[Fic] Guardian - 8/8 (EXO)
Title: Guardian
Pairing: Kai/Suho
Rating: NC-17 overall
Genre: master/slave!AU, pseudo-historical, fantasy, smut
Warnings: issues of sexual consent, references to past sexual assault, violence, kidnapping, slaves having no ability to say no especially at first, and did I mention issues of consent inherent to master/slave dynamics?
Summary: They spoke of him as though he were nothing more than a treasure found by the roadside. He bowed to his new master because it was polite, and because he knew of nothing else he could do. See warnings.
***
Chapter One * Chapter Two * Chapter Three * Chapter Four * Chapter Five * Chapter Six * Chapter Seven * Chapter Eight
***
If Kai had known just how thoroughly he had shaken Suho, Suho wondered if he would have been left at his new tent alone. Oh, it was a serviceable tent, not fancy. There was a bed. Suho’s chest was there in the corner, brought in by Sehun. There was a low table, a water pitcher. It was set up as though someone was to live there, as though he was to live there. The absurdity of it nearly came bubbling out of him when Sehun ducked back in. He was free. He had his own tent. He owned Sehun. None of it made sense.
“I did not expect this. What have I done to deserve this?” Suho asked Sehun, pacing when sitting was not helping him to think.
“Saving Kai’s life is something quite important,” Sehun said easily. “Are you not happy to be free?”
“Of course? Of course, I am. I haven’t lost my ability to think.” Though sometimes it seemed like it. “But Kai saved my life as well! He put himself to great trouble seeing that I would live. I thought that evened the burden between us.”
“What he did was in response to your sacrifice, though. He would have given more to see you made whole again. I wish you could have seen him holding you in the pond, talking to you, begging you to wake.”
Suho had gone to the pond, after, when he had been able to walk without fear of falling. He’d felt the desperation lingering in the water, and it had hurt him - and scared him that he had felt nothing from himself. He had been passive, there, held by Kai. It had only been Yixing’s interference, seeing deeper into Suho than even the water could, that had saved him. Thinking of it left him with an ache of melancholy, the worry when Kai had woken.
“Maybe he doesn’t believe my innocence,” Suho said, bewildered.
Sehun frowned. “But he freed you because of it.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps to see me gone from his tent, putting aside a tainted memory. A scarred memory.”
“If he does not appreciate what you have done for him, what you have been to him, then he is not the man I know,” Sehun said.
“He does not touch me,” Suho said softly. “Only once, since I was injured, has he asked me into his bed for anything more than sleep. And to sleep there, perhaps he felt he owed it to me.”
“Afraid of hurting you? Or if he meant to free you, he wanted to begin with you as a free man. Or guilty, because you hurt because of him. There are so many reasons.”
Suho shook his head. “No. Once he wondered if I would stay beside him freely. I felt the words carried some weight behind them, but I did not think his life would be threatened or that he would put me from him. Put me out of his tent.”
“To give you a tent of your own does not mean he wishes you to stay away from his.”
There was a certain logic to what Sehun was saying, but hearing it and really accepting it were different. It helped that what he wanted was far different than the reality he was seeing, and how he feared it would be going forward. Freedom didn’t mean a life of ease. His place among the tents was not guaranteed. They could put him on a horse and be rid of him before he could blink. But that Kai would want him close, he didn’t know.
“I wish I could believe that. I craved freedom for so long. I do not regret it, but there is much I do regret.”
When Suho saw how heavily his words weighed on Sehun, he reached for Sehun’s arm.
“Don’t worry for me. You don’t need to speak with him. If there’s truth to what you say, then it may be best that he finds it within himself. I would not push him to it.”
“As long as he doesn’t wait too long to discover what he should do,” Sehun muttered. “At least I’ll be here to help you while he decides.”
“And that. I can’t own a slave,” Suho said, freezing abruptly at the thought. He moaned, sinking down in front of the table and looking up. “Not you. We are friends. Not- No. If Kai can free me, then I can free you.”
Suho wondered at how unconcerned Sehun looked, as though the subject of his freedom was a mere amusement.
“Kai granted me a measure of protection in having his father give me to you,” Sehun told him. “As your slave, his father cannot cast me out. If you free me, he is not obligated to allow me to live in these tents. You may be free, but you are still bound to some rules. It is possible he would allow me to stay as your servant, but if you freed me immediately, that Kai asked that I be given to you would seem suspect.”
It made sense, and perhaps he would have thought of that as well had he had had the time to think it through.
“You have a good point. Then we could wait,” Suho muttered. “Oh. Oh! I could allow you to see your merchant!”
Sehun crouched in front of him, his eyes curving. “You could.”
“Even if you were my slave in reality, you would not…”
“I will do my duties,” Sehun told him. “I will bring your food, wash your clothes, help the others. I will help Kai if that is your wish.”
“Yes?” Suho said, and knew he sounded pitiful. He just needed time to think everything through, and he had no idea how much time he’d need.
***
It was quiet, so horribly quiet in the tent, even with Sehun coming in to check on him every so often. He rubbed over his wrist, and found it naked, bare but for the amulet. He picked up and put down his book. He had nothing to do. Nothing to clean, nothing to fold, no one to wait for. He watched the entryway hoping that Kai would appear, to see how Suho was, to see if he liked the tent, or just to spend time with him. Suho ate with Sehun, staring at his plate as he pushed the food around.
“Who took Kai his food?”
“No one he would take to his bed, if that is what you wonder,” Sehun said.
Sehun saw through that question, but maybe not the whole of it. “Did you see him? Did he ask you about me?”
“If you were settled. Asking me about him, or him asking me about you isn’t bring either of you any closer. Why do you not take your plate and eat with him?”
Suho knew Sehun wasn’t teasing when he looked up, but all Suho really could do was sigh.
“Because I’m stubborn,” Suho said, laughing when he admitted it. “And because I’m still worried. I want to see him, and I’m afraid of what happens when I do.”
“You’re still the same people,” Sehun pointed out.
And that was the truth. It was just hard to process, too many things to process at once. He’d went to sleep the night before pressed against Kai, and the thought of sleeping alone alone was something bitter to accept.
***
It took almost another day, bracing himself. If Kai would not go to him, he would go to Kai. He was not wiling to put the doubt in Kai’s mind that was building in his own, and he froze in the doorway of Kai’s tent to see him sitting at the low table with a man at his side. It was not a face that Suho knew, and it was not a slave. Just the fact that he found Kai not alone as he had expected had him turning, hurrying back along the path.
“Suho!”
He hadn’t turned away soon enough it seemed. Suho stopped, closing his eyes for a moment before he turned to face Kai.
“Did you need something?” Kai asked.
And Suho shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, I was interrupting you.”
“It was just a visitor,” Kai said. “I ate alone last night. The tent was too empty. He is a friend that I invited.”
Of course Suho knew. “Because of the-”
“Because you were not.”
The interruption forced Suho to inhale. “You moved me from your tent!”
“I gave you a choice,” Kai said, his voice tight and low. “I wanted you to make it.”
“I didn’t ask for one. Yes, I want that choice. But you didn’t ask me if I wanted to- You never told me I could come back!“
“You were in my bed almost every night. I took no one else to it but you.”
“The bed is yours. I was yours. You speak as though I have cause to protest.”
“You could still be mine,” Kai said. Suho felt the jolt, as thought the slavery would be bound on him by force again. “If you take me to your bed of your own choice.”
“Kai.”
“Let me worship at your body. Let me feel you moan for me. Let me speak your true name as you spill in me.”
Suho’s mouth was open, without his own choice, breath coming hard as Kai spoke.
“That has bound people before,” Suho said, trying to keep his wits among the images in his head and Kai’s squeezing fingers.
Kai’s lips had curled up, a tease and promise, and something like hope there that Suho could hardly bear to look at. It was as though Kai was asking if that would truly be so bad as he cocked his head. Hair fell across Kai’s eyes and he wanted to brush it aside.
But he shook his head. “Until that last night, you wouldn’t even touch me-“
“You’d been sick,” Kai said, voice fierce. “You were like some delicate egg that would crack if I looked at you, and the fault was my own.”
“Even when I offered you refused! Only to listen to you pleasing yourself.”
“How could I? You’d nearly given your life for me.”
Suho reached for his wrist, but the cuff was still gone. He shook his head again, twice, three times.
“I need to think,” he said, and he did what he had done so few times, turning from Kai when every instinct told him not to. But he made it not two steps before he heard Kai’s voice, low and urgent as Kai’s hand gripped his arm.
“Joonmyun!”
He did not turn, could not turn, could not risk looking into Kai’s eyes right then and losing himself entirely. “You cannot use that name against me! You must give me time. If I am free, that is my right.”
Kai took back his hands immediately, and Suho turned, skirting between tents. He was far enough away that he had slowed down, but he didn’t know where to go. He didn’t want to return to his own tent, not feeling as he was.
“Suho.”
Suho stopped. But the voice that had called to him was Sehun’s, and he watched Sehun approached him. His eyes dropped to Sehun’s tightened hands, before fixing on his face. He suspected, no, he knew, that Sehun had seen at least part of that exchange.
“I have known Kai since we were in swaddles,” Sehun said. “And I have never seen him thrown off as he is by you.”
“You wish me to give in to him,” Suho said.
Sehun shook his head. “Only if that’s what you want. You know that.” And Sehun touched his arm, the amulet there. “I was given this by… by my merchant, and brought it to him, for you, to ward away death. Though in truth, his love for you had done so already.”
“No,” Suho protested.
“I do not know what magic the healer performed that night, but you bear part of Kai’s soul. Do you not feel it? But I speak to you only because you should know not to fear anyone. He does not want another in his tent, or to hold him when his life is ended. Know that.”
Suho scrabbled at the cord around his arm. “You should have this. For you both. I have no more need of it.”
Sehun smiled, accepted it. “That’s what we all wanted.”
***
It was the water that Suho was drawn to, the quiet of it. It neither surprised him, nor offended him to hear the sound of movement in the water, and he knew what had brought him when he saw the lines of Kai’s shoulders as he moved in the pond. They had kissed there, and Kai had saved his life there. Perhaps it was meant, not on a dusty path, but in the cool and still, where he could feel honesty in the ripples of the water. They had spent days apart, the longest of any time since Suho had come to Kai’s tent, and seeing Kai from a distance had not been enough. Suho knew by his own words, Kai had felt he could not approach him. It was time, finally, to finish, to say the things he had ben waiting to say.
“Is this place only for you and your slave?” Suho asked, pausing at the water’s edge and feeling the pull of it, that, and the lonely slope of Kai’s shoulders.
But Kai’s response was almost immediate. “It is a place you are welcome, always.”
It was the invitation he had been seeking, when Kai made no move to leave, only watching him. But Suho did not feel self conscious as his loose pants dropped to the ground, and his tunic after it. He stepped down into the cool water and felt it soothe his heated skin. There was tension there, the way that Kai looked at him. He had nothing but himself, no basin, no amulet, no cuff. It was him, and the water, and it was an offering, a neutral place as Kai lifted his hand an ran a cool, wet thumb over the arrow’s mark on Suho’s shoulder.
“There are too many marks you bear because of me.”
It made Suho turn, feeling at once too exposed even with the cover of the water, a chill making gooseflesh rise along his arms. “Do they make my value lessen in your eyes? Did you free me because blemished I could not fetch a decent price?”
“No!” Kai said, and his voice was harsh even to the possibility of it. “I still haven’t found who was responsible for this. I feel responsible because I could not do that for you. I don’t deserve… Perhaps you deserve more.”
“I do not doubt you,” Suho told him. “Nor do I blame you for what you haven’t accomplished. You may find who was responsible, or perhaps not. But that had no weight to me. A wise man told me that I bear part of your soul. Perhaps together we can See your fate.”
There, where Kai had kissed him, and where Kai had saved him.
He felt Kai come up behind him, and did not startle as Kai’s arms surrounded him. Kai’s head was against his, one arm curving up over Suho’s chest to rest at his shoulder, and the other around his waist.
He wanted to rest his hands over Kai’s but he could not.
“What if you See something I do not like?” Kai asked.
“That is the danger in Looking. Else, there is only living.”
“Then that is what I want. I do not want to know. I only know…what I want.”
Suho swallowed, feeling the water lap at them.
“What is that?”
“I thought of this a few times, after I had you back. If I have a child one day,” Kai said into Suho’s shoulder, as though weighing his words. “I would have him learn at your knee.”
“Then he would be my student?”
“He would be your son. At the birth, I would want him born into your hands. That will tie his life to yours, and yours to mine.”
Suho blew out a quiet breath. “Kai.”
“You will see him grown with me. I dreamed of this.”
Suho’s lips curved at that. “Was it a waking dream?”
Not prophecy. Desire.
“You are a waking dream, Joonmyun.”
It sent warmth through them, and he laughed then, the thought of Kai picturing some uncertain future with so many uncertain elements. But they were together in that future, together in a way Suho would never have thought to dream of. Kai, who held him tight but gentle, who had put him aside when what he had wanted was to keep Suho close. He had given Suho his freedom when he could have kept Suho on his knees. Suho closed his eyes.
“You promised me there would be no other,” Suho said, and felt Kai’s shoulders tighten. “But I know there are some fates that cannot be changed. I will watch with you for that future.”
“Maybe one day you will dream of it, too. But it is my tent and my bed that is empty of what is home to me.”
Suho tilted his head back.. “Of that I foresee I will take you willingly to my bed, and that this future you desire, it may find truth in the living of it.”
Kai shuddered against him, holding him tight for a moment before turning him.
“May I kiss you?”
Suho shook his head, cupping Kai’s face. How serious he was. How lovely.
“Jongin,“ Suho whispered, watching Kai’s eyes go soft. And Suho kissed him.
***
Kai rolled with him naked onto the bed, pulling Suho atop him and letting Suho spend long moments to worship the lushness of Kai’s mouth as their skin warmed together. They were the kisses of his dreams, a way that Kai had taught him and yet not, cherishing amid the want, the pure flame of need that Kai inspired as his hands stroked Suho’s sides. He had missed it. Not the want and not even the kissing, but the warmth of him, the way he touched and said Suho’s name. He had been missed. Kai, who looked up at him, amazed, had been afraid.
He was so hungry to know Kai again on that bed that he could not even decide what he wanted. Kai braced over him, kissing him even as they moved together, and when Kai reached, the oil close, Suho parted his thighs and ached and moaned against Kai’s mouth at the press of Kai’s fingers into him.
“How will I last?” Kai nearly growled, and Suho shook his head vigorously.
“You won’t have to,” he said, and moaned again at the sudden emptiness, throbbing but not for long as it was Kai’s cock that pressed against him.
“Please,” Suho pleaded, when Kai paused, his mouth open as though he wanted to ask, as though he needed to hear. “Please, I need you.”
He would say if he was in pain, and if he was needing. They had been so close to that before, and that was all he wanted, that openness, that connection. He watched that assurance dawn over Kai’s face, and moaned in joy as Kai slid into him. They shared it, that pleasure, and it was theirs. He felt so powerful, gasping, his hands gripping at Kai’s shoulders and contorting in agonized pleasure as Kai gripped his cock and began to stroke him in time with his desperate hips. He came moaning Kai’s name, rocked as Kai groaned and fucked with such delicious abandon until his hips stuttered and stilled, gasping against Suho’s skin as he reached for him, held him, crooned for him.
“Jongin,” Suho whispered, and Kai moaned and held him, resting beside him on the bed. His face was damp, his eyes closed as he panted, and he was so beautiful then. And more so, when he studied Suho’s face, a smile curving his lips as he curled his arm tighter over Suho’s side.
“Sehun told me once that to know you wanted me, I should guarantee I would not beat you or put you from me or increase your work. I didn’t get a chance then, but I have it now,” Kai said, and he spoke slow, as though to make sure Suho understood. “Whether you share my bed, no matter how you share my bed, you have a place in these tents. You are free until your last breath. I want you to be with me, a free man who knows he is free.”
“You will know as long as I wish to be here,” Suho said. “It will…take time, I think to really fully understand.”
But with Kai to help him, he did not think it would take him so long to at least begin to feel secure in his freedom, in the knowledge that what passed between them was not obligation. And to lose any fear that it bore the weight of censure behind it. Even what they had done together that Suho had wanted, there had always been that danger there. They would change, had been changing slowly all the while, but it was not a change to regret.
“You asked me once if I would stay by your side if I was not a slave,” Suho said. “You know the answer now.”
They both knew the answer.
***
The cuff was thinner and it bore Suho’s name. It was simple, different than the cuff that Sehun had worn before, or the one that Suho had worn. Sehun had not seemed surprised to see it, that Suho would want to change the mark on his body to something more personal to him. It had been Kai who had had it made for him, Suho explaining what it was that he wanted to do and waiting for Kai to agree. There had been a smile there that Kai had been unable to hide, approval that had him leaning his head against Kai’s shoulder. But it was to Sehun that he presented the cuff. It was Suho’s duty, and he did so, to remove the cuff from Sehun’s arm. It had marked him as a slave. The absence marked a free man, as it did with Suho, but as Kai had explained, it was not yet safe. The old cuff rested on the table, as Suho’s own had not days before. Suho knew Sehun would feel the absence of it for some time, even with the new cuff to replace it. He helped Sehun to put it on, the ring of cloth and metal and laces.
“It suits me,” Sehun said, cheeky, glancing up at him.
“It does,” Suho said, admiring the new shine of it.
“I would feel naked without one.”
It was a sadness, but that was not the whole of it. Suho’s lips met Sehun’s forehead, soft.
“No matter what cuff you wear on your wrist, you are a free man,” Suho said, feeling the jerk as Sehun’s head lifted. “You were given to me to use how I wish, and this is my wish. I have known what it is to be a slave, and I have no wish to own a man. Certainly not a friend.”
Sehun did not panic, as Suho had when faced with the same revelation. He merely looked at Suho, a smile starting about his eyes, almost like he had expected it in a way. And from their conversation previously, perhaps he had. But it was one thing to wonder, and another to hear it, and Suho would not have him wonder any longer.
“You are welcome to stay with us,” Suho told him, nodding at Kai in case Sehun thought that he was making decisions above himself. “If you are happy doing what you were, you could continue that. If you are not, we will find something that pleases you. But you would be a servant, with a wage. Not a slave.”
“Kai…” Sehun said, looking to him.
“You have served at my side these long years,” Kai said. “Suho does what ought to have been done years before, had I had the authority to correct it. Or the knowledge that I should have.”
And there was something else.
“No matter where your merchant goes, or if he stays,” Suho whispered. “You will be free to go to him, or travel with him. If he is free to set up his own tent, you will be there with him.”
Sehun pushed himself up, catching Suho into a tight hug.
“I would have you meet him,” Sehun said, almost shuddering when Suho wrapped his arms around him as well. “His name is Tao, he-“
“Suho is still healing,” Kai nearly clucked.
And Suho just snorted and held Sehun tighter. “A hug cannot hurt me.”
Sehun almost swayed into him and they both squeaked just before Sehun almost blurted, “I don’t know how to be a servant.”
“We’ll learn together,” Suho promised. Perhaps he would be free, but that did not mean he would not still serve.
It was not that Sehun did not know what to do, but that the idea of being free - to choose ultimately where he might go - was overwhelming. They would nurture him. He would find his comfort in routines he knew, and expand. Suho would learn with him, though there would be but one tent to keep. He would keep the other as a pretense for a while. A meeting place for Sehun, perhaps. A place to sleep, that wasn’t amongst the boxes as though he was baggage. He was their friend. He was their family, and there was nothing more important than that.
***
It was the same, but so very different. The biggest change was that the pallet that Suho had slept on was gone, a tellingly empty space. It would be filled, one day, though he wasn’t sure with what. His trunk was back. Most importantly, he was back. He had so many things to be thankful for, to stand without pain, to have a warm man to turn against in the night as the air grew cooler. It was Kai who seemed fascinated, who had a harder time adjusting even than he did.
“It seems strange to see you doing those things,” Kai said, watching Suho stack their dishes and prepare to wash.
“It is not the same when I do them now.” It was his own tent, even if it was truly Kai’s. What he did, he did for himself as well as Kai, and it made him smile when Kai did even small things as trim the wicks or fold a blanket. It was as though Kai took ownership of his own things, pride in them. And the fact that he did them because Suho would not have to made it all the more endearing.
“It is good that you do not try to forbid me from it,” Suho said, and it was not as though the work was hard. It took mere minutes, and the tent was exactly as he liked it, and all the better for the sun setting because Kai was there and would not go out again.
Kai pouted, a cute sight as he then stared at the empty space beside him and then back at Suho. He told Suho without actually saying anything.
“Do you want me to correct your sums again?” Suho teased, sitting at the table and offering Kai the wine he had poured for him.
“You’ll only have to if you distract me.”
Suho accepted the sip of wine that Kai offered, and smirked to himself because he knew of many ways to distract Kai but none that he wanted to use just then. The numbers were important to Kai, and so they were to him. So he watched, quietly remarking as Kai completed his columns and added and subtracted, until the book rested completed and the cup between them empty. Suho, of Kai’s tent. He would wear a mark of Kai’s, a necklace, but it was not a mark to bind him. It was a promise, sworn on with the same words he had promised.
He’d walked with Kai the day before, gripping two of his fingers as they watched the colt run, no longer afraid of them, but curious, nosing after the treats that Suho always thought to take. That the colt was pleasing to Suho pleased Kai, and Suho laughed as the colt danced under his mother’s watchful eye. He took those moments, all of them. Perhaps the danger to Kai was not finished, or perhaps in some ways it never would be, entirely. But Kai smiled at the horses, and Suho smiled at him, and knew that he would be there to guard him.
***
Pairing: Kai/Suho
Rating: NC-17 overall
Genre: master/slave!AU, pseudo-historical, fantasy, smut
Warnings: issues of sexual consent, references to past sexual assault, violence, kidnapping, slaves having no ability to say no especially at first, and did I mention issues of consent inherent to master/slave dynamics?
Summary: They spoke of him as though he were nothing more than a treasure found by the roadside. He bowed to his new master because it was polite, and because he knew of nothing else he could do. See warnings.
***
Chapter One * Chapter Two * Chapter Three * Chapter Four * Chapter Five * Chapter Six * Chapter Seven * Chapter Eight
***
If Kai had known just how thoroughly he had shaken Suho, Suho wondered if he would have been left at his new tent alone. Oh, it was a serviceable tent, not fancy. There was a bed. Suho’s chest was there in the corner, brought in by Sehun. There was a low table, a water pitcher. It was set up as though someone was to live there, as though he was to live there. The absurdity of it nearly came bubbling out of him when Sehun ducked back in. He was free. He had his own tent. He owned Sehun. None of it made sense.
“I did not expect this. What have I done to deserve this?” Suho asked Sehun, pacing when sitting was not helping him to think.
“Saving Kai’s life is something quite important,” Sehun said easily. “Are you not happy to be free?”
“Of course? Of course, I am. I haven’t lost my ability to think.” Though sometimes it seemed like it. “But Kai saved my life as well! He put himself to great trouble seeing that I would live. I thought that evened the burden between us.”
“What he did was in response to your sacrifice, though. He would have given more to see you made whole again. I wish you could have seen him holding you in the pond, talking to you, begging you to wake.”
Suho had gone to the pond, after, when he had been able to walk without fear of falling. He’d felt the desperation lingering in the water, and it had hurt him - and scared him that he had felt nothing from himself. He had been passive, there, held by Kai. It had only been Yixing’s interference, seeing deeper into Suho than even the water could, that had saved him. Thinking of it left him with an ache of melancholy, the worry when Kai had woken.
“Maybe he doesn’t believe my innocence,” Suho said, bewildered.
Sehun frowned. “But he freed you because of it.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps to see me gone from his tent, putting aside a tainted memory. A scarred memory.”
“If he does not appreciate what you have done for him, what you have been to him, then he is not the man I know,” Sehun said.
“He does not touch me,” Suho said softly. “Only once, since I was injured, has he asked me into his bed for anything more than sleep. And to sleep there, perhaps he felt he owed it to me.”
“Afraid of hurting you? Or if he meant to free you, he wanted to begin with you as a free man. Or guilty, because you hurt because of him. There are so many reasons.”
Suho shook his head. “No. Once he wondered if I would stay beside him freely. I felt the words carried some weight behind them, but I did not think his life would be threatened or that he would put me from him. Put me out of his tent.”
“To give you a tent of your own does not mean he wishes you to stay away from his.”
There was a certain logic to what Sehun was saying, but hearing it and really accepting it were different. It helped that what he wanted was far different than the reality he was seeing, and how he feared it would be going forward. Freedom didn’t mean a life of ease. His place among the tents was not guaranteed. They could put him on a horse and be rid of him before he could blink. But that Kai would want him close, he didn’t know.
“I wish I could believe that. I craved freedom for so long. I do not regret it, but there is much I do regret.”
When Suho saw how heavily his words weighed on Sehun, he reached for Sehun’s arm.
“Don’t worry for me. You don’t need to speak with him. If there’s truth to what you say, then it may be best that he finds it within himself. I would not push him to it.”
“As long as he doesn’t wait too long to discover what he should do,” Sehun muttered. “At least I’ll be here to help you while he decides.”
“And that. I can’t own a slave,” Suho said, freezing abruptly at the thought. He moaned, sinking down in front of the table and looking up. “Not you. We are friends. Not- No. If Kai can free me, then I can free you.”
Suho wondered at how unconcerned Sehun looked, as though the subject of his freedom was a mere amusement.
“Kai granted me a measure of protection in having his father give me to you,” Sehun told him. “As your slave, his father cannot cast me out. If you free me, he is not obligated to allow me to live in these tents. You may be free, but you are still bound to some rules. It is possible he would allow me to stay as your servant, but if you freed me immediately, that Kai asked that I be given to you would seem suspect.”
It made sense, and perhaps he would have thought of that as well had he had had the time to think it through.
“You have a good point. Then we could wait,” Suho muttered. “Oh. Oh! I could allow you to see your merchant!”
Sehun crouched in front of him, his eyes curving. “You could.”
“Even if you were my slave in reality, you would not…”
“I will do my duties,” Sehun told him. “I will bring your food, wash your clothes, help the others. I will help Kai if that is your wish.”
“Yes?” Suho said, and knew he sounded pitiful. He just needed time to think everything through, and he had no idea how much time he’d need.
***
It was quiet, so horribly quiet in the tent, even with Sehun coming in to check on him every so often. He rubbed over his wrist, and found it naked, bare but for the amulet. He picked up and put down his book. He had nothing to do. Nothing to clean, nothing to fold, no one to wait for. He watched the entryway hoping that Kai would appear, to see how Suho was, to see if he liked the tent, or just to spend time with him. Suho ate with Sehun, staring at his plate as he pushed the food around.
“Who took Kai his food?”
“No one he would take to his bed, if that is what you wonder,” Sehun said.
Sehun saw through that question, but maybe not the whole of it. “Did you see him? Did he ask you about me?”
“If you were settled. Asking me about him, or him asking me about you isn’t bring either of you any closer. Why do you not take your plate and eat with him?”
Suho knew Sehun wasn’t teasing when he looked up, but all Suho really could do was sigh.
“Because I’m stubborn,” Suho said, laughing when he admitted it. “And because I’m still worried. I want to see him, and I’m afraid of what happens when I do.”
“You’re still the same people,” Sehun pointed out.
And that was the truth. It was just hard to process, too many things to process at once. He’d went to sleep the night before pressed against Kai, and the thought of sleeping alone alone was something bitter to accept.
***
It took almost another day, bracing himself. If Kai would not go to him, he would go to Kai. He was not wiling to put the doubt in Kai’s mind that was building in his own, and he froze in the doorway of Kai’s tent to see him sitting at the low table with a man at his side. It was not a face that Suho knew, and it was not a slave. Just the fact that he found Kai not alone as he had expected had him turning, hurrying back along the path.
“Suho!”
He hadn’t turned away soon enough it seemed. Suho stopped, closing his eyes for a moment before he turned to face Kai.
“Did you need something?” Kai asked.
And Suho shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, I was interrupting you.”
“It was just a visitor,” Kai said. “I ate alone last night. The tent was too empty. He is a friend that I invited.”
Of course Suho knew. “Because of the-”
“Because you were not.”
The interruption forced Suho to inhale. “You moved me from your tent!”
“I gave you a choice,” Kai said, his voice tight and low. “I wanted you to make it.”
“I didn’t ask for one. Yes, I want that choice. But you didn’t ask me if I wanted to- You never told me I could come back!“
“You were in my bed almost every night. I took no one else to it but you.”
“The bed is yours. I was yours. You speak as though I have cause to protest.”
“You could still be mine,” Kai said. Suho felt the jolt, as thought the slavery would be bound on him by force again. “If you take me to your bed of your own choice.”
“Kai.”
“Let me worship at your body. Let me feel you moan for me. Let me speak your true name as you spill in me.”
Suho’s mouth was open, without his own choice, breath coming hard as Kai spoke.
“That has bound people before,” Suho said, trying to keep his wits among the images in his head and Kai’s squeezing fingers.
Kai’s lips had curled up, a tease and promise, and something like hope there that Suho could hardly bear to look at. It was as though Kai was asking if that would truly be so bad as he cocked his head. Hair fell across Kai’s eyes and he wanted to brush it aside.
But he shook his head. “Until that last night, you wouldn’t even touch me-“
“You’d been sick,” Kai said, voice fierce. “You were like some delicate egg that would crack if I looked at you, and the fault was my own.”
“Even when I offered you refused! Only to listen to you pleasing yourself.”
“How could I? You’d nearly given your life for me.”
Suho reached for his wrist, but the cuff was still gone. He shook his head again, twice, three times.
“I need to think,” he said, and he did what he had done so few times, turning from Kai when every instinct told him not to. But he made it not two steps before he heard Kai’s voice, low and urgent as Kai’s hand gripped his arm.
“Joonmyun!”
He did not turn, could not turn, could not risk looking into Kai’s eyes right then and losing himself entirely. “You cannot use that name against me! You must give me time. If I am free, that is my right.”
Kai took back his hands immediately, and Suho turned, skirting between tents. He was far enough away that he had slowed down, but he didn’t know where to go. He didn’t want to return to his own tent, not feeling as he was.
“Suho.”
Suho stopped. But the voice that had called to him was Sehun’s, and he watched Sehun approached him. His eyes dropped to Sehun’s tightened hands, before fixing on his face. He suspected, no, he knew, that Sehun had seen at least part of that exchange.
“I have known Kai since we were in swaddles,” Sehun said. “And I have never seen him thrown off as he is by you.”
“You wish me to give in to him,” Suho said.
Sehun shook his head. “Only if that’s what you want. You know that.” And Sehun touched his arm, the amulet there. “I was given this by… by my merchant, and brought it to him, for you, to ward away death. Though in truth, his love for you had done so already.”
“No,” Suho protested.
“I do not know what magic the healer performed that night, but you bear part of Kai’s soul. Do you not feel it? But I speak to you only because you should know not to fear anyone. He does not want another in his tent, or to hold him when his life is ended. Know that.”
Suho scrabbled at the cord around his arm. “You should have this. For you both. I have no more need of it.”
Sehun smiled, accepted it. “That’s what we all wanted.”
***
It was the water that Suho was drawn to, the quiet of it. It neither surprised him, nor offended him to hear the sound of movement in the water, and he knew what had brought him when he saw the lines of Kai’s shoulders as he moved in the pond. They had kissed there, and Kai had saved his life there. Perhaps it was meant, not on a dusty path, but in the cool and still, where he could feel honesty in the ripples of the water. They had spent days apart, the longest of any time since Suho had come to Kai’s tent, and seeing Kai from a distance had not been enough. Suho knew by his own words, Kai had felt he could not approach him. It was time, finally, to finish, to say the things he had ben waiting to say.
“Is this place only for you and your slave?” Suho asked, pausing at the water’s edge and feeling the pull of it, that, and the lonely slope of Kai’s shoulders.
But Kai’s response was almost immediate. “It is a place you are welcome, always.”
It was the invitation he had been seeking, when Kai made no move to leave, only watching him. But Suho did not feel self conscious as his loose pants dropped to the ground, and his tunic after it. He stepped down into the cool water and felt it soothe his heated skin. There was tension there, the way that Kai looked at him. He had nothing but himself, no basin, no amulet, no cuff. It was him, and the water, and it was an offering, a neutral place as Kai lifted his hand an ran a cool, wet thumb over the arrow’s mark on Suho’s shoulder.
“There are too many marks you bear because of me.”
It made Suho turn, feeling at once too exposed even with the cover of the water, a chill making gooseflesh rise along his arms. “Do they make my value lessen in your eyes? Did you free me because blemished I could not fetch a decent price?”
“No!” Kai said, and his voice was harsh even to the possibility of it. “I still haven’t found who was responsible for this. I feel responsible because I could not do that for you. I don’t deserve… Perhaps you deserve more.”
“I do not doubt you,” Suho told him. “Nor do I blame you for what you haven’t accomplished. You may find who was responsible, or perhaps not. But that had no weight to me. A wise man told me that I bear part of your soul. Perhaps together we can See your fate.”
There, where Kai had kissed him, and where Kai had saved him.
He felt Kai come up behind him, and did not startle as Kai’s arms surrounded him. Kai’s head was against his, one arm curving up over Suho’s chest to rest at his shoulder, and the other around his waist.
He wanted to rest his hands over Kai’s but he could not.
“What if you See something I do not like?” Kai asked.
“That is the danger in Looking. Else, there is only living.”
“Then that is what I want. I do not want to know. I only know…what I want.”
Suho swallowed, feeling the water lap at them.
“What is that?”
“I thought of this a few times, after I had you back. If I have a child one day,” Kai said into Suho’s shoulder, as though weighing his words. “I would have him learn at your knee.”
“Then he would be my student?”
“He would be your son. At the birth, I would want him born into your hands. That will tie his life to yours, and yours to mine.”
Suho blew out a quiet breath. “Kai.”
“You will see him grown with me. I dreamed of this.”
Suho’s lips curved at that. “Was it a waking dream?”
Not prophecy. Desire.
“You are a waking dream, Joonmyun.”
It sent warmth through them, and he laughed then, the thought of Kai picturing some uncertain future with so many uncertain elements. But they were together in that future, together in a way Suho would never have thought to dream of. Kai, who held him tight but gentle, who had put him aside when what he had wanted was to keep Suho close. He had given Suho his freedom when he could have kept Suho on his knees. Suho closed his eyes.
“You promised me there would be no other,” Suho said, and felt Kai’s shoulders tighten. “But I know there are some fates that cannot be changed. I will watch with you for that future.”
“Maybe one day you will dream of it, too. But it is my tent and my bed that is empty of what is home to me.”
Suho tilted his head back.. “Of that I foresee I will take you willingly to my bed, and that this future you desire, it may find truth in the living of it.”
Kai shuddered against him, holding him tight for a moment before turning him.
“May I kiss you?”
Suho shook his head, cupping Kai’s face. How serious he was. How lovely.
“Jongin,“ Suho whispered, watching Kai’s eyes go soft. And Suho kissed him.
***
Kai rolled with him naked onto the bed, pulling Suho atop him and letting Suho spend long moments to worship the lushness of Kai’s mouth as their skin warmed together. They were the kisses of his dreams, a way that Kai had taught him and yet not, cherishing amid the want, the pure flame of need that Kai inspired as his hands stroked Suho’s sides. He had missed it. Not the want and not even the kissing, but the warmth of him, the way he touched and said Suho’s name. He had been missed. Kai, who looked up at him, amazed, had been afraid.
He was so hungry to know Kai again on that bed that he could not even decide what he wanted. Kai braced over him, kissing him even as they moved together, and when Kai reached, the oil close, Suho parted his thighs and ached and moaned against Kai’s mouth at the press of Kai’s fingers into him.
“How will I last?” Kai nearly growled, and Suho shook his head vigorously.
“You won’t have to,” he said, and moaned again at the sudden emptiness, throbbing but not for long as it was Kai’s cock that pressed against him.
“Please,” Suho pleaded, when Kai paused, his mouth open as though he wanted to ask, as though he needed to hear. “Please, I need you.”
He would say if he was in pain, and if he was needing. They had been so close to that before, and that was all he wanted, that openness, that connection. He watched that assurance dawn over Kai’s face, and moaned in joy as Kai slid into him. They shared it, that pleasure, and it was theirs. He felt so powerful, gasping, his hands gripping at Kai’s shoulders and contorting in agonized pleasure as Kai gripped his cock and began to stroke him in time with his desperate hips. He came moaning Kai’s name, rocked as Kai groaned and fucked with such delicious abandon until his hips stuttered and stilled, gasping against Suho’s skin as he reached for him, held him, crooned for him.
“Jongin,” Suho whispered, and Kai moaned and held him, resting beside him on the bed. His face was damp, his eyes closed as he panted, and he was so beautiful then. And more so, when he studied Suho’s face, a smile curving his lips as he curled his arm tighter over Suho’s side.
“Sehun told me once that to know you wanted me, I should guarantee I would not beat you or put you from me or increase your work. I didn’t get a chance then, but I have it now,” Kai said, and he spoke slow, as though to make sure Suho understood. “Whether you share my bed, no matter how you share my bed, you have a place in these tents. You are free until your last breath. I want you to be with me, a free man who knows he is free.”
“You will know as long as I wish to be here,” Suho said. “It will…take time, I think to really fully understand.”
But with Kai to help him, he did not think it would take him so long to at least begin to feel secure in his freedom, in the knowledge that what passed between them was not obligation. And to lose any fear that it bore the weight of censure behind it. Even what they had done together that Suho had wanted, there had always been that danger there. They would change, had been changing slowly all the while, but it was not a change to regret.
“You asked me once if I would stay by your side if I was not a slave,” Suho said. “You know the answer now.”
They both knew the answer.
***
The cuff was thinner and it bore Suho’s name. It was simple, different than the cuff that Sehun had worn before, or the one that Suho had worn. Sehun had not seemed surprised to see it, that Suho would want to change the mark on his body to something more personal to him. It had been Kai who had had it made for him, Suho explaining what it was that he wanted to do and waiting for Kai to agree. There had been a smile there that Kai had been unable to hide, approval that had him leaning his head against Kai’s shoulder. But it was to Sehun that he presented the cuff. It was Suho’s duty, and he did so, to remove the cuff from Sehun’s arm. It had marked him as a slave. The absence marked a free man, as it did with Suho, but as Kai had explained, it was not yet safe. The old cuff rested on the table, as Suho’s own had not days before. Suho knew Sehun would feel the absence of it for some time, even with the new cuff to replace it. He helped Sehun to put it on, the ring of cloth and metal and laces.
“It suits me,” Sehun said, cheeky, glancing up at him.
“It does,” Suho said, admiring the new shine of it.
“I would feel naked without one.”
It was a sadness, but that was not the whole of it. Suho’s lips met Sehun’s forehead, soft.
“No matter what cuff you wear on your wrist, you are a free man,” Suho said, feeling the jerk as Sehun’s head lifted. “You were given to me to use how I wish, and this is my wish. I have known what it is to be a slave, and I have no wish to own a man. Certainly not a friend.”
Sehun did not panic, as Suho had when faced with the same revelation. He merely looked at Suho, a smile starting about his eyes, almost like he had expected it in a way. And from their conversation previously, perhaps he had. But it was one thing to wonder, and another to hear it, and Suho would not have him wonder any longer.
“You are welcome to stay with us,” Suho told him, nodding at Kai in case Sehun thought that he was making decisions above himself. “If you are happy doing what you were, you could continue that. If you are not, we will find something that pleases you. But you would be a servant, with a wage. Not a slave.”
“Kai…” Sehun said, looking to him.
“You have served at my side these long years,” Kai said. “Suho does what ought to have been done years before, had I had the authority to correct it. Or the knowledge that I should have.”
And there was something else.
“No matter where your merchant goes, or if he stays,” Suho whispered. “You will be free to go to him, or travel with him. If he is free to set up his own tent, you will be there with him.”
Sehun pushed himself up, catching Suho into a tight hug.
“I would have you meet him,” Sehun said, almost shuddering when Suho wrapped his arms around him as well. “His name is Tao, he-“
“Suho is still healing,” Kai nearly clucked.
And Suho just snorted and held Sehun tighter. “A hug cannot hurt me.”
Sehun almost swayed into him and they both squeaked just before Sehun almost blurted, “I don’t know how to be a servant.”
“We’ll learn together,” Suho promised. Perhaps he would be free, but that did not mean he would not still serve.
It was not that Sehun did not know what to do, but that the idea of being free - to choose ultimately where he might go - was overwhelming. They would nurture him. He would find his comfort in routines he knew, and expand. Suho would learn with him, though there would be but one tent to keep. He would keep the other as a pretense for a while. A meeting place for Sehun, perhaps. A place to sleep, that wasn’t amongst the boxes as though he was baggage. He was their friend. He was their family, and there was nothing more important than that.
***
It was the same, but so very different. The biggest change was that the pallet that Suho had slept on was gone, a tellingly empty space. It would be filled, one day, though he wasn’t sure with what. His trunk was back. Most importantly, he was back. He had so many things to be thankful for, to stand without pain, to have a warm man to turn against in the night as the air grew cooler. It was Kai who seemed fascinated, who had a harder time adjusting even than he did.
“It seems strange to see you doing those things,” Kai said, watching Suho stack their dishes and prepare to wash.
“It is not the same when I do them now.” It was his own tent, even if it was truly Kai’s. What he did, he did for himself as well as Kai, and it made him smile when Kai did even small things as trim the wicks or fold a blanket. It was as though Kai took ownership of his own things, pride in them. And the fact that he did them because Suho would not have to made it all the more endearing.
“It is good that you do not try to forbid me from it,” Suho said, and it was not as though the work was hard. It took mere minutes, and the tent was exactly as he liked it, and all the better for the sun setting because Kai was there and would not go out again.
Kai pouted, a cute sight as he then stared at the empty space beside him and then back at Suho. He told Suho without actually saying anything.
“Do you want me to correct your sums again?” Suho teased, sitting at the table and offering Kai the wine he had poured for him.
“You’ll only have to if you distract me.”
Suho accepted the sip of wine that Kai offered, and smirked to himself because he knew of many ways to distract Kai but none that he wanted to use just then. The numbers were important to Kai, and so they were to him. So he watched, quietly remarking as Kai completed his columns and added and subtracted, until the book rested completed and the cup between them empty. Suho, of Kai’s tent. He would wear a mark of Kai’s, a necklace, but it was not a mark to bind him. It was a promise, sworn on with the same words he had promised.
He’d walked with Kai the day before, gripping two of his fingers as they watched the colt run, no longer afraid of them, but curious, nosing after the treats that Suho always thought to take. That the colt was pleasing to Suho pleased Kai, and Suho laughed as the colt danced under his mother’s watchful eye. He took those moments, all of them. Perhaps the danger to Kai was not finished, or perhaps in some ways it never would be, entirely. But Kai smiled at the horses, and Suho smiled at him, and knew that he would be there to guard him.
***