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“No, it’s…not real,” Malikai confirmed, clearing his throat with the words because Naarhiji’s breath was on his neck, body pressed to his back and then face tucked against him, and while not objectionable it was, in its own fashion, distracting. Not that he was about to complain. “I wouldn’ leave you,” he said. “It’d only be a moment, though I might ‘ave t’ go up more ‘n once…but aye, if y’ let me fly you, it’ll be just the once. I won’t drop you.”

He turned with the words to face Naarhiji and eyed the high wall, speculating before glancing back to what would be his ‘cargo.’

“I do promise, an’ I won’ let go. I think…the securest arrangement would be if I, ah…” Another cough of a throat clear as Malikai glanced to Naarhiji’s waist and then back up, settling his hands tentatively there as way of indication. “If I hoist you, an’ you lock your legs ‘round my waist an’ hold t’ my shoulders. I’ll hold you then, an’ fly up. Tha’ way y’ got your own grip t’ rely on, too…” He eyed Naarhiji’s face, waiting for and studying the reaction he got at the words and as he let the magic at his back loosen and unfurl his wings again. The four of them stretched, like yawning arms pleased to be free of constraint, the tips of one dusting the near wall. “Think y’ can manage?”

Malikai opened his mouth, but shut it when Naarhiji stepped in, pressing close, looping an arm about him, and drawing his lips — Malikai gave a coughed grunt of a sound — up his neck. He shut his eyes. More lips, now on his ear. The teeter-totter between this and the young man’s apparent inescapable need to laden him with ‘threats’ was firmly jammed somewhere between arousing and bewildering, but his body, as it was tend to do, opted to favor arousal. Malikai spared a moment of consideration to the thought of attempting to mask or otherwise diminish the obviousness of that result somehow.

But as quickly as the thought came, he dismissed it. Between the likely futility of any attempt regardless, and the fact that, given the nature of his company and their apparent history together, he didn’t guess that Naarhiji cared in the slightest, the idea seemed pointless at best.

So, he tightened his grip instead, further hoisting Naarhiji as promised in aid of him synching his opposite leg around Malik’s waist and successfully locking them together at the hips. It was a lot of contact. Malikai couldn’t frankly imagine it being more so unless they were devoid of clothes, and since that was not the target aim of the moment, he tucked that thought away. As a consolation prize, though, he did allow one hand to hook under and ‘brace’ Naarhiji’s arse — it was a logical location for a grip, to be fair — while the other wound around his back at the middle.

“No funny business,” he promised, the words tucked close enough to his company’s jawline that it could have been mistaken for a kiss. Then, he stretched his wings, flicking once minimally to stir them into action before proceeding to give a powerful, thrusting beat of them sufficient to take them off the ground and up, up.

The wall was not that high, so even with the weight of two people, the entire process couldn’t have taken but a few seconds, suspended in the cool night, before Malikai’s boots touched base on the solid earth of the maze wall’s top. He tested it, keeping his wings out for balance as he let their weight settle there, wanting to make certain it was indeed as solid as it looked before trusting it with the both of them. Only once satisfied did he relax his grip a touch, slipping the hand that was beneath Naarhiji up to rest at his waist and the other loosening similarly.

“A’right. World’s ours ‘cause you’re on top of it,” Malik said. “C’n let go now.” His gaze skimmed out, over past Naarhiji and along the top of the structure. It was rather impressive in size, but not nearly so massive or intimidating as it might have seemed when stuck in it, and — as would likely please his company — they were not terribly far from its edge and the warm yellow-red lights of the city proper, given their ability to skip the in between. Somehow, too, from this angle, open to the sky and devoid of the full bustle of the busy city or the eeriness of the maze’s interior, the night seemed less ominous, more open, and even accompanied by the looming red moon, the rest of the winking white stars looked bright. “Isn’t so bad of a night, from here.”

Naarhiji was not heavy. Nor was he especially gangly or — despite the initial but not objectionable roll of his hips — squirmy in general. As such, his weight felt comfortable in Malikai’s grip, his warmth and contact welcome. Still, all this aside, Malikai did expect Naarhiji, nervous as he seemed to be in regard to his wings, to drop away the instant he was given the opportunity, so when he didn’t, and instead leaned in and kissed—

Malikai felt for a moment at a loss. Though he had, according to at least one source, done so before, this was the first he had experienced according to his memory, and Naarhiji’s lips were soft. Pliant. Warm. Small but full and nothing that he might expect from the mouth of a man if he’d ever stopped to consider, but more so than that: welcome. He realized only in the last instant, as he remembered to breathe and blink his eyes shut, that he did want this, and as such ought to give some indication and kiss back. All but as soon as he leaned into it, however, loose grip at Naarhiji’s waist pinching just the barest fraction tighter and lips shifting against the younger man’s—Naarhiji was pulling away. Untangling from his touch, stepping back, and withdrawing.

He frowned at Naarhiji’s back, frustrated — primarily with himself — at how disappointing it was to lose that heat and contact. Surely it oughtn’t have bothered him that much. Gathering himself, however, Malikai breathed out, rolled his shoulders, and followed closely in the younger man’s wake, watching and ready on the off chance that his company took a foul step.

“Y’ needn’t apologize,” he said. “As just might ‘ave been noticeable by now, ‘m not unfond of you. An’ y’re right. Y’ should have laughed. Perhaps not terribly loudly, since that would’ve needled my headache, but a good spot of amusement a’ my ramblin’s might ‘ave nudged me toward less ridiculous assumptions sooner rather’n later.”

His eyes shaped the downward curve of Naarhiji’s backside, dark body silhouetted against the light of the town ahead, and it took him a moment to remember the latter question, at which point he cleared his throat.

“Ah.” What had he been eating? “Drinking. Not whiskey,” he said, because initially, that oddity in itself seemed explanation enough, but then, thanks to the fact that Naarhiji had expressed interest in actually having some, he added: “Juice. Spiced pumpkin cider o’ some make…was good. I could find th’ place an’ get you some on th’ walk home if you…” He realized only midway through making it that the offer might not be welcome at all, if Naarhiji was ready to be rid of his company, but eventually decided, being that he was already halfway into it, he might as well finish. “If y’ wanted an’ escort. Bein’ late as it is.”

Malikai’s eyebrows twitched upwards, expression caught between amusement and surprise as Naarhiji lurched back against him, and his hands moved on instinct to brace the younger man’s hips that they not fall in either direction. “Dunno wha’ else I’d hurt a whore with, other’n my d**k,” he defended. “An’ it seemed, still seems a reasonable concern, bein’ that I was drunk as I was an’ hadn’t the first clue how t’ safely, er…” His eyes trailed down, focussing for a moment on Naarhiji’s fingers as they twined into his and allowing it, “…be with a man. I assume i’s not like a woman, an’ I wouldn’ want t’ hurt you.”

At the rest, Malikai grunted. He could have argued and pointed out that Naarhiji could very easily ‘stop’ him, namely by saying ‘No, Malikai, I don’t want you to escort me home or take me down or have anything to do with you anymore.’ But that seemed a moot point, since none of that was apparently the case. So, Malikai obliged, gathering the younger man up like a bride in his arms — since it seemed easy enough and involved less hassle and hip grinding than the previous position — before stretching his wings, and stepping them off the edge. It was an easy landing, and he set Naarhiji down lightly once on solid ground, nodding.

“Aye, then,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten. C’mon…” And perhaps because Naarhiji had just trailed him along by hand or perhaps because it felt appropriate in the moment for other reasons entirely, Malik slipped his hand back without thinking about it, tucking his wings back into his tattoos as he carded Naarhiji’s fingers into his and gave a guiding tug.

The town, if anything, seemed more alive in the later hour, which Malikai blamed entirely on the season: filled with bustle and chatter, laughter, music, lights, and smells. Firelight danced and sent shadows flicking and darting about along the walls of the shops, and people of all varieties ran the streets like rivers. With the later hour, a greater portion of the population, too, was out of sorts thanks to various forms of substances including but surely not limited to alcohol, many of them to be found tottering about, and though he ought to have been used to it by now, the sheer volume of hybrids — being that it was the city of hybrids — was still unsettling and more so in the late hour.

Particularly in the unpredictable states so many were in.

A mangle of horns and eyeless faces or feathers and scales, or milky pale scaled flesh with a twitching tail at the back. All of it made Malikai’s skin itch to crawl and his body stand instinctively closer to Naarhiji’s because these characters, unlike the magicked mud-abominations of the maze, were very real and had every potential option to be genuinely dangerous. Thankfully, he found the stall at which he’d previously purchased his cider without too much effort, and notched his head.

“Wha’ever he wants,” Malikai addressed the stall manager, indicating to Naarhiji, “I’ll pay for it.” Then, in the in between as he waited and his mind wandered, he asked because he had been curious to know since first encountering his company, “If you hadn’t have decided t’…partake in your uncle’s business such as it is, wha’ would you have done for a livin’?”

Fishing into his pocket and coin purse therein, Malikai drew out appropriate payment, turning it over to the merchant before affording his attention back to his company. His eyebrows rose amusedly, but he found that his first several imagined responses were inappropriate for one reason or another.

‘You are not unintelligent,’ was the first. But Malikai realized even as he thought it that he had relatively little basis upon which to base any judgement of the young man’s intelligence or lack thereof, and it would be a meaningless point to make. ‘I am sure you could learn to fashion something,’ came next, but that, too, was a moot point. It didn’t really matter whether Naarhiji could learn, when the point was, at present, he did not have any of those requisite trade-profession skills under his belt. And imagining him in a classroom was, at the very least, highly entertaining. Malikai kept his musing on which could scream louder or fuss more efficiently — Naarhiji or the children he might teach — to himself.

“Children do…come with all th’ host o’ problems an’ complications that grown folk do, but with even less reserves about it. I don’ know about th’ worst, though, I’ve always thought one day I—” ‘…would want children, and a family of my own.’ But somehow that thought seemed misplaced, on a late night walking beside a young whore. So Malikai tucked it away. “Perhaps you would’ve been very skilled at it,” he said instead. “Y’ do have a way o’ gettin’ what it is you please. Might have helped you in wranglin’ them proper.”

Malikai noted passively that, even in the dark and even from an entirely separate part of town, finding the way to the brothel was not much of a mental exercise so much as a retracing of steps to a familiar point. What that said about him didn’t need to be dwelt on.

“I always wanted t’ be a soldier, ever since I was old enough t’ think I wanted t’ ‘be’ anythin’. Like my father, an’ his father before him, an’ so on…like my brothers, too. Come this far into it, though…an’ I think I might ‘ave been happier as a baker.” He rolled his shoulders, hooking the tip of one thumb into his belt as his eyes skimmed the streets. “Have y’ always grown up here, in th’ desert, then? Or…?”

He wasn’t sure what spurned his questions, or what right he even thought he had to know the answers, but he asked them anyway. It couldn’t hurt, to fill the time it took to traverse the streets, and they were nearing their destination in any case. What harm could it cause, to learn a little about the young man at his side in the meantime?

Malikai blinked, and then flushed at the initial question. “Aye, I’d want them. I think I’ve…near always wanted them, it just…” His mind moved, for the first time in Naarhiji’s company, to Vanariah, and a guilty knot lurched in his gut before he tamped it down. A wince still made it onto his features, though, spurned by the thoughts of what had been lost between them. Two children, on separate instances, separated by five years and a world of in between. “Never seemed t’ happen tha’ way…”

At the words that followed, though, the guilt weighted itself, heavier in his chest, and his wince was for something else. “And aye, I…don’t suppose I would have gotten to. I’d want to, I—perhaps I’d ‘ave quit by now, if I’d ever had any o’ my own. I don’ think I could stand t’ do otherwise. Knowin’ I had ‘em…I’d need t’ be there for them.”

His gaze jerked sharply to Naar at the commentary about the war, and immediately he shook his head. “No, I—o’course I don’t hate you, or Syth. I don’—” He frowned, and though it ought to have been obvious, he had never specifically thought of it in so many terms until this moment, but it remained true: “I don’ hate oblivionites. I’m not sure I ever did, though my thoughts were different when I was small. I didn’ know anythin’, I’d never met anyone but my own people, never been off o’ Serenia…I was raised real sheltered, an’ my father…” Malikai frowned, his thoughts shifting to his younger years, nights spent peering down from his upper bunk cot to the dining room table where his father would hold his weekly speeches derailing the lady Aveah Avi and damning the ‘soulless demons’ on the opposite side of the world.

“My father had some strong opinions,” he said at length. “An’ when I was a boy, they were all I knew. I…thought it would be an adventure, t’ travel an’ fight, and it sounded noble…t’ go and serve my people, my family. Protect them. Tha’s what I thought I’d be doin’. When I got ‘round t’ actually doin’ it though…” His expression folded, some unspeakable tension weighing his shoulders, and he shook his head. “It wasn’ anythin’ like I thought.” It seemed a frustratingly downtrodden thing to say, but in the moment, he couldn’t help it: “I hate it. We all bleed. We all scream. We all hurt. An’ twenty years into it, I haven’t found a great purpose in all the fightin’. More the opposite.”

Glancing to Naarhiji’s face — the youth and clear, bubbling willingness to continue on, Malikai happily let the subject drift, and relaxed as it did.

“Two older brothers,” he said. “One of ‘em died ‘fore I really got t’ know ‘im…an’ he was the reason my mum never wanted me t’ be a soldier t’ begin with. The younger o’ the two, still eight years my elder, is Tomlan. An’ he did like me, aye, I suppose,” Malik said, the corner of his lip twitching up the barest fraction. “He always took care t’ show me what ‘e could of swordplay when ‘e was around an’ I was small still…he wasn’t around so often, but…” Malikai glanced down, letting the words trail off. “Just your father, then? If ‘e was raisin’ you on ‘is own…tha’s feat enough, I’d think, in its own way.”

To say nothing about the fact that the ‘guardianship’ Naarhiji’s uncle had bestowed on him involved allowing him to parade about selling his wares to the common soldier. But Malikai felt that that needed no extrapolation.

“It’s good y’ like your job. S’an important thing t’ like, if you’re wantin’ t’ be happy, an’ most folk do.” Curbing the distinct, sharp urge to reach for a flask that he knew wasn’t currently on his person, Malikai tucked his hand into his pocket instead. “And not so many folk would enjoy your job, besides. It’s rather impressive you manage.”

“Life complicated itself,” Malikai said, rolling his shoulders vaguely and frowning. “It became…more difficult a thing than t’ just decide I wasn’ interested anymore an’ stop. First off, when y’ sign t’ serve our lady, they have ya in a contract t’ where y’ can’t quit unless they say so flat off until y’ve dedicated a minimum o’ five years. Tha’s t’ keep folk from signin’ on for a round o’ pay when war isn’t on, an’ then quittin’ when they feel it gets dangerous. Second, I…”

He cleared his throat, brow pinching. “Well. When I was young, thereabouts sixteen or seventeen, I took an interest in someone I oughtn’t. As y’ve likely guessed I’m not really anyone of note. My family was never wealthy, our name didn’t mean a thing, but…I caught my eye on a noble girl, see? An’ goddess only knows why but she took an eye t’ me too, an’ tha’ did not please her family. Bein’ that her family was fair powerful in its own right, the whole ordeal spelled poorly for me. S’pose I’m lucky, in the long run, tha’ worse didn’ happen than me just bein’ shipped off to all ends o’ the world far as could be from her, an’…leastways, I don’ know how t’ do much else a’ this point…”

Malikai’s gaze flit from afar back to Naarhiji, a knot lurching tight in his gut at the mention of his emotional state as though a string had been laying loose inside him only to be abruptly synched with great force. An anchor dropped with a tangle still in the line. His mouth opened, but nothing came at first. Eventually, with a great push of will, he worked the corners of his lips up into some semblance of a smile at the younger man’s bidding.

“I…” ‘…don’t have a great lot to be proud of.’ A pause. This, he was reminded with painful clarity, was why he kept whiskey on him, and the desire to drink had never been so great in his recent memory. But he had none. So he spoke instead. “It’s not so bad as it could be. I’m a’right.”

Blessedly, Naarhiji’s next line of conversation thoroughly distracted him, though at first, Malikai couldn’t discern if the boy was actually serious. When he concluded that he was, Malik frowned. He oughtn’t have said anything. Ought best have let it lie, let the boy wonder, let the night stay as it was, walk him home and kiss his forehead and leave him be. But his mind and mouth wouldn’t let it be.

“It’s not ridiculous,” he said aloud. “It’s natural. Everyone wants t’ be th’ subject of affection, but it isn’t…when y’ pay for it, or you’re givin’ it for pay, it isn’t real. T’ most people, sharin’ a bed with some’on…kissin’ ‘em, holdin’ ‘em, tha’s reserved for someone important t’ you. Someone who wants you an’ just you an’ loves you while they do. It means a good deal. There’s nothin’ flat wrong with sellin’ such things but it’s all…it’s a game o’ pretend. Syth’s a great actress, but I don’t flatter myself t’ think she thinks twice ‘bout me or wants me t’ hold her, but I don’t pay thinkin’ I’ll get that. I pay hopin’ t’ pretend just for a bit that I got the real thing. But the real thing…tha’s what’s missin’. Someone lovin’ you when they kiss back. Someone holdin’ you ‘cause it’s you they want t’ hold, not ‘cause they paid t’ touch your skin an’ pretend for an hour…”

Malik’s thumb skirted the front of his vest, but he stilled it and tucked it back to his pocket.

“Surely you’ve had tha’ at least once or twice…”

“Twenty years,” Malikai said with a grunt. “Twenty years since I was seventeen. An’ I stick with it now ‘cause I…” Don’t have anything better to do? Don’t know what else to do? Am waiting until it kills me? He frowned. None of the reasons sounded especially sound or uplifting. So he let them rest unspoken. “Don’ know why I stick with it,” he admitted at length. “Habit. Might quit, I s’pose. If I had somethin’ t’ fill the space. Until then…” He rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “I’m here, it’s what I’m doin’, an’ it’s what I know how t’ do. As to Laesa—” He hesitated. “As t’ nobles, sometimes…people who grow up in families o’ power have less choices than you’d think, I s’pose. Always seemed that way t’ me, watchin’ it.”

Thoughts of Laesara, however, and then Vanariah, turned Malikai’s mind in circles leading ever back to the same dead ends. He let those slip away, and focussed instead on the person in his company: the flick and swish of his hair, and the sway of his hips and roll of his posture. The shift in topic was welcome.

“I was happy t’ have been where I was tonight,” Malik said and meant it. “I enjoyed spendin’ it with you, an’ it…” ‘…was the most I’ve enjoyed my time sober in longer than I care to count…’ “It was nice, other’n ‘nearly impailin’ you. Far better’n I expected a’ first.”

Inevitably, however, as all things do, the walk approached its end, and as they came into view of the brothel, Malikai shook his head. There wasn’t much point in arguing with the boy. He was nineteen, experimenting, and naive, and Malik knew he had no real place trying to speak to him of things he wanted nothing to do with. Just the same, he couldn’t help saying his piece.

“However ‘bad off’ y’ think I am, it wasn’ due t’ love or loss or lack thereof. Just my own choices. Just time an’ chance an’ fate if y’ believe in that. All th’ best moments in my life though, an’ anyone’s, I think, ‘ave been due to it. An’ nothin’ lasts forever. So just ‘cause y’ don’ know how long a thing will last isn’t a reason t’ dismiss it. Happiness is worth havin’ where you can find it, even or especially if y’ know you won’t always have it or y’ might lose it a’ any moment. That’s part o’ what makes things precious — knowin’ y’ aren’t guaranteed another shot at anythin’ but the moment y’ got. Love is…the single best thing in all this world an’ mayhaps the only real thing worth livin’ for…don’ know what else would be.”

When they arrived at the brothel’s front, Malikai paused, hesitating as he eyed his company.

“Nothin’ compares t’ feelin’ like you could turn the world upside down for someone if tha’s what they wanted, or knowin’ that there’s someone out there that would for you if y’ asked ‘em. Everyone deserves t’ kiss someone an’ know, kissin’ ‘em, that the person wouldn’ rather be anywhere else in the world for anythin’ else in the world. It’s a feelin’ worth havin’, an’ clingin’ to, an’ fightin’ for, an’ dyin’ for even if it only lasts ‘til your next breath. If y’ want t’ feel purpose in life, you fall in love with someone. It gives y’ purpose. Whether or not y’ think you want that…” His gaze flicked to Naarhiji’s lips, and then away, a ripple of an exhale escaping him. “I hope y’ find it one day.”

Then, with a tip of the head in semblance of a bow farewell, Malik took a step back.

“I did enjoy th’ time with you an’ am happy to ‘ave happened on your path. May the night treat you kindly an’ your dreams be good. Sleep well, Naarhiji.”