TITLE

FULL TEXT

“Where’s your contact?”

Flik didn’t ask it with suspicion, or even annoyance. His tone was strained, but only with caution. Viktor had been hard-pressed to get just about anything but caution out of Flik since… well, no, before then. Since… come to think of it, since the day Tir McDohl entered their lives. Not because of Tir, not JUST because of Tir; because of the events that immediately succeeded his entrance, some, to his credit, completely unrelated to him. But not many. 

Well, Tir was out of their lives now. Potentially forever, which was a thought that made Viktor himself feel a little numb. Tara’s tits, he needed a distraction.

“Not sure,” he responded honestly. He thought he had gotten them signed up for a gap job, something for some spare coins to travel on. They had crossed the border into wild lands beyond Seek valley not long ago, mostly on a strict ‘get out of Toran’ policy, and had incidentally made the poor economic decision of getting out into one of the most impoverished areas of the continent. The work he found was a little unsavory, but they shouldn’t be shedding blood tonight.

He was getting more concerned about that as the man refused to show up, though.

Golden-brown fields waved slightly in the breeze, stretching into an unknown distance of sage and heather hills. Houses dotted the land very, very sparsely; the growing glow of firepits were more accurate beacons for human life. Between them, the flashing eyes of wandering deer, the rising calls of the grasshoppers; it was getting late. The sun was turning peach-pink in the west, and the air was setting into a lovely, contented cool.

Viktor’s sidelong glance at Flik, in the magical twilight, was rewarding. Statue-like concern was chiseled on his little, pinched features; a smaller man than he seemed. Viktor didn’t like the stoic anxiety that had kept Flik in singular state for the past… few months, at least, but his cool concentration was a little beautiful in the gathering dark. Even when it sometimes made him look like a crazy tweaker.

“Hey,” Viktor said, not really that sure what he was going to say next.

Flik looked his way, not a passing glance, not annoyance either. He hummed.

“Wanna go somewhere private and do something nasty?”

Ha ha. Well, okay, then.

Flik didn’t startle and get aggressive, like he might have when he was nineteen. Or twenty. Like he did when he was twenty and Viktor tried to make a few half-joking passes at him. And sometimes he almost missed not quite having Flik yet, messing around with Odessa’s cute little barbarian boyfriend—he would miss Odessa until the day he died and wonder a little what either or them did to deserve that —those days when he was just getting to know this little jackass, when he was constantly surprised by what made him tick, by how many things made him tick, by how badly he covered up his surprise and embarrassment. Back when he had such hilarious reactions to everything.

He had been so stoic since the fall of the Scarlet Moon Empire, their hair’s width escape, sliding and slipping over the fire-charred corpses. He had been so stoic since the siege of General Teo, since his utter failure at Scarleticia, since he had learned of Odessa’s death. Even before then, when the prestige of the Liberation had grown such that they had to start running from troopers no matter where they went. And that vibrant, fiery, trigger-happy youth had never been buried, exactly, never totally submerged; but he had slowly been dampened with time.

It happened to them all.

How many of his fingers, he wondered, watching Flik’s mild frustration at his bawdy proposition, would he have given to have at least been able to comfort him after Odessa’s death?

“Really?” asked Flik, turning away from Viktor to express his annoyance to the berry bushes and corn fields.  “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” repeated Viktor, mock-offended. “I’m sorry, I thought I was talking to—”

“Aren’t we waiting for a contact that you set up?”

“Isn’t he an hour late?” Viktor continued, gesturing one arm at the empty road ahead of them. The last farmer’s wagon had clattered down the cobblestones twenty minutes ago. Since then, they had been watching the windows shutter and grow dim. “And do we want to be doing the dirty work for someone who can’t show up on time?”

Flik shrugged a little, and his shoulders still didn’t go all the way back down. He didn’t relax anymore. “It definitely marks him as less trustworthy…” he said, ponderingly. But then turned back to Viktor with the slightest grin. “…I might say, if I wasn’t talking to the reigning champion of being three days late to a rendezvous.”

Viktor started laughing. “When—”

“Any anyway,” continued Flik over him, and how could Viktor do anything but see which thunderbolt was coming next when he tilted his head just like that, “how am I supposed to gloss over not just propositioning me now but how you said it? Really? What was it, go into the alleyway—”

“Hold on! I said a private place, by which I meant,”

“And do something ‘nasty?’ Viktor, is that you talk to women?”

“Well!”

“If so, I have reason to doubt some of your fantastic success stories.”

Viktor wagged a finger at him. “You punk. Who taught you everything—”

“Oh, I can’t even let you finish that one, you dirty old—”

“Different people, different approaches!” Viktor interrupted him, trying to suppress a grin. “Of course I wouldn’t talk to a lady that way. But the right type of girl, sure.”

“When we meet the ‘right type’ of girl, by your estimation,” Flik groused, turning back toward the street (with a little smile himself), “remind me to stay far away.”

“And you’re no girl, Flik,” Viktor continued, undisturbed, “I wouldn’t treat you like one.”

“Ha!” Flik barked, setting his back against the stone wall of the old mill again. “Ha, it’s good to know you do know the difference! You seem to get confused sometimes.”

“Confused nothing. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Anyway, am I?”

“What’s that?” asked Viktor, peering at his partner again. Flik had propped his head back, as if to look up at the stars just coming out. Only a few yet glittered in the sky.

“So different from a woman, that is?”

“Hm?” asked Viktor, intrigued. “Have I got you confused instead?”

“Shut up,” said Flik, no fire, just a request. They became more coarse with each other when more comfortable. But Viktor had always been that way. He couldn’t fully trust a man with fine speech who took great care to appear clean. There’s no such thing as a clean man. It only made him wonder what they were trying to hide.

This dirt-covered motherfucker, however, spoke plainly up at the sky. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about,” he admitted. “When I named my sword for Odessa, I named her for my lover, and for my captain. A man of the warrior tribes names his blade for his lover; to have it shattered is like losing the lover. And you probably will, after that dismal show. But Odessa was also my fighting superior. She would be able to save my back as often as I hers… and did. I always liked that. It never occurred to me to dislike it. Wasn’t it great, I thought, that I can depend on her, as a man, and love her, as a woman?”

He tilted his head down a little to stare at the ground. “The liberation army was a collection of great men and women. And some shitty ones. I wasn’t the greatest there. And as it turned out, pure fighting prowess really wasn’t the measure of a person. A fine spellcaster like Jeane could slap me stupid no matter what I was wielding.”

“And you’d thank her.”

“And. Viktor. Shut up.” Flik heaved a sigh as Viktor cracked a smile. “Or someone like Mathiu! Hand to hand, I’d demolish him. But despite disliking him as a person, after a year of knowing him, I would have taken a running jump off of the roof of the castle,” he said, snapping a finger as his words picked up pace, “if he said I should because I knew that he had a sharp mind . I knew I couldn’t hold a candle up to his knowledge of the battle. Sylvina, I think not a man in the place could stand up to Sylvina, a four-foot-nothing elven wife, because we knew it was wrong. Nothing but tenderness, and a thousand fighting men don’t dare touch her.”

Viktor found himself nodding slightly. “Sure, sure. But,”

“When you have General Valeria, Mathiu Silverberg, someone like, you know, Milich fucking Oppenheimer right next to Tir, fantastically, terrifyingly powerful 15-year-old black-magic murder machine, goddess bless him, I guess I started to wonder what the difference really was . It’s like… Valeria was a military general because she was good at it. Mathiu was a strategist because he was good at it. Milich was a woman with a mustache and one of the most terrifying men I have ever met,”

“Seriously, Flik, where is this going?” asked Viktor, amused and curious.

Flik shook his head and sighed. “After enough time in Tir’s army, where you only get fame and a position because of what you do, I started losing track of… why anything else was important. Like, being a man. Why make a big difference about, he’s a man, she’s a woman, when Valeria and I are… close to the same height, weight, age, fighting prowess, what the hell is the difference?”

“She has a much better attitude.”

“Bullshit. That woman drinks blood for breakfast,” said Flik, as if this was something everyone knew. “And if I hadn’t already been thinking, what’s the point even of being a man, or a woman, what really makes us distinct… then I had you.”

In the dimmest of light, just above the night, Viktor caught Flik’s eyes when they slid his way. They held each other in glance, silently, both remembering Soniere.

It had been in Soniere Prison.

They had been trapped for a month. By halfway through that time, no one inside really believed they were leaving.

Tir had spent that month in shocked, horrified mourning, on the wrong side of the door from a disintegrating corpse. The old doctor had spent his time nursing Tir, for the most part, sitting patiently on his haunches, dour expression and tired patience; they both hardly ate.

Flik spent some of the most harrowing weeks of his life in close-quarters, dark and stinking combat, killing every monster that haunted the halls, deeper and deeper until there were none left, fighting Vik, fighting Val, fighting the elves, honing his combat, growing exhausted as soon as he could. His drink had run out in two days; he had been unable to ration it. When sobriety set in… God.

He had felt just like one of the little, sand-covered lizards that crawled the walls in that desolate place; alone, without comfort, on an endless desert of cold stone, breaking the skin of his knuckles because he couldn’t stop punching.

Everyone who wasn’t in mourning started fucking when the food had run out and they were already a good way through the parts of dead monsters they felt brave enough to eat. They were getting more and more sure by the day that that was it. They were going to die there.

Flik had started it. Desperate and under duress. Viktor was huge and stronger than him and impossible to wrestle and he exhausted him. It replaced fighting rapidly; so much less pain and he could sleep afterward. Not just Viktor. It was more or less everyone by the last few days, and that was what everyone agreed on. They were dying and they couldn’t face doing it cold in separate prison cells.

But Viktor had taken him—and how many times had he taken him?—not with any air of carnal insanity, but just like he always had; familiarly. With the bond of brothers-in-arms they had shared. No give yourself to me, no possession, no claim. Share my warmth, he said, in the dark night. Sleep beside me, brother.

Soniere had been another world. Sometimes it felt like a strange story he read. A phantom vision.

Flik had kept fucking Viktor after they came back to the castle, after the nightmare, the sheer nightmare of putting Teo McDohl to death. There was no reason to, necessarily.

It felt as though the darkness of Soniere had followed him out. He couldn’t even drown it in drink. He wretched when he tasted what once was his bedside companion again, his drifting boat through every dark night.

Viktor could chase it away. The old bear.

“Ha,” said Flik, rolling his head on his neck. It crackled. He had been looking down at the ground too long. “One thing is for sure, I had no reason to act like a cock around hens when I had… well, bluntly, when I had been on both sides. Nor did I have any reason to strut around a room full of female and male generals. It felt like the lines starting fading. And I’ve been wondering, lately, what the real difference is. And I don’t know that I know.”

“Hm.” Viktor leaned his head back against the wall. “So it’s been bothering you?”

Flik squinted at the blossoming stars. “Bothering? I don’t know. In the sense that something you can’t figure out bothers you. You know?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing changed between you and me,” he said, changing tracks suddenly, “at least not to me.”

Viktor’s stomach tensed slightly and he willed it still. “’course not.”

“Of course not,” Flik repeated, shaking his head slightly. “I didn’t just… become a woman, somehow. That sort of idea was always bullshit. It was just fear, wasn’t it? The terror of the soft touch of a man, it’s the same as the terror of his fist. You’re afraid or you aren’t.” Flik finally pushed himself off of the wall, twisting his shoulder as he walked up to Viktor. “And now that I’m my age and I’ve seen the shit I’ve seen, touching a man is the most pathetic thing to be afraid of. Hey, your contact isn’t coming, unless it’s with an ambush.”

Viktor didn’t startle himself out of Flik’s soft blue eyes, though perhaps he should have. He had started grinning. “Now that it’s dark… we either want to hit the road or prepare to fight,” Viktor admitted, with a final glance down the street. “Didn’t think I was being set up… You wanna draw or get going?”

“Let’s get moving,” Flik said, reaching down to hoist his bag onto his shoulder. “We have enough potch for a night or two in an inn in a larger town. Besides,” he continued, with an abrupt turn on his heel, “we’re not going to get any privacy if we stay here.”

Viktor could smile as much as he wanted to with Flik facing away from him; maybe give him a quick up-down glance, too. Who looked that toned even armored? “So, you’d rather have the ‘privacy’ of the open road?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“You think I’m an animal?” asked Flik, still amused. “Let’s set up camp a few miles out of town. No fire, we don’t want to be seen. You pitch the tent, I’ll get in it.”

Viktor made the perhaps unwise choice of taking two quick strides to catch up to his companion and grab him as softly as he could manage by the tie of his bandana, then sliding his hand into his hair to tug at it. Getting long. A little dirty. But he could make it worse. “Deal,” he growled.

He didn’t quite dodge the swat that came for his shoulder, as much as he tried to trip away. Nor did he allow himself to follow up his laugh with a swipe back, which would probably lead to a playful punch from Flik, and a bit of grappling from himself, and…

They really had to get out of town first.