FIC: To spend my life in spitting distance of the love that I have known (Warchild, Jos/Niko)
Reposting in honor of No Shame Wednesday.
Fandom: Warchild
Pairing: Jos/Niko
Rating: PG
Summary: Jos and Niko talk and stuff.
How do you keep a bleeding heart wide open?
How do you stand directly where you’r standing?
-TUnEyArDs, Wolly Wolly Gong
Niko finally admitted to himself that reading the document a forty-first time wouldn't really make much of a difference. The meeting wasn't for another ten shifts, and he'd absorbed all he could of it for the time being. But he wanted something to do while waiting, something that didn't require relaxation (which was impossible) or enjoyment (also impossible) or too many of his mental faculties. He rubbed at his temple as he flipped through the history of EarthHub's legal deliberations regarding its treatment of prisoners of war. Not that much of what they did actually lined up with their laws; Admiral Ashrafi had admitted that much.
Then at last he heard two voices outside the door to his quarters. One, high and melodious, a striviirc-na female. Ter’tlo, his chief of security. And one, harder to hear because of its duller timbre and lower pitch. Human, and male.
Niko rose and straightened his robe before calling out, "Come in."
The door slid open, and Ter’tlo hung back as Jos entered.
"Thank you for escorting him, Ter’tlo-na” Niko said. She withdrew with a deferential flick of her wings. "Jos-na, welcome."
Jos nodded and his eyes flicked downward before he smiled just enough to show his rarely-seen dimples. "I translated what seems to be a pretty generous sampling of the most important EarthHub rhetorical theory. Some of it I summarized since I didn't have enough time to do all of a book like Chaim Perelman's The New Rhetoric. But...I hope it's to your satisfaction."
Niko answered Jos's smile with one of his own. "I'm quite sure it will be. I hope it didn't give you too much trouble. I know written translation is different."
Jos took a few steps forward, making it evident that he wasn't entirely sure what to do with his body in this space that wasn't his. The thought put a splinter of discomfort in his heart.
"Not too much trouble." Jos made as if to cross his arms, then let one arm drop so his hand was holding his elbow. "There were a few words I stumbled over. It seemed like both ‘topos’ and ‘category’ could best be translated as sis’na, even though it isn't exact in either case. And the two words have very different meanings. So I just...I left some words untranslated, with a glossary, as usual. Nikolas-dan, when was the last time you slept?"
Niko laughed a bit. "I can't believe I sleep any less than your Captain Azarcon. Being in command of a ship leaves little time for rest, even during a ceasefire. There is always work to be done. And talks to prepare for."
Whatever concern Jos was feeling for him at the moment had apparently distracted him from his insecurity, and he stepped forward to inspect Niko in greater detail. "You didn't actually answer my question."
Something in Niko wanted to blink, to flinch to look down. It was ridiculous. Why did Jos's gaze, direct as a migrant bird's flight and blue as a class O star, unsettle him, Niko wondered? He had faced every Caste Master on Aaian-na and stared into the sharp dark poison-arrowhead eyes of Cairo Azarcon, and he'd never been frightened in quite this way. Niko had always known his worth, practically been born knowing it. Maybe Jos called that into question.
It was not that Jos thought of him as less than worthy. Quite the opposite.
Maybe that was the problem. The worth Jos saw in him was worth he, for once, feared he didn't deserve. And yet Niko was greedy. He wanted Jos to think of him as worthy in every way possible. Even though the things he had read that day were the thoughts of a lonely, hero-worshipping fourteen year old and in four years so much had changed; so much deserved to change.
Jos sighed, an admission of defeat for his line of inquiry. "I'm sure the kia'redan bae has a good reason to neglect his health. Who am I to question his wisdom?"
Snide creature. Niko had to smile. "Not everyone is as young as you are, Jos-na. Even if you have somehow fit a thousand years into your eighteen." He regretted saying that--how many of those years had been stuffed in by Niko himself?
Niko was sure that thought was mirrored in Jos's mind, but Jos didn't voice it. "Maybe you're right."
"Sit down, Jos-na," Niko said with an affectionate sigh. "I should be grateful that you still care about me."
Jos pulled a cushion from the corner and sat at an adjacent side of Niko's work table. He set the folders down in an empty spot and rested his arms on the smooth polished wood.
"Why wouldn't I care about you?" There was a twinge of exasperation in Jos's voice. He looked up at Niko as Niko removed the tea set from the wall and pressed the button to fill the pot with water. "Sraga, Niko, don't play the martyr.”
"Because I sent you away?" Niko set the pot and cups down before them. "Because I still can't regret it and you know me well enough to know that I would have done the same exact thing even knowing what I know now? Because of what I said after I--" He still found it difficult to talk about what he had done to Ash. About--say it--killing Ash. Not to the kii-redan, or even to their mother, to whom he had merely said "Mother, I had to kill him. He did a great injustice in our name and in the name of our people." But he couldn't dredge up the memories of what had happened afterward. Jos telling him he didn't have to do it, telling him that he himself may have done an injustice--and still, after everything, touching him as if Niko were a drawing he was shading, with softness and deliberate care.
After a long silence, Jos filled his cup but didn't drink, only wrapped his hands around it lightly. "Was it because of me that you did it?"
"That I did--that I killed him?"
"Yes."
You sacrificed children, Niko remembered himself saying to his brother's still, defiant eyes.
"It wasn't why I did it," Niko said softly. "Not entirely. But it was why it was not an option."
"Mercy is not a striviirc-na virtue," Jos said--not as an accusation or a value judgement, but as if he were reading from an ethnographic study. "I never liked that word anyway, mercy."
"What word do you prefer for letting someone live who does not deserve it?"
Jos shook his head. "There are too many reasons. But sometimes it's just because we need to rest. Because no matter how right it is, killing makes us weaker. I don't know."
That word, rest, reminded him of thoughts he'd rather not remember at the moment. Ash's look of near-triumph. The thought (silly as it may have been) that he knew exactly what Ash was thinking at the moment, some last vengeful flare of brotherly connection. It made his head hurt more than it already did, but maybe it was only coincidence.
"I am sorry, Jos-na," Niko said finally. "I am sorry for all that has happened to you, and all I have done to you, and I wish with all my heart that it hadn't been necessary."
"And I am sorry," Jos answered. "I'm sorry I'm not here with you. But I have to be there. This is not my na, and you know that. And Evan..." His voice trailed off.
At the mention of the young man's name an all too familiar mind enemy yawned awake, and Niko tried to shove it back into bed. Wait, at least. Wait.
"Evan. You love him."
"I do." Jos looked a bit exasperated but happy all the same at the mention of that name. "He's...he's my family. The closest thing I have to it."
Wait, Niko told his klal’toric again, more insistently, and swallowed before speaking again.
"And what would you say I am to you?"
He wanted to shut his eyes, dreading the answer.
Jos was silent again. He sniffed at his tea, cold by now, and thumbed at the edge of the cup as if he could rub the lacquer off to reveal an answer. He smiled weakly--more weakly than he had at the mention of Evan.
"You are my u'loka."
If Niko didn't know exactly what it felt like to be hit with a bullet, he would have compared the feeling to that.
U’loka. The heart's unhealing wound.
Not a mind enemy by definition--although it could become one. U’loka was something that would always ache even when you found your na and vanquished your mind enemies. It was not to be feared, and learning whether to steer toward it or away could help you find your place. Harder than it sounded. It was fashionable to call the object of one's passionate love one's u’loka. But Jos was never much for the fashionable.
"You mean family is your u’loka.”
Jos looked up at him, his eyes boring into Niko in the true striviirc-na way. "If I had meant that I would have said it."
"It's an ambiguous word."
Jos was glaring by now. "Don't make me have to find another way to tell you that I don't mean I want you to be my older brother. I want everything, Niko. And we both know we can't have that."
"Why can't we?"
"You know why."
And Niko did know why.
"I do, u'loka'i." My u'loka.
Jos reached across the table and covered Niko's hand with his, hooking his thumb underneath so that he had a hold on him. It gave Niko the strength to continue speaking.
“I found the letters. But I didn’t know if you still felt that way. It seemed more likely that your heart would have changed in the past few years.”
Jos looked taken aback. “You-you read them?”
"When I was last on Aaian-na, I went into your old room," he began. "It had belonged to Ash when he was younger. And there was a hole between the stones in the wall where I know he used to hide things he didn't want me or our parents to find. I looked inside it to see if there was anything there that he had left. Sadly, I had stopped caring much about his life after I went into space, when I became the Warboy, so I didn't have much idea what the end of his childhood was like. And I found them there. If they were not meant for my eyes, I am sorry, but they were addressed to me.”
Jos breathed deeply. "I couldn't send comms to you. And I understand now why that is. But then I didn't. Enas-dan couldn't very well tell me that if they'd been intercepted it would've been serving up EarthHub your, er, trump card on a silver platter."
"Trump card?" Niko asked. Jos hadn't translated the expression.
"Uh, your secret weapon. No bitterness intended. But once I knew you’d never get them, things began coming out of me that I would never actually have said to you.”
"Jos-na, I'm glad I didn't receive these. I'm glad I didn't know how strongly you felt, how much you ached to be with me."
Jos smiled crookedly. "I thought it was obvious."
"I didn't want to be wrong. Especially not with you."
Niko remembered those first moments on Turundrlar when Jos's hand brushed his and he found himself wanting to arrest time. When they spent goldshift together, he wanted to make excuses not to send Jos back to his quarters, and he knew that was exactly why he had to. De society’s ideas about love were considerably different from what he knew of EarthHub's morality; casted students and their teachers often formed close, sensual relationships, believing that it invigorated the exchange of knowledge, and that love forged in study and contemplation was the most sacred of all.
But Jos, Niko knew, was different. Jos had been broken and tormented by a man claiming to be his teacher. He could not be anything like that man; so anything that grew between them would be Jos's choice alone. And Niko's plans for Jos meant that allowing anything like kiri'na, place-sharing love-something like what humans would call romance--to grow between them could do nothing but drive daggers through both of their hearts.
Niko laid his other hand on top of Jos's and looked into his eyes. The fear was gone; the ache, as inseparable from the one in his head as cold from snow, remained. "Shall we look over the translations now?"
Jos gave him a serious smile. "I'd rather not." He edged off of his cushion until he was kneeling on bare floor right beside Niko. Niko could smell his skin; he smelled older, and the scents of strange food and fabrics and detergents were overlaid with his, but beneath it all was Jos. Niko remembered sitting by his bed when he was rescued from Falcone, breathing him in, blood and sadness and dirt. All of it. How badly he wanted to pull Jos into his arms as he slept, to know that the fear he had that Jos's heart was battered and damaged was only a poetic conceit and that it still beat as strongly as ever against his own, like lips tapping together to form sounds.
Now Jos was so close Niko could feel his breath. Jos raised his hand to cup Niko's face, and he rubbed the pad of his thumb against the corner of Niko's lips.
"I've wanted to do this, but I don't really know..." Jos said. Fear flickered in his eyes like the blurry shape of a big, deep-swimming fish, a plea for help. He leaned in and hovered close to Niko's lips but drew back just as Niko felt the first hint of his mouth's warmth. Niko slid an arm around Jos's back, and Jos buried his face in Niko's shoulder.
"Don't do anything you don't want to," Niko whispered into Jos's hair. "It's enough to be close to you, s'yta-na."
"It's--" Jos's lips moved against the bare skin of Niko's neck. "It hurts how good it is to be with you like this."
Niko held him tighter and ran a hand up the nape of Jos's neck and into his thick black hair, hair that smelled like mint and leather and clean sweat.
"I think it might be a good idea to rest after all. Will you--will you come with me? You don't have to lie down. You can sit. Or stand."
"It's your head, isn't it." Jos pulled back and touched his fingertips softly to Niko's temples.
"Azarcon is training you in mind-reading now? You're going to be the most dangerous man in the galaxy soon."
Jos rolled his eyes a bit. "Your quarters are so dim, and you keep touching the side of your head."
"It's nothing serious. All my life I've gotten headaches that don't respond to treatment. They've been a bit more frequent lately. Another thing to be lived with.”
Jos stood and offered his hand. "I'll lie down with you."
Still hand in hand, they walked into the other room where Niko's bedroll was. Jos bent to untie and tug off his shoes, and he was first to stretch out on the bed. He looked a bit stiff and uncomfortable at first, but the awkwardness seemed to melt away as he lay on his side and looked up at Niko, a gentle smile on his face. Of all the things that Niko had encountered in the universe, both concrete and abstract, it was Jos's capacity for gentleness in spite of everything that had brought him closest to crying.
Niko lay down next to Jos and reached out to touch his cheek. Jos gravitated toward the touch, eyes half-closing in a grave sort of bliss that seemed appropriate to him. Jos, in turn, slid both hands into Niko's hair and began to massage slow circles into his scalp. Niko wasn't sure it truly relieved the pain any, but it felt good anyway. He found himself sighing deeply and shifting closer to Jos, forehead pressed against his shoulder.
Jos touched his lips delicately to the crown of Niko's head. "Come here," he murmured.
"I am here," Niko said wryly.
Jos removed his hands from Niko's hair and wrapped his arms around Niko's waist so that he could pull him closer, their bodies overlapping. Niko felt strange about resting all of his weight on Jos, but Jos's hands on the small of his back urged him to relax there and let Jos's body support him.
"You still let me touch you," Niko breathed, as if bearing witness to a miracle. "And you touch me."
"It's always been different with you. I don't feel like I'm being hunted when you touch me. I feel...grounded." Jos's hands were in his hair again, warming and soothing, and Niko thought he might actually be able to sleep like that.
Except that Jos was speaking to him, and he didn't want to waste a moment of feeling as well as hearing his voice, letting the vibrations ruffle him like a pleasant crossbreeze. "Niko?" Jos was asking. "I think I'm ready."
"For?" Niko didn't particularly want to raise his head from Jos's chest, but he lifted his head to look Jos in the eye.
"I want you to kiss me," Jos said.
"You are sure."
"I'm sure. If I want to stop, I'll say so." Jos's hand was on the back of Niko's head, and he pulled him closer. This time their lips actually did touch. Niko didn't open his mouth, only rested his lips against Jos's for a good long measure, soaking in the smoothness and warmth and the mere fact that these were his lips and Jos's lips and they were touching. He pressed another soft kiss to Jos's cheek, then another; he kissed his jaw and his chin and then returned to his mouth to leave another kiss as tender as he could possibly make it. It was Jos who deepened it, opening his mouth and sealing it over Niko's. Jos wasn't quite sure what to do with the kiss after that, but Niko didn't care at all.
"It's perfect, s'yta-na," he said against Jos's cheek. Jos just laughed and turned his head to kiss Niko's temple. "Anything you can give me. My days of demanding from you what you do not wish to give are over."
Jos rested his forehead against Niko's. "I have always wanted to give you everything you asked," he said softly. "That was what hurt so much."
"And it hurt that I couldn't give you everything you asked."
"There are as many kinds of u'loka as there are people on the planet," Jos said. A direct quote from a philosophical text. "I am glad at least that I don't feel I've completely lost you anymore."
In response, Niko just kissed Jos. Soft, closed-mouthed kisses, wanting then and there to give him every kiss he'd ever wanted to give him, as foolish as that was.
After he had driven the knife into Ash's heart, Niko wondered if it had been Ash, and not him, who had truly gotten revenge. Because of the two of them Ash was the one who could stop wondering if his every action was right or wrong. The one who could stop loving. The one who could rest.
But rest would mean not having Jos in his arms right now. For that, he felt, he could keep moving, with the love and the pain and all that brought with it.
"You will only lose me if you want to lose me, Jos-na," he said.
Jos tilted his head up and kissed Niko's forehead. "Don't think about things like that anymore. Sleep."
Niko smiled. "I will try."
Fandom: Warchild
Pairing: Jos/Niko
Rating: PG
Summary: Jos and Niko talk and stuff.
How do you keep a bleeding heart wide open?
How do you stand directly where you’r standing?
-TUnEyArDs, Wolly Wolly Gong
Niko finally admitted to himself that reading the document a forty-first time wouldn't really make much of a difference. The meeting wasn't for another ten shifts, and he'd absorbed all he could of it for the time being. But he wanted something to do while waiting, something that didn't require relaxation (which was impossible) or enjoyment (also impossible) or too many of his mental faculties. He rubbed at his temple as he flipped through the history of EarthHub's legal deliberations regarding its treatment of prisoners of war. Not that much of what they did actually lined up with their laws; Admiral Ashrafi had admitted that much.
Then at last he heard two voices outside the door to his quarters. One, high and melodious, a striviirc-na female. Ter’tlo, his chief of security. And one, harder to hear because of its duller timbre and lower pitch. Human, and male.
Niko rose and straightened his robe before calling out, "Come in."
The door slid open, and Ter’tlo hung back as Jos entered.
"Thank you for escorting him, Ter’tlo-na” Niko said. She withdrew with a deferential flick of her wings. "Jos-na, welcome."
Jos nodded and his eyes flicked downward before he smiled just enough to show his rarely-seen dimples. "I translated what seems to be a pretty generous sampling of the most important EarthHub rhetorical theory. Some of it I summarized since I didn't have enough time to do all of a book like Chaim Perelman's The New Rhetoric. But...I hope it's to your satisfaction."
Niko answered Jos's smile with one of his own. "I'm quite sure it will be. I hope it didn't give you too much trouble. I know written translation is different."
Jos took a few steps forward, making it evident that he wasn't entirely sure what to do with his body in this space that wasn't his. The thought put a splinter of discomfort in his heart.
"Not too much trouble." Jos made as if to cross his arms, then let one arm drop so his hand was holding his elbow. "There were a few words I stumbled over. It seemed like both ‘topos’ and ‘category’ could best be translated as sis’na, even though it isn't exact in either case. And the two words have very different meanings. So I just...I left some words untranslated, with a glossary, as usual. Nikolas-dan, when was the last time you slept?"
Niko laughed a bit. "I can't believe I sleep any less than your Captain Azarcon. Being in command of a ship leaves little time for rest, even during a ceasefire. There is always work to be done. And talks to prepare for."
Whatever concern Jos was feeling for him at the moment had apparently distracted him from his insecurity, and he stepped forward to inspect Niko in greater detail. "You didn't actually answer my question."
Something in Niko wanted to blink, to flinch to look down. It was ridiculous. Why did Jos's gaze, direct as a migrant bird's flight and blue as a class O star, unsettle him, Niko wondered? He had faced every Caste Master on Aaian-na and stared into the sharp dark poison-arrowhead eyes of Cairo Azarcon, and he'd never been frightened in quite this way. Niko had always known his worth, practically been born knowing it. Maybe Jos called that into question.
It was not that Jos thought of him as less than worthy. Quite the opposite.
Maybe that was the problem. The worth Jos saw in him was worth he, for once, feared he didn't deserve. And yet Niko was greedy. He wanted Jos to think of him as worthy in every way possible. Even though the things he had read that day were the thoughts of a lonely, hero-worshipping fourteen year old and in four years so much had changed; so much deserved to change.
Jos sighed, an admission of defeat for his line of inquiry. "I'm sure the kia'redan bae has a good reason to neglect his health. Who am I to question his wisdom?"
Snide creature. Niko had to smile. "Not everyone is as young as you are, Jos-na. Even if you have somehow fit a thousand years into your eighteen." He regretted saying that--how many of those years had been stuffed in by Niko himself?
Niko was sure that thought was mirrored in Jos's mind, but Jos didn't voice it. "Maybe you're right."
"Sit down, Jos-na," Niko said with an affectionate sigh. "I should be grateful that you still care about me."
Jos pulled a cushion from the corner and sat at an adjacent side of Niko's work table. He set the folders down in an empty spot and rested his arms on the smooth polished wood.
"Why wouldn't I care about you?" There was a twinge of exasperation in Jos's voice. He looked up at Niko as Niko removed the tea set from the wall and pressed the button to fill the pot with water. "Sraga, Niko, don't play the martyr.”
"Because I sent you away?" Niko set the pot and cups down before them. "Because I still can't regret it and you know me well enough to know that I would have done the same exact thing even knowing what I know now? Because of what I said after I--" He still found it difficult to talk about what he had done to Ash. About--say it--killing Ash. Not to the kii-redan, or even to their mother, to whom he had merely said "Mother, I had to kill him. He did a great injustice in our name and in the name of our people." But he couldn't dredge up the memories of what had happened afterward. Jos telling him he didn't have to do it, telling him that he himself may have done an injustice--and still, after everything, touching him as if Niko were a drawing he was shading, with softness and deliberate care.
After a long silence, Jos filled his cup but didn't drink, only wrapped his hands around it lightly. "Was it because of me that you did it?"
"That I did--that I killed him?"
"Yes."
You sacrificed children, Niko remembered himself saying to his brother's still, defiant eyes.
"It wasn't why I did it," Niko said softly. "Not entirely. But it was why it was not an option."
"Mercy is not a striviirc-na virtue," Jos said--not as an accusation or a value judgement, but as if he were reading from an ethnographic study. "I never liked that word anyway, mercy."
"What word do you prefer for letting someone live who does not deserve it?"
Jos shook his head. "There are too many reasons. But sometimes it's just because we need to rest. Because no matter how right it is, killing makes us weaker. I don't know."
That word, rest, reminded him of thoughts he'd rather not remember at the moment. Ash's look of near-triumph. The thought (silly as it may have been) that he knew exactly what Ash was thinking at the moment, some last vengeful flare of brotherly connection. It made his head hurt more than it already did, but maybe it was only coincidence.
"I am sorry, Jos-na," Niko said finally. "I am sorry for all that has happened to you, and all I have done to you, and I wish with all my heart that it hadn't been necessary."
"And I am sorry," Jos answered. "I'm sorry I'm not here with you. But I have to be there. This is not my na, and you know that. And Evan..." His voice trailed off.
At the mention of the young man's name an all too familiar mind enemy yawned awake, and Niko tried to shove it back into bed. Wait, at least. Wait.
"Evan. You love him."
"I do." Jos looked a bit exasperated but happy all the same at the mention of that name. "He's...he's my family. The closest thing I have to it."
Wait, Niko told his klal’toric again, more insistently, and swallowed before speaking again.
"And what would you say I am to you?"
He wanted to shut his eyes, dreading the answer.
Jos was silent again. He sniffed at his tea, cold by now, and thumbed at the edge of the cup as if he could rub the lacquer off to reveal an answer. He smiled weakly--more weakly than he had at the mention of Evan.
"You are my u'loka."
If Niko didn't know exactly what it felt like to be hit with a bullet, he would have compared the feeling to that.
U’loka. The heart's unhealing wound.
Not a mind enemy by definition--although it could become one. U’loka was something that would always ache even when you found your na and vanquished your mind enemies. It was not to be feared, and learning whether to steer toward it or away could help you find your place. Harder than it sounded. It was fashionable to call the object of one's passionate love one's u’loka. But Jos was never much for the fashionable.
"You mean family is your u’loka.”
Jos looked up at him, his eyes boring into Niko in the true striviirc-na way. "If I had meant that I would have said it."
"It's an ambiguous word."
Jos was glaring by now. "Don't make me have to find another way to tell you that I don't mean I want you to be my older brother. I want everything, Niko. And we both know we can't have that."
"Why can't we?"
"You know why."
And Niko did know why.
"I do, u'loka'i." My u'loka.
Jos reached across the table and covered Niko's hand with his, hooking his thumb underneath so that he had a hold on him. It gave Niko the strength to continue speaking.
“I found the letters. But I didn’t know if you still felt that way. It seemed more likely that your heart would have changed in the past few years.”
Jos looked taken aback. “You-you read them?”
"When I was last on Aaian-na, I went into your old room," he began. "It had belonged to Ash when he was younger. And there was a hole between the stones in the wall where I know he used to hide things he didn't want me or our parents to find. I looked inside it to see if there was anything there that he had left. Sadly, I had stopped caring much about his life after I went into space, when I became the Warboy, so I didn't have much idea what the end of his childhood was like. And I found them there. If they were not meant for my eyes, I am sorry, but they were addressed to me.”
Jos breathed deeply. "I couldn't send comms to you. And I understand now why that is. But then I didn't. Enas-dan couldn't very well tell me that if they'd been intercepted it would've been serving up EarthHub your, er, trump card on a silver platter."
"Trump card?" Niko asked. Jos hadn't translated the expression.
"Uh, your secret weapon. No bitterness intended. But once I knew you’d never get them, things began coming out of me that I would never actually have said to you.”
"Jos-na, I'm glad I didn't receive these. I'm glad I didn't know how strongly you felt, how much you ached to be with me."
Jos smiled crookedly. "I thought it was obvious."
"I didn't want to be wrong. Especially not with you."
Niko remembered those first moments on Turundrlar when Jos's hand brushed his and he found himself wanting to arrest time. When they spent goldshift together, he wanted to make excuses not to send Jos back to his quarters, and he knew that was exactly why he had to. De society’s ideas about love were considerably different from what he knew of EarthHub's morality; casted students and their teachers often formed close, sensual relationships, believing that it invigorated the exchange of knowledge, and that love forged in study and contemplation was the most sacred of all.
But Jos, Niko knew, was different. Jos had been broken and tormented by a man claiming to be his teacher. He could not be anything like that man; so anything that grew between them would be Jos's choice alone. And Niko's plans for Jos meant that allowing anything like kiri'na, place-sharing love-something like what humans would call romance--to grow between them could do nothing but drive daggers through both of their hearts.
Niko laid his other hand on top of Jos's and looked into his eyes. The fear was gone; the ache, as inseparable from the one in his head as cold from snow, remained. "Shall we look over the translations now?"
Jos gave him a serious smile. "I'd rather not." He edged off of his cushion until he was kneeling on bare floor right beside Niko. Niko could smell his skin; he smelled older, and the scents of strange food and fabrics and detergents were overlaid with his, but beneath it all was Jos. Niko remembered sitting by his bed when he was rescued from Falcone, breathing him in, blood and sadness and dirt. All of it. How badly he wanted to pull Jos into his arms as he slept, to know that the fear he had that Jos's heart was battered and damaged was only a poetic conceit and that it still beat as strongly as ever against his own, like lips tapping together to form sounds.
Now Jos was so close Niko could feel his breath. Jos raised his hand to cup Niko's face, and he rubbed the pad of his thumb against the corner of Niko's lips.
"I've wanted to do this, but I don't really know..." Jos said. Fear flickered in his eyes like the blurry shape of a big, deep-swimming fish, a plea for help. He leaned in and hovered close to Niko's lips but drew back just as Niko felt the first hint of his mouth's warmth. Niko slid an arm around Jos's back, and Jos buried his face in Niko's shoulder.
"Don't do anything you don't want to," Niko whispered into Jos's hair. "It's enough to be close to you, s'yta-na."
"It's--" Jos's lips moved against the bare skin of Niko's neck. "It hurts how good it is to be with you like this."
Niko held him tighter and ran a hand up the nape of Jos's neck and into his thick black hair, hair that smelled like mint and leather and clean sweat.
"I think it might be a good idea to rest after all. Will you--will you come with me? You don't have to lie down. You can sit. Or stand."
"It's your head, isn't it." Jos pulled back and touched his fingertips softly to Niko's temples.
"Azarcon is training you in mind-reading now? You're going to be the most dangerous man in the galaxy soon."
Jos rolled his eyes a bit. "Your quarters are so dim, and you keep touching the side of your head."
"It's nothing serious. All my life I've gotten headaches that don't respond to treatment. They've been a bit more frequent lately. Another thing to be lived with.”
Jos stood and offered his hand. "I'll lie down with you."
Still hand in hand, they walked into the other room where Niko's bedroll was. Jos bent to untie and tug off his shoes, and he was first to stretch out on the bed. He looked a bit stiff and uncomfortable at first, but the awkwardness seemed to melt away as he lay on his side and looked up at Niko, a gentle smile on his face. Of all the things that Niko had encountered in the universe, both concrete and abstract, it was Jos's capacity for gentleness in spite of everything that had brought him closest to crying.
Niko lay down next to Jos and reached out to touch his cheek. Jos gravitated toward the touch, eyes half-closing in a grave sort of bliss that seemed appropriate to him. Jos, in turn, slid both hands into Niko's hair and began to massage slow circles into his scalp. Niko wasn't sure it truly relieved the pain any, but it felt good anyway. He found himself sighing deeply and shifting closer to Jos, forehead pressed against his shoulder.
Jos touched his lips delicately to the crown of Niko's head. "Come here," he murmured.
"I am here," Niko said wryly.
Jos removed his hands from Niko's hair and wrapped his arms around Niko's waist so that he could pull him closer, their bodies overlapping. Niko felt strange about resting all of his weight on Jos, but Jos's hands on the small of his back urged him to relax there and let Jos's body support him.
"You still let me touch you," Niko breathed, as if bearing witness to a miracle. "And you touch me."
"It's always been different with you. I don't feel like I'm being hunted when you touch me. I feel...grounded." Jos's hands were in his hair again, warming and soothing, and Niko thought he might actually be able to sleep like that.
Except that Jos was speaking to him, and he didn't want to waste a moment of feeling as well as hearing his voice, letting the vibrations ruffle him like a pleasant crossbreeze. "Niko?" Jos was asking. "I think I'm ready."
"For?" Niko didn't particularly want to raise his head from Jos's chest, but he lifted his head to look Jos in the eye.
"I want you to kiss me," Jos said.
"You are sure."
"I'm sure. If I want to stop, I'll say so." Jos's hand was on the back of Niko's head, and he pulled him closer. This time their lips actually did touch. Niko didn't open his mouth, only rested his lips against Jos's for a good long measure, soaking in the smoothness and warmth and the mere fact that these were his lips and Jos's lips and they were touching. He pressed another soft kiss to Jos's cheek, then another; he kissed his jaw and his chin and then returned to his mouth to leave another kiss as tender as he could possibly make it. It was Jos who deepened it, opening his mouth and sealing it over Niko's. Jos wasn't quite sure what to do with the kiss after that, but Niko didn't care at all.
"It's perfect, s'yta-na," he said against Jos's cheek. Jos just laughed and turned his head to kiss Niko's temple. "Anything you can give me. My days of demanding from you what you do not wish to give are over."
Jos rested his forehead against Niko's. "I have always wanted to give you everything you asked," he said softly. "That was what hurt so much."
"And it hurt that I couldn't give you everything you asked."
"There are as many kinds of u'loka as there are people on the planet," Jos said. A direct quote from a philosophical text. "I am glad at least that I don't feel I've completely lost you anymore."
In response, Niko just kissed Jos. Soft, closed-mouthed kisses, wanting then and there to give him every kiss he'd ever wanted to give him, as foolish as that was.
After he had driven the knife into Ash's heart, Niko wondered if it had been Ash, and not him, who had truly gotten revenge. Because of the two of them Ash was the one who could stop wondering if his every action was right or wrong. The one who could stop loving. The one who could rest.
But rest would mean not having Jos in his arms right now. For that, he felt, he could keep moving, with the love and the pain and all that brought with it.
"You will only lose me if you want to lose me, Jos-na," he said.
Jos tilted his head up and kissed Niko's forehead. "Don't think about things like that anymore. Sleep."
Niko smiled. "I will try."