To new friends and old."
"To absent family and near." He returned the toast. The glasses were not crystal, but they tinged nicely anyway. Dimitri gathered up a forkful of pasta. The slightly sweet cheese went perfectly with the broccoli and pasta. He'd never had fresh pasta before, and the delicate give to it was like nothing he'd ever tasted, or felt in his mouth. "This is so good." He felt his eyes roll up in his head.
"Its pretty easy." Dimitri shrugged, grinning. Mitka preened however, giving Dimitri away, as he always did. Unlike most people, Dimitri was silent while he ate. Danyel was glad of it. He wanted to concentrate on his food! Dimitri'd given him nearly as much as he took himself. Danyel ate all of it and ended up scrubbing at his bowl with a piece of crusty bread to get the last bits of sauce. "I'd guess you like."
"Very much," he leaned back in his chair. The wine had gone straight to his head, but it was so good with the slightly salty pasta sauce. "You are quite the cook."
"I'd starve otherwise." He reached for Danyel's spotless plate. Danyel tried to stop him. He felt as if he should do something to help. "I'm the Gen." He made the plates and forks vanish. "Just sit there and enjoy."
Danyel felt himself flush under all the attention. He knew he was not particularly domestic, but Dimitri seemed to insist this was normal, because of their larities.
"Haven't you seen Sevrin taking care of his hearth and home?" Dimitri rinsed off everything in the sink, humming an unfamiliar tune under his breath. Mitka was draped over the counter, contentment in every line of his body.
"I hadn't thought of it." He looked through his wine toward the light and realized the glass was so poor it distorted the color of the wine. Danyel sipped at it anyway. It was quite good, although to his taste it was a little bit sweet.
"I think you'd better stay here tonight." Dimitri bustled out into the other room. Mitka raised one eyelid, as if it weighed a ton. It fell shut immediately. The sound of Dimitri shooting home the night bolt roused Danyel out of his daze to take note of what Dimitri'd just said. "Its getting late."
"Its only nine." Danyel blinked. His own eyelids were sagging. He pried his behind out of the chair after finishing off the last of his wine. The click it made as he put it down made him blink. He'd not drunk so very much of it. Then the glass vanished, with the rest of the dinner dishes and was soon on a rack, drying. Dimitri wasn't a Donor, he was a wizard.
"I made up the couch for you." He held out his hand. Danyel wondered how anyone so physically strong could be content with dishes and cooking. He glanced again at the now spotless kitchen. Only moments ago it had been a mess. Dimitri chuckled. "You dozed off."
"So I did." He blinked away some of his sleepiness. "I'm a Sime. I don't have to sleep very much."
"You're jittery because you don't eat enough." Dimitri's hand under his elbow steered him out to the other room. Danyel took one look at the woolen blanket and shrank back. "What's wrong?"
"I can't tolerate wool." He felt like an idiot for saying something, but he really didn't want to end up with hives all over his body.
"You slept in wool blankets with me." Dimitri cocked his head. "Or is it another kind of allergy." Mitka swooped out of the kitchen and landed with a heavy thud on Dimitri's shoulder. Dimitri rocked back a step, then hissed as he put all his weight on his bad leg.
"You're putting me to sleep." He wiggled one tentacle under Dimitri's nose. The bracelet he still wore caught his eye. He grinned, looking at Dimitri. Danyel slipped it off his wrist and knelt at Dimitri's feet, as if he truly were going to propose marriage. "If not this month, if ever it is possible, I'd like to try." Danyel trembled from head to foot. Dimitri had every right to refuse him. They were of different worlds. All the same, Danyel had to try, at least once.
Chapter 24
Dimitri was stunned. He'd known Danyel was interested in his wrists, but he'd never expected a formal proposal. Dimitri's hand shook so badly he stared at it, bemused for a moment. So did Mitka, focusing so strongly Dimitri's vision doubled. "I want thee." He murmured, knowing the truth of it in his heart, even as his head screamed in protest.
"Then let me get up off my knees." Danyel winked. "I've never done this before. It doesn't feel good."
Dimitri laughed, taking Danyel's hands, holding the bracelet, and raising him to his feet. Danyel's eyes were crinkled at the corners with good humor. He folded his hand so Danyel could put the bracelet on his wrist. He glanced down to see the firestone sparkle with tremendous brilliance.
One of Danyel's tentacles brushed over the diamond window protecting it. The gem responded to him as well, glittering in the yellowed lights of the incandescent bulb in the ceiling. Mitka slithered down his arm and wrapped around their hands, adding his blessing to their joining.
"I'd never thought this would happen." His chin trembled as he fought not to cry again. It would be a foolish excess of emotion.
"Neither did I." His tentacles bound their hands beneath Mitka's body. Dimitri shivered all over, feeling as if his heart would burst. Even if it never came true, to have someone freely give of their hand was more than he'd ever dreamed happening to him. "I'd never thought to choose my own partner."
"I'd never thought to be chosen." He tugged at Danyel's tentacles, wanting to feel them give to his pull. Danyel's eyes blackened momentarily in response to the sensuous gesture. "I never thought someone would want me for anything other than familial obligation."
"I don't know why." He freed one tentacle and stroked Mitka's face.
"Mitka," Dimitri admitted, unable to look away from the beautiful image of their hands entwined. A single tear spilled down his face.
"Don't cry." Danyel pleaded. "I don't want to hurt you."
"I'm happy." He said, even as another tear trickled down. "No one has ever given me something so wonderful."
"Its your own bracelet." He glanced down, his cheeks darkening further. Dimitri bent down, kissing the unruly lock of hair that insisted on trying to fall in his face. The desire burning through him, to protect and cherish this fragile Sime, overwhelmed all other thought. Mitka shifted, loosening his hold and Dimitri wrapped around Danyel, holding him in his arms as Mitka held both of them in his wings. Danyel trembled like a dried aspen leaf ready to fall from the tree.
His whole body ached to touch all of Danyel's smooth, Sime silky skin, but he held back, just holding him in his arms. Danyel's warmth was as intoxicating as any wine. Dimitri breathed in his scent, sweet roniplin and slightly dark musk. He spread his hands against Danyel's back and pressed him closer, wanting to feel so much more of him. Danyel's sweet breath tickled at his chest, and lower down.
Reluctantly, he loosened his hold and tried to step back. Mitka was a solid wall behind him, preventing him from moving more than a cent. Dimitri sucked in his abdomen as well as he could, trying not to importune Danyel with more than he could possibly want.
Danyel moved into him, an impish grin spreading on his face. The light in his nager was stunning. "You said I wouldn't be hurt."
"There's hurt in every relationship." His own voice shook, as Danyel's hands did on his back. Then those hands slid lower and lower. Dimitri's hips rocked forward, of their own accord. He wanted to drive himself on Danyel's slender, defenseless body. He wanted to pin him to the floor, rip his clothes off and ravish him without another thought for tomorrow. He knew he wasn't going to get what he wanted, no matter how Mitka begged.
Mitka shook his head, gold eyes loosing their luster. "I though you wanted me to take him?"
"I want to love him." Mitka said, no louder than the rustle of leaves. "Not hurt him."
"We will hurt him."
"Not if I have anything to say about it." Danyel pressed into him this time. Stunned, Dimitri could do nothing but let him. Even more mindless than Mitka, his body strained the cloth of his trousers to the breaking point. Mitka snorted, spraying him liberally.
"Thanks," he muttered, actually glad of the distraction. With it, he could pull back a fraction in his mind and took note of Danyel's unresponsiveness. Dimitri slid his hands down to Danyel's buttocks, cupping them. They tensed, wary of any more intimate intrusion. "I'm very easy to arouse." He murmured, wuffling Danyel's sweet scented hair, lipping at his raven wing black curls.
"I'm not." More muscles snarled beneath Dimitri's hands. He moved them up, kneading away the tension with a touch of power and simple pressure. Dimitri found a knot at the third thoracic vertebra. With a deft application of force, he popped it loose. It cracked. Mitka snorted, startled. Danyel groaned, melting against him. Dimitri found another knot.
"Come with me." He tried to back up again, this time taking Danyel with him. Danyel's nager no longer held the sharp outlines and quicksilver reactivity so typical of southerner's. It had softened to a warm wash of color, spanning the entire rainbow. Mitka let them move, probably because Dimitri was leading Danyel to the bed. By the time they reached it, Danyel'd recovered.
"Shen and shidoni," Dimitri muttered in absolute exasperation. He'd gotten Danyel truly relaxed, without cheating him of any of his faculties, and then lost it in moments.
"Excuse me?" Danyel blinked. Mitka'd hidden his head under his wing, air around him crimson with mortal embarrassment on the ambient.
"Frustrated," he slid his hands along Danyel's ribs, trying to get a start on relaxing him again.
"Why?" He glanced down, lips curling up in an easy smile. "Other than the obvious, of course."
"Oh, I wouldn't swear about that." His initial frantic lust was fading, as it always did when he ignored it. "Your cycle time is too fast."
Danyel cocked his head in question.
"I'm used to Lords who are inherently slower than I am. Even Valtanir, the quickest of them, was maybe half your speed. I'm trying to get you to relax a bit so my touch will feel good." Danyel had to grope for words that usually came so easily to his tongue.
"It does feel good." Danyel said. His nager could care less, humming to itself in merry indifference to anything going on around it. "Why do you think it doesn't? Because I'm not physically aroused yet?"
"Yet?" Dimitri blinked, looking him up and down closely. "You don't have enough selyn in your private field to react to me physically, only nagerically. And your nager is off chasing butterflies!" This time it was his turn to snort. He swiped at Danyel's nager, trying to get its attention. Danyel blinked. For an instant, his nager froze, then flicked at him disparagingly and went back to its business.
"I thought ..." he looked back over his shoulder.
"No," Dimitri shook his head frantically. Mitka's eyes grew to the size of saucers. He too mouthed his protest. "Never. Don't let anyone do that to you."
"Would it hurt?" He paled, turning to a color Dimitri at least would call cream.
"It certainly wouldn't feel good." Dimitri blinked at him. "Do you know anything at all about sex?"
"With women." He blinked, still looking a bit stunned. His nager was now twining around Dimitri, sniffing at him as a sighthound would sniff a suspected stranger, all whipcord energy and lightning quick reflexes. He got the feeling he'd get bitten by it before he could even react if he even accidentally harmed Danyel. "I've only ... the once."
"What Rik did was rape." He put his hand on Danyel's shoulder. "Not even sex. He raped you. If I were to approach you in the same way right now, I'd be no better."
"You wouldn't mean to hurt." Danyel put his hand over Dimitri's.
"But I would hurt you." He twined his fingers with Danyel's. "Let me rub your back while we talk."
"Then I can know what its like having you poke me in the back?" He grinned, even as he turned. Dimitri hadn't quite thought about his request in these terms.
"Are you usually so trusting in showing your back?" Dimitri slid his hands inside Danyel's shirt after Danyel'd untucked it from his pants. He so very desperately wanted to feel Danyel open up to him, but this was not the time for it.
"Is there something wrong?" He looked back over his shoulder. The classic pose of desire and invitation made Dimitri's tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, despite its frantic watering. Mitka leaned forward and caressed Danyel's ear with his tongue.
"I don't know if there's an equivalent in Western culture." He slipped Danyel's shirt off, neatly displacing Mitka in the process. Then he remembered the pictures pinned up on the wall in the dressing room. "Its like the white chain and tunic."
"The kill!" Danyel yipped, tensing all over.
"Relax," Dimitri purred, Genhandling Danyel onto the bed. He wanted Danyel to be comfortable while they talked, not all knotted up with tension. "But yes," he brushed a kiss over the nape of Danyel's neck, keeping one hand behind his back as he did so, just to be sure. Even so, a bone deep longing to dominate and control Danyel, possibly unto death, pummeled at his conscious mind. The age old instinct to demand rather than court was as old as the tribes, who'd taught the early Rus how to become more than another group of squatters amid Rodina's lost finery. "Anyone can kill from this position."
Danyel's nager moved first. Dimitri caught him anyway, clamping his knees to Danyel's sides. Danyel flipped him over, then fell back on top of Dimitri. It didn't matter. Dimitri caught his shoulders and slid his hands down Danyel's wildly flailing arms. From here, augmentation didn't help. He caged Danyel's wrists with his hands.
"Stop," he whispered, quietly so Danyel'd still to hear him. Danyel quivered like a tiny bird, frantic to get free and stunned with shock. "Don't move."
"I won't." He breathed, panting. Through Mitka's eyes, he could see Danyel's panicked expression. "Don't grab."
"I never would." He promised, releasing him, even though his fingers didn't want to let go. Danyel's corded forearms, with their delicate tentacle sheaths had felt so wonderful against his palms. Danyel flipped over, grabbing Dimitri this time. Too stunned to move, he stared into Danyel's face, cents from his own. Danyel's tongue flicked out, brushing Dimitri's lips.
He felt his eyes roll up in his head and he moaned, falling back against the bed, utterly lax and submissive to the Sime resting all his weight on Dimitri's body. Dimitri opened his mouth, panting a bit with Danyel's nearness. He'd wanted this with Vayer, with Valtanir, even with Karola, but none of them had really had the time. Then Mitka's weight thumped down on Danyel's back. He grunted and nearly smacked Dimitri in the nose.
"Mitka," Dimitri sighed, looking up at him. His brows furrowed.
"I did bad?" He whimpered, sniffing.
"You're a klutz." He tickled Mitka's belly. His nager giggled and swatted at Dimitri with the back of his hand. Danyel chuckled, then pushed himself back up. His expression turned impish. With a nageric prod, he cued Dimitri to jump. With a quick grab, he yanked Mitka over both their heads. Mitka crashed into the far wall with a thud.
Dimitri squirmed around to launch himself at Mitka. Mitka ducked, right into Danyel's hands. Danyel grabbed him. He wuffled Mitka's armpit, making a huge splatting sound. Mitka howled, so loudly he probably woke up everyone in the building. Dimitri grabbed both of them, tumbling them both on the bed. Danyel laughed, his nager bright with fun.
Dimitri wuffled him. This was a big mistake. The rich, musky smell of him went straight to Dimitri's brain. Well, a great deal lower. Trying to keep this all light, he nipped. It didn't work. Danyel bucked against him, throwing Mitka across the bed. Danyel's hands yanked Dimitri's shirt up and his tentacles flickered over Dimitri's ribs.
Caught between laughter and desire, he pinned the much lighter Sime with all his weight. Danyel's eyes widened, his mouth forming a perfect 'o' of surprise. Dimitri slid his hands under Danyel's shoulders, cupping them in his palms. The heat of Danyel's body did nothing to cool Dimitri's raging libido. He was as low field as he got and his rampaging production rate only made his hormones wilder. A flicker of fear called to the demon riding Dimitri's back.
Dimitri jerked back, stung at the sharpness. Danyel lunged this time, knocking him into Mitka. Between them, he didn't stand a chance. Mitka shoved all his weight against Dimitri's back. Dimitri tried not to grab Danyel again. It didn't work. Danyel grabbed both of them. His expressive lips were under his before he could stop.
Now frantic, he tried to lock his muscles, pull back, anything to keep from forcing himself on Danyel. Danyel thrummed, tipping his head in open invitation. Dimitri lost his battle. He cupped the back of Danyel's head, ravishing his mouth with desperate kisses, tasting his mouth with all his senses wide open.
The sharpness of his drive must have startled Danyel badly. He yanked back, Sime quick. Dimitri slumped, horrified at what he'd done. He looked down at the tattered linens. He'd never meant to force himself on Danyel. His hand came up and tipped Dimitri's chin toward him. Danyel's lips were reddened with the force of Dimitri's kisses. "I'm sorry." Dimitri breathed, holding his hands to his sides, wanting more than anything to be able to comfort Danyel.
"This isn't a game." Danyel murmured. His chest was heaving, probably in terror, Dimitri figured. He didn't dare look to find out.
"Yes it is." Mitka sniffed, writhing around both of them. He bumped his head against Dimitri's still rock hard erection. It hurt like shen and he doubled over, cupping himself.
"Mitka!" Danyel snarled. Dimitri didn't see what he'd done, but then all he could see was a gray fog.
"That hurt." He breathed, still trying not to throw up with shock.
"I bet it did." Danyel exhaled sharply. "My turn to apologize. I'm sorry, Dimitri."
"Not your fault." Dimitri finally managed to straighten up a bit. He leaned a bit sideways and nearly fell over. Finally the worst of it had passed. "I haven't had something like that happen since Aliana kicked me at six."
"She's your older sister, right?"
"Only sister," Dimitri blinked away the stars in his vision. "Mama paddled her for it, but the damage had been done. I lived, even though that time I didn't manage to keep my lunch down."
"Yeah, well, I think we've all had that happen." Danyel's grin of shared confidences brought a grin to Dimitri's face. "Its all part of growing up."
"I didn't think Mitka'd do it to me." He glared at his nager. Mitka looked up at him, quite sheepishly. He was very, very still, otherwise. "Why did you do that?"
"I wanted to give you a hint." He whispered. "I'm sorry."
"You better be." He rearranged himself. "Well, I'm not going to be importuning you again tonight." The pit of his stomach ached horribly.
"I liked it." Danyel blinked.
"Until I got too aggressive." Dimitri raised a hand to Danyel's face. Danyel rubbed his cheek against Dimitri's palm. Harsh whiskers rubbed at his skin. "Do you want to shave?"
"I think I'd like that back rub." The light returned to his eyes. "Without the wrestling match this time, if you would."
"I think we can manage that." He glared at Mitka. Mitka just blinked and then looked away. "Can't we?" He asked his obstreperous nager.
"Yes, Dimitri," Mitka put his head under his wing. "I'll be good." He mumbled.
"Do you promise?" He really wasn't mad. Things had been getting out of hand and Mitka'd certainly fixed them. He sent this as well as he could to his nager, hopefully without Danyel being able to quite catch the interaction. Mitka brought his head out, eyes wide.
"Yes," he nodded, mouth agape. The bright shine to his scales was enough of a reward. How had he and Mitka ever come to such odds? "I love thee." He added, hope outshining all the stars in the sky.
"I love thee." He grinned back. "Even if you hit me in the groin."
"Sorry," he ducked his head again. "I didn't mean to hurt."
"Be careful next time." Dimitri stroked his head. Mitka rubbed against him, exactly as Danyel had. The similarity didn't stop there, for their feelings were entirely too similar for Dimitri's peace of mind. Had Danyel fallen in love with him, truly? Mitka's tail twitched restlessly, slithering around behind Danyel as if of its own accord. Dimitri glanced at it and raised an eyebrow at his nager.
Mitka glanced at his tail, grabbed it with one foreclaw and tucked it underneath himself. He then curled up like a cat and sighed. "I'll stay right here." He was right in the middle of the bed, but it was probably as good as Dimitri was going to get. Mitka usually took up the whole bed, all by himself.
"Actually, after that little shock, I'd rather rub your back first." Danyel offered, getting the oil he'd brought along for this very purpose, or one like it. A faint smile crossed his lips as he remembered Mikal having bought some. It had taken him days to figure out why, but when he had, he'd actually been a touch jealous of the fey young channel he'd become so attached to.
"If you're sure." He put his hand at the bottom of his shirt.
"Let me." Danyel held Dimitri's eyes. He nodded, meeting his gaze evenly. Few Donors could, or would. Even one of his sex therapists had been uneasy about it, glancing away.
"You're beautiful." He murmured.
Danyel shrugged, flicking a bit of invisible lint from his trousers. He'd removed his belt earlier and they'd slid down even lower on his hips. Dark, thick hair traced up from below his navel to his chest. Compared to Dimitri, he felt coarse and awkward; bony and mostly unfinished.
He put his hands inside Dimitri's shirt. The tight, stretchy knit clung to his body and he slid his hands along Dimitri's ribs. Dimitri's eyes closed, as if he were tasting something really good. When he tried to pull the shirt off over Dimitri's hands, it caught on his bracelets, pressing them against his wristbones. The sensation was not entirely bad, reminding Danyel forcefully of Dimitri's wrists.
Dimitri gave him one of those lazy smiles. He licked his lips, drawing Danyel's attention to them as well. "Thank you for getting my bracelets back." He flicked his hands, settling his jewelry against his wrists. Dimitri reached out and flicked his hand down, then glared up at the light. Danyel'd seen Sevrin make the gesture often enough recognize it.
Grinning, he said, "I like being able to see you." He'd never been so aware of anyone as Gen except right before transfer. Usually it was, if not a matter of indifference, not something he thought of much. Every move Dimitri made seemed to be calculated to proclaim to the world his larity.
"I'm not much to look at." He waved a hand to his body. The light flashed off his bracelet. The ambient twined around them, although not as badly as Danyel'd once thought. Although Danyel'd also never met someone who was new to wearing such things. Dimitri was obviously comfortable with his. Actually, a sense of tension had gone out of him as soon as Danyel'd replaced the first one. He leaned down and rubbed at his shin through his trousers.
"Take your pants off too and I'll do your shin." Danyel couldn't help but zlin how it ached.
"I'm used to it." His glance toward the light was all the hint Danyel required.
"It isn't as if I can't zlin you." He muttered, wanting to do more than zlin. "And you haven't been so shy before this. Earlier today, as a matter of fact." Not that he'd really looked. He kicked himself for passing up the opportunity. Danyel clearly remembered watching Dimitri that first morning.
Dimitri slid to the edge of the bed and fumbled with the button. "I'm being silly about actually having you here." He glanced down, long lashes falling over high cheekbones. "It just seems different now that I know, for certain, you're looking at me, not just catching inadvertent glances or zlinning."
"I looked at you before." He admitted, wondering how this would be taken. Dimitri's cheeks pinked. It was actually rather cute. "You look, and zlin, amazing."
"I looked the fool at the shoot." He slid his pants off and kicked them into the corner. Then he snorted and got up, hanging them carefully over the back of a chair. Danyel stared, at least while Dimitri's back was turned. Mitka's eyes blinked open. Danyel glanced down at him for a moment. Mitka winked and then closed his eyes quickly when Dimitri turned around. From either side he was spectacular. His shoulders hunched and Danyel could zlin them muscle tension in his arms as he held back from covering himself. Although the effects of tensing those muscles made slumping a pointless exercise.
"You, and your mother both, are gorgeous." Danyel patted the bed next to him. Then he slipped off his own pants, wanting to at least be fair. Although how fair it was to expose Dimitri to his own scrawny carcass was debatable. This time Mitka's eyes stayed open, even as Dimitri looked away. Danyel wasn't at all sure how to interpret this. Mitka licked his lips, openly staring now, at Danyel's groin.
Dimitri's cheeks turned bright red. The blush extended all the way down to where he wasn't looking. Mitka snickered, drooling on the bed at the same time. He clapped his jaws shut, spraying selyn all over Danyel's side. He wiped it off with his hand and then wiped his hand off on Mitka's back. Mitka began to uncoil, probably in preparation for something else obnoxious. Dimitri winced.
"I want to pay attention to Dimitri for a bit." Danyel squashed Mitka to the bed. Mitka's tongue flicked over his wrist, leaving it soaking wet. "I'm not interested in you right now. I'll rub your back later."
"I'd rather you pulled my tail." He rolled over, offering his belly.
"Not right now, dear." He felt as if he were talking with Kolya. Mitka sniffed at him, but curled up again.
"He doesn't respond like that to me." Both of Dimitri's eyebrows raised this time. From his blinking, this was as much a surprise to him as it was to Danyel. Mitka smirked, eyes closed as if he were napping. Danyel tweaked his tail. He tucked it back under his body. Dimitri chuckled. "He really does like you, probably because you let him bite you."
"I think because I like him." Danyel stroked Mitka's back. This time he forgot to feign sleep and purred, loudly. "I do." Mitka's purring increased in volume until it shook the bed.
Dimitri sat on the edge of the bed, muscles tense as if Danyel were going to hit him.
"Relax," he murmured, trying a gentle push toward being flat. Dimitri sat as if set in poured stone. Danyel put his hand on Dimitri's bare shoulder, rubbing at the cap of muscle. It was also as hard as rock. He sighed, trying to figure out what to do. Dimitri glanced at him through lowered lashes. Danyel gave in on moving him and moved himself. He straddled Dimitri's hips and tried rubbing at the horrible knots in his back. Only when he got all the way to pounding on him did any of them give.
As if massaging a tied up horse, he leaned all his weight into what he was doing. He broke a sweat long before Dimitri gave out a sigh and began to melt. "That feels so good." He purred, in exact echo of Mitka, rolling his shoulders.
"Don't ruin my work." Danyel wiped away a drop of sweat before it could get in his eyes. He knelt behind Dimitri and pulled him against his upraised knee. Dimitri's back cracked.
"Oh, yes," he sighed, his nager melting as well as his body. Quite literally in this case, as Mitka'd sprawled all over the bed. Danyel shoved a foot out of the way and tugged Dimitri back. He fell over with a thud. Staring up at the ceiling, Danyel could see his silly grin quite clearly. His eyes were closed as if he were savoring this experience. "You're very good at this."
"I can't rub your back from here." He complained.
"Then rub my front." Dimitri tipped his chin up. Danyel hadn't intended to get him quite this relaxed. He compromised by rubbing the muscles of Dimitri's jaw and neck. Dimitri's moan transmitted straight to his wrists, which were unavoidably close. Then he turned his head and licked at Danyel's wrist. Danyel shivered all over with the cool, slick caress on the nerve rich skin. "I can tell why Mitka likes to do this so much." His breath cooled the dampness. Another shiver traced Danyel's skin, making all the hair on his body stand up. "So very sensitive." He purred, as if this were a good thing.
"I am." He admitted, not wanting to look, but unable to avoid the sight of Dimitri continuing to nuzzle his arm, as if he were making love to it. There was something so very sensual about his caresses. Danyel'd never even thought to have any Gen touch his wrists, only the opposite. Dimitri's short hair brushed the inside of his elbow and he gasped.
"Feel good?" Dimitri looked up at him, turning so his face was resting against Danyel's arm. One of his ventrals came out and curved up to trace Dimitri's lips. He smiled, tongue flicking out for a moment and licking at it. Danyel'd learned to enjoy Mitka's licks, but Dimitri was human, and very Gen.
"Very," he murmured, not at all sure if he should. He tried to smile. It probably came out as more of a grimace. Dimitri blinked at him, lazy smile beginning to fade. "Oh, it feels wonderful."
"Are you sure?" He pressed his cheek against Danyel's ventral sheaths, so gently he thought for a moment he might have simply felt Dimitri's hair brush them. He turned his face and kissed Danyel's arm, right on the very sensitive spot between his ventrals. Both of them came out, curling around Dimitri's ears and pulling him closer. Dimitri chuckled, the rich, soft sound caressing Danyel's arm.
He'd never thought of himself as being particularly Sime. No one he knew did. It was simply a fact of his life before now, like his black hair or brown eyes. To Dimitri, it seemed, his being Sime was something special. Dimitri's focused attention on his wrists was something he'd never known or even zlinned before. Sevrin couldn't do it with Vanesa, being blind, and he'd not watched any of the others very much.
"You taste good." Dimitri murmured, licking at the openings to his tentacle sheathes. Mitka's having been so alien had meant Danyel hadn't really thought about it. But Dimitri was entirely human. "I can see why Mitka is so fascinated."
Danyel struggled not to squirm. Dimitri's tongue was making his laterals flick out and forcing him hyperconcious. Unable to stop the progression, he moaned, the last thing he heard before the world dissolved in to shimmering fields. Mitka's form, here, was still shadowed and dull. He'd not recovered fully, not at all. He was merely putting on a good show. And completely asleep, Danyel could zlin it.
Dimitri was nowhere to be found but for a faint patch of mist, slightly to one side of Mitka. Danyel tried to contact it, but it drifted away into nothingness. Mitka sighed, rolling over and looking at him upside-down. "Stroke my belly?" He asked, this time with Dimitri's voice.
"I'm not sure exactly what you want of me." He thought long and hard about Dimitri's comment that he'd be injured if he gave into Mitka's wiles and tried having sex.
"I won't ask, not here." His voice thrummed, as if there were an echo. Danyel listened closely. "I want to be touched, Danyel." His voice was softer than Danyel'd ever heard it, then he realized Mitka's voice was blended with Dimitri's. "Yes, here in the world of selyn, we are one." Dimitri's level gaze held his. It was quite odd. Danyel'd gotten used to Mitka's wildness. Mitka/Dimitri chuckled. "This is the only time I'm whole."
Danyel smiled sadly, thinking how hard it must be to live as to separate beings.
"Oh, its not hard, usually." Dimitri grinned, Mitka's playfulness peeking through. "But we can't stay like this indefinitely." He licked his lips, obviously trying to give Danyel a hint. He finally got it and knelt at Mitka's side. His hand caressed Mitka's ribs and belly, his scales softening to the softest leather low down on his body. Mitka chuckled, curling around Danyel's hand, pressing at it. He rubbed harder. Mitka sighed, rubbing his head on Danyel's arm, as Dimitri had duo-conscious.
Danyel wondered what had happened. "Why did everything changed so radically when I went hyperconcious?"
Dimitri/Mitka blinked at him, obviously confused and no little bit dazed. Dimitri's intelligence blazed behind Mitka's slit pupiled eyes. The combination of the two of them took Danyel's breath away. What could Dimitri do if he truly were whole?
"I'd die." Dimitri said, glancing away for a moment. He nodded. "We are here because you somehow ended up with all five contact points stable."
"How?" He didn't remember doing any such thing.
"Probably when you bent down and kissed me." Dimitri/Mitka chuckled. "Come on, lets go back." With a rush of power, Danyel found himself back bent over Dimitri, brushing his lips over Dimitri's. This wasn't the hard contact of Sime to Gen for transfer, but rather the soft touch, as man to woman. Although he found Dimitri'd been right, again. He'd taken the four lateral contacts off Dimitri's jaw.
Dimitri grinned up at him. "You are beautiful there, you know." He reached up and caressed Danyel's face. "A sculpture of ice and light, ever changing, like quicksilver made into human form."
"You, and Mitka, were together." He breathed against Dimitri's lips, not really wanting to move away.
"We are there." He smiled. "For that brief time we're whole."
"Why did you say you'd die if you lived whole." Danyel glanced at Mitka though. He didn't want Mitka to go away. He did like him, even love him, if in a different way than Dimitri.
"My mind split when I established." Dimitri's voice grew soft. Danyel had to stay close to hear him, although his back was beginning to ache. "I couldn't live with the knowledge imparted by the Sergei gifts and bear strong emotions at the same time. Together, knowing and feeling, would have destroyed me. Mitka is innocent and is good at forgetting, I can not forget, truly, but then I can not feel things the way he can." Dimitri shrugged as if this were nothing outrageous.
"Don't you want to be able to feel the things he does?" Danyel wondered if Dimitri truly could love anyone. Dimitri jerked back as if hit. "Oh, I don't mean to hurt."
"I'm just a bit sensitive on the subject." He looked up, staring past Danyel's face, then pulled his knees up to his chest. "I can love, and fear, and even hate, but they are always a bit distant, disconnected if you will."
"Don't you want to be normal?" Danyel bit his tongue.
"I like your honesty." Dimitri turned his attention back to Danyel, field focusing on him again. "This is what I know."
"Don't, weren't you whole as a child?" Danyel knelt and got the oil. Dimitri's field flickered wildly. He looked down and realized he'd leaned his crotch right over Dimitri's face.
"Oh, don't worry it." Dimitri grinned, patting Danyel's butt before he could sit back down. "I know you're not thinking of sex at the moment."
"You aren't going to change the subject so easily." He crawled around to Dimitri's side. After warming some oil on his palms, he began rubbing at the horrible scar on Dimitri's leg. It was nearly half an inch thick in places and he could feel where the bone had ripped through the muscle and skin. Dimitri scooted around and put his legs across Danyel's lap.
"I don't know if I was or not." Dimitri put his hands behind his head. His chest rose and fell easily, except when Danyel dug a bit hard into the front of Dimitri's shin. "No, don't let up." He smoothed a wrinkle out of the sheet underneath him. "It feels good, even though it hurts some too."
"If you say so." Danyel's muscles were snarling now, as he felt the sharp little bites of pain in Dimitri's field every time he pressed on the sensitized nerves. Through touch alone, Danyel could feel the unevenness of where the bone hadn't calloused perfectly, leaving deep gouges behind. "Although how did you manage without Mitka, as I'd guess he didn't exist before you established, or that you really required him." Danyel was guessing Dimitri'd come into his power when he established, just as Sevrin had.
"No, I didn't." He flexed his foot and then pointed it. "That feels so much better." He turned his foot in a circle. Beneath Danyel's fingertips he could feel the muscles and tendons catch on massive scarring. Danyel worked the oil deeper into those knots, trying to at least warm them. To zlinning, they were nearly dead, so he set his field to try to bring selyn to those thick scars as well. "It won't work." Dimitri told him, even as his field thrummed in appreciation. Danyel ignored this last comment.
"Then how do you know you wouldn't be better off as you were before, say if someone could help you learn to deal with those emotional pressures tied to your memories?" Danyel worked a bit on Dimitri's other shin as well, not wanting to leave him uneven. Dimitri tugged at one of Danyel's feet. Falling over half sideways, he gave in to the irresistible force. This was one thing unique to Dimitri. "You have all the leverage." He complained.
"That's right, little Sime." He swiped the oil and began rubbing Danyel's feet. Danyel groaned, forgetting entirely about anything but Dimitri's hands. "You like this, do you." He rolled half way over and put a kiss on the arch of Danyel's foot.
"I do." He sighed, resting his cheek against Dimitri's ankle. Dimitri's fingers worked their way up. This was good. It let him think again. He blinked, trying to get back some sense. "Don't you want to be like that?"
"I don't want to be a child again, Danyel." He murmured, renewing his attack on Danyel's feet. "Do you think, no, you already took a shunt." He gave the top of Danyel's foot a slow, lazy lick.
"I did what?" Danyel looked down at Dimitri. There was something in the way, pointing at him. He'd thought Mitka'd made such enthusiasm impossible. Although as it seemed Dimitri was ignoring it, Danyel figured he'd better as well.
Dimitri glanced down at him and rolled his eyes, grinning. "Sorry," he murmured, tipping his hips back. It didn't help much. "You shunted oh, a few hundred days out of your secondary into your primary when you made your five point contact with me."
Danyel blinked again, checking his selyn reserves. He was far higher in his primary than he expected and nearly empty in his secondary. How had that happened? He tipped his head back, trying to think. It didn't work very well. Dimitri's knuckles were digging into the arches of his feet, both at the same time. It had to have been as Dimitri said, he'd dumped the selyn he stored for renSimes into his primary.
"You're body was in need while your mind was before turnover. It tried to fix things." Dimitri was playing havoc with Danyel's ability to concentrate. All he could do was moan. "Although you're over half now, if I don't miss my guess."
"What?" Danyel blinked, trying to get some of the fuzz out of his brain.
"Your body set itself to what your mind thinks is right." He chuckled softly. "Probably why you used my field for a shunt."
"How do you know so much about all of this?" Danyel's tongue had been loosened so badly it should have fallen out of his mouth. At least that way he wouldn't keep saying these foolish things.
"Because unlike Western Donors, I've been trained." He nuzzled Danyel's feet. "Although I didn't think this particular lesson of Avilan's would come into play so easily."
"Hmmm?" Danyel gave up on thought. It was too much effort. He sighed, giving in to Dimitri's caresses.
"On how to find what your lover likes." He murmured, warm breath twining with Danyel's toes. He popped them, just because he could. Dimitri chuckled. One by one, he wiggled and then really popped each of Danyel's toes, making them give way with loud cracks. By the time he was done, Dimitri wasn't the only one pointing. Although that was the only thing on Danyel's body that was firm. "Although I'm not sure what I like."
"Lets find out then." Danyel put his arm over Dimitri's legs and nuzzled them.
"I like being touched." He whispered, as if ashamed.
"Good," Danyel tried to be firm, at least with his voice. It didn't want to. "Then I'll touch you all over as much as you like."
"We'll never get out of bed then." Dimitri chuckled. "Although I recommend we wait until we both have transfer, if not with each other, before we do more than touch."
Danyel melted the rest of the way. He'd not known the tension he'd felt in his body with the oddly distant stiffening of his dick. There had been something wrong with it, he'd known as much, somehow. With Dimitri's reassurance, he sighed, simply feeling his body surrender to Dimitri's touches.
"I like to touch, Danyel." He murmured, hugging Danyel's feet to his face. The odd gesture seemed quite pleasant actually. As if Dimitri cherished all of him, not just his wrists or his crotch or his face. Dimitri nuzzled the tiny gap between his feet, whisker roughened cheeks tickling. Danyel laughed, squirming.
"Oh, my beautiful Sime." He crooned, in Russian. With a kiss, he returned to rubbing Danyel's feet. Before he'd finished, Danyel'd drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 25
Dimitri found himself waking with a Sime in his arms twice in the same month. This may well have been a record. Particularly as it was the same Sime. Even more amazing he didn't have a headache, or really any particular aches. Oh, he had a few, including one in the pit of his belly and of course his shin, but nothing at all of note. Luxuriating in the feel of it, he sighed, relaxing against Danyel's slender back and hips. Dimitri had no idea why Simes always ended up against his front, but had no complaints.
He kissed the back of Danyel's neck, reveling in the scent and feel of him. But, thankfully, there was nothing more to it. Danyel'd promised himself to Dimitri. That was enough. He didn't have to push himself on Danyel right now. He wasn't going anywhere.
Danyel muttered something utterly unintelligible and resettled his seatbones against Dimitri's thighs. He was such a tiny thing, particularly asleep. Vayer and Karola had been far larger people, although Danyel didn't seem so small when he was awake. The sense of presence he got from the Sime more than made up for his slight stature and slender build.
With more fussing, Dimitri figured out the problem. He reached down between them and moved the offender away. Danyel grumbled, shifting back against him, wiggling all the while. Dimitri's hand slid over Danyel's side, caressing him as he dared not awake. Danyel's awareness crystalize his field with his waking.
"Mitka isn't the only one to make sticky messes." Danyel murmured, pressing back against him. Dimitri blinked. What was he talking about? Then he realized what had happened.
"I was asleep." He growled, mortally embarrassed.
"I don't mind." He rolled over, taking the blankets stuck to his hip with him. A cold draft ran up Dimitri's spine, literally as well as figuratively. "I remember doing much the same." His dark eyes were shadowed, as if this bothered him, even though he'd said not. "Oh, more in that it was awkward to me at the time."
"Its pretty awkward to me." The blanket made a loud ripping sound as Danyel peeled it away from his body. Dimitri could smell it. He wrinkled his nose.
"I bet." Danyel looked up at him, eyes still soft. "Although I can understand why."
"Too much hormones." He gave a wry grin. "Oh, I know well enough the cause of nocturnal emissions. They're just a bother. I'm always very amorous right before turnover, as if my body wanted to save up for the two weeks without."
Danyel opened his mouth and then closed it, without saying anything.
"You were going to say Gens don't go through turnover?" Dimitri tried to change the subject. Danyel let him.
"Yes," he admitted, cheeks darkening, even as his eyes twinkled with hidden laughter. "Its a hard habit to break."
"Thinking of Gens as people."
"No, thinking of them as having need." Those wonderful eyes flashed in heat.
"Oh, thinking of Gens as adults." Dimitri needled him. Danyel flushed, turning his face away. "I didn't mean to hurt."
"I hurt you." He glanced back, through his black lashes.
"Not really," Dimitri shrugged. "We come from different worlds, even though we are both natural healers."
"I didn't do very well yesterday with Cami." Danyel looked away again. Dimitri didn't have to sense Danyel's nager to know what he was feeling, it was all writ large on his features.
"Why do you say that?" Dimitri asked, gripping Danyel's hip. It was a convenient handle.
"Because I let her jump you." Danyel's skin went cold under Dimitri's hand.
"Oh, bullshit, Danyel," Dimitri shook him a bit, even though he was careful to keep his voice down. Mitka was still sound asleep, as gray as a winter's sky now that he was no longer trying to look as if he felt better than he really did. His flesh was still firm and filled out, so Dimitri figured he was simply still recovering, or at least he hoped so. "I prodded her on."
"Not deliberately," Danyel flicked his tentacles, as if brushing off something. "You didn't actively do anything. I know. I can zlin you and most Simes can't even do that. You don't have enough of a personal field to drive any Sime to attack you."
Dimitri blinked at him. Then he flushed, his skin shrinking many, many sizes. He ducked his head. "Is this why Simes don't like me?" His voice had turned into a tiny squeak. Was Danyel saying he really did zlin like a child? Did Simes avoid him because they didn't want such perversion? What did that say of Danyel? For that much matter, what did it say of him?
"No, silly," Danyel put his arm around Dimitri's shoulder and pulled him close. Dimitri didn't dare look at him. "More that here, only a high field Gen can provoke a Sime."
"Legally, you mean." This didn't make Dimitri feel a whole lot better. Did he really have no more nager than a child?
"Yes, legally," he shook Dimitri. "You couldn't have provoked her."
"You mean I can't provoke anyone." Dimitri longed for the emotion deadening effects of need. He'd never thought of himself as impotent!
"Is that such a bad thing?"
"Bad?" Dimitri wailed, tears threatening to spill over. "You're telling me I can't attract a Sime with my field!"
"You attract me." He said, rubbing his chin on Dimitri's scalp.
"Really," he looked up. Tears spangled his vision.
"Oh, I didn't mean to make you cry."
"You couldn't zlin it." Dimitri was crushed. His heart lay like lead in his chest. What good would it do to go on? Mitka woke with a snort and a twitch. The ache faded to bearable levels. "Oh, its fine, Danyel." He could feel Danyel tremble beneath his fingertips.
"No, its not." He said, pulling Dimitri hard against him. "You're upset. What's wrong?"
"I'm ugly!" He cried, even with Mitka siphoning off the worst of it.
"No you're not." Danyel shook him, even as he nearly crushed Dimitri against his chest. "I just meant you couldn't be held accountable for Cami jumping you."
"But I did provoke her?" Dimitri himself wasn't sure if he wanted a yes or a no to this question. Mitka nodded so frantically Dimitri could feel the bed shake.
"Maybe," Danyel answered, his hands smooth and hot against Dimitri's back. This wasn't how he'd wanted Danyel's hands on his body, in pity. "I don't think she'd have gone after a donor."
Dimitri felt a little bit better. Mitka's chin prodded at his ribs, fangs poking between two of them. "Am I ugly too?"
"Neither of you are ugly." Danyel snorted, breath ruffling Dimitri's short hair. "I just wouldn't want you to think you were responsible for Cami's foolishness yesterday."
Was it only yesterday? Dimitri felt as if he'd lived a lifetime in these two weeks. "So I did provoke her?"
"You could provoke anyone you set your mind to." Danyel's statement had the tone of one reassuring a madman he was sane. Dimitri felt Mitka squirm against his back. "No, I'm not condescending to either of you. Mitka is gorgeous and I've never seen or zlinned anyone as Gen as you are, Dimitri."
"Do you mean that?" Dimitri didn't dare reach. It would be better to take Danyel at his word.
"I do." He said, as plainly and simply as if he were describing the weather. "But I don't see you accidentally provoking a Sime."
"I'd like to think I could." He murmured, feeling as if Danyel were patronizing him. Telling him he was pretty fast for a man with no legs.
"Why?" Danyel asked.
Dimitri snorted, in unison with Mitka. "Is it so bad to want to be attractive to the opposite larity?"
"You are!" Danyel pounded on Dimitri's back. "I don't think your own father would have taken your wrists in transfer if he weren't overwhelmed by other considerations."
"Really?" Dimitri looked up at him. "But here you don't consummate your transfers."
"No, but we also don't let people of opposite genders in the same family have transfer."
"Then by your standards there was nothing wrong with it." Dimitri wasn't reassured.
"I'm learning your way of life, Dimitri." Danyel began digging his fingers into the snarled muscles of Dimitri's back. Dimitri couldn't think like this. It felt so good. He stretched back against Danyel's touch, savoring it. "From what I know, Vayer had to have wanted your selyn very badly for him to have been wiling to even be near you in hard need."
"Yes, probably," he admitted. "I know I wouldn't have wanted him if, well, if I could have had anyone else."
"Isn't that cheating him?"
"No, because if I'd been able to find another, he'd have let me go to them, more than willingly." Dimitri admitted his inability to attract anyone to partner him. Maybe Danyel was right? Maybe he was ugly to zlin? "You're right. Only someone with an obligation to my health would touch my wrists."
Danyel bit him, on the shoulder, hard! Dimitri yelped, even as his hips rocked into Danyel and a flash of pleasure blinded him. "Oh?" Danyel asked, lipping at the place he'd bitten.
"Don't do that again, please." Dimitri begged, now breathless and squirming like mad. For him, nocturnal emissions only made his libido that much more aware of what it was missing with his enforced celibacy. He moaned, pressing himself against Danyel's front before he could stop.
"You like being bitten?" He murmured, rasping his whisker roughened cheek over the stinging bite mark.
"He likes attention." Mitka gave him away, as he always did. Although he'd been very quiet so far. "Give it to him, please."
"You like attention too." Danyel had to have moved his hand to Mitka. He purred, digging eight very sharp claws into Dimitri's ribs. The other eight were probably trying to slice up the linens.
"He does." Dimitri tried exposing Mitka's weakness, as he'd done so often to Dimitri. Mitka just nodded, fangs digging in with each bob of his head.
"I like being touched, a lot." He added to Danyel's store of knowledge, infinitesimally, most likely, at this point.
"So do I." Dimitri admitted of his own free will. Oh, he'd certainly said enough, but perhaps if he repeated it often enough, he'd manage to get how much he liked being touch through.
"What can I do to show you I want you?" Danyel asked, as clinical as any physician. Dimitri leaned back and stared at him. "I don't know what I'm doing." His admission was clearly under some sort of internal, hopefully, duress, as his nager pinked with it.
"In what way?" Dimitri couldn't reach for any of his unworldly knowledge, Danyel was too close to him now, emotionally. He was working blind.
"I want to make you feel good, Dimitri." He said, fingers returning to working their magic on Dimitri's back.
"Then keep rubbing my back."
"I mean sexually." His nager shattered into impossible little glittering bits. If he hadn't been so vibrant, and still rubbing Dimitri's back, he'd have said he'd just suffered a major seizure! "I don't know how to have sex with another man." The words came out coldly, as if he were discussing a medical issue, but his nager was tied into a tiny black knot.
"From what I've heard, its simple." He murmured, wishing he knew what to say.
"You've never done it?" He asked, pulse pounding beneath Dimitri's ear.
"No," he admitted, daring to run his hand down Danyel's thigh. He shivered beneath Dimitri's touch, for the first time, warming to it. "Vayer could never, quite, manage it, neither could I, really." He shrugged.
"Because he's your father?"
"Yes," Dimitri nodded. "It goes both ways, I'm afraid."
"But if he wasn't?"
"Darya'd have had competition." Mitka chimed in, tongue flicking out and tickling Dimitri's ribs in the process. He squirmed. Mitka's claws dug in. This pain didn't feel good at all and Dimitri hissed, "Stop poking me, I'm trying to think."
Danyel chuckled. "I never could think at your age when I was hard." His nager'd returned entirely to normal, as if Dimitri'd never perturbed it, or Danyel either.
"I'm used to it." He shrugged. "It has a mind of its own."
"They do." He murmured, hand sliding down Dimitri's back. Dimitri arched his neck, wishing he could purr like a cat. Mitka did it for him. The vibrations, particularly when he rested his throat on Danyel's arm, pulled at the lust he'd been stomping on for over a week now. Danyel was so incredibly gentle and tentative in his touches. Even his mind was gentle, often flicking away at the slightest thought he might have caused Dimitri some discomfort. "What would feel good?"
"Your touch." He kept from humping Danyel's leg by force of will alone. He'd found the area on Dimitri's lower back right over the node nexus. Dimitri groaned when Danyel's fingers dug in.
"This was where you touched me." He murmured against Dimitri's chest, breath and face as warm as the summer sun, also as irresistible. Dimitri's attention turned to his heat and light, as a flower would turn to the rising sun. "Is there something special about this, on both larities?" He had to feel Dimitri's drooling erection trying to find a home. Any home would do.
"Yes," Dimitri nodded, trying not to grab Danyel, flip him over, and take him. Maybe if they'd managed a bit more foreplay over these days he'd been in the West, he wouldn't be quite so sharp set. As it was, as soon as anything reminded him of sex, he wanted to fall on Danyel like a ravening wolf. Mitka, however, was surprisingly quiet. Dimitri glanced down, trying to see what he was doing.
Mitka had his chin resting on Danyel's shoulder, just looking at his face, not doing a great deal of anything but riding both of them. Although Dimitri hadn't any idea what Mitka would do during sex. When he'd been with Karola, Mitka'd been nearly comatose after the best transfer of his short life. Now he was wide awake and aware.
"I love you." Mitka murmured, binding the two of them together with his body, then doing nothing more than cuddling both of them. He even removed his claws from Dimitri's ribs.
Then Danyel's questing tentacles stroked him even lower. Dimitri groaned, opening himself in silent invitation to the touch. Danyel fumbled for something behind his back. Mitka slithered over both of them, digging his hock painfully into Dimitri's shoulder in the process, of course. He winced.
"I didn't hurt you, did I?"
"No," Dimitri said quickly. He was treated to the amazing sight of Mitka dragging a bottle of oil with his teeth. Dimitri could feel the tremendous stress he was under affecting something so heavy in the physical world. Mitka dropped it in Danyel's questing hand and then collapsed, flat on his belly, panting.
"Its wet." Danyel murmured, then looked back over his shoulder. "You brought it?"
"Yes," he whispered. His eyes crossed and then they closed. Exhausted, he fell asleep instantly. Dimitri smiled at him, astonished at the length he'd go to make things easier for Danyel. Although he did wonder if Mitka was going to regret missing out ... if anything happened.
"Thank you," Danyel whispered back.
"He's asleep." Dimitri told him, equally quietly. "He wore himself out with the carry."
"I didn't know he could carry things."
"With a great deal of effort." Dimitri never asked Mitka to carry anything. He hated seeing him so worn unless it was by his own free choice. "Particularly something so heavy and unlikely. A bit of paper, which can be caught by the wind, is very easy for him. Or things he can get people to carry for him, like kadors or veils, which is usually how he looks to renGens."
Danyel snorted, then flicked open the bottle. "We were discussing other things."
"Like?" Dimitri shivered all over as Danyel's tentacles, now slick with oil, explored Dimitri's lower back. He didn't know if he should press against him, and possibly loose those wonderful digits, or move back, and loose the contact against his loins. Either way it was a loosing proposal, so he stayed in the middle and shivered with tension.
"Cold?" Danyel asked, pressing up against Dimitri's front. Compared to the air, he was burning hot, but Dimitri was plenty warm with his own enthusiasms and Danyel's touch only fired them hotter.
"No," he shook his head. "There's a nerve bundle, in men, beneath the base of the spine, deep inside the body."
"The prostate gland?" Danyel asked, his nager reaching for that.
"Not quite," he shifted his weight slightly. "Its actually a webwork of nerves around it." Danyel got the right spot. Dimitri shivered all over, crying out with the fire running up his spine and exploding at the top of his skull.
"I think that's it." Danyel chuckled softly. Dimitri gasped, quivering all over. He'd not spent, but only because Danyel'd not kept his attention on the node for more than an instant.
"Yes," Dimitri nodded. "Its possible, although harmful, to make even a Sime in hard need ejaculate by stimulating that node."
"Oh," he breathed, a bad shiver taking him over. "I don't think I'd like that."
"Its not done lightly." Dimitri said, trying not to think of how much he'd give to not be quite so ethical. Danyel was high enough field, Dimitri could, if he chose, bring Danyel's libido into an active mode, as if he hadn't had to do a shunt to make his body match his mind. "Nothing regarding libido is. The risks of injury are too great."
"Then why have you been playing around with your own?" Danyel's question stunned him silent. "You haven't been fulfilling your body's sexual requirements."
"Because I don't want to force myself on anyone." He said, even though he knew he'd wished he could, many times.
"You aren't forcing yourself on me." Danyel's tentacles slid lower, teasing at him as they'd started to do earlier. Dimitri's eyes widened. His muscles knotted again with not wanting to yank Danyel to him. He'd break the fragile Sime he held in his arms. "If I'm to consider you to have the same needs and requirements to be healthy as I have, then this is something you require."
"I don't want to be an obligation, Danyel."
"Then let me help you out of friendship." Danyel teased at Dimitri with a single tentacle. Karola'd hinted at something like this, but they'd not had the chance to do more than play around. As with her, he relaxed and let Danyel slip inside. But this was different. So late in his cycle, Dimitri's body was frantic for any kind of release.
Dimitri arched his back, wrapping himself around Danyel and doing everything he could to give him even greater access to his body. Unlimited by bones, Danyel's tentacle reached easily for the juncture of so many nerves, probably unavoidably zlinnable. Dimitri licked his lips, panting in desperation for a single brush of one of those tentacles over the node.
"Is this why, how, what you are talking about?" Danyel's explorations deepened and quickened. Dimitri moved against him, no longer able to still the rocking of his hips.
"Yes," he murmured, mouth wet with a frantic desire like none he'd ever felt before. Dimitri'd certainly seen many of Chernoye's erotic paintings, although he'd been entirely unable to match the irascible old Sime's brilliance as a child. As an adult, he'd known so little of normal sex or transfer, he'd not dared. Now he understood. Danyel's touch on and in his body fired his passions, ones he'd never known he had, to white hot. "Oh, yes." He clutched at Danyel, wanting to share in this desire, hold him so close he'd never get away.
"I think you like." He murmured, adding a second tentacle. Dimitri opened to him, giving of himself as he'd give in transfer. Then he felt the hot, wet touch of laterals. He screamed, a pleasure too great to bear blinding him to all else in the world.
Beneath his severe facade, Danyel could clearly zlin Dimitri's bubbling good humor. He'd relaxed tremendously since this morning. Danyel's ears still rang from Dimitri's tremendous bellow. He'd never had such pure fun in pleasuring someone, often enough it had been more of a chore than anything else, like entran functionals.
One of Dimitri's fingers traced the nape of Danyel's neck, beneath his hair. He'd been constantly touching Danyel, not in the way of a Donor or even Companion, as a lover. Danyel purred nagerically under the attention, although he didn't dare do so out loud.
The cracked and crazed sidewalk gave way to new paving and freshly planted trees. Danyel's tiny home, only a few blocks from the center was right around the corner. He wondered if Dimitri would be able to accept his hospitality for more than a couple of weeks. Danyel'd bought the little place when Sevrin'd made it very clear Danyel would never, ever return to the normal Techton rolls.
In some ways, Danyel missed getting to see different places. Living alone, as he did, he didn't see many people. At least when he was moving from center to center, he always got to meet new people and so saw more of them. Danyel fumbled with Dimitri's suitcase as he tried to get out his keys. Dimitri just blinked at him, looking like a huge blond owl. Danyel wasn't entirely sure he liked the way Dimitri kept sticking him with the tote and carry jobs.
The key didn't click in the lock. Danyel put down Dimitri's suitcase. Dimitri, so silently Danyel couldn't hear him, vaulted the low railing and vanished around the side. He must have picked up on Danyel's unease. While he was standing there, thinking this was impossible, a gunshot rang out. Danyel danced away from the door, and the huge hole in it. If he hadn't had to fiddle with Dimitri's suitcase, he'd have been shot.
Danyel's heart pounded in his throat. Certainly he'd come close to death before, but not like this. Not by simple, stupid accident. Mitka brushed by him, arrowing through the hole in the door. Another shot rang out, enlarging the hole even further.
A woman's scream split the air and was cut off.
"Its safe." Dimitri called out, although there was no joy in his tone. Danyel zlinned carefully though the blasted open door. "Sorry about the door."
"Oh, better the door than my gut." His hand shook as he opened it, although the hole was almost big enough for him to slip through, if he wanted to risk splinters in his tentacles. It took an augmented shove to unstick it.
"I didn't think Simes could stand to shoot guns." Dimitri shrugged. Mitka's wings were flared behind his back, his eyes crimson red.
"She tried to murder him!" Mitka screamed, lunging at the woman. Dimitri blocked his attack. Mitka snarled and tried to get around him.
"Stop it." Danyel said. "If she wakes, she'll regret it." He knelt at Cami's side. She was breathing, barely. Other than that and her heart beating, she was hardly alive.
"I didn't know you could knock out a Sime in attrition."
"She got me." Dimitri looked up, eyes gray. He held up his hands, showing the faintest marks on his wrists. They should have been far deeper if she'd managed a transfer grab. "Oh, my bracelets warded her off, but she collapsed with shen."
"It sounded almost like a kill." Danyel shivered all over in reaction.
"If I hadn't had these, it would have been." He flicked his wrists. The bracelets rubbed on the raw skin where Cami had grabbed him with her tentacles. Danyel winced away. The pain didn't make him want to take Dimitri, it made him want to throw up, unlike in the world of dreams, he realized, where he could not feel the bruises at all. "Oh, I'm sorry." He let them rest against his hands.
Danyel took a deep breath. "Thank you." He murmured, turning his attention back to Cami. "What, exactly, did you do to her?"
Dimitri sighed, glancing back down. "The same sleep I put on Hari."
"Then she's likely to drift away on us?" He asked. "Pick her up." Dimitri stood, taking Cami with him. Mitka growled, fangs bared and dripping selyn. "I don't want to hear any more complaints out of you." He pointed at Mitka. Mitka flinched back, eyes faded to a brassy gold. "Follow me."
"Don't you want to make sure she didn't damage anything?" Dimitri followed, Cami cradled in his arms as if she weighed nothing. There was something odd about the fields. Danyel zlinned. He paled, realizing it was Dimitri's work. "What are you doing?"
"Making sure she doesn't wake disoriented as well." He brushed her hair back from her face with his cheek, as if he actually cared for her. To Danyel's Sime senses, the warmth in Dimitri's field spilled over all of them.
"I don't know if that would be a kindness." Danyel admitted, grimacing at himself. "Although she is a lot more important than any things. Lets go." He pulled Dimitri's case inside, behind the door where someone who was just curious wouldn't find it. Besides, few enough people could wear any of Dimitri's clothes. "Oh?" He looked at Dimitri, wondering if he'd actually been asking about his own stuff.
He shook his head no. "We're within walking distance of the center, aren't we?" Dimitri faced it, blocks away. Danyel shook his head at this further evidence of stuff they had in common.
"Yes," Danyel admitted, probably looking at Dimitri rather oddly.
"Can't you tell its one and a quarter kilometers northeast of here?" Dimitri gave him back his odd look. "I know quite well you're Sime." His glance this time could well have been described as a leer, except he stared at Danyel's wrists.
"Can you carry her so far?" Danyel thought about having the center van come pick them up.
"It would be easier for me to keep her oriented walking." He glanced down, as if in longing. "I hurt her, Danyel. I didn't mean to."
"She grabbed you first." Danyel headed for the door. He held it aside for Dimitri. He'd heard of channels getting possessive of Donors, but had never thought it would apply to him! Of course he wasn't jealous of the attention Dimitri gave Cami. She was far better suited to him than Danyel, despite her problems. Danyel knew many of the Russian channels were junct, technically at least. "Cami has a chance with you." He admitted, even while ignoring the horrible ache in his own chest.
"She does not. Not in the long term." Dimitri's body language said the exact opposite. He was caressing her as he'd hold a lover who'd been badly injured, not an acquaintance, much less a potential threat. "I won't abuse anyone, Danyel."
"I didn't think you would." People were zlinning them as they walked down the street together. Danyel glanced at Cami again. She was very thin, worse than Danyel remembered from yesterday. He knew she'd begun to fail even earlier than most juncts, her status as a first destroying her faster than any other kind of Sime. Although there was a dynopter of a thought Danyel wished Dimitri would hold him so lovingly in public. He shoved that aside. It was one thing for Nashen and Arkay to flaunt their relationship. They didn't live here.
Dimitri glanced at him. Mitka was more obvious in his hurt, ducking away as if Danyel'd slapped him. Dimitri shook his head when Danyel tried to protest.
"No," he rejected this. "I would have you." Danyel didn't say in what way. One woman was pointing at Dimitri, her nager sharp edged and uneasy. Another was drooling at him, her laterals flicking out of their sheathes. Dimitri zlinned oblivious, non-provocative, but Danyel could see his cheeks flush.
"Does no one care for Simes here?" He murmured, muscles in his neck cording for an instant.
"Not like you do." Danyel brushed against Dimitri's arm, wanting to regain a fraction of the closeness they'd had earlier. Mitka slithered from Dimitri's shoulders to Danyel's. He still glared at Cami. "She won't hurt Dimitri."
"I won't let her." Mitka flipped his wings over his back and settled his tail around Danyel's throat. "We're due to hit turnover today." He whispered in Danyel's ear, giving it a flick with his tongue.
"I don't know what to do for you." He subvocalized, hoping Mitka could pick up his words this way. Danyel didn't know quite how much Dimitri overheard from his nager.
"Lock him in a room, with an adjoining bathroom, and let us get through it." Mitka stroked Danyel's ear with his cheek. It was nearly as warm as his own.
"How soon?" He glanced at Cami again. She was hardly stabilized, her nager sliding further and further into attrition with each step. He should have called the van. If she died in Dimitri's arms, so close to turnover, he didn't want to think what he'd do. Dimitri stumbled slightly as they stepped up onto a curb. Danyel caught his elbow and felt the first flicker of instability in his body.
He waved his hand, calling a cab.
"Its over here." Dimitri pointed with his chin. "She's going to make it."
"I'm worried about you." Danyel wrapped his tentacles around Dimitri's arm, sliding them between him and Cami. His pulse was up, both nageric and physical. "I don't think I could catch both of you."
"Then catch her." He said, hurrying his steps. His skin was beginning to pale and he swallowed heavily. "We're almost there." He crooned, probably to Cami, but Mitka hummed in his ear as well.
"We are." Danyel steered Dimitri as he clenched his jaw.
"This is going to be a bad one." Sweat trickled down the side of his face. More people stopped and zlinned, many of them pointing. Dimitri licked his lips, eyes sliding out of focus. Danyel held him back when he tried to step out in front of traffic.
"One more block." He could feel Dimitri shaking under his hand. "We can all make it." Mitka's claws were digging into his collarbone. Selyn trickled down the side of his neck.
The receptionist asked, "Is there something I can do for you Hajene Ferris and ...?" She trailed off in utter confusion.
"Sosu Sergei." Dimitri nodded. He leaned slightly on Danyel. It was almost enough to knock him off his feet.
"A gurney and a channel, first, stat!" Danyel commanded. "Oh, and get a first order Donor to replace Sosu Sergei."
"At once." Her tentacles and fingers flicked over the array of buttons. Five people charged into the waiting room. One of the donors squealed in shock. She had to have been half blind to miss their stumbling entrance.
One of the newcomers was Miz Vera Glin, this was good. Unfortunately, Hajene Lorn was with her. He looked down his beaked nose at Dimitri. A good trick as Dimitri towered over everyone. Although Lorn stuck up his nose at everyone he considered inferior, which meant anyone not a first. Dimitri didn't zlin first, he zlinned weird. Mitka resettled himself in Danyel's hair. Miz Glin's nager gave off a rainbow spray of amusement.
"If you could care for her properly this time instead of letting her harass honest citizens, I'd think a great deal more of your patient control procedures." He rattled off this string of Simelan so fast even Danyel had to pay attention to catch all of it. Even Sevrin spoke the language a touch awkwardly, for how much he liked to hear himself talk. Dimitri sounded like he'd changed over in this very building.
"Well, where's the gurney?" Danyel tried to remember where the nearest should be.
"I overrode the request figuring you had to have had some way to transport her, as she was obviously not conscious from her lack of screaming." Hajene Lorn had his head so far up his backside he had to ship in selyn. Mitka snorted in Danyel's ear, the worst of his shaking stilling for a moment.
"Get one!" He snapped, unfortunately at Miz Glin, as she seemed to be the only one listening and not zlinning.
"At once," she ran off, field darkening as if bruised. When she returned, moments later, she didn't look at any of them.
"I'm sorry." Mitka said.
She shook her head, but when she looked back up, a tiny grin played around her lips. Mitka crooned, shifting his claws in Danyel's shoulder. Vera put her hand over her mouth, but her eyes twinkled and her nager glimmered again.
Dimitri set Cami down on the litter and put the restraints on her shoulders and legs. His hands shook badly and his field was dead white, totally immobile, as if he were in deep shock. He brushed his palm over Cami's forehead.
Her scream nearly emptied the waiting room.
"Please forgive her." He whirled around, the perfect image of a Techton Donor, except for being so forward. "Not all channels pay a negligible price for their gifts."
"What's that supposta mean?" One older woman chewed at her lower lip, with about half the normal number of teeth.
"She has not been very healthy as a channel." Danyel wished he had Dimitri's way with words. "For some people, its very hard."
"Oh," her nager softened as she watched Cami, still screaming, being wheeled out. "I didn't know."
"We do everything we can so you never do know." Dimitri flashed that arclight smile. It would take a harder heart than anyone in the room held to resist. "It wouldn't be right for you to feel guilty or ashamed because it is a hard way of life."
"I won't, but I also won't be thinking its easy now either." She said, many of the other waiting Gens nodding.
"You shouldn't have come in this entrance, Hajene Ferris."
"I know it, but he's about to collapse." Danyel growled, watching Dimitri go to a child playing with a doll near her mother. "It doesn't look or zlin it, but he is." Danyel went to him and put his hand on Dimitri's shoulder. "Its time for you, too, to have your health checked, Sosu." He leaned on the word. No matter how he tried to imitate it though, Dimitri'd never quite zlin Techton. His field was too wild, too uncontrolled, too beautiful.
Chapter 26
Dimitri had a problem. Now that he was on his knees, he couldn't get up. The weakness of turnover, combined with the work he'd done on Cami had sapped him utterly. He sagged over his knees.
"Are you sick?" The little girl's lower lip quivered.
"I'm very tired." He said, reaching out and stroking her thistledown soft hair. "I'll be fine in a moment." If he didn't collapse completely. The worst of turnover hadn't started yet. Sweating, he struggled to his feet. Danyel's hand under his elbow was a tremendous help. Unable to see more than a meter in front of his nose, he swayed slightly as the floor shifted under his feet.
"I'll grow up big and strong and take care of you." She hugged the gen doll to her chest.
"I'm sure you will, sweetie." He grinned down at her, feigning a cheer he could hardly feel. Get me out of here! He screamed in his mind at Danyel. Dimitri know Danyel couldn't possibly hear him, but it seemed to work.
"Come with me, Sosu Sergei." Danyel steered him toward a shadow in the wall, hopefully an open door. It clicked shut behind them. Dimitri fell back against the door, knees shaking.
"You're too heavy for me to carry, Dimitri."
"Yes, right," he pushed off. Staggering as if drunk, he struggled to see where they were going. Danyel tugged his arm and they ended up in what seemed to be a cave. Dimitri tried to pull back.
"Its only a deferment suite."
"I can't sense out." He panted, terrified of ending up trapped again.
Mitka crooned to him, reassuring him it was all right. He couldn't see through Mitka's eyes at all. Danyel flipped open something, letting a great deal of light into the tiny room. Dimitri staggered forward, searching for something to sit on.
"Here," Danyel steered him to a soft, padded, something. Some sort of ceramic clinked near his head. Dimitri managed to focus his eyes well enough to see a basin on the table. He closed them again, not wanting to make the swaying worse.
"You'll want to leave now." He clutched at the cushions underneath him. It wouldn't be long now until turnover hit for real. He'd never had a good one since after his transfer with Karola, and even that had been weakening.
"I won't." Danyel said, pulling a soft cover up over Dimitri's chest and then tugging off Dimitri's shoes. "You rest here for a bit." He tipped Dimitri over onto his side.
"Thank you," he slumped into the cushions, relaxing completely. No one, ever, had cared for him like this. "Won't I hurt you?"
"Mitka is protecting me." He said. There was the sound of running water and then a cool, damp cloth wiped the sticky sweat off his face. "Don't fret for my safety."
"I nearly killed Cami." He wrapped his arms around his knees.
"You saved her life in bringing her here." Danyel said. "She has a chance now."
"Is this really a good thing?" Dimitri wished he could let it go. His hand clutched at the pillow under his head as the abyss of need opened beneath his feet. It was a black maelstrom, sucking at his life with preternatural fury. His body struggled to produce the selyn necessary to feed it. He lost track of everything but the fire burning him alive, from the inside out.
Dimitri writhed under the pressures crushing nerve to bone. Molten steel seemed to fill every vein in his body. He may have screamed, but where he was, there was nothing but need and the struggle to be able to meet it. After what could have been hours, or days, he managed to pull away from that gaping maw. His body had resettled itself, smoothly producing the selyn to fill the need he'd sensed.
He tried to blink his eyes open. A damp cloth brushed at them. It was too rough. Dimitri shook his head. Then a soft, hot, Sime tongue brushed his lashes, ungluing them.
"Danyel?" He asked, at last able to see. The light from the window was faint and distant. His timesense told him nearly ten hours had passed. He groaned, leaning back and finding he'd snarled even more muscles.
"I'm here." He said.
"Obviously," Dimitri breathed and then winced. He'd vomited, more than once, from the disgusting taste left in his mouth. How could Danyel stand to be near him, much less lick him. The taste was enough to make him gag.
"Here," he held a mug to Dimitri's lips. He turned his head and sipped at the weak, sweet tea. It was trin, the perfect thing for his unsettled stomach, although he'd have put a touch of mint in it as well. "I let it cool."
"You mean you prepared it a while ago." Dimitri snorted. He pulled himself upright. The blanket covering him was dry and sweet, so Danyel must have replaced the first. He sluiced out his mouth and swallowed. "Much better," he sighed, leaning back. "You undressed me?"
"I had no choice." Danyel's eyes were as dark as the shadows surrounding them. "You went into convulsions."
Dimitri rolled his eyes in disgust at himself. "You should have found my Uncle."
"I think I managed." His voice shook.
"You took a big risk."
"I didn't think you'd hurt yourself."
"No, you," he put his glass down and tugged at Danyel's hand. "I could have done all kinds of horrible things to you."
"You didn't." He reached up and stroked a shadow on his shoulder. Mitka's eyes reflected the light trickling through the window. "He protected me."
"He won't be able to protect you from his fangs." Dimitri tucked the blanket around his shoulders. Danyel fed him more tea.
"I can duck." Danyel grinned, seemingly unperturbed, now. "If that's the worst you can do, then I'll be fine."
"I want you to be well." Dimitri insisted, turning his face away from more tea. Danyel insisted. He took another sip and then leaned back. Danyel chased him with the glass. "No more."
"Yes," he said, nager hardening to diamond. Dimitri blinked at him. "You too?" He asked.
"Yes, properly this time." He took a sip himself. Then Mitka stuck his nose in the glass, sniffing and then sneezing into it. Dimitri again gave thanks for how difficult it was for Mitka to affect the real world, or they'd all be covered liberally with tea. Not that this would be such a bad thing, then he wouldn't have to drink it. "Although I'm going to have to explain to Hajene Lorn what happened to all that selyn."
"I can't give you enough to make up for it, I'm afraid." Dimitri gave in to Danyel's insistence on more tea. It really wasn't so bad. "Although at the end of the month I'll be so far over you ..."
"I'll come up with something." Danyel shrugged. "I'm due on shift in half an hour."
"Will my clothes be dry?" He assumed Danyel'd had them washed. The horrible weakness of turnover had faded. He was ready to get going again.
"You're staying put." Danyel shoved against Dimitri's chest. Dimitri shoved back, easily winning the battle of strength.
"I'll be fine now." He tried to wave up the lights, with a total lack of success, of course. Dimitri did wish the Veiled had not forbidden the sale of this one bit of technology. Mitka flitted off Danyel's shoulder. He thumped into the wall. With a horrible scraping sound, Dimitri knew he's slid down the plaster. Then the lights came on, Mitka hanging from the light switch.
Dimitri chuckled. Mitka yanked one further time, then fell on his tail. But at least the light switch stayed in position. Mitka shook himself all over and then rowed through the air back do Danyel's shoulder. He hit this with an equally loud thud.
"I'm going to get padding on my shoulders." Danyel craned his head around to look Mitka in the face. Mitka licked his nose. Danyel sneezed. Mitka shoved his tongue up Danyel's nose, again. Danyel yanked it out. "You're going to get a paddling if you do that again." He sneezed again, then rubbed at his nose. It was such a wonderful nose. Dimitri understood Mitka's fascination with it.
"Last time you kissed me." Mitka pouted, wings sagging.
"Because it was once." Danyel told him. "Don't do it again. Do something different next time."
Dimitri winced. "You're inviting all kinds of mayhem into your life."
"Good," he grinned, his whole being focused on Mitka.
Danyel gripped the desk for a moment. His own weird shunt yesterday had left him a hair over half field. Yesterday would have been his turnover day, if all had been normal. The familiar sinking, falling sensation hit him. Dimitri's attention was nothing compared to Mitka's. It was like being blasted by a Tegue first, in other words, Mikal. The young man had never, quite, had the control around Danyel he could have wished, but he was used to it.
Rolling with the shock, he let it all wash over him. Then it was gone. Mitka nibbled gently on his ear.
"Are you alright?" Dimitri's voice quavered.
After watching the horror of Dimitri's turnover, Danyel'd feared something similar might happen to him. It hadn't. Mind and field now truly together, he took a deep breath and then blew it out. He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked up at Dimitri. "I'm fine." He managed a grin, only slightly forced with the first darkness of true need.
"And I'm impressed." His grin didn't quite make his eyes. The skin on Dimitri's face was drawn tight over the bones, as if he were the Sime and in hard need. "You hardly reacted."
"I rarely do." He grinned and winked, for the first time not feeling entirely inadequate around a Russian. Danyel put his hand over Dimitri's, savoring the contact. Shrugging, he resettled Mitka's weight over his shoulders. Now his claws were well clear of Danyel's skin, although his shoulder beneath Mitka's head was growing wetter by the moment. "Its not that big a deal, for me." He realized he probably shouldn't make light of what Dimitri'd gone through.
"Can you finish your shift?" He asked, lips tightening further. Dimitri looked awful, as if someone had dragged him face first through the sewers.
"Of course," he flicked a tentacle at him. Dimitri stared. Danyel felt his cheeks warm, but Dimitri made no mention of it, finally turning his face away. "Oh, you can look, silly." He brushed one over the back of Dimitri's hand. It clenched on his other shoulder, beneath Mitka. The even, hard pressure felt wonderful. It connected him to the real world, something he sometimes had a hard time with right after turnover. "Next." He said into the intercom.
"Don't you want to finish your rest period?" Dimitri glanced at the schedule.
"No," he shook his head. "I know Miz Larin."
The next renSime to enter the door, zlinned the room nervously. When she zlinned Dimitri, she froze in her tracks. As usual, Miz Larin Farmer was so far into attrition it was a surprise to see her walking at all. Often enough she jumped him as soon as the door closed behind her, sometimes not even waiting that long. He always tried to arrange his schedule to be able to take her at least a few minutes early.
Trembling from head to foot, she dropped from hyperconciousness and backed away from Dimitri. To Danyel, his field turned bright red, even as he did. Danyel walked away from the desk. She turned, ready to bolt. He caught her, augmenting wildly. Her scream rang in his ears. "Killer!" She screamed again, trying to get away from him.
Dimitri moved, not with the quickness of a Sime, but something even faster, like a great serpent uncoiling. Mitka's weight vanished. He reappeared behind Larin's shoulders. Dimitri's weight thudded against the door. His eyes blazed brighter than any field, but the black of a hunting Sime.
A low growl filled the air, not from the Sime between them, from Dimitri. Miz Larin launched herself at Danyel, knocking him to the floor. Her tentacles yanked at his. Their roll ended under the desk, transfer complete, but nothing more. She panted, staring past him at Dimitri. "Make him go away." Her fear, high field, tainted the ambient. Dimitri reached up and stroked Mitka, now coiled on his shoulder. "Gypsy!" She snarled, writhing back. Her own nager was focused on Dimitri.
"No, Miz," he nodded, muscles straining the slightly undersized Techton jumpsuit Danyel'd talked him into wearing. It was skin tight on him, and the tension it was under made Danyel pray the seams were good. It had been the largest the laundry had in stock. "I'm no gypsy." His accent thickened to near incomprehensibility. "Unlike you."
She shivered, burning selyn in frantic agitation.
"I know not of other than my kind." He murmured, Mitka's gold eyes soft and seductive. "We are strangers from a far away land, not creatures who steal children for their monstrous festivals."
"You know nothing of the Company!" She snarled, even as her field settled to a normal production rate. "We'd never harm children."
"You were turned out." He snapped back. Danyel could zlin his field slip into a far calmer pattern for a moment, then regain its prickly scorn. "They banished you."
"No," she crawled out from under the desk. She was nearly of a height with Dimitri. How had Danyel never noticed how tall she was? "I was sent here, to find ..." Her field froze. She glanced back at Danyel and bit her lip. Danyel slapped the record button off. She blinked, expressive lips curving up in a perfect bow. "You tricked me, you bastard." Mitka flinched, nearly falling off Dimitri's shoulder. "I'm sorry."
"Oh, I had no reason to out you." He grinned back, after taking a deep breath. "Its none of my business, really, if you're hunting, or whom."
"Because you're Heilro, gypsy or not."
Danyel'd heard the term before, often in reference to his far more illustrious Zaor Ferris relatives. He crawled out from under the desk and dusted himself off.
"Do I have to dust in here, too?" His lips tightened, brows furrowing. "I have to admit I'm not looking forward to cleaning up two places."
"I had someone from the center go to my house." Danyel shook his head at Dimitri's domesticity. "And the janitors here can do their jobs.
Dimitri sniffed, nostrils flaring for a moment. "Yes, and my mother's a renSime like this nice lady here."
"I'm no lady." She glanced up at Dimitri, rocking her hips slowly as she advanced further on him. He didn't even glance down. "What are you doing with him?" One tentacle pointed back at Danyel.
"He took you early, Miz Larin." Dimitri's scorn nearly stripped Danyel's nager from his body. He flinched back, missing Mitka's protection horribly. "You should be more considerate of those who help you."
"I'm no renSime, pretty lad." She put her hand on Dimitri's chest.
"What in shen is going on in there?" Lorn, irate as always, pounded on the door.
"I won't tell." Danyel tried to pull himself together. All he managed was his tentacles into his sheaths. His wrists still burned with Dimitri's accidental strike. How could they possibly make this work? He looked into Mitka's gold eyes. They widened and he launched himself from Dimitri's shoulder. As he returned to Danyel's, a cool, soothing rush of power seemed to soothe away everything. He stroked his cheek against Mitka's, reveling in his return. Maybe it could work.
"I'm sorry." He murmured, caressing Danyel's ear, then nuzzling through his hair.
"What do you want?" Danyel shouted, waving Dimitri and Larin to silence. Amazingly enough, Dimitri followed his lead. Stunned, he almost missed Lorn's answer.
"You shut off the recorders."
"The client asked for privacy." He shot back, going to the door. "We won't say a word."
"Thank you," she grabbed her purse off the floor. Her glance at Dimitri was entirely overshadowed by the awe in her field. Then it flared so brightly Danyel was nearly unSimed. She was a channel of enormous, well trained, strength.
Dimitri chuckled softly. "We keep secrets." He flicked his attention to Mitka.
"They can't see him?"
"Nope," he grinned. They could well be a perfect couple, Danyel realized. she was dark, beautiful, single.
"What about her?" He asked Mitka, as softly as he could. Both of them stared at him. He flushed, not having wanted to be caught out at all. Danyel turned to Mitka, trying to read his expression, so as to not broadcast to the entire room their conversation. Mitka stuck his tongue up Danyel's nose.
Larin made a sound somewhere between a gag and a scream. It didn't come out well. Dimitri's wince was nearly as awkward. Danyel just yanked Mitka's tongue out, again, and bopped him on the head with his fist. Little gold and silver stars appeared over his head, dancing around it. Danyel couldn't stay mad at him. He grabbed Mitka's muzzle in his hands and kissed him. This time Miz Larin did gag, the control over her field slipping for another instant.
Dimitri's attention was all over her, not so Mitka's. He'd opened his mouth to Danyel's and was cool and soft and as wonderful as any lover Danyel could have ever wanted. Mitka hummed, opening to him further, venom fangs sliding down, as they'd not, earlier. This time he could taste the roniplin, sweet and seductive as selyn. Yes, he wanted this so very badly.
"Ahem," Dimitri cleared his throat. Danyel managed to pull back, eventually. Hajene Lorn was standing at the door. Miz Larin had vanished into the bathroom, where he could hear her flush the toilet. He checked the visible and found himself standing in the middle of the room with all twelve of his tentacles twined with a silk scarf he was holding to his face. "Are you done yet with my scarf?"
"I was just finishing up." He wiped away the traces of roniplin fooling around with Mitka'd left on his arms.
"Why aren't you in there with your client?" Hajene Lorn snarled, heading for the door to the bathroom.
"Because I didn't require him watching me pee." She nearly smacked Lorn with the door. "Oh, I'm sorry, Hajene." Her lower lip quivered. "I didn't know it was First Order Channel Lorn." She capitalized every letter. "Oh, please, Hajene Ferris is such a wonderful channel. I don't know why he's never been promoted." Larin burble, as mindlessly as a brook.
"Because it isn't exactly an issue of suitability." He glanced down at her. It was absolutely astonishing how short Larin could make herself zlin.
She fluttered her lashes, licked her lips, and added a little heavy breathing to the mix. Danyel found himself entirely uninterested. Up to a week after turnover, he usually had at least an academic interest in the opposite sex. If nothing else so he could plan. Knowing she was a strong first, and quite talented on top of it, should have made him even more interested in finding her sometime after transfer.
But this time things were different. Although she glanced back at him and her glare should have nearly skinned him the way Dimitri's scorn had. Mitka hissed, tongue flicking out and this time right into Danyel's ear. Larin turned green for a moment and then took Lorn's arm. "I'd love te hear ye talk about the center." She purred, wiggling her hips at him for all she was worth.
It did seem to work. Although the fact Lorn was post probably helped considerably. He patted her hand and led her from the room. "I can see Hajene Ferris did nothing to you." What his nager said was, "nothing for you."
"Please, let me show you some advanced techniques my own household is working on." He lied through his bleached white teeth. Lorn belonged to no legitimate household, the bastard, literally as far as Danyel knew. Danyel couldn't wait for the jerk to be moved to another center. If he'd had Dimitri's power, Lorn would have holes burned in his spine by now.
"Oh, yes," he waved his free hand for a moment. "Cami asked for you, Ferris." His lazy smile held nothing but contempt. Mitka snarled in his ear. "She's in four-oh-three."
Dimitri headed for the door. Danyel held him back.
"You'll have to sign in, since you seem to have such a hard time keeping track of your own selyn, Ferris." His sneer didn't go with the tailored coveralls he affected. Somewhere, somewhen, Lorn had come into far too much money and loved rubbing everyone's nose in it.
"I've been working."
"Playing up the hill." He made an obscene gesture with his tentacles behind Larin's back. "Come now, my dear. Why don't we go up to my office and we can talk about it?"
"Oh, are you sure that would be right?" She breathed, the perfect bimbo renSime again.
"I'm sure." He purred. At least he didn't have the temerity to try to usurp the controller's place, although Hiklan was bad enough. "I even have a big couch where you can lie down for a bit if you don't feel better."
"I probably shouldn't drive like this." Their conversation trailed off down the hallway. Now Danyel grabbed Dimitri's arm and headed for the other set of elevators.
"Are all your days so exciting?" Dimitri blinked down at him.
"Too often," he muttered, punching at the correct button. It took forever for the elevator to arrive. "Lorn wouldn't tell someone if their own mother were in attrition."
"Do you think they managed to get selyn into her?" Dimitri paled further, looking as if he'd faint. Danyel propped him against the wall this time, having learned he couldn't catch him earlier. Mitka's claws flexed in Danyel's shirt as Lorn and Larin vanished around a bend in the hallway.
"I hope so." He looked up. Mitka sighed, relaxing completely as the doors closed. "You really don't like her, do you?"
"No," he snapped, spraying saliva everywhere. "Cami's better, even if she's junct."
"Why?" Danyel had to know. His curiosity would be the death of him. He knew this. With Mitka on his shoulder, possibly literally.
"She's real." Mitka answered, shifting his weight. "Larin is a lie."
Dimitri blinked at this, head turning back and forth between them with the conversation. "I knew she was not as she seemed, but I didn't know she was Rom."
"Not Rom, gypsy." Danyel had enough knowledge of the world to be dangerous, no more. "The Romany are tribes of Europe, like the Bedouin of the Middle East and the Tinkerfolk of the White Isles. Our gypsies are dreamers and mystics, often enough tied to Zaor." He snorted in disgust. If Danyel had a mark for every time he got asked if he were a member of Zaor, he'd be as wealthy as it seemed Nashen was. "They do little useful." He snorted.
Dimitri gave him a crooked grin. "Miz Larin is certainly effective at her little game." He pushed himself upright as the bell rang. Dimitri swayed a bit with the stop, but then nearly everyone did.
Danyel waved him to silence. Dimitri raised an eyebrow, but said nothing more, even though his dimples reappeared. His amusement was infectious, cheering Danyel at a time when he'd really have rather wanted to bite something. He led them from the lift.
Dimitri followed, copying a Techton Donor as Miz Larin had copied a Techton renSime. Although Dimitri's copy was transparent to Danyel's zlinning. He asked Mitka, "Is Dimitri making it easier for me to zlin him truly?" Dimitri's gasp rang in Danyel's ear. It was as much a gasp of pleasure as the ones he'd given Danyel only this morning, even though it seemed as if it had been months ago.
Mitka nodded, stroking Danyel's ear. "You zlin well." He murmured.
"You zlin beautiful." He returned the complement. Mitka's skin nearly burned Danyel's cheek. He looked at Mitka. He dropped his eyes, hiding his head under his wing. But he didn't quiver with fear. Danyel tickled his head back out. Mitka licked his lips, which kept skinning back from his teeth in an embarrassed rictus of a grin. Danyel laughed, yanking Mitka off his shoulder and tossing him in the air.
Mitka squealed his joy, drifting back down to Danyel's shoulder. His loud purr could have been an out of tune steam turbine. Danyel tugged a bit of breathing room free beneath Mitka's tail.
"This may not be pretty." Danyel sobered, looking at the guards, with their hard stares and harder nagers. They were renSimes, with unlimited augmentation budgets. That was the main attractor for many. Being able to look down on channels was another. Danyel held out his arms, letting them zlin him without interference.
"He can't come in." Miz Faena nodded to Dimitri.
"I'm in need. My Donor comes with me." Danyel stared her in the eyes. They unfocused as she went hyperconcious. Danyel hoped she wouldn't zlin Mitka hidden in Danyel's hair.
"He's not up to you." She held out her hand.
"I will be." Dimitri's voice was a low rumble. He set his hand on Danyel's free shoulder. As soon as he made contact, Danyel felt their nagers fall into sync, as if they were orhuen mates. Miz Faena's body slumped for a moment. She caught herself before Danyel could move.
"Oh, certainly Hajene, Sosu," she nodded with her nager quickly, still hyper. "Let me buzz you in." Danyel led Dimitri into the first of two locks. The door closed behind them, clear plexi and steel. The blowers started. Dimitri tensed, his hand still on Danyel's shoulder. There were hundreds, if not thousands of questions in his nager. Danyel couldn't answer any of them here. He pointed with a flick of his field to the pickups. The door behind them moved, herding them to a second. This one Danyel had to open, pressing a sequence known only to Kaon and the channels of this center with his tentacles. There were twelve keys he had to hit at one time.
"I can do it." Mitka snorted.
"You had a hard time with a light switch." Danyel muttered.
"I can help Dimitri." He murmured back. "We could get in here."
"You don't want to." Danyel opened the door to the second part of the lock before they were held pinned. This one closed behind them automatically and he nearly didn't let go in time. It slammed shut with a huge boom. Dimitri didn't jump again, but blinked at it.
"These precautions are left over from the days of the Secret Pens." Danyel felt his lips tighten at all those lives wasted, by fools too stupid to zlin. Oh, not the Pen Gens, but the semi-junct Simes who'd been condemned to a living death.
"You're picking up my prejudices." Dimitri murmured, hand still on Danyel's shoulder. Most Donors would touch him, at least enough to do their jobs. Danyel always appreciated it, hopefully never taking them for granted. But Dimitri's attention was different. He liked Danyel. It wasn't a job for Dimitri.
"You have to open this one." Danyel pointed to the knob. His heart raced. Could Dimitri turn a Gen only knob? Danyel had no idea how it worked, only that it somehow sensed larity and would give a Sime a nasty shock, enough to numb their hand so they couldn't manipulate the slippery knob. Dimitri turned it with ease, giving him a raised eyebrow.
"It senses selyn consumption. A very well trained Sime could fool it." He murmured, nodding to more of the guards. "Reminds me of home." He added.
"Guards?" Danyel asked.
"Yes," his field had relaxed, no longer showing the false orhuen between them. Danyel missed it actually, never having felt the real thing. Although if he had, not being able to touch his orhuen partner afterward would have been excruciating. Danyel glanced through the portal in the door. Cami was restrained, restless and mostly awake. She had a few days worth of selyn in her systems, but that was it.
Danyel opened the door. Dimitri followed him into the room. Mitka's claws caught at his shirt, but that was the only sign of distress from either of them. Dimitri's field had gone as bland as any Techton Donor's. Here, in this place, Danyel wanted to slap some life in it just to remind himself there was some life in the world.
"Help me." Cami pleaded. Her eyes were black pits into the ultimate nightmare. Danyel's own need resonated to the far deeper need he zlinned in her.
"What do you want?" Dimitri asked, his voice a harsh whisper. He swallowed heavily.
"You said you could kill me." Her voice was hardly louder than the breeze through the trees outside. "I'll never leave here again."
"Except in a body bag." Dimitri prodded her on.
"Don't do this." Danyel wasn't sure what he didn't want to happen.
"It is your choice." Dimitri said.
"Is there any chance?" She asked, eyes traveling up and down Dimitri's body.
"No," he answered before Danyel could. He straightened. Danyel could zlin the effort it cost him, both in physical and emotional pain. His whole appearance was one of indifference. Mitka trembled against Danyel's neck.
Over and over, Mitka repeated. "I don't want to kill. I don't. Please don't make me. I don't like it. It hurts."
Danyel stroked him, wishing he could hold Mitka in his arms. Keep him safe. He didn't want to see Mitka forced to kill.
Dimitri sat on the edge of the hard bed Cami had been strapped to. Danyel knew beds like it well enough. He'd been on one a few times in his life, but not like this. The coarse cotton sheets beneath her shoulders and legs where they were restrained were bloody. Danyel could zlin where she'd broken and then healed them both repeatedly in her struggles. She'd had a full transfer. She was destroying herself before their eyes.
"Please," her cracked and bleeding lips trembled.
"Yes," Dimitri nodded. He waved Danyel to the door.
"No," Danyel refused to leave.
"I require Mitka for this."
"He requires a friend." Danyel stood before him, then on the edge of the bed as well. Mitka slowly slid onto Dimitri's lap. With his huge hands, he stroked Mitka's back. The pain and love in his eyes was clear. His face trembled, as if he wished he could cry and couldn't. Finally he sighed, looking at Mitka curled into a ball between them.
"I'll help you." Danyel added his hand to Dimitri's. Mitka straightened a bit.
"She hurts." He said.
"Yes," Danyel replied, not wishing to confuse him. The crack of Dimitri releasing the leg restraints echoed off the cement walls. Danyel slapped the alarm off before it could more than cheep. "Clear in four-oh-three." Danyel's voice broke.
"Come again, there's static on the line."
"Clear in four-oh-three." He repeated, managing to get it out clearly this time.
"Bitch dead yet?"
Danyel clenched his jaw to the breaking point. Dimitri nodded at him. Danyel winced, but answered. "Yes, we're verifying cause of death."
"She's a junct. Good enough for me. Take yer time. Now she's good for something." Danyel slapped the off switch. He wished he could have kept Cami from hearing that. Dimitri nodded at him.
Cami lay on the bed, relaxed, eyes closed, chest rising slowly with steady breaths. She looked and zlinned normally asleep.
"She didn't hear anything." Dimitri said, popping the shoulder restraints. Cami's eyes opened, slowly. She blinked a few times.
"I feel good." She purred, leaning forward as if to sit up. "I can't move."
"You're very heavily sedated." Dimitri said, his voice soft and low. It thrummed up Danyel's spine.
"No drug feels like this." Her eyes widened. The dark circles beneath them hadn't lessened a bit, nor had the gray, skeletal cast to her face. She was dying, even though Dimitri's power kept the worst of her pain away. "Thank you."
"You're quite welcome." Dimitri swallowed once. "You once said you wished to know what sex was like?"
"Yes," she snorted, then tensed in a wheezing cough. Dimitri put his hand on her chest. "I'm still here. I don't think any man would want me like this." Her nager twinkled. Danyel was amazed she could joke at a time like this. Mitka glanced at him, eyes as dark as his skin. He nodded slowly, as if he'd seen this whole scene before.
"I can at least give you my memories."
"But then you won't know." Her awkward smile make her cracked lips bleed more. Dimitri wet a sponge in his mouth and dabbed it against her lips. "Its sweet."
"Roniplin," he said, swallowing again. "I don't want you to feel any pain, Cami. Oh, I'll remember them too. Maybe I should have said share."
Cami's cheeks pinked the slightest bit. "I'm not worth this."
"You're human." He brushed his thumb over her lips. "I'm a healer."
"I wish." She said.
"I wish I could heal everyone, Cami." Dimitri said. Mitka's eyes blinked shut for a moment, then he grew. "But sometimes there is no more healing, only peace." Mitka's grown so large he curled around all three of them. Danyel wasn't sure he should be here, even as he was sure Mitka needed him for this. "My sire set me to helping people like you. I've given many, many people peace. I won't hurt you."
"I trust you." She said at last, looking back and forth between the two of them. "My mother hurt. Shouldn't I hurt for killing her?"
"No," Dimitri closed his eyes for a moment. "There speaks the true junct. Death and pain pay for nothing, least of all Azrael's blessings." He reopened them. They were as black as Mitka's scales.
Cami smiled, this time her lips had been softened enough they no longer bled. "You're beautiful, Dimitri. I'm glad I met you."
"Speak with your mother in paradise. She'll forgive you." Dimitri brushed Cami's forehead. Danyel wondered how long this usually took, then kicked himself for such a lack of charity. If Cami wished to speak with them the entire night, they owed her at least so little.
"Not my mother," Cami snorted. "She was a vicious old bitch."
"You are young, Cami." Dimitri murmured. For hours it went on. They talked about everything. Their favorite foods, music, clothes, parents. Danyel was lulled into a daze by the quiet conversation. Even Mitka seemed to be hypnotized by it, only occasionally shifting his coils around them.
At last Cami's eyes closed. "I'm ready." She said, for the third or fourth time, Danyel wasn't sure which.
"You are." Dimitri said this time, leaning forward. He held Cami's hands at her throat, stroking her laterals out with his hands. His lips met hers, in a soft, gentle kiss. She moaned, opening to him as a woman to a man. Danyel zlinned her whole body arch back, in a gesture part orgasm, part convulsion. Mitka struck, as fast as Danyel. Mitka's fangs sunk straight into, and through, Cami's vriamic node. Her field stilled for an instant, then flared in the most spectacular transfer Danyel had ever zlinned, even though nearly no selyn had been exchanged.
It was done. Dimitri stayed over Cami's lips so long Danyel wondered if he should do something. Then he realized Mitka was nowhere to be found. Danyel zlinned for him everywhere. At last he found him, in his own pocket. Danyel held him close, stilling the horrible trembling. Mitka sighed, then crawled out onto his hand. He looked at Cami's body. "We did right?"
"You did perfectly." He closed his own eyes, even though the image would always stay with him. Dimitri smoothing away the kill rictus from Cami's lips.
"She was gone before I took her body's life."
"You don't have to explain it to me." Danyel shuddered at what Dimitri'd done.
"I am my sire's executioner." His eyes were as gray as a winter's sky.
"You give peace." Danyel said, holding Mitka safe. "You gave her a pleasure she'd never known, and would never know." He told Mitka directly. "I'm very proud of you, Mitka."
"I don't like to kill."
"Neither did she." Danyel pulled the sheet over her face, with Mitka's help. "When you'd freed her soul from the kill."
"She'd have never survived."
"No, you couldn't free her body from the taint, but you gave her enough of yourself for her to know true peace." Danyel had also heard their speaking of Cami's parents, so very much like his own, but with money. An absent father, a mostly absent mother, too much money and no time for their only child, whom they'd adopted from out territory as an orphan. "Until today, she'd never known love. You love her, Dimitri."
"I love them all." He smoothed the sheet and stood. "What if I kill you, Danyel?"
"Then I'll die happy." He said, caressing Mitka. Danyel never wanted to let him go again.
Chapter 27
Dimitri didn't want to think about what he'd just done. "Do you have to get back to work?" He hoped so. Helping Danyel, other than with Larin, had been the easiest job he'd ever had. He'd even dozed off a few times.
"No," he shook his head. Danyel was still holding Mitka, crooning to him and touching him as he would an infant. "My shift is over." Dimitri'd seen Vayer do that often enough to recognize it. Mitka was bonding with Danyel, readying him for transfer.
"I didn't mean to mess up your schedule." Dimitri'd seen more than enough to know Danyel's work was organized down to the minute, with every single one of them filled. "What happened to the renSimes you couldn't serve?"
Danyel's lips quirked upward. "They got a better channel."
Dimitri snorted. "I doubt it."
"Oh, Hiklan automatically ends up with any overrun." Danyel shrugged, his dimming nager graying further.
"I doubt if he is better." Dimitri didn't like the way Danyel could heap so much scorn on himself. It was entirely unnatural for any Sime to not be so self confident they'd charge a thunderstorm and try to stop it. "You are very good."
It was Danyel's turn to snort. He glanced up at Dimitri, dark eyes tight with the beginning of need, even under Mitka's influence. "I'm only a second."
"I don't want to hear that again." Dimitri pinned him to the wall. There was no one else around. It was as if people, here, didn't stop and chat in the hallways. Which was truly bizarre, if useful. He put his hands on either side of Danyel's head. "You are a wonderful human being, Danyel."
"Even if I have southerner's and am barely a channel?" He must have stopped paying attention to Mitka. Danyel jumped slightly and glanced down. The little imp had stuck his tongue in one of Danyel's sheathes again. "Better than my nose." He let Mitka continue rooting around. Dimitri didn't think he could ever allow such a liberty.
"You are a very good channel." Dimitri told him. "I've seen you work."
"You've seen me give transfers to renSimes and take selyn from general order donors."
"Yes, and you treated them with dignity and respect." Dimitri took a deep breath. "I spent two months, in a wheel chair, arranging, scheduling and dealing with problems with Sergei's rens. Most lords are efficient. That's the best that can be said for them. The only thing keeping me from strangling some of them had been the fact I couldn't walk."
"I'm not even efficient." Danyel's eyes darkened further. "I'd much rather be playing with the horses or reading a book."
"You read?" Dimitri asked, blinking in complete surprise. Few lords could read, or would. "Do you have any books?"
"Of course I do." It was Danyel's turn to blink. "Why wouldn't I?"
"I only have access to those Diomid or others didn't take from my grandsire's library." Dimitri chuckled softly to himself. "And while The Natural History of Nageric Societies might be interesting, its not the sort of book I want to read when I'm cranky with need and just want to escape. All the romances and other fiction vanished, probably within months of his death, if he'd had any."
"Most men don't read romances." Danyel said, then put his hand to his mouth. The gesture would have been cute, if it hadn't included Mitka, hanging leech like, from his forearm.
"You haven't noticed I'm a Sharm Lord?" Dimitri purred, doing his best to flirt. Mitka'd made his choice. It was a good one. Dimitri didn't disagree with him, but Danyel was not a lord to be trifled with. Danyel looked up into his eyes, meeting them so boldly Dimitri nearly pulled back. "We do like our pleasures."
"Oh," Danyel's lips pursed. Dimitri leaned down further, supporting himself on his hands and brushed his own lips on Danyel's. A door opened down the hall. Danyel slipped away from him. He tugged at the front of his coveralls. Dimitri did his best to slow his pulse and give Danyel quiet, calm support. It didn't work very well.
A completely unknown channel came out into the hall and locked the door behind himself.
"All done for the morning for me, Hajene Ferris." The man's dark skin warmed with a certain amount of heat. Dimitri didn't require another disaster tonight. What kind of place was this? He blinked, recognizing the dazed look on his face.
"I really don't care if you go into unoccupied transfer suites afterward and jack off." Danyel sighed. Dimitri winced at the crude language, even as he held his breath so he wouldn't guffaw with laugher. It was the only thing which would explain the man's expression. For some reason, this struck him as hysterically funny at the moment. His gut hurt and his eyes watered with the effort not to laugh. He hid himself behind Danyel, hoping the poor lord couldn't zlin him clearly.
"Of course I ..." he put his hands over his lips and looked back at the door. Dimitri's problems grew. Mitka was shimmering all over in his own version of howling laughter, which of course made Dimitri's even harder to control.
"I don't care, Haris." Danyel shook his head. Beneath Dimitri's hand, he could feel Danyel's shoulders shake as well.
Dimitri looked around. The dark shadows of a deferment suite were half a meter ahead, on the other side of the hall.
"I think we have to talk." He tugged at Danyel's shoulder. He sounded like a strangled chicken. Haris paled and began waking awkwardly toward the far end of the hall. He looked like he had something shoved up his briefs. Dimitri slammed the door behind them both and howled. Tears were running down his face by the time he managed to stop.
Intellectually, he knew he was laughing because of the release of stress. Even after turnover, any sharp turn toward the ridiculous, after something as tragic as Cami's death could set off a reaction in this. Dimitri knew this in his head and give himself over to the laughter, even though it was as much an escape as any drug. He let off the worst of the tension choking him, and this was relatively harmless. It wasn't taking out his stress on Danyel or Mitka, thank all of Maryam's gods.
Danyel too seemed to have been overwhelmed by the situation. He was sitting on Dimitri's lap and laughing right along with him. "Did you catch the smell?"
Dimitri thought about it a moment and then winced. "Yeah," it had been the sour ammonia bite of stale urine. "Oh dear." Now his laughter had a base, albeit an extremely uncomfortable one.
"He's a good channel." Danyel grinned, but at the core of his nager was an even brighter gleam. "I'd never hurt him over it."
"No, neither would I." Dimitri scratched at his cheek. "Although, well, don't the cleaning people have anything to say about it." He'd run into his own share of sexual peculiarities, many of which were far more common than lay people would like to think. As long as they harmed no one, Dimitri'd not say a word, even though he might not be able to contain himself in private.
"He's a channel." Danyel shrugged. He stood and offered Dimitri a hand. Dimitri took it. Danyel tugged, landing him right back on Dimitri's lap. He giggled, ripples of laughter shimmering in his nager. Dimitri'd never seen a Sime so carefree in need. "You, Dimitri," he said, turning to make both of them a lot more comfortable. Mitka'd ended up curled around Danyel's ear, like a handfasting piece. "You make me feel so good."
"I didn't make Cami feel good." He looked down at his hands. Dimitri knew, if he managed a decent transfer, he'd turn into a sodden wreck in two weeks. Even as he sat here, tears of laughter on his face, he felt the darkness of her unnecessary death eating at his soul.
"How many people have you killed?" Danyel asked, not moving.
Dimitri stared at his scarred and calloused hands. They held the gift of both life and death. Today he'd killed, again. He looked up, at least able to meet Danyel's eyes. "In the last year, more or less, I've killed forty-three people, including Cami." He stared down at the worn tiles beneath them.
"Do you include Salkov?" Danyel asked.
"No," he said. "His was not by choice." Dimitri knew it was mere sophistry. Salkov had died under his hands just as Cami had, as Sasha had, as Loisha had, as every single one of those men and women had died. "The others were sick, old, tired, condemned." His voice trailed off.
"You were an executioner?" Danyel's voice cracked.
"Twice," he said. "Kobak and Vachlava. He raped and beat to death his sharm lord. Vachlava drowned her three year old child in the river." Dimitri took a deep breath. "They chose my hands over being broken and burned." Dimitri gave a short prayer of thanks he'd hardly eaten more since this morning than the tea Danyel'd pressed on him.
"Did you hurt them?"
"Of course not." He looked up. "It was quick. I did not speak with either much, not like with Cami. In both cases, I took their hands behind their back. They didn't struggle. I stroked their laterals out, kissed the back of their neck, Mitka struck and they fell dead from my hands without even a bruise." The calm recitation crawled into the darkened room and died before producing an echo. "It was merciful. More so than for their victims."
"How could your sire ask you to do such a thing?"
"He took for himself the worst cases." Dimitri said, the words echoing in his own ears, if not in the room. "Including one who tried to run. The guards cut her down on the white marble of Sergei. I'd known, intellectually, how much blood the human body held before then. They cut her head off, Danyel, and let it fall to the tiles, beside her body. Her mouth moved, as they all did, even when they'd had their neck broken, but it was worse with her head rolling across the floor, leaving a trail of blood against all that white."
"Hush," Danyel put his arms around Dimitri's shoulders. So close, Danyel's need eased Dimitri's own. He'd never cried for Paras'ia. "What did the rest of the court do?"
"Well, it was pandemonium. The guards had tried to shove her back from the doors at first, so at least they'd not murdered her in them. The court bolted. I stood on the dias beside my sire. Diomid was as white as new snow, and nearly as cold." Dimitri spoke through his tears, as if they were part of the story. "I was in hard need. At the time, I was an observer in my own body. I was to go to Valtanir that month, as Alexandrya was pregnant. All I could think of was repressing this so I could make a good impression on him.
"It was very foolish. In truth, I was horrified. I'd killed more than Salkov by that time. People who'd asked for peace and had outlived anyone they'd have chosen to give it to them. After the first few, they began asking for me, as I never refused them their friends or family." Dimitri had to stop. His throat had knotted shut. It was too soon after turnover. He didn't have the nervous static of need to damp his emotional reactions yet.
Danyel's hands stroked his face, his shoulders, his chest, as if he were trying to touch Dimitri in every place he could reach. "I like it when my Donors do this for me." He said, field soft and silken as a clean bed with fresh sheets. "It feels really good when I'm upset and hurting."
"I thought Techton Donors were supposed to take care of their channels."
"I'm not just a Techton channel, to you, I hope."
"No," Dimitri nodded. He flicked his head, loosening the snarled muscles momentarily.
"I think what you did with Cami was incredible, Dimitri." Danyel said, his emotions indisputably echoed in his field. The iridescent violets and blues of awe sheened over him.
"Paras'ia was cut down like a rabid dog in front of me and all I could think of was not running for fear of making Valtanir think of me as a fool." Dimitri said at last, throat and chest relaxed enough by Danyel's hands. It was not a particularly deft massage. His lack of experience was painfully obvious, such as when he would accidentally catch one of the pressure points in Dimitri's shoulders or breast, but he never did it more than once.
"If he had, I'd think a great deal less of him."
"Oh, Valtanir's strange," Dimitri gave Danyel a wry grin. "He's very Geninine, although he puts on a good show with his partner Lexi otherwise. He raises their children, runs the looms, dyehouses and mills of Azov, even controls the slaughter of animals for all the Gens of the Demenses." Dimitri shuddered at the thought of the weight of that much blood on any Sime's hands. They couldn't even eat meat. For Valtanir to hold that power in his hands, that of life and death over the beasts, was very unsettling. "No one other than the immediate Azov household, the Veiled, and I know of this."
Dimitri struggled with his wandering thoughts. "Sorry I'm not more to the point."
"My behind is falling asleep." Danyel stood, this time levering them both up off the floor using the door. He reached behind Dimitri's back and flipped a catch. Dimitri glanced down to see the in-use, locked light flick on. Before he could figure out quite what was happening, he was sitting up in bed, with a glass of tea, some crackers and cheese, and Danyel. "Its not much of a dinner, but we can stay here until you're ready to go."
"What about your house?" Dimitri protested. Danyel put some cheese on the cracker and silenced him with it.
"The caretaker the center sent over will be certain nothing happens to it." His eyes darkened a bit.
"You don't have anything of yourself there, do you?" He asked, tipping Danyel's chin back up. This time it was his turn to feed Danyel. Danyel shook his head no, even as he accepted the morsel of food.
Dimitri, warmed, sleepy, at least nominally fed, lost track of who he was talking to. "Paras'ia was a beast." He shrugged, seeing the entire scene in his mind's eye with perfect Sergei recall. "I reached for the lines of fate, but only the holes she'd put in it stood out. No more would die because of her madness, so I held my sire back from disrupting the future I saw.
"At last, it was silent. The guards stood like statues, both splashed with crimson, now rust brown. More blood had dripped down their spears and had dried on their hands." Dimitri took a deep breath and sipped at his tea. It was still very weak, although Danyel must have somehow heard his wistful longing for some mint in it. "I knelt and closed her eyes, careful not to get blood on my clothes, for even though they were not truly mine, I'd not want to see them ruined for a creature like her."
"What did she do?" Danyel asked, jarring Dimitri out of his reverie. He sloshed a bit of the rapidly cooling tea on his hand. Dimitri licked it up before answering.
"She killed, Danyel." He said. In the window, dark with the last hours before dawn, Dimitri saw his own face turned into a skull mask. "She killed eight renSime guards. Men and women who could not, in any way, protect themselves nagerically and had been conditioned to never raise a weapon to any Gen, for any reason."
"She was Gen?" Danyel asked.
"Yes," Dimitri put his hand on Danyel's knee. "She was as Gen as I am." In the window, the false mirror, the skull gave back its bony grin. "She abused, raped and killed those Simes for no more reason than she could." Danyel's face paled beside his own. "Think before you take me into your arms, Danyel. I'm as much a killer as Paras'ia."
"No," he said, pulling Dimitri away from the vision in the glass. "You are not." His brows drew down into a single line. "You gave Cami such beauty, such grace, today. No brutalized killer could have healed her heart."
"But what of mine?" Dimitri closed his eyes and still he could not escape the parade of faces. "I've been condemned for no longer having the heart of a healer."
"There's something wrong." Danyel said. He shook Dimitri's shoulders. "Listen to me, shen you!" He shouted. Dimitri forced his eyes open again. Danyel's eyes too were reddened, as if Dimitri'd brought him into Dimitri's own madness. "You cry because you care. Even for a woman, a Gen like yourself, who lost all connection with her common humanity. You can see that humanity even in a killer like her. You closed her eyes, so she wouldn't stare for all time." Danyel glanced away for a moment. When he looked back, tears had pooled in his eyes again. "You could even love the unlovable."
"She didn't deserve love." Danyel clenched his hands into fists. He finished off his tea and set the glass on the table.
"None of us do." Danyel said, so softly Dimitri could hardly hear him but for the echo in his mind. "Me, Diomid, Cadek, Valtanir, Cami ..."
Dimitri snorted softly, wanting to protest. Danyel put his fingers against Dimitri's lips, silencing him before he could speak. "None of us are perfect, Dimitri."
|
|
|
|