Healer's Heart
Section 7
by
Ann Marie Olson
Story © 2002 Ann
Marie Olson
Chapter 36
Dimitri rolled over. He got his dick out of the way and rolled over again. Some realities didn't live up to fantasy. A thrush sang its heart out.
"I'm sorry." Danyel said.
"Its not your fault." Dimitri hoped the stupid bird wouldn't dump on him. It would fit the rest of the day. Danyel touched him. He tensed.
"Hey," Danyel lay down next to him. "This was a great idea." He'd taken his hand back.
Dimitri sighed, wishing he had the enthusiasm to move the rock poking into his ribs. "The ground is awfully hard." He put his head down on his hands. "I should have gotten a bath."
"You smell wonderful." Danyel's tentacle tips traced the muscles over Dimitri's shoulder. He shivered all over. He also bent himself into the ground.
"So do you." He managed, squirming around. It served him right to hurt. He'd made an utter fool of himself today. First with Sevrin, then getting himself all bothered and unable to do anything about it.
"Dimitri," Danyel said, his brilliant nager fading. Dimitri studied the red and gold pattern woven into the blanket beneath them. "Look at me." He tipped Dimitri's chin up. Mitka was coiled around his shoulders. He'd taken up residence there, it seemed permanently. Dimitri wished it were as easy for him.
"I am." He forced himself to meet Danyel's gaze for a moment. His dark eyes were cast in shadow by the new leaves trembling in the breeze.
"I want you, Dimitri." Danyel's hand caressed the side of his face. He leaned into the pressure, wanting so much more than Danyel could ever give. "I love thee. I love you. Both of you." His hand slid down Dimitri's neck to his chest. Dimitri sucked in a deep breath.
"I hurt." He said, even while managing to keep it within himself. Mitka would be unbearable in getting him off if he felt it. "Its stupid, I know." Dimitri swatted at himself.
"Stop it." Danyel grabbed his wrist with his tentacles. Dimitri moaned. His whole body tingled all over. This was what he wanted. To be touched. It would be enough. "Its not stupid." He licked his lips. Dimitri looked at him. The lines in his face had returned.
"I ruined it all for you." He ground his teeth. "I wish I were female."
"Oh, bullshit, Dimitri," Danyel's tentacles slid up to twine between his fingers. "You don't."
"No," he admitted. "Usually I like being male, just as I like being Gen, But I wish I were what you wanted, too." The ache in his chest merged with the ache in his groin. They were good company to each other, not Dimitri.
"You're so incredibly beautiful." Danyel said, lips twitching slightly, as if he were about to cry. Dimitri brushed them with one fingertip. Danyel's mouth opened and his breath was sweet and warm against Dimitri's skin.
"Beautiful, not handsome," Dimitri forced his hand not to stretch out.
"Oh, you're handsome. Painfully so." Danyel's hand stroked Dimitri's side. He purred like a cat, or Mitka. "Its just that I can't forget. Can you make me?"
"No," Dimitri shuddered at the thought. "It would hurt you worse." He licked his lips. "You have to grow past it."
"How did you?" Danyel's hand continued its wandering, nearing Dimitri's loins. He felt as if they'd snap. His whole body quivered, like an over tight harpstring brushed by the wind. "Well?" He grinned.
"I'm having a hard time thinking." He admitted, cupping Danyel's jaw in his hand. Mitka stroked the back of it, egging him on. "I was adult. I wasn't physically harmed, and even still my next transfer with Vayer was abysmal. I shenned him before he even made the final contact." Dimitri watched Danyel's eyes, looking for what he wasn't sure. "He finally had to get Avilan."
"Why Avilan?" Danyel's hand had stilled. His attention was even warmer. Danyel never did things without his laterals. He did them all the way. Now he was listening. Dimitri's head spun.
"He's the best in Russia at transfer problems." Dimitri sighed. "I asked him for help with Khristov. He did. Neither of us died."
"But Khristov was badly injured."
"Crippled for life." Dimitri admitted. "I've not had the best luck in my love life."
He shook his head. "No, that's wrong. I've never been very responsible with my love life."
"Hush." Danyel squeezed Dimitri's hip. There was no sex behind the gesture, only support. It worked.
"I've always tried my best." Dimitri didn't want to blame Mitka for any of it. He looked into those amazing gold eyes. Dimitri couldn't think of life without him, not really. "I never knowingly went into a situation where I would be likely to kill by accident, at least not alone." He'd always see Khristov's face against the pillows, as white as snow against the dark shadows of bruising around his eyes. The rotten meat smell of khasti seemed to fill his sinuses again. "I had Avilan's assistance when I struck down Khristov."
"I did." Mitka's eyes shaded to bronze. The world reflected in them was merely a shimmering haze of their fields twining in the ambient. "I didn't want you to go to Avilan."
"You never said anything." Dimitri didn't know what to think. Was Mitka trying to confuse him? "Why didn't you?"
"Because I knew I might hurt him and didn't want to get caught." He put his head under his wing. "I was bad."
"Hush," Danyel tugged him out of his knot. "But you didn't say anything. You accepted Dimitri's sense in going to Avilan. Although I'm still not sure why you went to him and not Diomid or Arkay."
Dimitri chuckled softly and scritched Mitka under the chin. His eyes drooped closed and he smiled, showing all his fangs and then some. "We," he leaned on the pronoun, looking straight at Mitka, "knew Avilan is the best at transfer related problems."
"Why didn't you ask for an assist with me?" Danyel's grin twinkled in his eyes.
"Thought you'd run." He admitted, feeling the fool. "Because I trusted you." The truth came out. "My mentor, Mikhail Chernoye, always said there was truth after transfer, and none before it. I didn't know what he meant when he'd said it. I thought it was just a saying."
"I wouldn't have known either." Danyel didn't look away. "Although we didn't get in trouble with transfer."
"Part of it." He sighed. "The part I've had nearly as many problems with."
"I wasn't raised to think of sex as part of transfer but as something entirely different." A butterfly drifted down to rest on Danyel's shoulder. Its red, black and orange wings trembled in the slight breeze, like the leaves overhead. "We were taught we couldn't have sex with someone the same gender. After Rik, I didn't want to take the chance, even though ..." he glanced away. "I'd once desired another man, a Gen, a Donor."
"I don't have to ask, do I?" Dimitri knew Danyel's heartbreak only too well. He'd mentioned this before, but hadn't been ready to speak of it. Now the time had come.
"She was junct. A killer. Three months after change over. Should have been her fourth. Said she wanted to disjunct." Danyel's hand clamped down so hard Dimitri'd have bruises. "She made it through the worst of the crisis already. We were all amazed at her will." He stared into Dimitri's eyes.
"I was thrilled for Patrik." A tear shimmered in his eye and then ran down his face. "Yeah, I wanted him. I wanted him like you want me right now even though it had been less than a year since my ... change over." Dimitri heard the substitution in his mind. Since his rape. "He was a good Donor. Nothing spectacular. Not like you or your family."
Dimitri snorted. He wasn't that special. Although he now knew where the root of Danyel's problems lie. He'd ended up tangling his own abuse at Rik's hands with the experiences of change over. A shiver ran through him. And now Dimitri had nothing more than his heart to heal Danyel with. He had none of his abilities as Sergei. He loved Danyel too much to be able to reach into that well of otherworldly knowledge.
"I'd decided to brave the ban. I thought it couldn't be so serious." His voice went flat and harsh. "I know the Sime was in a pause between crises. Patrik would have the free time to see me after his own transfer. I didn't dare brave the ban on transfer partners being romantically entwined. Besides, he didn't have a fraction of the speed I required." Danyel took a deep breath. The butterfly flitted away.
Mitka tracked it with his eyes, then rested his head against Danyel's cheek. They were beautiful together. Danyel reached up and caressed him. Dimitri missed his touch, even as he felt it through Mitka. Right now Mitka required it more, really. Mitka snorted, tossed Danyel's hand up and then bit it. Well, not really. But he grabbed it in his mouth. He put it on Dimitri's shoulder and nodded, as if he'd accomplished some great feat.
"I think he wants you to touch me." Dimitri said, letting his voice soften to try to get Danyel to speak again. He'd obviously not reached the end of his story. Not from the pain still hidden deep in his eyes. Anyone could see it, even a child.
"Do you want to be touched?"
"Silly question." Dimitri put his hand over Danyel's and squeezed for a moment. "I always want your touch. That's why I got so upset when you went after that other Sime."
"Not at work?" He was sliding around the question.
"What happened to Patrik?" He asked, wanting and not wanting to hear the end of the story.
"She got loose." He didn't cry this time. "She got loose from Mister 'I am so perfect first', Hajene Lorn."
Dimitri wanted to ask how Danyel could stand working with the man, but stayed silent.
"I saw and zlinned all of it." Danyel took a deep breath. "Part of what being Ferris means is the inability to zlin away. To avoid knowing. I know what happened to Patrik."
Dimitri hugged Danyel closer. He didn't have to say he knew the implications of having southerner's. Danyel understood as well as he did it was unnecessary. But Danyel had to explain away his own memories.
"It started out the classic disjunction triangle." His voice had gone flat, as if he were reciting from a story he'd memorized by rote in another language. "Patrik had been crossing the quad. He'd probably been at lunch, although he was close to transfer and probably not very hungry, now that I think about it. His attention was on getting to the infirmary. He'd always been one to ask for help when it was necessary."
Danyel licked his lips. "I thought to go to meet him there. See if he'd talk with me. We'd only talked a few times. I remember each conversation. I never did say goodbye, not wanting them to end." He swallowed heavily. "When he saw her, Bet, he stopped. His whole field focused on her. Patrik was a natural Donor. He couldn't stand to see a Sime in need and not help them."
"What happened then?" Dimitri asked after a long pause.
"Lorn formed the other corner of the triangle." Danyel was panting as if running a race. He closed his eyes for a moment. "I still remember the look of pure pleasure on Bet's face. She zlinned right through the illusion. Even I couldn't move fast enough. She jumped Patrik without a moment's hesitation."
Dimitri nodded. He'd never seen a disjunction. It wasn't done in Russia anymore. A junct Sime was put to death if they were tied, truly, to killing. There was no appeal, no trial.
"Bet knew what she was doing. She didn't want to disjunct." Danyel snorted, a bitter, harsh sound. "They found that out after she'd killed twice more."
Dimitri felt as if he'd been kicked in the gut. This was why his people executed juncts. One of the reasons, anyways.
"Patrik screamed. The same way Volen screamed. That exact same shriek of agony." The skin of his face drew down taught over the bones. "She collapsed crying on his body. Her nager was writhing with pleasure."
"A true junct's does." Dimitri'd never sensed it personally, but he certainly had memories to fill in the gaps.
"As yours did over Volen." Danyel's last comment smacked Dimitri right between the eyes.
"Mitka?"
"No, you," Danyel said, blowing out a held breath. "No one believed me when I said she didn't want to disjunct. That she was stringing everyone along. They believed Lorn. Wanted to give her another chance. Said I was too unstable and since I'd come from Hillview, what did I know." His hurt at being dismissed showed as plainly in his field today as it must have those many years ago. "The Techton send me a letter of apology when she'd finally been taken to a last year house. It was years later I found out she'd killed there."
He sighed again. "Maybe your way is right. Give them peace. Make sure they never kill again. I don't know."
"The cost is just as high." Dimitri still trembled inside from Danyel's observations of what he'd done with Volen. "Anyone can become addicted to killing."
"Perhaps your enemy is trying to get you declared junct?" Danyel half chuckled.
Dimitri froze, an icy grue slithering up his spine. "Yes." He said, hissing. "You're right." He looked down between them, unable to meet Danyel's eyes for a moment. "I've killed a lot of people, Danyel. I'd never killed one the way I did Volen. I was furious. What is wrong with me?"
"I'm not the healer, Dimitri." His field had calmed as soon as he stop speaking of his past. "You are." Shimmers of good health returned, glowing brighter with having spoken of his past.
"You've healed yourself." He stroked Danyel's face. "What would you have done if Patrik had said yes to your proposal?"
"Run away screaming, most likely." He chuckled, giving to the caress. "I didn't think it was possible, even though I knew I wanted him. I didn't know how."
"You figured it out with me." Dimitri reassured him.
"No really," he shrugged. "I still haven't managed to give you have the pleasure you've given me."
"This isn't a race, Danyel." Mitka bit his ear, right above the earring Dimitri'd given him.
Danyel yelped, but didn't bat at him. "I want to pleasure you."
"You do." Dimitri pressed Danyel's hand against his shoulder. "Very much so. You lie here and talk with me."
"I wanted to talk with Patrik." Danyel's gaze unfocused again. "Maybe if he'd lived. Maybe if his passing hadn't been such a nightmare. Maybe if I'd gone down to talk with him instead of hoping he'd come to me."
"Unless you're Sergei, there's no way of knowing."
"Then tell me." Danyel challenged him. "Tell me what would have happened if I'd gone down there."
"He'd have died under your hands when you tried to pull him away from Bet in mid-transfer. You'd have died of his backlash, both shen and the kill. Your anti-kill was still very fresh and had a strong hold on your mind. When your body reached for that tainted selyn, your conditioning would have caused a suicide abort." Dimitri spoke the words without emotion, straight as he saw the web of fate. "Patrik would have then died, knowing he'd murdered you as well."
"Shen, Dimitri!" Danyel gasped, doubling over. "I shouldn't have asked."
"I didn't know it would be so bad until I reached." He rested his head on his arm. "Usually it isn't. Often enough such small changes make small differences. You and he were bound, Danyel." Dimitri licked his lips. "He loved you and held back from approaching you because you were a channel." The travesty of it all shocked Dimitri to his nager. "He was coming to see you. Even though he wasn't planning on doing more than talking, then or ever. He believed you'd die if you touched him. But he loved you."
"Thank you," Danyel's tears glittered in the dappled sunlight. "Thank you so much."
"Don't thank me for ill news, please." He squeezed Danyel's hand. "I'm sorry it didn't work out for you."
"From what you say, it never would have." He shrugged, but his nager was as flat as his voice had been earlier.
"Oh, I'm sure you could have convinced him." Dimitri both grinned and frowned at the same time. "I wouldn't have had a chance, probably."
"No," Danyel did smile this time, lighting his nager. "Is there always so much more to what could have been?"
"I don't know." He said. "I've learned not to look."
"How?" Danyel said, then put his hand over his mouth. "I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't have asked."
"I was ready for it." Dimitri ignored the shock of pain. Danyel's nager twined restlessly around him. Mitka hissed at it and snapped. He growled, wings raised. "All right, Ferris curiosity." Despite the ache, he laughed. "It was about Chernoye. My mentor. The person who spent the most time with me growing up. He taught me to paint, to draw, to write." Dimitri had to breath deeply to loosen the knot behind his breastbone.
"He hardly knew I existed." Dimitri stared for a moment at a bit of moss hidden in the crevice of a tree. "He was blind. I helped him with his pigments and his brushes. He thought I was a pest, always bothering him, except when he required something of me."
"Not a very nice person, it sounds like."
"Oh, he was as mad as a hatter who spends his days up to his elbows in fulminate of mercury." Dimitri thought about what he wanted to say next. "He was insane, and very, very old. He'd never had children, as I found out, for good reason. He'd been born to the nobility. My grandfather shattered his mind. Our families were bound by that act of cruelty or compassion, I'm not sure which it was. My grandfather also kept him from dying of attrition hanging from Maryam's walls by his wrists."
Danyel's nager flushed green, his tentacles retracting as fast as they could.
"He only had five handling tentacles." Dimitri remembered the crotchety old renSime from his own memories as well as his Sergei ones. "I prefer my true memories to those of my talent or curse."
"I can understand why." Danyel pulled him in close. "I want to make love with you, Dimitri."
"You have." He sweated with the effort it took not to force Danyel against him, full length and no separation at all.
"You want more." Danyel nuzzled Dimitri's ear. "So do I. What is it that's so forbidden, Dimitri?"
"Hurting you." He replied, fingers tracing Danyel's spine.
"What if your, or our, enemy gets lucky? What if they succeed in taking you away from me?" Danyel shivered all over.
"Like the Techton took Patrik away from you?" Dimitri smoothed Danyel's hair back away from his ear.
"Yes," Danyel leaned back and looked him in the eyes. "I want you in all ways, Dimitri. I don't want to keep being held back by my past."
"Or mine," Dimitri admitted, running his fingertips down Danyel's neck. "I've come so close, so many times, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'm going to make a mistake. I'm afraid I'm going to hurt you." It was his turn to cry. "I love thee, Danyel. Nothing can ever take that away from either of us."
Danyel'd never thought of himself as a romantic. Dimitri, well, he brought out the best and worst in Danyel. Although reacting to Dimitri's tears by getting hard wasn't romantic, it was weird.
"Look what I found." Dimitri brushed said hardness with his hand. Danyel gasped, but this time didn't move away. He tensed, wanting more. "Oh yes." Dimitri purred, his voice dropping so low Danyel felt it more than heard it.
"More," Danyel begged, moving closer.
Dimitri's hands tensed on his back. "Show me." He said, loosening his hold. The breeze ruffled Dimitri's short blond hair. "Do whatever you wish."
Danyel stroked that short, silky plush. He'd wanted to, but didn't want to seem weird.
"Feels good." Dimitri purred, eyes dropping shut for a moment. Danyel caught a bit of hair between his fingers. Dimitri hissed, giving to the little tug as if Danyel'd yanked at it. Dimitri tipped his chin, asking for a kiss, as a woman would, soft and giving to him. He bent down, well aware of the odd mixture of larity and gender driving him half crazy. "You feel good." He breathed against Danyel lips, then waited.
The passivity yanked Danyel right in. He held Dimitri's head in his hand and plundered his mouth. Their tongues danced, as he'd done with Mitka. Dimitri's hand slid down Danyel's back.
"Not this time." He said, stopping him before he could reach that spot low on his back. Dimitri pulled back, lips reddened with the force of their kisses. "I want you, Dimitri, not some trick."
"You can do the same thing for me." He arched his neck, nodding toward Danyel. "Or don't you want to?"
"I want to fulfill your fantasies, Dimitri. You made mine come true."
"Fantasy or nightmare?"
"You gave me the touch I'd never had." He smiled, even as a hundred butterflies danced beneath his diaphragm. "Never knew I wanted, but was not truly alive without."
"And perhaps you'll find a woman like me."
"There is no other like you, Mitka." He said, deliberately using Dimitri's nickname. "Oh, Sevrin calls Domi all kinds of things." Danyel explained at Dimitri's start of surprise. "I want him, too." He brought Mitka's face around and looked him in the eyes. He leaned back, having to grasp Danyel's torso with his tail and flail his wings to keep from falling over. "I want you to help, Mitka."
"How?" Mitka's eyes didn't land anywhere, flicking around the tiny nook beneath the trees.
"I missed you after transfer." He stroked Mitka's head.
"If I'd been there, you would have really fucked?" He blinked, as if this were normal everyday conversation. "I'm here now!"
Dimitri winced. Danyel chuckled. "You are." He slid his hand down Mitka's neck. "You're beautiful too. I don't know how I got so lucky to have two such beautiful creatures on my borrowed blanket."
"Because we're special." He cleaned a bit of imaginary fluff off one wingtip.
"You are." Danyel stroked Mitka until his was lying the length of Danyel's side.
"Dimitri wasn't exaggerating." He draped his head over Danyel's hip. "Looks good." He hummed, warning Danyel of what was to come next. But Mitka's tongue was nothing like Dimitri's mouth. His tongue spiraled around Danyel's shaft as a tentacle would, but wetter and cooler, with the exotic freshness of a healthy Gen, not another Sime. Danyel couldn't help but rock his hips.
A sharp pain made him draw back, leading to another cut.
"Don't move." Dimitri breathed. "He catch you with his teeth?"
"Yeah," Danyel blinked clean his vision. "It felt great until then."
"I hurt you!" Mitka tried to turn around.
"A little," he lied. The cuts seemed as if they'd been made by paper, not Mitka's fangs. "Wait a moment."
"I didn't mean it!" Mitka wailed. It was a good thing he wasn't physical. He and Dimitri would have had half the neighborhood down their sheathes, and the nearest outside Danyel's zlinning range.
"I know, sweet." He rubbed Mitka's shoulderblades, right between his wings, waiting for it to pass. After a few minutes, it faded to nothing, not even a visceral memory. "OK, watch the teeth." Danyel gave Mitka a gentle nudge.
"Its soft." He said, bumping at it, gently at least, with his nose.
"You have to be nice to them." Dimitri said, spots of crimson on his cheeks and nager. "I never really had the money for pillow books, so Mitka couldn't exactly learn from example."
"Oh," Danyel chuckled.
"And Chernoye had stopped making them when his vision failed." Dimitri's lips tightened. "His primary illuminator was too young for such things." The pain of the difference between the child Dimitri's perceptions and his mentor's reality hurt Danyel, as he could imagine how awful it had to have been to know the truth. "The truth is often a vastly overrated commodity, Danyel."
"Do you lie to me?"
"No," he lied. Danyel could see it in his eyes. They were older than any human had a right to be. They'd seen hundreds of years pass.
Danyel, of course, cheated. He slipped his hand between them and caressed Dimitri's dick with one tentacle, as Mitka'd done with his tongue. Dimitri bucked, driving himself against Danyel with startling force. The fey light had died and Dimitri was again a young man. A very horny young man.
"Let me do for you what you did for me." He started to slide down.
"Let me turn around." Dimitri said. Before he could protest, Dimitri'd done it. Danyel stared, blinking. He'd offered, certainly, now he didn't know what to do.
What had Dimitri done? He wasn't sure at this point. He tried licking a bit. It didn't taste bad. Dimitri was fanatical about cleanliness. More than most of the people Danyel'd known, that was for sure.
Dimitri, on the other hand, seemed to have no reservations at all. But he'd not gone for Danyel's dick at all, he gathered Danyel's feet into his hands. He had to be reaching way over his head. This was silly. Then Dimitri's fingers slipped between his toes.
Danyel groaned.
"I know what you like." Dimitri sang, fingers slipping beneath Danyel's arches. "Yes I do." He kneaded at them. With each touch, Danyel's eyes rolled up in his head. He strained at empty air, looking for something to rub against. Dimitri's chest wasn't the best option, but it was sure better than nothing. Then Mitka got into the act, wetting the skin with his very slippery saliva. He slid against Dimitri's skin, as they'd done right after transfer.
But this was even better. Danyel squirmed around so he could get back to where he'd been. He could no longer tease himself frantic, although he didn't have to with Dimitri's hands rubbing at his heels and easing the tension in his ankles. He moaned, holding Dimitri as close as he could when he tugged, sending waves of pleasure through his body.
"Wait," he begged, panting and desperate. He'd not been this quick to call a halt for fear of release since he'd been Dimitri's age, and hardly ever, even then.
"You really like having your feet rubbed." Dimitri smiled, mouth slightly open, lips soft, eyes crinkling at the corners. "I think I could do anything I wanted if I rubbed your feet first."
"I know you could." Danyel shivered as Dimitri ran one knuckle beneath his toes. "Don't stop."
"Maybe later." He pointed Danyel's foot and kissed the arch. Danyel clutched at Dimitri's finger with his toes. "Although I was thinking more the other way." His bright eyes held no doubt, this time. Danyel glanced down and noticed, for the first time in his life, maybe he was a bit different than other men. He was nearly half again as large as Dimitri.
"Are you average?" He asked at last, curiosity winning as always.
"Yes," Dimitri grinned. "I am. You're not." He laughed softly, the cool breath chilling where he'd licked Danyel's instep. Danyel shivered, hissing with the pleasure/pain of the sharp sensation. "I think, after I learn some more, I'll enjoy it tremendously."
"How do you know?"
"I may not have read pillow books, but I do have ears." He nuzzled Danyel's ankle bones.
"Are you really so fascinated with my feet?" No matter how good it felt, it was strange. Danyel'd never head of such a thing. Dimitri nibbled along the line of bone from ankle to along the top. With each little bite, Danyel's breath caught.
"Are you really so fascinated with my nager?" Dimitri put his mouth on Danyel's skin and suckled at it. Danyel cried out, the sensation connecting his crotch to his brain with nothing in the middle. "Oh, yes, here's the on switch." His fingertips flickered over the now sensitized skin. Danyel squirmed, wanting any contact at all harder. He didn't know if it tickled or felt good. He wanted it to feel good.
Dimitri stopped for a moment. Danyel replayed their interrupted conversation. He got his revenge. "Come here, Mitka." He crooked a finger.
"What do you want?" He waddled over, as ungainly as any other arboreal, or humanoreal, is such were a word, creature on the ground. For Mitka didn't live in trees, but he did live on humans, Danyel in particular. He loved it, actually.
"I want you to join in." Danyel said. Mitka looked back towards Danyel's dick.
"No, not like that." He slid one hand beneath Mitka's wing. Mitka's eyes sagged half shut. Danyel stroked the dense muscle giving him flight, or at least allowing to think of himself as flighted. His wings probably weren't big enough to keep him in the air if he were real. Mitka stretched his wings over both of them, giving Danyel unlimited access.
He'd learned the first time he'd petted Mitka that his keel and the muscles attached to it were very sensitive. Danyel rubbed those muscles, feeling for the tiny sensitive nodes on Mitka's chest. Mitka suddenly folded his wings and rolled onto his back.
"He knows what he wants." Danyel muttered, finding all six of those gaps in Mitka's scales at once. Mitka arched his back, rubbing against Danyel's hand. Dimitri groaned, echoing Mitka's obvious pleasures for the first time since they'd met. "Do you usually hide this?"
"Yes," he gasped, glancing down at him for a moment. "I didn't think my father would like to know he was getting his son off by petting his nager."
"Probably not, no." Danyel agreed, easing up a bit in his teasing. He flicked his nails over those spots, one at a time, slowly. Each time he did it, Dimitri quivered, like a struck bell. "How did you hide this?"
"With great difficulty." He grinned. Then he rolled his eyes when Danyel used his tentacles to touch all of them at the same time. "Oh my." Dimitri breathed. "Although the fact I didn't want to respond to my own father did help me keep it under control."
"And in your pants?"
"Yeah," he sagged back, recapturing Danyel's feet. "We're a pair." He licked one from ankle to toe. It was a while before he could see again.
"Let's get comfortable." He scooped Mitka up and put him on his chest. Mitka's wings were so limp they flopped. Danyel rolled up Dimitri's shirt and put it under his head.
"Good idea." Dimitri grabbed Danyel's shirt and propped himself up on his side. He leaned over and kissed the arch of Danyel's other foot. Danyel shivered from head to well loved toe.
Chapter 37
"Do we really have to stick our dicks in each other?" Dimitri leaned back, spread his arms, and basked. There wasn't a whole lot of sun. That didn't matter. He felt great. If very soggy.
"I don't know we do." Danyel slithered around, somehow not displacing Mitka and curled up to him. He too was a sodden mess. Mitka was out. Danyel'd bundled him up some for the move, but Dimitri'd never seen him so dead to the world around him. Dimitri picked up one wingtip and dropped it. It went flop. Danyel chuckled.
"Then lets just not say anything to anyone else." Dimitri's grin was as limp as the rest of him. "I'm happy."
"So am I." Danyel purred, stroking Mitka's chest. Mitka didn't twitch, not even the tip of his tail. "Although I'm about to fall asleep now."
"I would be if I weren't starving." Dimitri winced as his stomach tried to take another bite out of his spine.
"I'm hungry too, like always now." He gave Dimitri the strangest look. It was angry and half amused. "You've spoiled me."
"How so?" He asked, capturing Danyel's hand over Mitka. Out of curiosity, he glanced down into the real world alone and found they were holding hands over Danyel's pants. Well, better Danyel's than his own. He blinked his vision back to normal and stroked Mitka's scales with his thumb. There was never any sign of Mitka's inherent unreality.
"Do you think Sevrin's cook is half as good as you are?"
"Better, probably." He removed a stray rock from under his butt. "I'm not great, Danyel."
Danyel pinched him.
"Hey!" He didn't want to move away. Mitka'd fall inbetween them. After his injury, Dimitri never wanted to risk breaking him again. "Don't pinch." He pinched Danyel's shoulder.
Danyel reached around and pinched Dimitri's neck. Dimitri pinched his chin. Mitka woke up and bit Dimitri's ear. He yelped and swatted at him. Danyel bent over and nipped Dimitri's chest. He pinched Danyel's backside. Danyel rolled Dimitri on top of him and gave him a really sharp pinch on the backside in return. Dimitri kept the momentum going.
Dimitri bucked under him, flipping him over. When they reached the pond, Dimitri screeched. "That's cold!" He danced out of the water. Danyel slipped on the mossy tiles. Dimitri caught him, sliding himself. Mitka tangled his ankles and he nearly fell. He flailed his arms.
Splash!
He blew half a liter of muddy, slimy, filthy water out of his nose. A water lily stuck to his shoulder. Before they'd only brushed the edges of the pond. Dimitri glared at his nager. Mitka's tongue stuck out. Dimitri wasn't at all sure what this meant. Mitka looked away.
Danyel held out his hand. "Truce?"
"Well, I'm slimy for a different reason now." He took Danyel's hand. Both of his bracelets were covered with gunk. It was a very good thing the firestone was protected. "I think I prefer the other."
"Honestly, so do I." Danyel grinned. "You're a mess."
Dimitri looked Danyel up and down. "Even half covered with pond muck, you're still gorgeous." He rocked his hips as he stepped forward.
"Cold!" Danyel yelped as Dimitri touched him.
"I'm gonna get you for that!" Dimitri raised his hands over his head, dripping mud everywhere and threatened to drip it all on Danyel.
"Hey, it didn't get in my hair." He backed up.
"Not yet." He scraped a bit off his neck. His first shot was wild. His second caught Danyel right between the eyes. "You always duck the same way."
Danyel stopped, bending over and putting his face in his hands. Danyel couldn't tell if there was anything wrong on the ambient. "Danyel?" He asked, wary, but not wanting to keep playing if he was hurt. "Are you all right?"
"Yes!" He said, yanking at Dimitri's ankle. Dimitri landed on his backside. Danyel danced back out of the way. Dimitri whooped with glee. He didn't bother getting up, but tacked Danyel from hands and knees. They tumbled across the little grove again. Dimitri stopped before they got to the blanket.
"You know what?"
"What?" Danyel's field was as bright as the sun overhead.
"This is nowhere near as romantic as all the books say it is." Dimitri got up off the ground. He pulled a couple of small twigs out of his hide. They felt more like branches. Dimitri threw those in the pond.
"You're right." Danyel stood up, brushing at the mud and small boulders that had attached themselves to him. Dimitri helped, feeling very much like an ape in a display. "I've worked at the zoo."
"You heal animals?" Danyel'd never had the chance to speak with any of the animal specialists much. He got along with Lexi well enough, but she was the only one. All the others treated him as if he had no business ever going out of doors at all.
"Everyday at work." He yawned. "Oh, my, yes, food and sleep."
"Food, sleep and bath." He put his arm over Danyel's shoulders. "I'm not amorous anymore."
"I think I have bruises on my dick." Danyel glanced down.
"Its not swollen anymore." Dimitri pointed out.
"Yours is getting that way again."
"I'm sorry." Dimitri looked at it. "What's your problem?" Danyel snickered "If you think I'm going to touch you before I wash off this filth, you're crazy."
"Does your mother know you talk to yourself?" Danyel asked.
"She talks to both of us too." Dimitri pointed at Mitka, sound asleep again on Danyel's shoulder. He was drooling again, although now it was obvious it wasn't real. It didn't displace a single grain of dirt.
"You cheat." Danyel laughed.
"All the time, my love." He captured Danyel's hand before they walked across the yard, and back into the house. "When its important." He looked into Danyel's dark eyes. "You're gorgeous, Danyel Ferris. No matter what happens, you'll always be my first love and first lover. Karola was warmup."
"Wouldn't she be upset at being displaced so easily."
"She was hoping to be." Dimitri smiled at the memory of that wonderful Lord taking him so gallantly when no one else would so much as touch him. "Karola was my first bed partner. We weren't lovers. She's literally old enough to be my grandmother."
"She is your grandmother, isn't she?"
"She was the only one who'd take me." Dimitri stared at the white facade of the house. It was huge for a single freeholding family dwelling, even with servants, but it could have been tucked into a single corner of Sergei and lost for years. "No one else would come close to Mitka. Not after Khristov."
"So she was testing you?"
"No, she trusted us." Dimitri looked down at Danyel. "I wouldn't be alive today if she hadn't taken me into her arms that day. No Sharm Lord could live so long without a complete transfer."
"How long could you be with me?" Danyel's question yanked him up short.
"As long as I can keep from getting murdered." He tipped his face and closed his eyes. Danyel'd learned this quickly enough. He rose up along Dimitri's front with all the grace he could have wanted. Dimitri let Danyel open his lips, giving to him as he'd given of his selyn, without stint.
"I won't let him murder you." Danyel said, holding Dimitri close. "You keep telling me when to duck, and I'll keep making sure you eat." He swatted Dimitri on the behind. "Now shower!" He pointed to the house.
Dimitri balked. This was too good an opportunity. He backed up, again in the shadow of the trees. "I'm just being paranoid." He narrowed his eyes. Someone was singing, off-key, in the kitchen. Couldn't have been Illyana. All of the Azov horde had a sense of pitch. Someone was upstairs, taking a shower, and whistling. This one probably was Illyana. "Did you zlin the number of servants yesterday?"
"Three," Danyel said, tugging Dimitri further back into the bushes, as if he'd caught Dimitri's paranoia. "Or at least three renSimes."
"My Uncle would never hire anything else." Dimitri slipped around the side of the house. How he wished he weren't stark naked. Having everything dangling in the breeze was decidedly uncomfortable. That wasn't to mention the mud in delicate places.
"Then there's one out front, one in the kitchen, and a third," he paused. "The third is in the basement."
"How can you zlin that?"
"There's a mirror at the head of the stairs that catches the ambient all the way down." Danyel put his hand on the back of Dimitri's neck. The warmth of his touch soothed the first inklings he might well be making the fool of himself. "Although I think you can tell your Aunt for yourself."
"I can." He grinned. When he reached the front corner of the house, Danyel tugged on his hand. Dimitri froze, listening, not even opening himself to the ambient. Mitka was still asleep, besides. He looked at him. Mitka was rarely so quiet, particularly when Dimitri was tense. Right now he was as tense as bridge cables. The hissing of a car coming up the drive warned him long before he could have sensed the engine.
"I can't zlin very well into cars." Danyel said.
"Now you tell me."
"Most Simes can't at all."
"I'll have to remember that." Dimitri peeked around the edge of the garage.
"Go," Danyel pushed at him. Dimitri didn't question it. He yanked at the door, nearly falling on his behind again. It hadn't even been latched. They dashed into a huge, open, barn of a room. It should have held at least three, if not four, cars. There was a single motorcycle. "Who rides?" Danyel pointed.
"You're more likely to know than I am." Dimitri blinked at it.
"What are you two doing here?" Illyana wrapped a towel around her hair. "You're filthy."
"I'd noticed that, yes." Dimitri straightened, sliding in front of Danyel.
"Excuse me," Danyel pushed him over.
"She's Gen." Dimitri muttered, putting his arm around Danyel's shoulder.
"I'm not looking." His field fondled Illyana's wrists.
"You're zlinning." He growled.
"How do I not zlin?" Danyel snorted.
"Close your eyes." Mitka then yawned and went back to sleep.
"What is wrong with you?" Illyana asked. "Get cleaned up. Your brother is coming to Kaon. Sevrin wants to talk to you about him."
"Which brother?"
"Miran of course." She walked over and sat on the seat of the motorcycle. "He's saying he wants to move here, like Aliana did."
"And you?" He looked at the leathers hanging against the wall, exactly Illyana's size.
"You wouldn't be running around in the buff at home." She looked Danyel up and down. "You shouldn't let him out of the bedroom."
"This isn't Russia." Dimitri wasn't going to mention how tempted he'd been.
"He has southerner's. Its for his health." Her shoulders swayed as she walked up the three steps to the rest of the house. Bracelets jangling, Illyana showed off her wrist, leaning against the door frame for a moment. "If you ever get tired of playing with children, Danyel."
"Get out of here." Dimitri slapped at her with his field. Danyel's froze in shock. "She doesn't mean it." He whispered loudly enough to be heard across the house, much less across the room.
"No, I don't." She sighed. "I'm not going to get between Dimitri and what he wants. More importantly, I'm not going to get between Mitka and what he wants. I don't have the right kind of need for him."
"You're also my Aunt by blood."
"True," she grinned. "Which also makes Danyel off limits. You win. But wash off out back first?"
"Sure," Dimitri gave in. There'd been no real threat, just his nerves.
Danyel remembered far happier and far more worried times standing out on this same tarmac waiting for people.
"Nothing has happened since before transfer." Dimitri rubbed at his eyes. "I wish I'd been wearing my glasses."
"Me too." Sevrin grumbled. "You're too picky by far. Get the surgery and be done with it."
"When the only people in the world who can do it are likely to want me dead? I don't think so." Dimitri pushed his new glasses back up on his nose. They looked about the same as his last pair, but not if you zlinned them closely. The workmanship was not at all similar.
"I don't think Diomid wants you dead." Danyel was curious, as usual. "How can anyone do surgery on the eyes. Everything is so small."
"Its not physical surgery, as such." He removed his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, then put them back on. "Its not limited to just Sergei healers, other very sensitive and strong channels can do it."
"Could I?" Danyel hated seeing Dimitri fussing like this. Not to mention what it was doing to Mitka.
Dimitri blinked at him, then winced. He reached up to his glasses again.
"Take them off or leave them alone." Danyel caught his hand. He asked the question again with his field.
"If I were awake." He turned his face to the wind, along the axis of the runway.
"You'd direct me to work on your eyes." Danyel shuddered at the thought. "What happens if one of us slips?"
"I never work in the operating room again."
"Leave your glasses on." Danyel grinned at him.
"That was my thought." He hugged Danyel to his side, squashing most of the air out of him. He didn't have to breathe, not really, he had Mitka. Turnover was coming up for both of them in a couple days. They'd tried almost every variant on sex imaginable since their transfer, never once going over that invisible line they'd drawn, no penetration.
Danyel was happier than he'd ever been in his life. Yeah, there had been a couple of times, in the middle of the night, when Dimitri'd pressed up against him and he'd wanted to take him with all his heart and soul. But then he woke the rest of the way.
"I want to go home with you, take a long, hot bath with lots of soap, scrub your tentacles down really well, cover them in honey, then lick them all clean." Dimitri murmured this into Danyel's ear all in one long breath. Danyel gulped.
"You're going to make me unpresentable." It actually was a little late. After a week and a half of Dimitri, always willing and always ready, Danyel'd found a bit of the youth in himself as well.
"I want to make him jealous." Dimitri purred, stroking the back of Danyel's neck with his hand.
"You were right." Sevrin looked down, even though he was actually looking through Mitka's eyes. "He is huge."
"Sevrin!" Dimitri squawked.
"Serves you right for impersonating the Fellowship." He sniffed.
"How long did it take you to figure it out?" Dimitri chuckled. Danyel hadn't know he'd ever impersonated this bizarre organization Sevrin and Dimitri called the Fellowship. It sounded like something bored Simes would read if they actually had to read something. Danyel gave himself a little slap on the side of the face.
"Now you have me doing it." He muttered.
"Doing what?"
"Oh, about as far as the gate." Sevrin replied.
"Thinking of people as Sime and Gen, not male and female." Danyel shook his head. "But you're right. More often than not, Gens stay home and Simes go out and work. If nothing else because Simes have to pay taxes and Gens receive those taxes."
"Not a healthy economy, but true none the less." Dimitri shrugged. "But at home its because, well, Simes have to pay for their selyn and Gens get paid for it." He grinned.
"What's the difference?"
"In Russia, its a free market. Anyone can buy or sell selyn at the market rate." Sevrin shrugged. "Here its a fixed rate, with no response to supply and demand, risk or even capital accumulation."
"This is the sort of work you were trained to do?" Danyel'd rarely seen Sevrin so animated. Often enough he zlinned half asleep, like a great jaguar stuck in a cage. For no matter how luxurious, there was still a part of any great cat that demanded freedom.
"Yes," he frowned when Danyel went to light a cigarette. Dimitri let Danyel take one drag and stole it.
"You're a bad influence on my nephew." Sevrin snorted. "Thank you for saving his life, however."
"It balances out?" Danyel lit one for himself. Tanya was stealing smokes from him all the time. Her husband, Pyotr hated smoking and had hoped moving to the West would get her to quit.
"Yeah, I think so." Sevrin gave Dimitri a shove with his field, which was so high it was a threat all on its own. Mitka trilled in his ear, reminding him of his presence with a nip to the earlobe.
"I haven't forgotten you." He stroked Mitka's scaly head. He'd become as familiar as Danyel's own skin, more so in many ways. Before he'd spent time with Dimitri and Mitka, he'd not really known his own body at all, just his nager.
"I know what you're thinking about." He licked Danyel's ear. "I want it too." He purred, shifting his weight restlessly over Danyel's shoulders. The sound of scales rubbing against each other was enough to get Danyel's interest all on its own, now. "I want you to touch me. I want you to stroke me all over. I want your tentacles to ..."
"Mitka," Dimitri frowned.
"I want your tentacles between my legs, Danyel. I want you to stroke me until I come for you." Mitka still had no shame at all. Danyel did wish, however, he had better timing.
"You're making me frantically horny, Mitka." He tugged Mitka's tail, the wrong way. Mitka sniffed and nibbled down the side of Danyel's neck. This time, thankfully, he didn't actually catch Danyel with his teeth. They were far too sharp for any area other than wrists and mouths. It had taken a few tries, but they'd come to the conclusion Mitka couldn't know where his fangs were well enough to be able to get intimate with any other part of Danyel's body. Which really was a shame. He liked being licked a lot, at least by Mitka. Often enough with Dimitri it turned into a tickle fight.
The dark roar of one of the new jet planes broke into his ruminations. They'd been around for a while, but hadn't been available for anything smaller than major cargo runs. Even the annual migrations from Russia to Kaon and back were still done in prop planes.
Danyel shaded his eyes, even though he was zlinning, not seeing. The habits of childhood died hard. The plane was enormous, big enough to transport a herd of horses. Danyel prayed they hadn't tried to tranship livestock. They'd had enough problems with human health problems.
"Why the jet?" Danyel asked, doubting he'd get an answer.
"Because it was the only one coming back from Europe when Miran managed to get out of Russia." Sevrin sighed.
"What did he do, ride out?" Dimitri asked.
"Yeah, he did, to Berlin." Sevrin shook his head. "From there he caught the train to Paris and then plane across the ocean."
"So you didn't know where he was when you mentioned his establishment to me." Dimitri turned his attention inward. "He must have established within days of my coming here. The veiled were very specific about when they wanted me in the West. Shen them to hell." He tensed all over, nearly splitting his shirt. "I knew when he'd establish too." Dimitri crushed out his cigarette butt, again. "Or at least I could have."
"How does it come to you?"
"Usually with a question." Dimitri spread his fingers. The gesture caught Danyel's purely zlinning attention. It was one he never had to see.
Miran Sergeyevich looked a great deal like his half brother, more than Danyel would have guessed. He was a lot smaller boned, however, and had a delicacy to him Danyel didn't much care for.
"He'll get a lot heavier with age." Dimitri murmured, then stepped forward. Miran dropped his single bag and jumped into his brother's arms. "Its great to see you. What'd you do, run away from home?"
"Papa's nuts." Miran snorted, field alight and gleaming with good health. Although Danyel's breath caught in his throat. Miran was a virgin. He'd never had his field taken down. He turned to Danyel, as if zlinning, the same way Dimitri did.
"We all are." Dimitri pounded on his brother's back so hard Miran nearly fell. Dimitri then offered Miran a hand. When he took it, he yanked Dimitri over his outstretched feet. Dimitri rolled, grabbing Miran's foot on the way by. "You little brat." He yanked Miran's feet out from under him. Danyel winced at the loud smack his butt made when it hit the tarmac.
"Ow," he winced. So did Danyel. That had to hurt.
"Come one, get up." Dimitri stood and dragged Miran up with him. "You're looking good for a kid who ran away from home."
"You're looking great for a bastard who go kicked out on his ass." Miran hit right back, harder.
"I might be a bastard and houseless, but I have a partner." He bowed to Danyel, Mitka staring all the while at Miran. "Danyel, lord Ferris, may I introduce my half-brother, Sharm Lord Miran Sergeyevich?"
"You may." There was something to this that smacked of ritual. He studied Dimitri's brother through half slitted eyes. The fragility he sensed in Miran's field had nothing to do with the fact he'd never had transfer. There was something off about him. Why had he run away from home?
"I'm not officially Sharm Lord anything." He grabbed his bag and nodded to Danyel. The informality rubbed his tentacles in their sheathes. Danyel held out his hand for Miran's bag.
"Dimitri has me well trained in one way." He waited, hand outstretched. Miran never met his eyes.
"Get the dogs." Danyel pulled Dimitri back.
"What?" Miran's eyes tracked on all of them. Mitka slid down his arm.
"Miran," Mitka said, growing until he towered over the young man. "Do you trust me?"
"You're Mitka?" He asked, not looking at the enormous dragon casting a huge shadow over all of them.
"Last time I zlinned." He bent down and sniffed at Miran's bag. "I hope you didn't intend on bringing ten kilos of heroin and as many of harilin into the West. The first I could forgive, with enough persuasion, but never ten kilos of harilin. I want it gone. It will not leave this landing strip."
"Its for medical purposes." Miran had turned dead white.
"Who gave you the bag?" Danyel didn't want to hear the answer. No matter what it was, it wouldn't be good for someone.
"I don't know, some person at the hotel. They were throwing it away."
"Did you ask them about it?"
"Oh, sure," he shrugged. "Wasn't much of a hotel, but people seemed friendly enough. It was this guy, Sels Ferris. You know him?"
Chapter 38
Dimitri glared at the kilos of illegal and very expensive drugs on the table between them. Mitka'd sniffed out the harilin and heroin, both were still in powder form and very easy to find. The harduran, khasti, larilin, opium, allicaine, loricain and parketamine were far better packaged. "What were you trying to do, set up a pharmacy?"
Miran glanced up at him, silent. His nager gave him away.
"There's no one here but Sergei." He closed the door and let Mitka flip the lock. "I don't even know if anyone has a key." Danyel tugged it out of his shirt and grinned.
"He's Techton." Miran pointed.
"He's Sergei by bonding." Dimitri leaned against the table. He'd never much cared for Miran before, but now, both Sharm Lord and in a strange place, the trivialities of growing up rivals for Diomid's attention were just that, trivialities. "When you find a lord or Lord, you'll want him or her with you all the time too." Dimitri put his hands on Danyel's shoulders.
"You could almost pass for a Donor like this." Danyel murmured. Then he rubbed his face against Dimitri's arm. "At least until I do something like this." His nager twinkled in a lazy smile. Danyel'd relaxed so much he'd nearly changed into a different person. He rarely jumped at ambient fluctuations anymore, and even though he still required Mitka's help, could face down a Gen with a temper now.
"He's still Techton." Miran flicked his hand at Danyel. "Get him out of here."
"Still my bratty little brother, I see." Dimitri sighed. "You're in my world now, Miran." He bent down and kissed Danyel's scalp. "You smell so good." He murmured.
"And you're so post you're about to fuck a rock." Miran muttered.
"Hardly," Dimitri shook his head. "So, you waited to set yourself of with a fortune in drugs and then what ... forced prostitution, child labor?
"Everyone does them." Miran glared at him. "You'd probably be a harilin addict if you could have afforded it."
Dimitri slapped him. "Hardly."
"Arkay was."
"That's ancient history." He glared at the drug, still with its black band. "Hell, how did you get ten kilos of pure harilin?" Dimitri picked up the package. A thirty-second of this drug, in its liquid form, was enough to get a Gen high. The aftereffects, however, would never leave them. It was normally only used on terminal cases, where the addiction wouldn't matter, or certain critical psychiatric conditions. Dimitri'd never prescribed harilin.
"Bribed the shipper." Miran crossed his arms over his chest, shutting them both out. "He brought twenty, listed ten on the manifest."
"When did you start collecting?" Dimitri'd never guessed. He put down the harilin and got the allicaine. A relative of cocaine and the external allocaine, the stimulant could spike a Gen's nager from nothing to full in a matter of hours. Dimitri'd used it for critical patients in surgery, so their bodies would overproduce selyn while it was pouring out of them. A lot of other Gens did the drug illegally for the days it would get them on the black market for the inferior selyn they produced under its influence.
"All of these have lethal or serious side effects, Miran." From the sound of it, Miran should have been at Mir, with Vayer and Darya, not Sergei. "Did you barter for them all?"
"Yeah," he pulled out a pack of gum. Dimitri winced. It was a vile habit. Some of the renSimes would indulge in chewing gum, wanting the constant stimulation of the oral nerves. Dimitri thought it perverted in the extreme. "You going to ship it back?"
"You're trying to cut a deal with me." Dimitri accused.
Miran shrugged and pushed the ashtray across the table. "If I am?"
"You should have been Vayer's son." Dimitri glanced at the window frame. Before something else interrupted him, he checked the lock. It had been jimmied recently. He looked at Danyel and flicked his hand. Danyel gave in to his own temptation and lit another cigarette.
Dimitri took it from him. After a deep drag, he stared Miran in the eyes through the blue haze of smoke. "You're here to make money off these people. How many of them are going to die?"
"You're the one with the Sergei gift." Miran leaned back, lacing his fingers over his knee. "You tell me."
"Don't you even care?" Dimitri looked at the drugs again. "I don't even want to think of what all this stuff is worth."
"Millions in Russia." Miran's eyes narrowed. "Do you really want to know the exact amount?"
"No," he shook his head. "And at least ten times that here."
"Yeah," his nager lit.
"You're a virgin, Miran. How can you even think to do something like this?" Dimitri took another drag off his cigarette. He knew nicotine was a drug like the ones spread out in front of him. "Where did you get the capital in the first place? You didn't murder someone for it, did you?"
"Of course not." He held out his arms. "And I certainly don't indulge." His arms were still smooth and untouched. He didn't even have a single bracelet to warn off Simes. "You going to give me one?" He licked his lips, looking across the table at Danyel. "Or should I ask you?"
"Keep your nager off him." Dimitri growled.
"You're keeping him as a pet?" Miran, the little flirt, bit at his lower lip. "Don't you want to know what its like to take a virgin? You ever had one?"
"Miran!" Dimitri slammed his fist down on the table.
"You know my name." He leaned back in his chair and crossed his ankles. "I'm amazed."
"You're being a pain in the ass."
"I thought he would be." Miran glanced down. "At least for a tight ass like you."
"Shut the fuck up, Miran." Dimitri fumed. "I don't want to hear it."
"So you can't fit it in." He ran his tongue over his teeth. "I have some nice little aids to help your problem, big bro."
"You shut up." Danyel leaned forward. "I don't need your backchat, child."
"Oooh, such an insult." Miran rocked his shoulders and looked through his lashes at Danyel. "You like it rough? Or you like to give it rough?"
"Neither," Danyel's nager froze as if he'd been smacked in the face.
"I think you lie." Miran stood. His silk shirt and leather breeches were the finest money could buy and tight enough to show whether or not he'd been circumcised. Miran leaned his hands on the table. "I can give you anything you want, Danyel. Selyn, money, power."
"You sound like a bad melodrama." Danyel snorted and leaned back with a creak. He steepled his hands and tentacles before him. "You think you're such a bad boy." He drawled. Miran sat, with the same lazy smile on his lips, as if he'd already won.
Dimitri never saw Danyel move. Danyel's knife was sunk a cent deep into the chair between Miran's thighs.
"Don't move," he breathed, ruffling Miran's hair. Mitka looked around the other side of Miran's head. "Quit picking on your brother. You could have been coming here for his funeral." Danyel stared straight into Dimitri's eyes as he said this.
Miran's shock was unfeigned. His eyes widened and his field froze. So high, if he'd had any complicity in the attacks, it would have shown. To Danyel if not to him. Danyel shook his head no.
Dimitri turned the other chair around and straddled it. "Someone's been trying to murder me, Danyel, or both of us."
"Shen, when did this start?" Miran rolled his eyes. "I had nothing to do with it. I don't deal in such shit. That was Maryam's work."
"We know that now." Dimitri put his forefingers to his lips. "Who set you up to run drugs, Miran?"
"I did it on my own."
"You lie." Danyel brought his knife to Miran's throat.
"You couldn't murder a high field Gen."
"He assisted an autopsy on a waterlogged corpse. Don't bet your life on it." Dimitri stared into his brother's eyes. "Tell me the truth and I'll let you go."
"What about Sevrin. What about Danyel?"
"You're my bro." Dimitri looked him in the eyes. "You gonna use enforcers?"
"Only on the dealers." His face wasn't young, only his field. "The buyers." He shrugged. "Their choice. Someone wants the lats up their elbows, not my choice." His euphemism for an execution made Dimitri's skin crawl. Even Danyel winced. He was getting very used to Russian culture. "I'm here to make money, big bro. I don't much care bout the serfs."
"You're such a fucking hypocrite." He slammed the chair into the table and stood.
"Like you aren't?" Miran followed Dimitri with his eyes. "Hangin out here at Kaon, free as a bird while everyone back home wants your hide cause you owe them so much money you'll never pay it back. Not playing straight like you do."
"I want a cut." Dimitri leaned on the table. "We need the selyn."
"No we don't." Danyel said with his eyes, even though he kept his field under control, or Mitka did.
"I want you under control, Miran." Danyel's knife vanished. "I don't want you loose on the streets of Navean or Norleans."
"Then I'll go elsewhere."
"No," Dimitri countermanded him. "I have a couple of contacts for the heroin. Let me talk to them. Get you set up."
"Why are you doing this?" Miran's field gave him away again, bubbling happily with greed.
"One, you're my brother. Two, I don't think you'll be able to keep up the supply once that's gone and three, I want to know the underground." Dimitri heard his own voice ring hollow in his ears.
"And you call me a fucking virgin." Miran stood. "Yeah, I might not have had a hard dick up my ass, but I sure as hell know what one's for. And it ain't pissin with." His nager was as hard and slick as crystal.
"You're sure your grandfather's son, without the polish." Dimitri cocked a hip. He wasn't going to let Miran get under his skin again. At least not when he didn't stand a chance of getting revenge.
"Who, old Ivanovich?" Miran snorted. The polite fiction was still that no one really knew Kirina's or Diomid's fathers.
"No, Nashen Fatimovich." Dimitri had the joy of watching the shock flare across Miran's features. "Find out if the lion has teeth before you yank its tail." Dimitri smiled. "Yeah, you're Nashen's grandson. But figure out where not to stick your dick before you have a chance to use it, at least."
Miran's nager flicked over Danyel, as if trying to grope him by selyn. It was the exact same gesture Sevrin used when trying to find someone or something. Danyel shivered a bit.
"Stop," Mitka hissed, fangs cents from Miran's jugular.
"Ah, yes," Miran tried to pull back. It was an honest try. He glanced at Dimitri, eyes wide, as if asking for help.
"Make you a trade." Dimitri put his hand on Miran's shoulder. It didn't do any good. Then Danyel flicked a tentacle at them. Miran straightened in his chair, his eyes nearly popping out. But his nager did stop fondling Danyel. "We can make you a trade."
"No," he gulped. "Not his field. Not his need." He leaned away from Danyel.
"He won't hurt you." Dimitri shrugged nagerically at Danyel. Miran just shuddered.
"You're going to have to either give transfer or let someone strip you before you leave Kaon grounds." Danyel brushed one tentacle over Miran's ear. He tensed, as if even more scared of this than Danyel's knife. Danyel stepped back, making confused gestures with his hands.
"Why are you so afraid of Danyel?" Dimitri'd caught the initial play.
"Because he's a freak, just like you." Miran snorted. "Yeah, I'll give you a cut. Just keep yourself and your killer off my wrists."
"He's no killer." Dimitri glared at his brother.
"How do you know?"
"Because every time I've been attacked, so has Danyel." Dimitri shook his head. "He wouldn't destroy everything he owns just to try to get to me. We're tentacle bound partners."
"Yeah, but is that with all of him?"
"He has no riders." Dimitri shook his head. "You're just trying to rattle me."
"I might be." Miran leaned back, jawing at his gum like a cow with her cud. "So you gonna find me a cute one like him."
"Fuck you, Miran."
"I don't do Gens, Dimitri." He flicked his nail against his front teeth.
Danyel knew Miran would have to get his field taken down. It was splashing all over everything. If he'd been Techton, Danyel would have done it himself and never thought twice about it. But Miran was most certainly not Techton.
"So you did turn out Sergei after all." Dimitri had let Miran put away his sale items, such as they were, and put them in the back of the closet under some linens. They weren't particularly hidden, but at least they were out of sight.
"More or less." This seemed to be one of Miran's favorite phrases. "I don't have the healing talents."
"You have no empathy." Dimitri snorted. "Still my bratty little brother."
"Half brother." Miran's gum chewing was one of the most disgusting habits Danyel's ever run across, as bad, if not worse, than chewing tobacco. Danyel ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to get rid of the awful sensations from Miran. "I'm normal, unlike him. Sure you don't want a little fun?" He looked at Danyel through his lashes.
"No," Danyel winced as Miran popped his gum. Dimitri slid his glasses back up on his nose. Miran chuckled.
"Are you sure? I know I can show you a good time."
"Lay off." Dimitri rolled his eyes. Mitka snickered in Danyel's ear.
"I wanna lay on." Miran licked his lips.
"Give it up." Danyel knocked at Sevrin's door. Sevrin might have had the chance to warn Vanesa of what was to come.
"They're waitin fer ye." Pyotr opened the door for them. Danyel still wasn't sure what to make of the renSime guards Sevrin and supposedly Vanesa had brought back from Russia. They zlinned content enough, even though Danyel could zlin Tanya's ambivalence about giving up little Arkady. If she'd not wanted to do it, Danyel would have fought even Sevrin for her to be able to keep the child. As it was, he really didn't have a tentacle to hold on with.
"Be well and do your best." Miran, surprisingly, didn't smirk. Danyel glanced at him. For the first time he showed someone real respect.
"At your will, m'Lords." Tanya nodded to them all.
"And what do you expect me to do with him!" Vanesa shouted. Maybe they should come back later.
"Find me a Lord." Miran barged in between them.
"Get that filthy gum out of your mouth." Vanesa swatted at Miran with her field. So close to transfer it just brought the smirk back to his lips. He swallowed.
"What gum?" He swaggered to a chair and fell into it with a thump.
"You are the most obnoxious creature I've ever had the misfortune to meet." Sevrin pulled his own massive field away from Miran, as if it were skirts.
"Good thing you can't look in a mirror."
Crack! Danyel'd had it with this child.
"So you do like it rough." Miran purred, wiping the blood from his lip. Danyel hadn't meant to hit him so hard, quite, well maybe.
"I have a general liberality where some laws are concerned. Often enough where the finer points of ownership are involved." Danyel leaned against a table. "But you deal in drugs. Drugs that murder people from what Dimitri says." Danyel hadn't even heard of half the ones he'd mentioned, and his ability to read Russian was non-existent.
"This is a family issue." Dimitri closed the door.
"How can you say that with him here." Miran pointed at Danyel. "He's not family."
"He's my partner." Dimitri growled.
"He's Techton." Miran scoffed. "Great lot of good that'll do you when our beloved sire calls you back."
"He doesn't want me."
"Doesn't matter." Miran shrugged. "He has no heir again."
"I can't believe you came here just to get out of the Demense."
"Why not? Aliana did." Miran gave his lazy cat grin. He would grow up to be better looking, hopefully. Right now he was all feet and hands. "My looks aren't what got me here."
"You can hear what he's thinking?" Dimitri paced.
"I'm not blind." He smirked.
"Give it up." Sevrin sighed. His glorious field had grayed. "I'm the one with the partner."
"I can get one."
"You can get a strip." Vanesa's eyes hardened.
"I can tempt you." Miran licked his lips again.
"Hardly," Vanesa sniffed. "I never had anything to do with little punks like you when I was working as a channel."
Vanesa's use of the past tense made Danyel blink. He knew she was junct. He hadn't known she'd quit channeling altogether.
"Then you let your subordinates? You should be ashamed of yourself." Miran looked up at her. His nager was a candle flame next to Sevrin's enormous bonfire, but still it gleamed bright on the ambient, and steady as no Gen's ever was but when they first established. "You let lesser channels take the virgins?"
"We don't call them virgins, we call them untrained." Vanesa slid forward. "And not this month or any other am I going to put my laterals on you."
"He's going to need a first."
"More or less." Vanesa shrugged.
"You aren't going to short me, are you?" A tremor shook Miran. It was the first chink in his armor Danyel'd zlinned yet. "I won't take it if you are." The facade was back up.
"No," the lines in Vanesa's face deepened. "I know too well what it will do to your development as a Donor."
"You're not going to cut my wrists off, are you?" He tensed, fingers digging into his thighs.
"It would serve you right if I did." Vanesa leaned on Sevrin, physically if not nagerically. His great field wrapped around her, making it so even Danyel couldn't zlin her. "But it wouldn't be fair to the channels you could give transfer to in the future. Where did you go to school, Danyel?"
She'd already asked him the question when she'd proposed he join Kaon. Vanesa had something up her sheathes. "Mountain High." He shrugged. "It was a good enough school, if nothing compared to Rialite or Oxenwhite."
"It takes connections as well as money to get into Rialite." Vanesa sniffed. "I went there, as did Riana and Mikal."
"They're Kaon." Danyel helped her play her hand. "Miran's unaffiliated. Besides, I don't think Rialite would appreciate Kaon sending a known criminal."
"I ain't no thief." Miran straightened. "Besides, I don't require the crap Rialite teaches. It can't be that tough if Dimitri managed."
Dimitri's lips twitched, his dimples reappearing. "You have a lot to learn, m'bro."
"I'll learn it. I've already learned how to make money. Making need can't be that much harder." He snorted. "If nothing else its less dangerous."
"To you or to others?" Danyel still couldn't quite believe Miran's callousness. He didn't look that much younger than Dimitri.
"To me, of course." He shrugged. "That's what counts." His rakish grin shone in his nager. "Its what everyone does."
"Some people care about others."
"Why?" Miran shrugged. "No one ever did me. They all fawned over you, big bro."
"Not our sire." Dimitri flicked his hand, bracelet tapping his wristbones. Danyel zlinned, still fascinated at the effect. Mitka stropped his ear, reminding Danyel of his presence as well. "He almost got me murdered."
"By accident." Miran's eyes reflected the bright sunlight outside. "He at least knows your name."
"Get off the sword." Dimitri grimaced. "You're his darling boy."
"Yeah, just after his firstborn." Miran glared back. "You were always the one we were supposed to grow up like."
"What's this we, business."
"Kirin and I, at least when he was home." Miran shrugged. "Open your eyes, Dimitri. Diomid dotes on you just like everyone else."
"Bullshit, to use your favorite term." Dimitri snorted. "Yeah, right, like he brought me into Sergei right after I established?"
"Like he covered up your little mistake with Khristov?" Miran's field burned with anger. "If it had been me, he'd have let me hang out to rot."
"He nearly had me put under ban."
"He didn't." Miran shrugged. "Did he?"
"No," Dimitri looked away for a moment. "He didn't. Only because Vayer stopped him. He put me on trial for rape."
"Yeah, and you were acquitted." Miran stood. "If you hadn't stood trial, you'd have always been under suspicion." He leaned forward.
"True," Dimitri leaned on the table as well. "But he didn't have to do it. Lord and Ruler Vayer was there. He zlinned the whole thing."
"Vayer's your father." Miran raised his voice. "Do you really think anyone would have believed it had been anything other than a cover up if you hadn't stood trial?"
"No one would have fucking known." Dimitri growled. "I didn't require having the whole sordid affair dragged out in front of the entire Demenses."
"You didn't want to show off your big, bad, dangerous self to all the Lords in the Demense, after Salkov battered you into a wreck?" Miran snorted. "Come on big bro, that might be what you tell the Simes, but I'm not."
"And screw you too." Dimitri spread his fingers on the table. "You don't know what you're talking about. You've never even touched a Sime in transfer. How could you know what its like to have your selyn taken by force."
"It wasn't force." Miran stood and snarled right back at him. "No one could force Mitka."
"Salkov did."
"There was some part of you that wanted it." Miran shot right back. "Admit it. You're ashamed because you liked it."
"Yeah I liked it, but I'm ashamed because I didn't want it."
"Oh, you're upset because a Lord made you feel good."
"Without my permission or will."
"Get real, Dimitri." Miran shook his head, looking up at his brother, his nager the perfect representation of disbelief. "You say I'm the one on the sword. You can't even get over the fact you were taken by a Sime and loved it."
"Salkov raped me, you little bastard."
"You're the bastard."
Dimitri grabbed Miran's shirt and yanked him halfway over the table. "I don't want to hear it. Vayer is my father. I'm no bastard. Diomid was an accident."
"He claims you."
"Stuff you." Dimitri threw his brother back in his chair. "Not that I would."
"Is that why you killed Salkov. Afraid of his dick near your tight little ass?"
Dimitri launched himself over the table. Vanesa just moved back our of the way. Sevrin said, "Move your hair so Mitka can see better, Danyel." Mitka leaned out for a better view.
Miran seemed to have a great deal more enthusiasm when it had been words. Dimitri, however, knew how to use his fists. He didn't throttle Miran, or otherwise do anything that might seriously, permanently harm him, however he pounded Miran's ribs and gut until Danyel stepped away, wincing. Miran never managed to land a single blow, even though he obviously wasn't holding back anything.
"Enough, Dimitri," Sevrin said long after that point. Dimitri got up, sucking at scraped knuckles. Miran glared up at him. Dimitri held out his hand. Miran glared at it, then rolled over and got to his hands and knees. With a lurch, he stood the rest of the way. It wasn't tidy.
"You're Uncle Sevrin's pet too?" Miran looked Dimitri up and down, a bit warily this time.
"I know better than to keep going when he tells me to." Dimitri returned Miran's look. "So, you going to listen to your elders or you going to go to some place like Mountain High?"
"Don't," Danyel shook his head. "They're good people there. Don't send them this lorsh."
"Oh?" Dimitri grinned at him with the side facing Danyel. "You still have friends there?"
"I do." Danyel nodded. "I don't want them stuck with this spoiled brat."
"Dimitri's the one who's been spoiled." Miran said, all the while prodding his own ribs.
"What did you do? Crack them all one by one?"
"I tried." Dimitri's dimples deepened. "He was always bigger growing up. I was the runt."
"Oh," Danyel tried to reconcile this with the two young men standing in the room. Dimitri was considerably larger than his half brother, both in height and width, almost half again Miran's size, actually.
"Well, I, for one, after that little display, am tempted to put you in Dimitri's charge." Vanesa's comment made everyone stare at her as if she's spawned Mitka's twin sister. "But I don't think I want to do that to my friends."
"He's really not usually this bad." Dimitri licked at another of his scraped knuckles. "He's just overwrought with the excitement of it all."
"You make me sound so Gen."
"You are." Dimitri shot back. "Or we wouldn't be having this little conversation."
"No, I'd have died before birth." Miran prodded at another of his sore ribs. Some of the fight seemed to have left him.
"True enough." Dimitri shrugged. "So, are you going to listen now?"
"Yeah," he flopped back down in his chair, started to cross his arms over his chest, winced, and put his hands on the table. "I need a Sime."
"Would have been a solid first half an hour ago." Vanesa glanced at Dimitri. He shrugged and shook out one of his hands. "Are your discussions with your brothers usually so lively?"
"Kirin's just a kid." Dimitri shrugged. "Miran pounded me into the dirt often enough. He used to be bigger than me."
"Oh," Danyel bit back any further comments on the subject. Miran just glared at his older brother. "The only channel at the local center I can think of who'd match him is Lorn."
"Let me call around." Vanesa got the blank look of a zlinning Sime and winced. "You did beat him up."
"Yeah," Dimitri straightened a rag rug on the floor with his toe. "He deserved it."
"I'm going to be black and blue." Miran complained.
"Suits. You always wanted to be Fatima or Mir." Dimitri shrugged.
"Yeah, you got all the luck." Miran shifted in his seat. "I'm not at all hungry now."
"I bet." Sevrin snorted. "So, I don't know if Lorn's that great a choice. He's really Techton and I don't think we can slip you onto the rolls fast enough to not arouse his suspicions."
"Too bad Cami's dead." Dimitri sighed.
"What happened to her?" Vanesa straightened.
"Dead," Dimitri repeated, staring her in the eyes.
"Oh," Vanesa winced. "She asked?"
"Yes," Dimitri glanced down. "She was a good kid."
"What'd she die of?" Miran asked.
"She was really junct." Dimitri's voice went flat.
"Oh," Miran shut up. It was an honest miracle. "I'm not that much of a jerk, Danyel."
"You're just in hard need." Dimitri rolled his eyes. "Even if you're richer than Sharmiz."
"Hey, some of us make our own luck." Miran shrugged, hissed, then prodded another of his sore ribs. "I think you broke a few."
"Nah, just cracked em a bit." Dimitri held out his hand. "Lets get you patched up."
"After you were the one who pounded on me?"
"You rather have Sevrin do it?" Dimitri asked, Mitka chuckling softly in Danyel's ear.
"No," Miran glanced at him. "He'd probably pound me into goo with his nager by accident."
"No, I'd do it on purpose if you tried to back talk me." Sevrin put his arms around Vanesa. "Besides, two high field Sharm Lords in one place isn't good for anyone's temper."
"I'm still not used to it." Miran really had come around. "So, big bro, gonna work some of your Sergei magic on me?"
"Nah, just some tape." Dimitri yanked Miran to his feet. His brother wobbled a bit, then crabbed after him. "I really did do you."
"Yeah, ye did." Miran's nager had shrunk around his body the same way a dog would tuck their tail between their legs. "Could you teach me to fight like that?"
"I had motivation." Dimitri steered him to the bathroom. "Do you have any fifteen cent wide tape?"
"In the cabinet, near the back." Vanesa shouted to him. "Sevrin got some for me when he was teaching me to spar. I wasn't very good at it."
"I can tell." Dimitri's voice echoed. "There's not a whole lot left." The sound of tape ripping off the roll came to them.
"Am I going to loose the hair on my chest?" Miran fretted.
"You didn't have to start the fight." Dimitri replied. Miran hissed. His pain rang out into the other room on the ambient. Danyel winced and scratched between Mitka's shoulderblades. This always tickled him into stepping up his protections. Mitka licked his ear then stuck his head down Danyel's shirt.
Danyel glanced up at Vanesa and Sevrin. He had the oddest grin on his face. "Well, I finally met someone ruder than I am."
"They're brothers." Vanesa sighed, leaning against her mate. Danyel had always wondered what it would be like to find his matchmate, particularly after zlinning Vanesa and Sevrin together. Now he found he didn't much care. He stroked Mitka's back, right between his wings. Mitka purred, then slid down inside Danyel's shirt, getting himself rather stuck.
Danyel tugged on Mitka's tail, the right way this time. Mitka tried to get under Danyel's belt. "Not here, silly." He nibbled the tip of Mitka's tail.
"Why not?" He turned around and looked up at Danyel.
"You zlin pregnant." Vanesa pointed with a tentacle.
Danyel shrugged. "Because I want to be able to pin Dimitri to the sheets with only you for an audience."
Mitka was silent for a long moment. "OK." He said. "We ditch Miran, then we roll around in bed?"
"Yeah," Danyel grinned, rubbing his hand over Mitka's chest, just brushing the good spots. Mitka squirmed. The feel and sound of his scales got Danyel going immediately. He moved over behind the table. Vanesa chuckled softly. Danyel winked at her.
"I'm not so sure I like this view." Sevrin muttered.
"I'm not your portable eyes." Mitka poked his head out of Danyel's collar.
"Oh, I know that, silly." Sevrin sighed. "I do appreciate it though when you do let me borrow them."
Mitka warmed all over and squirmed against Danyel's chest. This felt really good. He stroked Mitka under the chin. "I wanna go back to bed. Its almost turnover."
"So it is." Danyel winced.
"Want another bracelet?" Sevrin grinned, missing him by a bit, but Danyel was more than used to the effect.
"He looks so good with the ones he has on." Danyel lowered his voice. "Is there anything else I can give him?"
"Not as binding."
"He's not mine." Danyel sighed.
"No?" Sevrin snorted. Vanesa elbowed him in the ribs. "I think you short him, Danyel."
"I know I do." Danyel glanced away. "Miran is far closer to my cycle." He'd zlinned the young man. The similarity in field strength between the two of them was unmistakable. Not close, but nothing like the gulf between himself and Dimitri.
"Miran's still a child." Sevrin said softly, field flicking toward the bathroom.
"Dimitri's not a whole lot older."
"Only in years." Sevrin sighed. "I think you wrong Dimitri in not truly giving him a bracelet."
"I want to give him something worthy."
"That's easy to solve." Vanesa snorted.
"I'm broke." Danyel admitted. "I've pawned everything I own but my knife and gun."
"I still can't zlin how a Sime can shoot, but be that as it may." Vanesa shook her head. "You could join Kaon. I'm sure I can find a way to slide it into the books."
"No," Danyel shook his head. "I want it to be from me. Can you understand that?"
"You're a romantic." Sevrin snorted, grinning. "I'd never thought to zlin the day."
"Yeah, well," Danyel glanced toward the bathroom door.
Miran was muttering something about, "not so hard!"
"I want it to be from me to him. Not from Kaon to Sharm Lord Sergei." He'd never spoken Dimitri's title out loud. It zlinned to hold the weight of centuries of tradition. "I love Dimitri. It isn't Kaon's feelings I want to give him."
"I understand." Sevrin said quietly.
"I'm glad you do." Vanesa blinked. "You accepted the bracelets I gave you. They were paid for with Kaon money."
"You're a part of Kaon, love." Sevrin nuzzled her hair. A flare of ruddy desire brightened the ambient for a moment.
"If he joins Kaon, he'll be a part of it too."
"I respect Kaon tremendously, Vanesa."
"Don't go on with the, 'lets just be friends,' talk. I've heard it before." Vanesa sighed. "You're not ready. When you are, Kaon will be waiting for you."
"With Dimitri on my arm?" He asked.
"Dimitri's changed." Vanesa sighed. "I don't know. When you're ready to pledge, ask me then."
"I'll be ready to pledge when you'll accept Dimitri." Danyel promised.
"Oh, shen, Danyel!" Vanesa growled. "I can't take him the way he is. He's a killer. You heard about Cami."
"I was there." Danyel sighed. "It was beautiful."
"What about the gun?"
"That," Danyel sighed, looking out the window at a sparrow searching for twigs for its nest.
"Yeah, that," Vanesa's nager darkened further. "I know you didn't buy it and I know you didn't have it before Dimitri. Where did you get it? Off a body?"
"Yeah," Danyel admitted, looking her in the eyes. "He raped and murdered his own son."
"His son was a child?" Sevrin asked.
"Yeah, seven," Danyel stared him in the eyes, for all the good it would do. Hopefully his resolve would come through.
"A seven year old child?" Vanesa leaned back further into Sevrin's embrace.
"Yeah, and he was trying to buy Lukus ambrav Kaon's son, Kreg."
"Shidoni, Danyel, why didn't you tell us?" Vanesa usually only swore when she was furious, like now.
"It happened a little fast." He couldn't get that cold, lonely night out of his mind. Volen's body hitting the water. None of it had faded, only strengthened with time. Of course doing the autopsy on Volen's corpse hadn't helped any. "Didn't Lukus stop by?"
"No," Vanesa replied.
"Oh shen," Danyel sighed. "Do you know if Tami ambrav Kaon is still in Hillview?"
"What's a member of Kaon doing there?" Vanesa straightened instantly. "Pyotr, go get me Tami ambrav Kaon from Hillview. We have the space in our infirmary."
"At your will, my Lord." Pyoter handed his wife his spear and took off running, although not augmenting.
"How's he going to get there without taking all day?" Danyel blinked. He'd never seen Vanesa quite so forceful before.
"He learned how to drive while we weren't looking." Someone started a car outside, probably Pyotr, and left rubber leaving. "I think he learned from Iter."
Danyel winced. "Then it won't take long."
"I just hope they haven't wrecked her mind completely." Vanesa shook her head. "I keep Kaon small enough to know everyone who claims householding status."
"Lukus didn't have a ring. Dimitri found one on the child rapist's hand, I think, and gave it to him." Danyel didn't want to think what might have happened to Kreg and Lukus, particularly Kreg. "Kreg could grow up at any time."
"If he establishes, living on the street ... ?" Sevrin trailed off.
"He'll be fair game for every killer south of eighty-fifth."
"Your old neighborhood?"
"Yeah," Danyel admitted. "Shen," he looked around. "What was he thinking?"
"Probably didn't want to admit to his problems. Particularly not post."
"He's not post now."
"No, he's in need, and likely to try to sell Kreg again."
"Is that what he was trying to do?" Vanesa headed for the door.
"He's only a ren." Dimitri blinked.
"Shen you too." Vanesa growled, pushing past him. "He's Kaon."
"He doesn't think he is."
"Well I'm not going to let him or Tami go so easily."
"Someone should be here for when Pyoter gets back with Tami." Danyel looked at the two leaders of Kaon. "You know Lukus well enough to spot him?"
"Yeah," Vanesa looked Danyel in the eyes. "But I don't know the area."
"Shen," Danyel growled. "Dimitri's the best healer in the country." And he didn't want him back down there. It was bad enough with someone trying to kill him deliberately. South of eighty-fifth he might as well have a sign on his nager saying cheap kills.
"I've been down there before." Dimitri grumbled, although he didn't try to follow Vanesa. "But you're right about healing. Can you mind heal at all, Miran?"
"Don't know. Never tried." He moved stiffly, but had regained a lot of color to his face.
"Hold still." Dimitri approached him.
"Is this going to hurt?" Miran didn't exactly wince, he looked too resigned for such a gesture.
"Maybe," Dimitri waved Danyel forward. "I want you to show paranoid schizophrenia."
"You don't ask for much." Danyel closed his eyes and concentrated. He'd only zlinned one case, and he'd died shortly thereafter from liver failure. He'd also been a terminal alcoholic. Someone had dragged him into the center so he didn't take up room anymore under a bridge somewhere.
"You can do better than that." Dimitri scoffed. Stung, Danyel ran his tentacles through his hair and really concentrated on it. The sense of alienation and fear, the knowledge of being hounded from home to gutter by the strangers with guns under their coats, the terror that every breath would be his last if he didn't convince someone the people with guns would turn them on everyone else. "Pretty darn good."
Danyel blinked himself out of the illusion. Miran was plastered against the far wall. Vanesa hid behind Sevrin. Sevrin's field shielded her, but even he'd backed away.
"You could use that as a weapon."
"I'd rather not." Danyel blinked his vision clear. He'd tried to save the man, even though it had been hopeless. He always did.
"You took that from life, didn't you?"
"Yeah," Danyel glanced down. "So, can Miran do it?"
"Not in this lifetime." He shrugged. "I'm surprised he can even stand. You hit him pretty hard."
"So did you." Danyel pointed out. "I don't think you'll be after my arms again."
"Not on your life." Miran pried himself off the wall. His shoulders had left damp spots on it. "I ain't gettin near him." He flicked a thumb against his teeth.
"Yeah, and unfuck you too, punk." Danyel chuckled. Miran laughed. He was just playing, by the same rules Danyel'd grown up with. "Take him with you."
"I'm unarmed." He glanced at Danyel's waistband.
"That's not detachable." Danyel winked.
"The other is." Miran cocked a hip, then thought better of it and straightened again.
Danyel pulled the gun out of the back of his pants. He still had his knife. "You know how to use one of these?"
"In theory." He came around Danyel's side. "I've never seen one so fancy."
"Semi-auto, necked down to forty cal from forty five."
"Stop a Sharm Lord, I bet you." Miran didn't reach for it.
"Yeah," Danyel glanced at Dimitri. Mitka shivered against his neck. Danyel'd never thought of it that way. It was easy to stop a Sime with a gun. Single hit and the shock would drop them, even if it didn't murder them outright. But Gens took more stopping. They weren't so badly affected by the kinetic shock.
Danyel worked the action, then dropped the clip and cleared it.
"I'm surprised you trust that thing." Sevrin said.
"I cleaned it." Danyel let the slide down on an empty chamber and tried to hand it to Miran. He refused to take it. "Someone had played with the hammer release." Danyel locked the slide back. Miran took the gun and sighted it at the far wall, toward the bathroom. Smart lad. He knew what he was doing.
"Slide release here?" Those weren't quite the right words, but Danyel figured it out well enough.
"Yeah, and safety here." He pointed out both the grip safety and the active one. Miran glanced at the holster against Danyel's back. "Oh yeah," he pulled it out and gave it to Miran. "It went off because you tipped it just the right way."
"I thought you'd left it without a round up?"
"Yeah," Danyel said. "But anything could have happened there, even someone just messing with it. Its a piece of machinery, not a living thing." He sighed. "Besides, if whoever can tinker with a gun like that wants me dead, well, there isn't a whole lot I can do about it other than making sure my own weapons are as safe as they get."
"True enough." Miran had to let out his belt a bit and even still did not look comfortable.
"Here," Dimitri grabbed a lightweight linen coat off Sevrin's coat rack. It was a bit loose, but Miran could hide the gun easily on the outside of his pants wearing it. "I don't have any brothers to spare."
"Yeah right." Miran smiled. "Know what you mean." He gave Dimitri a huge hug. "You watch yourself with Tami. Danyel was scary crazy."
"He's pretty damn scary sane." Dimitri licked his lips. This was supposed to be a complement?
"Yeah," Miran wiggled his eyebrows at Danyel. The lascivious effect was totally spoiled by the glint of laughter in his eyes. "He's scary. Too bad you got him first."
"You're just outa luck."
"Then I better get some more." Miran followed Vanesa and Sevrin to the door. "So what's up with these car things?" Floated up to his ears.
Dimitri rolled his eyes. Then he rocked his head on his neck.
"Tense?" Danyel reached up and dug his fingers into the rock hard muscles.
"I love my brothers, really I do."
"You sound like you're trying to convince yourself of the fact." Danyel steered him to a chair. "Was I really so scary?"
"Yeah," Dimitri sat, leaning back into the caress. "You were. About as scary as my father, Lord and Ruler Vayer."
"How? Why?" Danyel hadn't done anything so outrageous. Vayer carried a big sword and zlinned like he knew how to use it.
"You could have murdered anyone here in the room but me with your projection of insanity." Dimitri zlinned serious.
"How?" Danyel repeated, still rubbing Dimitri's neck. Danyel absolutely adored the purring feedback Dimitri gave him for such ministrations, so he kept doing them. Fair trade, he figured.
"When you project like that you take over the mind of anyone nearby who isn't Sergei. There's no defense against insanity other than insensitivity or enough empathy for the condition to be able to discern reality through the delusions." Dimitri leaned back all the way and looked up at him. He licked his lips. Danyel got the hint, bent down, and kissed them. Dimitri reached around and pulled Danyel to him.
"I don't know if we have time for a romp." Danyel glanced out the window.
"We do." Dimitri grinned. "And I want you more now than ever before."
"Because I'm dangerous?" Danyel joked.
"Yeah," Dimitri grinned. "You're dangerous. Just like I am."
Chapter 39
Dimitri glared at his pants. He didn't want to get dressed. He wanted to take advantage of Sevrin's featherbed again.
"Are you sure he won't get upset?" Danyel asked, waving his feet in the air. His tight little butt was sticking up too. Dimitri patted it, loving the sound his hand made against the tight muscles.
"Oh yeah, do that some more." Danyel gave to the caress.
"I wish." He grabbed his pants with his toes and shook them out. Even so he leaned over and kissed Danyel's wonderful behind. "Yeah, there's more to sex than sticking my dick up your ass."
"I think so." Danyel wrinkled his nose, probably at Dimitri's crude humor. "I wish I could do it though."
"Why?" Dimitri stood and pulled his pants up. His shirt was a bit more difficult. Danyel'd bitten him hard a couple of times. He settled it over the bite marks. Fortunately Danyel also had great aim and they didn't show.
"Because you want it." Danyel matched his gestures, while staring at Dimitri. He got his shirt backwards. Dimitri snickered.
"Not really," he demurred, tucking in his shirt and buckling his belt. "I love thee as thou art. Even if I wish you were smaller."
Mitka snickered. He was still flat on his back, not having to put on any clothes, lucky beast. Mitka made a flatulent sound, and not with his lips.
"You're such a slut." Dimitri flipped the blankets under him. Mitka bounced a couple of times and then sprawled even more.
"You like it." Mitka purred. "I'm happy."
"Yeah, you get the Sime's share of attention." Danyel yanked on his tail. Mitka stretched with the gesture, growing to fill the bed, as he usually did. "I do wish I could do it."
"Enough," Dimitri put his finger on Danyel's lips. "I'm happy with things the way they are."
"If you're sure." Danyel's nager had grayed.
"You're anticipating turnover." Dimitri couldn't look into those dark, almost black, eyes without loosing himself in their luster.
"I want to do it before." Danyel set his jaw.
"I'm happy with what we have." Dimitri sat next to him on the bed. "I adore making love with you." He put his arm around Danyel's still bare shoulders. They were damp with sweat and he smelled wonderful. "You are the most wonderful Sime alive."
"Right now." He sighed, shoulders slumping. "What if something happens to me?"
"What if something happens to me?" Dimitri asked, a quiver of unease running through him. "I can't say I'd be thrilled. I'd miss you more than I could ever say." He nuzzled Danyel's black curls, drinking in the smell and heat of him with each deep breath. "I love thee, Danyel. Don't think I wouldn't miss thee."
"That isn't what I meant." He stood again and ran his tentacles through his hair.
"Then what did you mean?" Dimitri watched, since he couldn't touch.
"I meant since we haven't had real sex."
"Oh, bullshit, Danyel," Dimitri stood. "I've enjoyed every minute I've spent in bed with you. That's more important than any technical definition."
"Don't you want more?"
"More than what? Thy love?" The ache in Dimitri's heart grew to fill his whole chest. "Do you think less of me because I won't take you?"
"No," Danyel shook his head. "But for you, well, it isn't because you cramp up every time we get close."
"No, its purely mental." Dimitri snorted. "You have a good physical reason to not do it. This is a stupid argument, Danyel. Drop it, please." He begged with eyes and field alike.
"Can you tell me honestly you wouldn't wonder what it would have been like?"
"No," he admitted, looking at Mitka. "I can't."
"Neither can I." His clipped words pattered to the floor between them. "Tonight."
"Its too close to turnover." Dimitri protested.
"I want it, this month." His field hardened to adamantine.
"No," Dimitri protested. "I'm the healer. You're not ready. I'll do it." He closed his eyes, thinking of how badly he wanted Danyel, but unable to keep from shying away from the logistics.
"I don't want to hurt you." Danyel's field grayed further, trembling on the edge of crashing.
"You won't." He gulped down his apprehension. "At least so far from transfer, we'll both be able to go slow."
"You're scared, Dimitri." Danyel took Dimitri's hand in both of his. "What are you so afraid of?"
"That I'll lose your love, because of my fear."
"No," Danyel squeezed Dimitri's captive hand. "We'll wait."
"I want you so bad." He felt as if he were reaching across an abyss.
"Can you get a message to Avilan?" Danyel grinned, his slightly crooked teeth making it look even wickeder.
"Not before turnover." Dimitri grinned right back. "But I want to know before our next transfer."
"Yeah," Danyel's grin widened. "Me too."
When Pyotr brought Tami back to Kaon, there was little Dimitri could do but watch her through the one way mirror. Her hair was matted and tangled half way down her back, he skin covered with oozing sores and filth caked all over her body. However, she was also so delicately balanced on the edge of self destruction, if Dimitri did so much as show his face, too soon, she'd destroy herself with her own overcharged field.
"I take it Hillview doesn't believe in stripping Donors." Dimitri wished with all his heart he could go to her. Right now she was crouched in a corner, eyes wide, unseeing, and terrified. Pyoter'd said he was going out to wash out the car. Dimitri knew he was going to go get a stiff drink. Dimitri didn't blame him one minute.
"Or washing them, it seems." Danyel winced away from the shielding mirror. Tami glared at it anyway.
"I know you're there." She struggled against the straightjacket binding her arms across her front. "Get me out of this thing. I'll tell you where Lukus hid the gold. Its under the safe." She cackled wildly. "At least part of it. Enough to prove I'm right. Get it and come back. I'll help you."
Dimitri looked away, trying to tune out her ravings.
"Could she be right?" Danyel asked.
He shook his head. "She's raving." Dimitri rubbed at his face. "They didn't even have the decency to sedate her often enough to keep her physically healthy."
"Using what?" Danyel asked. "We don't have half the pharmacopeia you do in Russia."
"Oh shen," Dimitri turned his attention back to the woman. "And the only drug my idiot little brother brought that would be of any use is harduran, and you can't strip a Gen under its influence." There was another, but the risk was even greater.
"Why not?" Danyel asked.
"Because the human body slows or even stops processing selyn under its influence." He continued to watch Tami out of the corner of his eye. She'd stopped struggling, at least. Now panting and staring around at things only she could see. "If you try to strip a Gen under its influence, well, they can't release it."
"Transfer burn?"
"Like you wouldn't believe." Dimitri snorted. "Its the ultimate selyn resistance drug."
"How did you develop all of these?" Danyel blinked. "Even more, why did Miran bring harduran?"
"We developed them over time and with a great deal of experimentation." Dimitri sighed. "The same as any other drug. Miran brought harduran because one, if you give it to a Gen, you can kill them, no matter the strength differential. If I took any, a renSime could kill me. Second, some Simes will do harduran to stretch out the period between transfers ... or kills."
"Oh," Danyel shivered all over. "Have I ever said how much of a jerk your little brother is?"
"Yeah, he's a jerk." Dimitri looked at Tami again. She was crying now, the heartbroken, utterly unselfconcious tears of the truly mad. "But he's my brother, Danyel."
"Why'd you talk about going into business with him?" Danyel stood at his side. "She looks so lost."
"She is." Dimitri said. "I require a portion of all of the drugs he brought with him."
"Even harduran?"
"Even harilin." Danyel made up his mind. "Get some of it for me."
"Wasn't that the drug Miran said you would become addicted to?"
"Yeah," Dimitri couldn't look away from Tami. "Get me a gram, a twenty cc vial, a syringe and an angel."
"I don't know about that last." Danyel snorted. "How about some alcohol while I'm at it."
"Half a liter of starka for me and enough to at least make a gesture at cleaning off a patch of her skin." He watched Tami curl up on the floor in a fetal ball, still crying. The tears pooled beneath her cheek and she stared into the distance. "Go on. Maybe we can get her cleaned up all the way."
"I'd like that." Danyel turned.
"And be ready to strip her." Dimitri added, knowing Danyel was probably the only Sime who could do it and not get sucked into her madness.
"I can't." Danyel paused, near the door.
"You're the only one who can." Dimitri breathed, not daring the chance of disturbing Tami as her eyelids drooped. "No one else I've ever met could."
"Me?" Danyel snorted. "I'm just a Second Order Ferris."
"Yeah, but you have a healer's heart." Dimitri turned from the glass for a moment. Danyel's eyes were wide. "You're a healer."
"Not like you are."
"With drugs and knives?" Dimitri glanced back at Tami. "And needles?"
"Yeah, and with your hands." Danyel left. Dimitri sighed, wishing he had more than those few things to heal Tami with. The extreme forms of mental illness rarely responded to anything but the most extreme treatment, often enough involving drugging the person insensible. In all the generations of Sergei healers, only a handful had managed to reverse any of the major psychiatric illnesses, and then only for short periods of time and in constant contact with the victim.
Danyel forced himself not to flinch away when Dimitri uncapped the needle. He'd even been unable to search through Dimitri's big white bag to find it. There were too many things in there he wasn't ready to deal with. Watching him heat and then dissolve the harilin in the saline solution he'd gotten out of his bag hadn't been so bad, but that needle was huge.
Dimitri snorted at him, holding the syringe back along his hand like a hidden knife. "Yeah, close enough." He visibly braced himself as well. "Lets do it." With a flick of his free hand, he unlatched the trick door knob. Tami didn't stir, physically. Her nager'd flared into wakefulness the moment they'd entered. Danyel gave thanks again for Dimitri's forethought, even though he hated having anything bind his forearms.
Tami's eyelashes fluttered a bit and Danyel could see the faintest flash of eye beneath them. Her nager twined around them, but unfocused, unlike the Russians Danyel'd become accustomed to. Tami couldn't zlin, or whatever they called it.
"Hey, sweetheart," Dimitri put his hand on Tami's shoulder. She jerked back, eyes wide, but field wary, not terrified. The stink of her unwashed body made Danyel wrinkle up his nose in protest.
"Yeah, I stink." She curled her lip. "What of it? You gonna keep me filthy too? Figures. I know what you're up to. All of you. You just don't want to listen. Think you're too good." Her ramblings went on and on.
"Of course I'll listen to you." Dimitri held out his bare arms. "See, I'm a Gen like you are."
Danyel held out his arms too, showing his long sleeves.
"You could be a Sime in disguise. They are all, you know. Killers, all of them."
"A Ferris Sime, tolerate anything but the best?" Danyel knelt at her side. He brushed her gummy, matted hair from her face as gently as he could. His tentacles ached to come out and clean her filthy hair, run through it, touch its softness. He pulled back, suddenly afraid of the sense of familiarity he'd gotten. She was another man's wife. What was wrong with him?
Dimitri glanced up at him then back at Tami. "What kind of Donor are you? I've always been fascinated by Donors. They wouldn't let me into the training." He added this last with a sigh of wistfulness.
"They don't let just anyone in." She stared at Danyel, tongue tracing her cracked and bleeding lips, as if they were as soft and smooth as silk. Danyel backed away, fear tightening his skin. "You're no Gen." Her tone changed completely, now purring with a twisted pleasure. "You are a Ferris Sime." She rocked back and forth. "I'm a Second. High second, fast enough for first, but not enough selyn."
"I'm second." Danyel answered, loosing control over his tongue completely in the face of Tami's madness. His heart pounded in his throat. He looked at the door. Dimitri shot a frantic glance at him. Mitka nearly throttled him.
"Its him!" Tami shrieked, pointing straight at Mitka. "The dragon who will eat us all. Kill it!" Her panic fueled nager nearly dragged Danyel into her madness. If she'd threatened anyone but Mitka, it would have worked. As it was, the absurdity of it all broke Danyel out of his trance.
Danyel started to unfasten the sleeves of his shirt to get at the silk Dimitri'd used to bind his wrists.
"Don't," Dimitri stopped him. He turned Tami over and unbuckled the straightjacket. "I have to get this into a vein."
"What are you doing?" She stopped struggling again. "Are you trying to help me? Oh, Lukus, what have I done to you!" She howled, a broken, tormented sound. It echoed off the walls and wrenched at Danyel's heart. Tears blinded him for a moment before he could blink them away. "I'll hold still. Oh please, I want to see my baby again. I want to see Kreg one last time before I die. Kill me before I hurt them again." Tame collapsed into a sobbing heap. She didn't even twitch when Dimitri slid the needle in. Less than Danyel, actually.
She sighed, eyes rolling up in her head. "I feel so good." Her purr was devoid of sex, but yet was as sensual as Danyel could imagine. "What did you do?" She licked her lips, eyes completely dazed.
"Its a drug." Dimitri said softly. He nodded toward Danyel's wrists. Danyel removed the strips of cloth and felt Tami's nager, without any more protection than Mitka, for the first time.
"She's my matchmate." He murmured, frozen in place.
Mitka nipped him on the ear. "You're not going to leave me for that?"
It was so obnoxious, Danyel could only chuckle. "No, I'm not." He stroked Mitka's head.
"I've seen lots of things, but never a Ferris with a dragon." Her lazy smile could have been tempting in other circumstances.
"Mitka is Dimitri's." He pointed at his lover.
"Oh, how cute." She purred, rocking her shoulders. "I thought when I first saw him, I might have been crazy." Her voice was as soft and sweet as honey. "But I know I'm sane. Everyone just thinks I'm crazy." She shoved her breasts together and pointed them at him. Danyel wasn't at all interested. "You don't think I'm crazy, do you?"
"I think you require some help." He tugged forward a lock of her hair.
"Its filthy." She sniffled. "Will you help me wash my hair?"
"I think you'll feel better if you let Danyel strip you."
"I've heard of you." She licked her lips again. Her field shimmered like the golden cloth of the dress Darya'd worn for the photo-shoot. "I always wanted a chance at you. But Lukus wouldn't let me."
"Why not?" Danyel looked at Dimitri for an instant for guidance.
Mitka murmured in his ear. "Keep talking until you feel comfortable with her."
Danyel wasn't sure he ever would, but decided to try. It certainly couldn't hurt, and she seemed to be having fun now.
"Because he was cheap." She hiccuped, then put her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry. I haven't had anything to drink."
"Aren't you thirsty?" Dimitri asked, his suggestion as blatant as a whore's wink.
"Yes, I am." Tami didn't seem to mind at all. Beneath the filth and the madness, Danyel could see the brilliant, beautiful woman she must have once been. She took the glass from Danyel and started to guzzle it.
"Slowly," Dimitri tipped the glass down. She smiled, teeth showing over the edge of the glass. "You have such a pretty smile."
"I'm a married woman, Sosu." She looked at Danyel out of the corner of her eye.
"And I'm a married man." He replied, honestly, for the first time. Usually he lied when he said as much. He got asked at least a few times a week.
"Awwwww," she sighed, pouting. "But you're so pretty." Dimitri's dimples made an appearance.
"Thank you," he sat, feeling the ache in his knees. Even if Tami jumped him, there would have been little he could do to get out of the way.
"I won't hurt you." She sniffled. "I never meant to hurt anyone."
"I know you didn't." Dimitri stroked her hair. "I know you didn't. But you did."
"I couldn't stop myself." She bit at her lower lip, then took another sip of her drink. "What did you give me? I've never felt like this." Her eyes wandered around the room. They occasionally focused on things, rarely anything Danyel could distinguish, then moved on. "The Techton controllers are still sending evil channels to chain me for the Secret Pens, but I don't really care." Her brows furrowed. "I don't remember not caring about them before."
"The drug I gave you is a very strong painkiller." Dimitri spoke in matter of fact terms, as if to another physician or Donor. Tami leaned against the wall. Danyel could smell fresh blood where she had to have torn open old sores, but there was nothing of it in her field. "I've rarely seen it work this well on a schizophrenic patient."
"Is that what I have?" She giggled into her glass. "I'd wondered. How can I make them go away? I know they're going to get me, even if I don't care about it now."
Dimitri's half smile was the saddest thing Danyel'd ever seen. Another tear escaped.
"You're making him cry." Tami hugged herself with her arms. "Don't make him cry."
"I'll try not to." Dimitri took the glass from Tami's unresisting fingers before she could drop it. "I'm sad, and he zlins it, because I don't know if I can heal you."
"I'm not sick." She reverted in an instant, then giggled. "I guess I am."
"Yeah," he grinned, even as his blue-gray eyes remained sad. "You are a very sick woman Tami. I don't know what I can do for you."
"Can you make me better, even a little?"
"Only like you are now." He put his hand on her ankle, one of the few uninjured places on her body. "We, Danyel and I, can get you cleaned up, heal your physical wounds, strip the selyn making you worse and give you the chance to speak with your family again."
"Lukus, Kreg, what have I done to them?" She bit at her lip. "Oh, I didn't mean it. Oh, no, please."
Dimitri caught her face in his hands. "Look at me, Tami." His deep voice rumbled around them, soothing even Danyel's sympathetic upset. "Look at me."
"Such pretty eyes." She purred back, as rapt as any rodent facing a raptor. "He's married. How about you?"
"Afraid I'm married too." His grin was a trifle wicked.
"You're so young!" She leaned forward, slipping Dimitri's grasp, and planted a huge kiss on his lips. "Nice to kiss, too."
Dimitri's attention flicked over Danyel. "You're not the only one who thinks so." He grinned wider. "Up for a bath."
"Yes," she groaned. "Oh, please," she got to her knees and put her hands together in front of her. "I want to be clean!"
Danyel chuckled. "Then let me go get your bath."
"Send Tanya for it." Dimitri reminded him.
"Oh yeah," he played along. "I forgot I'm not supposed to do all the work around here."
"You got a Sime to do real work? A Ferris Sime? I'm impressed. What's your secret?"
"Love," Dimitri grinned, his tongue sticking out a bit.
"You're together?" Her tone was that of a school girl hearing about sex for the first time. "Oh, I never thought you could."
"Neither did I." Danyel grinned, dragging in the huge tub, with Tanya's help, and the coasters underneath it. A bit of water sloshed out onto the floor, but it was far better than the tiny, tiny open shower in the corner of the room.
"Get me a hose." Dimitri shouted to Tanya before she closed the door.
"What kind?"
"Long, two of them," he shouted back.
It didn't take her long. She slid those through the safety panel. Tami was no threat in her current condition, but Danyel appreciated her caution. Any high field Donor could injure a renSime, even if they didn't mean to. Right now, Tami had no control over her nager at all. "How did Pyotr manage?"
"He's really good at not zlinning." Dimitri answered. He rigged up the hoses so a steady stream of water flowed into the tub while the dirty was taken away. "We have bathing pools like this at home."
"Where do you come from?" At the moment, Tami gave the impression of complete lucidity. Then she giggled, at something only she could see, and the illusion was broken. "Butterflies!" She reached out.
"Pretty ones?" Dimitri asked.
"Blue and green and purple ones." Her smile was that of a child, completely unselfconcious. It was a beautiful smile and Danyel could seen the amazing woman she must have once been.
"I like those colors." Danyel plucked at his shirt. "I don't like black."
"And you call yourself Ferris." She stroked up against him like a giant cat. "Oh," she gasped, loosing her balance for a moment. Danyel caught her elbow. "You're so strong!"
"Thank you." He hoped he was getting the hang of his. "Do you want me to take your selyn before or after you get clean."
Tami frowned, no, she pouted. "I want a transfer." She sniffled, tears pooling in her eyes.
"Do you know how to do a hard strip?" Dimitri asked.
"I've never done one." Danyel thought about it for a moment. "Like I did with you?"
"The opposite." He undressed Tami as if she were a doll. She didn't seem to notice, her entire attention focused on Danyel. If the circumstances had been any different, he'd have simply taken her selyn without thinking about it. "Make it feel like a real transfer, not like when you stripped out my excess."
"She's my match." He murmured to himself.
"You're tempted?" Mitka asked.
"Physically," he admitted. "Not any other way."
"Then maybe you shouldn't." Mitka trembled.
"No," Danyel pushed it all aside. Tami cocked her head at him, eyes wide and vacant. They were a deep hazel, green and gold intertwined. "Which would you prefer?"
She looked around. The tip of her tongue brushed her upper lip. "Do it now."
"OK," he held out his hands. Dimitri's face was white behind her shoulder. He didn't like this any more than Danyel did. He tried to reassure Dimitri with his eyes, then remembered Tami couldn't sense fields and let his love for Dimitri show on his field.
"I feel like an adulteress." Tami crossed her arms over her chest.
"I know what you mean." He blushed, trying to push away all the conflicts in his mind. They didn't go.
"I love thee." Mitka murmured in his ear. "Its OK."
"If you're sure." He let his tentacles come out. Tami stared at them, shrinking back against Dimitri. She opened her mouth, as if to scream. Her terror lashed through the ambient.
"Hush," Dimitri put his arms around her. Danyel's body tensed. Dimitri's hands were spread beneath Tami's bare breasts, across her stomach. She was as slender as a Sime with her long sickness. "He won't hurt you."
"I know." Her eyes flicked over the room. "They will though." She struggled against Dimitri's hold. Danyel jumped forward and caught her face. Her eyes widened, white rimmed with terror. High field, he could barely breathe under the impact of it.
"They can't hurt you here." Danyel said, willing her to calm with his voice. "Remember the drug Dimitri gave you."
Tami nodded slowly. "I feel good inside."
"Yes, and they can't make you feel bad anymore." He held onto her gaze with all his will. She nodded slowly.
"But if I have transfer with you, they'll be able to get to me. I'll have done something wrong and they'll be able to punish me, even with the drugs."
"Then I'll just take your selyn quietly, like any other channel." He brushed the tears from her face.
"But you're Ferris." Her gamine grin returned. "Any strip from a Ferris is good."
"I'm glad you think so." Danyel leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, even as he ran his hands down and captured her wrists. She sagged, giving control to him like the trained Donor she'd once been. Danyel couldn't just strip her. He leaned into it, pulling at the incredible backlog of selyn she'd stored in her body.
It took him far longer than normal. He drew and drew at that pool of selyn until he felt as if he'd burst with it, then managed the last bit, hanging on for all he was worth. When he reached the end, he gave one final yank, as if he'd reached a proper termination, not just gorged his secondary beyond all reason. Tami gasped, nearly falling from Dimitri's arms as she went completely limp.
"Oh, my," she sighed, head lolling against Dimitri's chest. "I've never had a transfer like that."
"You enjoyed?" He asked, trying to someone cram his secondary into some semblance of order. He'd rarely been this far over in his secondary compared to his primary. He felt as if he were about to overbalance onto his nageric nose. Mitka chuckled in his ear, licking it gently.
"Very much," she grinned. "All the rumors about Ferris' are true. I'm going to tell all my friends."
"You seem a lot more stable." Dimitri murmured.
"I am." She blinked, glancing around. Her blush started at her hairline and traveled downward. "I'm a mess."
"You are." Dimitri chuckled. "Can you solidify enough to get into the tub?"
"You're not worried I'll try to drown myself?"
"No," he had to lift her over the side. She sighed, sinking down into the water slowly. "Right now you're probably about as close to sane as you've been in a while."
"Since the Techton put my on short transfers." She leaned back against the edge of the tub. "I'm still fuzzy headed, probably as much from your drug as the strip, but I do remember." Her jaw tightened. "Why do they do it to us?"
"Do what?" Dimitri asked, then poured a dipper of water over her filthy hair. Long tendrils floated away, along with filthy suds when he worked shampoo through it.
"Short Donors and then wonder why we go insane?" She brought her hands out of the water. The nails were long and ragged. "I know when I'm crazy and inside I'm screaming to be let out. I know what causes it."
"Short transfers?"
"Yeah," she grimaced, looking up for a moment. "I can't feel any pain right now, just a huge numbness and lethargy. I miss Lukus and Kreg so much. Even that pain is gone."
"Harilin removes all pain, physical, emotional, and nageric." Dimitri fumbled with Tami's horribly matted hair. Danyel waved him away and began working at it himself, with his tentacles. Dimitri took one of Tami's hands from the water and began filing her nails smooth again.
"I like this." She smiled. "Lukus used to wash and the comb my hair with his tentacles."
"You'll see him again." Danyel promised, praying he wouldn't be forsworn. Dimitri'd taught him to pray. It was a very useful thing to be able to do. "Vanesa and Sevrin are going to bring him here to you."
"Where am I?" She looked around, nearly bumping Danyel's wrists. "Oh, sorry," she chuckled, voice harsh and breathy.
"You're at Kaon." Dimitri finished up one hand then took her other. The circulating water seemed to have soaked away the worst of the horrible filth caking her body. "When Vanesa found out about what had happened to you and your family, she was furious."
"My parents didn't tell her?" Her brows furrowed. "I remember something about them fighting with Lukus."
"They took the business from him, and his home."
"I can feel pain." Her eyes darkened. "Shen," she put her face in her hands for a moment. "What am I going to do?"
"Well, right now I'd say you're about as close to sane as its possible to be on harilin, and that because your physical injuries are absorbing most of the mental effects." Dimitri recaptured the hand he was working on. "You want to be pretty for your Sime, don't you?"
"Lukus is just a renSime." Her cheeks pinked.
"He's a Sime." Dimitri gave her one of those Gen only looks. Mitka chuckled softly in his ear and slid down to the edge of the tub. Tami glanced over at him then jumped in place.
"He's real!"
"Yeah, I am." Mitka gave her one of those chin to forehead licks. "You need a bath." He grimaced.
"That's not very nice." Danyel swatted him into the water. He didn't splash, of course, but he sputtered pretty well.
"Who are you?" She laughed, a true laugh this time, not her maniacal madness.
"I'm him." Mitka rolled over onto his back, on top of the water, as if it were a bed. He pointed at Dimitri by means of a jet of water that caught him on the nose.
"Tami, I'd like you to meet Mitka, my nager." Dimitri's grin was more than a bit crooked.
"And people say I'm crazy." She ran her tongue over her teeth. "Gah," she stuck out her tongue. "You touched these lips? My breath is probably enough to gag a freeband raider."
"Yeah," Danyel chuckled. "We'll get everything straightened out." He looked at Dimitri, hoping to see some reassurance in his eyes. Mitka squirted him instead.
"You little beast." Tami dunked him. Danyel whooped with laughter. "He deserved that."
"For his comment about your current state of hygiene?" Dimitri scooted her forward, then winced. "You're a mess, Tami."
"I know it." She rocked her shoulders. "I can feel the scars pull."
"Those aren't scars." Dimitri soaped his hands then slid them over her back. In moments the soap suds were pink. "These are scabs. Your skin never had a chance to heal at all. What did they do to you?"
"I haven't been out of that straightjacket since I was committed." She tipped her chin at it. Danyel left off his detangling and got the thing. It was stiff, but then he'd thought such a thing should be. Then he looked into it and gagged. The whole back was caked with blood. He dropped it, unable to touch it more. His skin crawled all over.
"I require a bath now." He washed off his hand in the tub.
"I'm no cleaner."
"You're human." He glared at the coat. "Whoever did that to you wasn't."
"It was that or death." She wrapped her arms around her knees. "I knew that much."
"I'm afraid this time you're probably not being paranoid." Dimitri sighed. "Do you know what happened to your brother?"
"No, what?" She turned around, eyes wide. Then she saw Dimitri's hands. "Oh, my, word."
"He's dead." Dimitri rinsed off his hands, the blood tinged foam quickly floating to the drain.
"Yeah," her face hardened. "My parents, right?"
"Yeah," Dimitri said. She hit the water with her fist, splashing everyone. "And they wanted to send you to the same place, Farsie."
"Seems I got lucky."
"No, you married a good man." Dimitri turned her back around.
Tami looked up at Danyel. "So did you, Danyel Ferris."
"I know." He smiled, pride and love in his partner overflowing.
Chapter 40
Dimitri felt like an utter fool, but he couldn't help grinning. He'd never had a psychiatric case turn around so fast. He'd given Tami an eighth when he heard Lukus and Kreg's voices outside Tami's new room, but that was it. He'd first given her a quarter.
"Do I look alright?" She ran her hands down the loose jumper he'd found her in Kaon's stores of unwanted and repaired clothes. Over the cream shirt, the dark green cotton brought out the green in her eyes and the reddish sheen to her long hair.
"You zlin wonderful." Danyel couldn't know how incredible the change was in her. From what he'd said, he'd never worked with the terminally insane before. Although now Dimitri wasn't entirely sure of his diagnosis. He'd know in a few days, as her production really picked up again and he tapered off the harilin. Right now her body was so damaged the drug did little more than settle her nerves and allow her to function.
"I feel naked without underwear." She muttered under her breath.
Dimitri chuckled softly. "I can't stand it."
"You don't have tits." She straightened her shoulders. "I sag."
"No you don't." He patted at her butt, careful not to touch the hideous sores over her seatbones. "Your family's waiting for you."
"How can I ever repay you?" She turned away from the door, hazel eyes huge in her drawn face. She'd require a lot of calories to even start regaining the weight she'd lost. Dimitri didn't know she'd be able to even digest solid food after so long without. At that torture den called a hospital, they'd only tube fed her liquids.
"You have." He said. "Your smile."
"Hardly," the shadow crossed her eyes again. "Let me do something for you."
"Here they are." He pointed to the door.
"No," she didn't turn. Her eyes flicked down to his bracelets. "I know where I can get more."
"We're both Gen. Don't fret, please?" He held out his hand. Lukus stood in the door, trembling all over. She glanced at Danyel. He shook his head no.
She stomped her foot. "I'll make you something." Tami snorted and turned to her husband and child. Her nager melted, what was left of it. She threw herself into their arms, uncaring for her injuries or weakness. Dimitri could tell she was about to collapse, but only when Lukus eased her back into a chair did she show it, and then in the set of her shoulders alone.
Kreg was crying. He rubbed at his eyes like a much younger child.
"Come here." Tami patted her knee. He knelt at her feet and put his head in her lap. Kneading the soft fabric of her jumper between his hands, he looked up at his mother and smiled through is tears.
"You're back." His voice cracked, and he sobbed again, putting his face in her lap.
"Hush," she crooned, voice as harsh as a raven. Dimitri knew she'd once had a beautiful voice, but her illness and having been force fed had damaged her throat badly. He hoped she'd at least recover the tone to it.
Lukus stood, staring at her, eyes wide, begging her forgiveness.
"Thank you," she mouthed, stroking her son's hair smooth with her still water wrinkled fingers. It had taken them hours to get her clean. "You saved my life."
"I abandoned you." His chin quivered. He glanced away. Dimitri shook his head no. Lukus looked back at her, his whole body straining toward her. "I love you."
"I love you." She held out her free hand to him. He knelt at her other side, but unwilling or unable to show his love as his son did. Dimitri drew Danyel back into his field. Danyel leaned against his chest, giving a gentle sigh of his own. At last Lukus cried, letting his wife hold him.
"Better," Mitka murmured. "I like her."
"You do?" Dimitri glanced at him. His eyes were bright with unshed tears as well, but they looked like happy tears.
"Yeah," he licked his lips. "She's strong."
"Too strong." Danyel sighed. He slipped into Russian. "It broke her. Will she ever recover fully?"
"Probably not." He held up a hand. "But then I'd not have said she'd recover this far."
"You're not perfect?" Danyel teased, giving Dimitri a bit of a jab.
"No, I'm not." He put his arms around Danyel, nuzzling his hair. It was so springy and lively, Dimitri never tired of it. "Not in anything."
"I'm glad to hear you say as much." He looked up at Dimitri. "I'd worry about you if you couldn't admit it."
"Oh, you have your own blind spots." He kissed Danyel's brow.
"How long can you stay?" Tami asked. The tension lines on her face had nearly vanished, although Dimitri could see her tremble with exhaustion.
Before Lukus could upset everyone, Dimitri stepped forward, Danyel glued to him, and said, "I think we all are going to have to talk with Vanesa and Sevrin about where both of your skills, all three of your skills," he grinned at Kreg, "can be of best use to Kaon."
"I know I'm not well." Tami blinked, eyes beginning to wander again. She tensed as a shadow passed over the window.
"You will be taken care of." Dimitri promised.
"I wanna stay with mama!" Kreg held his mother's knees as if he'd never let go again. "I never got to tell you how much I love you, mama. Don't go again!"
"Hush," she stroked his hair. "Oh, Kreg, I do love you."
"Its time to let her rest now. I promise, no matter what happens, you'll get to see her again." Dimitri flinched at the memory of breaking that promise to Lira. It had not been under his control, but even still, it hurt. "You'll be staying here at Kaon, I'm sure." He looked at Lukus.
"Sectuib's husband informed me in no uncertain terms the place we were living in was unacceptable." Lukus' lips twitched, as if he were trying to figure out whether to grin or frown, with neither winning.
"Do you want to go out and see the ponies?" In the daylight, Danyel seemed to remember seeing this lad around, once or twice.
"Yeah!" He shouted, finally getting up. "Oh, mama, I'm sorry."
"I'm just very tired." She leaned back in her chair, eyes closing. Her pulse was strong and she was breathing as easily as she could. They'd erred a couple of times in feeding her, forcing the food mixture into her lungs. The resulting mechanical pneumonia had left horrible scars.
"Come with me." Danyel held out his hand. Then he looked at Dimitri, as wide eyed as the child.
"Go on with you. I have to talk with Lukus." His chest felt very cold without Danyel's presence. They'd hardly spent more than a few moments away from each other in the past month. Tami's head fell to the side as sleep overcame her. Dimitri nearly cracked heads with Lukus as he went to catch her before she fell.
"She's so light." He cradled her against his chest. "I love her, Dimitri."
"I know." He had to clear a lump from his own throat. "She's going to require a tremendous amount of care."
"More than she could get at Hillview?"
"Different." He put his hand on her forehead. She still had a slight fever, but such was to be expected. Most of the sores he'd cleaned on her body had been infected. "She's a very strong woman, Lukus."
"But you're telling me she may not make it?"
"She may not." He turned down the bed. "She's probably not had clean sheets since she was last home."
"Why did they abuse her?" Lukus put her down, smoothing her limbs.
"Foolishness," Dimitri slipped her out of the jumper. He left the shirt on to protect her back. He'd not dared bandage her sores. They required fresh air to finally dry and scab properly. "They did the best for her they knew how." For a moment, Dimitri wished he could stay here, with Danyel. He was useful here in a way he never was at home. "Right now, she's fairly heavily drugged. With a compound you can't make here. My little brother smuggled some into the country."
He made a note to have a nurse come in on a regular basis in case he ended up sidetracked. Dimitri knew he could be so quite easily. Right now, he was stretched so thin Danyel could probably zlin right through him. Not that he couldn't, anyway.
Lukus snorted, showing the first sign of amusement since he'd come in. Dimitri glanced down and noticed he was wearing the Kaon ring Danyel'd given him.
"Why didn't you go to Vanesa when Danyel told you to?"
"Ashamed," the light from the window shone in his eyes. "Didn't want to admit my failure."
"What failure?" Dimitri frowned at him. "When was the last time you slept?" He looked the man over closely. "When was your turnover?"
"Three days ago, for both." The tiny muscles around his eyes twitched.
"OK, off with your clothes too." He didn't give Lukus a chance to protest and Dimitri'd had a lot of practice in stripping recalcitrant Simes. Lukus kept trying to cover himself, his arms, even his chest. None of it worked. Dimitri grinned at him. "I recommend you quit fussing and get in there." He lifted a corner of the cover. Lukus slipped into bed alongside his wife. He looked stuffed, in more ways than one.
"Relax," Dimitri murmured. "Think of me as a doctor, not a Donor." He leaned out the door and asked Pyotr to bring him his knitting. Tanya pulled it out of her basket, next to the baby. Dimitri chuckled softly to himself. "Thank you."
"At yer will, m'Lord." She winked, returning to her guard position. "He's a good 'un."
"Be well and do your best." By the time he looked back at the bed, Lukus had wrapped himself around his wife and had fallen asleep. Poor man, to have so many things go wrong all at once. Dimitri sat in the seat Tami had been in. He was a lousy knitter, dropping stitches and tangling his fingers in the yarn, but his potholders worked well enough.
Tami stirred in her sleep. Dimitri watched her closely. At first she tensed, nearly waking, then a tiny smile came to her lips. She drew Lukus into her arms and then they both slept quietly. Dimitri tried to think about his knitting.
Dimitri knew romance stories were about people who did great things and won against impossible odds. To him, Tami and Lukus were more romantic than any big, busty Sharm Lord or steely eyed Lord. He dropped another stitch and grumbled at his knitting. Danyel thought he was a paragon of domesticity. Dimitri didn't have the heart to tell him how many things he really was abysmal at, like knitting.
But the steady clicking sound did seem to soothe many restless patients. He didn't want Tami waking at every little sound, so something slightly noisy in her environment should help.
Before long, Dimitri found a good rhythm with his knitting needles. The resulting stitches weren't very even, but at least they stayed on the needles, more or less.
"How are they doing?" Danyel asked in that softer than a whisper voice of his, almost as quietly as telepathy. Sometimes Dimitri wondered if he did manage true telepathy, he got his words across so quietly.
"Zlin for yourself." He nodded.
"Cute," Danyel sat at Dimitri's feet and put his head in Dimitri's lap. Dimitri hugged Danyel with his legs and kept knitting, or at least trying to. Well, he managed to keep the clicking rhythm steady. Danyel yawned, then chuckled. "You're doing that to keep them asleep."
"Yes," he admitted, concentrating so hard he'd probably stuck his tongue out.
"It couldn't possibly be because you enjoy it." Danyel watched him avidly. "Here, let me." He swiped the needles. Before long, he'd steadied into a constant, even rhythm. "This is fun." He grinned at the perfectly neat, even stitches.
Dimitri scowled. It wasn't as if his mother hadn't tried to teach him the Geninine arts. The only one that seemed to have stuck was cooking. "I'm glad you're enjoying it." Dimitri couldn't stay frustrated for long in the face of Danyel's obvious joy.
"I'd never thought to try it."
"Why not? Most of the other kids I knew had tried both Sime and Gen things, not being entirely sure which way they'd turn out as adults. I'd known, even still I worked in the stables, learned to ride astride and climbed trees. It had been too much fun to pass up." He grinned at the memory of Vayer's face when he'd found Dimitri up a tree with Miran a few years ago. "Just as Tzer'd learned to knit, sew and even cook a little. Probably a good thing as I'd been subjected to Mikhail's cooking once or twice when they'd still lived at Fatima."
"He can't cook." Danyel shook his head quickly. "I know. He tried some of it on me."
"Awful, isn't it." Dimitri chuckled.
"Even worse than my own." Danyel sighed. "I don't know why I didn't. I guess because I always thought of it as something women did."
"What does gender have to do with it?" Dimitri stretched out his cramped and aching hands. This probably explained some of why he was so lousy at knitting. He really didn't like anything that put his hands at risk, even for the shortest possible time.
"Well, women have babies. They can't work when they're pregnant or nursing." If Danyel's field hadn't been squirming with utter confusion, Dimitri would have thought he was pulling Mitka's tail again.
"Sevrin takes care of Kolya. He probably took care of Sivaya too."
"Viasha too." Danyel grinned. "I know. I've zlinned it, but it isn't what I grew up with. Sure, men and women are equal, but they do different things."
"Separate but equal?"
"Yes," Danyel gave him one of those quirky smiles.
"But what does gender have to do with it?" Dimitri pressed, enjoying the peace and quiet of good conversation. Done this way, knitting relaxed him as well. Watching it, that was.
"Because of the thing about babies." Danyel snorted. He never slipped a stitch or even yanked the yarn taut. The Sime had amazing control, for all his seeming fragility.
"The woman's partner has to take time off too, and has just as much of the nageric load, if not more." Dimitri shrugged. "I remember seeing Vanesa and Sevrin when they came to Russia for Kolya's birth. Sevrin was a wreck. Vanesa bopped around like nothing had happened within a day. I know, personally. My own mother grumbled about it at the time." Dimitri clearly remembered Visarin's birth, not just Sergei memories. She'd been secluded in the main Mir suite for a week. Vanesa had been up and at a party a few days after Kolya's birth.
"What about someone like Karola?" Danyel blinked. "I remember her taking the little ones when everyone was at Kaon the first time."
"Karola's a rule unto herself." Dimitri grinned in fond memory.
"She's your grandmother." Danyel stared at Dimitri's crotch for a moment.
"In transfer, the body doesn't care." He shrugged, not wanting to go into the subject further. Nothing had, or could have, come of his liaison with Karola. He'd been fertile, but she'd not been, being past bearing for even so fecund a woman. "All it knows is selyn and then sex."
"So larity comes first."
"Always." Dimitri glanced over at the bed. Tami snored as if she'd never stop, clutching Lukus to her side as a child would grab a rag doll. He still had a smile on his face. Their happiness was contagious. Dimitri hugged Danyel with his legs again. "I certainly wouldn't be doing this if you weren't Sime."
"I thought you told your brother you weren't that picky." Danyel's lips twitched upwards into a grin.
"Its a running joke in our family." Dimitri grinned at Danyel's flush of warmth at being accepted. "Because Darya is also Gen, and Dimitri is so picky about larity she had to trick him."
"She wouldn't have to trick me." Danyel blinked, then blushed. "I suppose I shouldn't think like that about my mother-in-law."
Dimitri shrugged. "I don't blame you. To any Sime, she's probably very Gen." Dimitri shook his head. "I just can't see it. She's my mother."
"You had transfer with your father."
"That's different." Dimitri squirmed in his chair. "He's Sime. There's the whole larity thing again. Mitka could care less."
"I do so care." He'd gotten a lot quieter lately. Dimitri would have said it was sated if he didn't know it was because he was always whispering in Danyel's ears. "I like Danyel." He added a snort, probably a wet one. Danyel just shook his head and kept knitting. "Vayer was pretty neat too."
"See," Dimitri grinned at them both.
"Oh, I knew he was your father." Mitka peered out from Danyel's hair. "I never felt really comfortable doing him. There was something wrong with it." Mitka stuck his head down Danyel's shirt again. "Not like you." Danyel squirmed.
"Don't stick your tongue in my bellybutton." Danyel wiggled some more. He was very good at it, as Dimitri had reason to know. Dimitri's hands followed his nager. Danyel sighed, leaning back against Dimitri's legs. "You, however, can do that some more."
"You're just picky." Mitka turned around and looked up at them both. "Thank you for accepting me."
"Took you long enough." Dimitri wrinkled his nose at his nager. "We had transfer almost two weeks ago."
"Yeah, well, turnover is soon, and, well, he didn't give you a bracelet, and, um, I didn't know if ...?" Mitka trailed off into incoherence. Well, greater incoherence. He stuck his nose between two of Dimitri's fingers and gave him a sloppy lick.
"Yes, I want you again." Danyel stroked Dimitri's arm with a tentacle and flipping his bracelet. "These are just so incredible, Dimitri, I don't want to give you some piece of junk just to try to bind you to me."
"It wouldn't be junk." Dimitri captured Danyel's strong wrists while he continued his tight, controlled movements. The first hint of need startled him badly. He wasn't at turnover yet. What was going on? Then he chuckled as he realized he was focusing on the deft movements of Danyel's selyn through the nerves of his wrists. "You'll have to do more of this after turnover."
"Oh?" He glanced up.
"Yeah," Dimitri brushed his thumbs over the sensitive wristbones. "Your nager feels good when you're doing handwork like this."
"Oh," Danyel grinned. "I never thought of my body or field so much before you and Mitka showed up. I always shoved it aside, ignored it."
"Why?" Dimitri didn't understand. "Why push away one of the greatest gifts we have?"
"What gift?"
"Larity," he wrapped his hands over Danyel's tentacle sheathes, again utterly bemused and fascinated at the warmth beneath his fingertips. "The differences between us. Feeling your selyn pulse beneath my fingertips." Dimitri'd already memorized the lines of Danyel's wrists. He still stared at them, utterly fascinated.
"I'd never thought of the mutation as anything other than a curse."
Dimitri gasped, drawing back for a moment. "How can you say such a thing?" He didn't want to be upset, but couldn't help the sinking feeling in his middle. "Don't you like the fact I'm Gen?" Dimitri felt really strange asking such a question, as if were fishing for complements. "Or don't you like being Sime?" This seemed even more impossible. Danyel was beautifully Sime. Dimitri caressed his slender tentacle sheathes, the gesture, to him at least, even more intimate than stroking his genitals. His tentacles were far more important.
Someone could live without genitals. They couldn't live without at least their primary larital characteristics. His fingertips brushed the length of Danyel's sheathes. He even stroked the fragile, thin skin over his roniplin glands, where within a few days, Danyel would begin producing roniplin for his own need. The thought alone brought a flush of heat to his forearms, even before turnover. "Our last transfer was so amazing. You didn't enjoy it?"
"Oh, I did." He chuckled softly. "But I was always told the mutation was an accident. That the ancients were better, somehow. They didn't have to suffer need."
"I don't talk about suffering desire." Dimitri cupped Danyel's wrists in his hands. The weight of them symbolized Danyel's trust and life to Dimitri. "I love you. If you weren't Sime, I would still love you, but not the same way." He felt the fool. "No, I didn't mean that the way it sounded." His skin tightened. "I'm making a fool of myself."
"I don't think so." Danyel set aside his knitting and turned to Dimitri, resting his chin on his hands, in Dimitri's lap. "You aren't a fool Dimitri."
"I feel like one." He traced the back of one of Danyel's hands with a fingertip. "You're Sime. Very Sime to me. That's a beautiful thing, one I wouldn't trade for anything in the world." He tried to pull his arm out of his mouth again. "I'm not saying this right. I love you, Danyel, as a beautiful, wonderful human being. You wouldn't be any less wonderful if you were Gen, or heaven forbid, an Ancient." He shuddered at the thought. To be forever a child. Yuck!
He winced and went on, trying to extract himself from the mire he'd made. Danyel's dark eyes twinkled. "But I would miss transfer with you." Gah, he was making a hash of this. "It isn't that I only want you for transfer."
"No, you want me for sex, too." Danyel yanked his tail, as he so often yanked Mitka's. Dimitri blushed, acknowledging the hit.
"I'm fascinated as much by our differences as our similarities. Can you at least zlin that much?" Dimitri flailed around blindly. "Oh, just shoot me now." He gave up. His face had to be so red he could be mistaken for Kirov.
"I'd rather not." Danyel chuckled. "I don't know what you're so flustered about. I find your perspective absolutely fascinating?"
"I haven't totally made myself zlin the fool by giving you the idea I'm only after your need?" Dimitri shook his head, wishing he could hide his own face under his wing. Mitka was busy grooming between his toes, ignoring both of them. He usually did when Dimitri really messed things up, not wanting to be associated with him at all.
"I've never had anyone after my need, as you put it, before." Danyel rested his cheek on his hands, looking up at Danyel out of the corner of his eye. "I'm flattered."
"Its rather crude." Dimitri caressed Danyel's fingers. "I do want all of you, not just your wrists."
"Or my ass."
"You have such a cute one." Dimitri grinned. "That I've had."
"With your fingers." Danyel glanced away, lines reappearing around his mouth.
"Yeah, and I had a great time." Dimitri brushed Danyel's already stubbled jaw with one thumbnail. "Its not just for surgery I keep my nails short."
"The only cutting on people you've done here has been on a corpse."
"Yeah," he sighed. "And I was so far in need all I could really think of was jumping your arms."
"Really?" Someone had pasted Danyel's grin on crooked. "I thought you were mad at me."
"I was." He shrugged, feeling even more the idiot. "You let me make up to you."
"Of course I did." Danyel licked the web of skin between Dimitri's fingers and thumb. Dimitri shivered all over, loving the hot, wet feel of Danyel's mouth on him.
"You're so hot." Dimitri played on the meanings of the word.
"Am I?" Danyel slid to his knees. "How are you going to prove it to me?"
Dimitri leaned down and tipped his chin, waiting for Danyel's kiss.
"You're so soft." Danyel purred, holding Dimitri's face in his hands. "I love touching you." He captured Dimitri's lips with his own, suckling at them and drawing him out as if they were in need, not a day shy of turnover. Dimitri loved having his mouth played with, it felt wonderful at any time. He opened himself to Danyel, surrendering to him and submitting himself to Danyel's lead.
He heard his own voice thrum deep within his chest.
Quiet applause came from the doorway. Dimitri knew it was his brother. He slid out of his chair and slipped his knees between Danyel's thighs. They'd gotten really good at this maneuver. Danyel leaned over him, demanding Dimitri give everything to him. Dimitri arched back, letting Danyel dominate him completely. He hummed his pleasure, opening himself in all ways to his lover.
"You're going to ruin your pants." Miran muttered sourly. Dimitri would have snickered if Danyel's passionate caresses didn't feel so very good. Danyel licked at Dimitri's lips in a gentle promise for later. Dimitri licked back. Miran's dismay brought a light to his own eyes, clearly visible in the reflection in Danyel's. Their tongues danced, as wet as any woman and twice as sweet.
Dimitri reached down and straightened his bent shaft. "That's better." He muttered against Danyel's lips.
"Indeed." For the first time, he rocked his hips and pressed against him. Dimitri's vision reddened with total and complete lust. With the last minute of sense left to him, he didn't grab Danyel's hips. Instead he bit at his lower lip, brushing lightly against Danyel's tentatively proffered rear. He was so hot Dimitri gasped. A bit of wetness slicked the inside of his pants.
"You have an audience." Miran's growl teased Dimitri out of his daze. He glanced over at the bed and realized he'd made a complete and total fool of himself. Lukus was staring at him as if he'd grown tentacles. Dimitri tried to grin. It probably came out as more of a pained rictus.
Lukus slipped back under the covers with his wife, pointedly turning his back on the room. It was purely symbolic. Dimitri could tell he was still zlinning in mad curiosity, but the gesture was still touching. Danyel grinned down at him and brushed a lass kiss on his lips. Danyel's were reddened and a bit puffy, as if begging for more. Dimitri really wanted to give it to him.
"You're already horny?"
"I've been amorous for over a month now." Dimitri purred.
"Give off the sugar sickness, bro!" Miran griped. Lukus' shoulders shook with silent laughter. "I don't need it right now." His voice cracked dramatically. Miran's face was drawn down into the skull mask so common with desperate need. He didn't beg with his field, but he did with his eyes.
"Yeah, gotcha in one." He gave Danyel's flank a gentle squeeze, reveling in the tight Sime muscles beneath his hand for one last moment. "Come on, we gotta get my little bro laid."
"That sounds really sick, Dimitri." Danyel chuckled. "Are you going to pimp him out?"
"Nah, what about one of those surrogates you used?" Dimitri teased.
"I can't go back to them." Danyel's eyes widened. "You've spoiled me, Dimitri."
"What about a Techton Donor?" Dimitri's blood had suddenly gone cold. Danyel stared into his eyes.
"No," he shook his head. "I couldn't do it." Dimitri read the truth of his words in his nager. Danyel'd suicide abort before he ever touched another Techton Donor.
"I have no new home to give you." Dimitri felt his brother's attention soften for a moment, then shy away.
"We'll make one." Danyel promised.
"I hope." Dimitri hugged him, wanting to feel his life before their own individual needs brought them to their own intimacy with death after turnover. Danyel hugged him back, popping Dimitri's back he did it so hard. "Oh that feels good."
"Don't start again." Miran broke in.
"I never stopped." Danyel held Dimitri's face.
"Good." Dimitri replied. "Keep it that way and lets see where we end up.
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