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Malik wasn’t able to remember the man’s name, and he did need to. His body was his for the night and that was all that mattered. He tried to analyze the fact with his usual sharp perceptiveness: If his robe needed mending, he went for the tailor, if his hair outgrew a certain length, he visited the barber – and when his own hand was unfit to meet his needs, he went for the brothel. It was as easy as that.
Except that it wasn’t.
He pressed his eyes closed to shy away from the obvious contradiction that would’ve otherwise stared right back at him. He could’ve chosen one of the girls the other assassins were so fond of, even asked for one of the boys that offered their services, too, but, no, it had to be this guy.
Halting his thrusts, Malik dragged his hand down the others sinewy back, urging the man deeper into the cushions. With just his mop of dark curls visible, it was easier to imagine that the lithe body arching below him belonged to the very person Malik yearned for. He needed this special type of man to pretend: He sported a similar build, had a face that was close enough to the original, even his hairdo matched to a certain degree.
Who was he trying to fool: he didn’t need just anyone to scratch an itch – he chose this whore as a substitute for his past lover, and that fact alone left a bitter taste in his mouth.
His longing for Altaïr always abided, hiding in the darkest corners of his mind and soul to make itself known at the most ill-fitting times.
But he wasn’t here to think, he was here to fuck – thinking got him nowhere, at least not right now, so he picked up where he’d left and let his mind forget and his body feel, rocking into the man beneath him in renewed vigor.
Clawing into his shoulder, Malik deepened his thrusts, changing the angle, silently glad that the fabric muffled the whore’s screams for they were a dead giveaway that he wasn’t fucking the person he so desperately wanted to.
Back then in brighter days, Altaïr been vocal in bed – quite contrary to his usual stoic demeanor, and Malik had enjoyed luring out the nicest sounds beyond everything humanly possible. He had drunken in every sigh, every moan and groan when he’d been aroused, reveled in his cries and screams when he released.
There was this one late afternoon in the ruins, back when everything was still so fresh and exciting, when their fumbling had turned into more, because they finally got a clue how sex was supposed to work between them. The small nook in the ancient temple served as their sanctuary and they took their time away from Masyaf’s prying eyes. In his mind, Malik heard him laugh again, a full, clear sound, when the vial of scented oil had slipped from his grasp, pouring its contents over his flank and below, leaving a glinting path on Altaïr’s olive skin.
Nice. Now I look as appealing as a pickled fish…
You are the most appealing pickled fish in recent human history.
A kiss, another breathless laugh, and they’d tumbled back onto the covers, limbs entangled with too much oil smoothing the way and energy like lightning fueling their touches.
He’d deflowered him that day.
Here in this harsh reality, this memory was enough to push him over the edge and Malik came with his name on his lips, spilling into the warm body beneath, before he sat back on his haunches, pulling out with a sigh.
‘What a beautiful name, my friend.’
The whore was stretching out upon the cushions pillowing his head on folded lower arms, still presenting his pert backside, and mustered him out of foreign, yet friendly eyes.
‘I have no right to ask, but entertain me if you like: Is he as pretty as his name?’
Not-Altaïr was pretty enough himself with his sweat-glistening skin and a track of semen still smeared across his left buttock, but Malik’s stomach turned in nausea, cleaning himself off as best as he could, before he donned his clothes piece by piece. He waited for his composure to return with every layer added, but even once he slipped into his black mantle, he didn’t feel any more at ease. He had to get out of here, and more so: fast. He had no patience for conversations like this.
The golden coin he added to the few already laying on the bedtable shone in the lowlight of the room.
‘You can’t imagine,’ he said and left the small chamber without looking back.
A winter storm was greeting him when he stepped onto Jerusalem’s dark streets, pulling at his robes and he tugged his hood down deeper. He was drenched to the bone once he made it to the bureau that lay silent that late at night and he hurried to light the lanterns on his desk.
Usually, a trip the brothel used to reinstall his peace of mind with his body’s need sated, but a strange tension crawled right under his skin like maggots eating dead flesh. He could live with his maimed arm sending ghost-pain through nerves long severed, but this agitation proved to be so hard to fight that even drinking a cup of hot tea didn’t do the trick. The cup of sweetened peppermint tea was doomed to cool almost untouched, sitting on the desk top.
What was it that had unsettled him so much? A fast romp with someone that looked a bit too much like Altaïr? Was it such big news that he still desired the man who had taken so much from him?
He was pacing the room in long strides, peeling out of his sodden mantle and his outer garments, until he came to a full-stop in front of his sword, hanging from its rack on the wall. Normally, he would start each day with a series of well-practiced sword routines before he headed for the office and its maps, but his hand reached out for it now, almost out of its own accord, unsheathing the long blade with ease.
Falling into the familiar repetitions was like breathing.
He still had to compensate for his missing arm that unsettled his balance on a constant basis, but he’d learned to compensate that loss with a lot of core strength and a refined footwork to counter and lead the way of his blade.
The steel hissed through the air in a high arc and he spun on his heel, closing the form, until he opened it again to start anew, flowing through each movement to calm his racing mind.
Yes, he still desired Altaïr, but that fact alone wasn’t what left him restless. By now, the two of them had found their way out of hate, resentment and regret to install a fragile state of tentative truce with a lot of dancing around each other.
But what was once would never come back.
Sweat glued his under-tunic to his skin and Malik found himself frozen in mid-motion, sword extended in front of him, ready to strike down.
He wanted it back. He wanted it back so badly. All of it.
Their intimacy.
Their laughter.
Even their bitter rivalry in the end.
He wanted the relationship back that got torn apart along with his left arm and buried brother. Despite of them. Because of them. In the silence of his mind, all of his loss had to amount for something and he wanted that something to be Altaïr, as conflicting that thought might appear on the first glance. Altaïr had paid for his hubris, was torn down and reduced to nothing – and rose again, stronger and wiser than before.
His arm completed the downswing the moment his body flexed to the side, making room for the blade that went for the full circle.
Closing his stance, he went to leap into the next sequence, when his instincts as an assassin told him that he was no longer alone. He knew that eyes were following him, burning like coals at the back of his head.
Spinning on his axis, he turned, blade at the ready and lunged at the phantom that dared to disrupt his not-quite-peace, only to have his sword parried by a hidden blade, breaking his momentum.
The Prophet must have heard his silent musings and deigned to intervene. Malik was rarely religious, but such peculiar timing raised questions of exactly that nature, as he stared into a painfully familiar face with shining eyes.
‘You.’
The scar that ran through his lips quirked up.
‘I.’
The following pause was pregnant with suspense, but neither moved an inch, blades still crossed between them.
‘You’ve been watching me.’ Malik hadn’t intended for it to sound so accusing, but his sentence was already out in the open with all of its implications.
Something flickered across the other’s features, before he retracted his blade with a metallic hiss. ‘It was hard not to, in all honesty. You’ve always been good with the sword, but seeing you so withdrawn into yourself, one with your blade was…mesmerizing.’
Lowering his sword, Malik couldn’t help himself, but laugh out loud already expecting the hurt look that indeed flitted across the other’s face a moment later.
‘I’m a cripple, Altaïr. Nothing about my sword stances is ‘mesmerizing’,’ he said, gesturing to the stump that protruded from his sleeveless tunic with the tip of his long blade. He knew he was pushing him away with his crudeness, but Malik still felt raw and in turmoil after the epiphany mere moments ago. He would’ve preferred a little alone-time with the hard facts his heart had delivered – being confronted with the very source of his dilemma so shortly after only served to uproot him further.
Altaïr followed his gesture and eyed what was left of his arm with a bitter sadness in every line of his face that made Malik regret his harsh words.
‘I’m sorry.’
The sentence hovered in the air, being spoken in unison with different intentions, but the very same outcome and a silence followed that wanted to be filled with words both of them were unable to deliver.
It was Altaïr who broke the spell with a shaky sigh. He dragged a hand across his face as if to shoo away unpleasant thoughts or to counter a beginning migraine. Tension seeped out of his squared shoulders in the end, leaving him strangely open and vulnerable.
‘I…I didn’t meant to rile you up, Dai.’
Being addressed by his title reinstalled an invisible wall between them Malik detested from the bottom of his heart. Altaïr was pushing him away very much the same way he had done mere moments before.
Malik acted seldom out of instinct and he wasn’t able to name what made him sheath his sword and reach out to gently pull down Altaïr’s rain-soaked hood. His hair clung to his forehead in inky tendrils and Malik had to refrain from brushing them to the side. Instead, his hand came to rest between his neck and shoulder, still holding to the wet fabric as flimsy excuse for the prolonged contact. Below his thumb, a pulse hammered in sharp staccato.
Confusion was evident in Altaïr’s eyes, but he made no move to shy away, his whole body under tension again, waiting for something to happen. Malik would’ve paid a fortune to know what that something was meant to be himself, silently chiding his sudden impulsiveness.
It never failed to amaze him how young Altaïr looked without the cowl to mask his expressive eyes, his clear features, but he also recognized the deep transformation the other had undergone in a thousand micro-expressions that stared back at him.
Altaïr had changed, changed so much – and this time for the better, but one fact remained completely unaltered:
What was once would never come back, no matter how much he wished for it to return.
This time, it was Malik’s turn to sigh and he withdrew his hand slowly.
‘Neither was it my intention to bring up things that were laid to rest,’ he murmured.
His hand twitched with the urge to touch, to reach out for the man he still loved so much and Malik had to settle it on the hilt of his sword instead, gripping the bound leather until his knuckles went white under the strain.
He didn’t know what reaction he’d expected from the other, but it surely wasn’t a show of slowly shedding all of his outer layers, including his main weaponry. Altaïr carelessly discarded them onto the floor, until he stood in front of him dressed down to his under tunic and sword, mirroring his own appearance.
‘Care for a round of sparring?’
Malik was glad for the lack of title and decorum - and the tentative smile Altaïr graced him with. Being almost too smitten by the other’s offer, he nearly missed the blade that sang through the air, forcing him to draw and parry in the blink of an eye.
He was sure that the smile on his own face must look borderline maniacal, but Malik threw himself into the match with an elation he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. How many times had they sparred like this? A hundred times? A thousand? Maybe more.
They fell into a dance of their own where every step had its own choreography, each turn its own counter, every attack its special parry.
What Malik loved the most was the fact that Altaïr didn’t held back, wasn’t belittling him for his handicap and challenged him round after round until they were both breathing hard, with minor cuts and bruises littered across their bodies.
A thin line of blood trickled down Altaïr’s throat where his blade had nicked the skin and Malik felt the urge to follow it with his tongue to where it colored the tunic crimson.
Maybe it was due to that tiny moment of inattentiveness, but Altaïr used it to land a blow against his sternum with his elbow and he tumbled backwards, crashing against the wall. The impact sucked all air from his lungs, but the other was upon him in a matter of seconds, cornering him with the blade pressed to his neck for emphasis.
‘Got you.’
Malik flashed him a toothy, lop-sided smile the moment he was able to breathe again, drinking in his sheer proximity, his scent, his whole presence.
The blade fell away with a clang and was replaced with fists that clawed into his tunic and a mouth that was too close to his own to leave any doubt of where this part of the dance was heading to.
Malik waited for the kiss in that strange equilibrium that held them both captive, only to have the other shaking in strain.
‘I don’t deserve you. I can’t bring back what once was.’ Altaïr was already withdrawing and that set Malik’s mind into motion: Could it be that the other was plagued by the very same mix of melancholia and regret?
His own blade was abandoned without a second thought, clattering down next to Altaïr’s, as his hand developed a sense of its own, halting the other by clasping his neck – only this time without hesitance, without excuse, feeling for the heartbeat that raced below in tune with his own.
‘You don’t have to,’ Malik heard himself say. ‘I don’t have to either.’
This time, the kiss was the end of their dance, fulminant and a bright full stop to everything that stood between them. Altaïr met him with the same urgency, but still in tension, full of doubt. It was a rare occurrence that Malik wished his left arm back, for he had perfected the art of compensation, but, right now, he wished for it from the bottom of his heart in order to embrace the man that rested in his hold. But if he wasn’t able to grasp him physically, his words had to do.
‘Altaïr, listen,’ he began once they parted. ‘You got so much better at listening, so hear me out.’ The other’s eyes were near black in the dimly lit room, but Malik was able to read in them just like he always had and saw the confirmation before his head was able to nod.
‘What was once will never come back, that much is true, but,’ his fingers traced across Altaïr’s high cheekbones until they cupped the side of his face. ‘But: We could start anew.’
Closing his eyes in both relief and pain, Altaïr heaved a shaky sigh and Malik knew what words would counter his suggestion once the other was able to speak again.
‘Leaves the fact that I don’t deserve you.’
His thumb was stroking over his cheek to calm him, but somehow that tiny gesture wasn’t enough, so Malik pulled him into a one-armed embrace, cradling his head to speak into his ear directly.
‘There were days when I would’ve accepted your head delivered on a plate with satisfaction. I wanted your life in exchange for Kadar’s. But those are gone, because for one: they weren’t leading me anywhere and, second: despite it all, I never stopped loving you, not truly. And there’s one more thing on top of it all: You’re worth it, Altaïr, you’re worth it.’
There it was, finally out in the open for the entire world to judge.
Burying his face into the crook of his neck like a frightened child with his hand still entangled in his tunic, Altaïr didn’t say anything for a few heartbeats that lasted too long for Malik’s taste, but he waited them out with a patience he rarely showed otherwise.
‘You’re the braver man,’ Altaïr finally murmured into his skin, breath warm and moist.
‘You don’t need bravery to love someone.’ Malik was able to feel his smile against his neck at those words.
‘You need bravery to love me.’
The chuckle that bubbled up Malik’s throat must’ve been very unappealing, but he carried on despite it. ‘In this case, then I’ve indeed always been the braver man. It doesn’t change the outcome, though, because I still love you due to my brave, brave heart.’
A shudder ran through the body in his hold and Malik tightened his embrace to counter it, reminding himself that this scene was real: No lookalike, no bought ‘almost- Altaïr’ to meet his needs. This one was real, so very real and he finally had been able to speak his heart, speak his mind as well.
His soul lay bared and he didn’t feel naked.
‘Then…then…,’ Altaïr was fumbling for words and Malik let him, waited for him to find whatever he was searching for. In the end, the other had made up his own mind, asking the question that had been so hard to utter.
‘Then we could start anew?’
For as much Malik had enjoyed their position with Altaïr in close embrace, he needed to see his face right now, so he untangled form him with reluctance.
Malik was none to be easily silenced but he was at a loss by the childlike hope that shone in the other’s eyes.
‘Yes. Yes we could,’ he heard himself say, still transfixed. He saw the kiss coming and was surprised by it at the very same time, as it took his breath and his higher brain functions away. Altaïr had a way to pour himself into a kiss: all-consuming and whole, and Malik followed him unasked.
He was well aware that Altaïr wasn’t able to meet his declaration with one of his own, but he knew that he would find his own way to it, given time and space.
Patience wasn’t his forte, but Malik was a brave man and for Altaïr, this very, very real Altaïr, he would be willing to wait.
In the meantime, nothing that once was would come back, and there was no need for it.
They will start anew.