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The flat crack of the big handgun is immense in the confines of the dining room.
The King of Kyrat jerks once, almost as if he were reacting to the noise. But his eyes are vacant. As the echoes fade, he slides slowly, bonelessly off his chair and into the floor with a heavy, muffled thump. Ajay lowers the gun, the muzzle still gently smoking, and calmly walks over to the other end of the table to look down at what’s left of Pagan. Now the former King of Kyrat. Or close to it, anyway.
The bullet made such a small, neat hole in the front of his head, while a good deal of the soft stuff inside, what had made him Pagan, had exited with fairly high velocity from the back. Now, it decorates the wall behind him, his portrait liberally spattered.
Ajay stands there and watches Pagan stare at nothing at all, watches while his chest judders up and down with his last shallow, erratic breaths.
As he does, he finds himself remembering that Pagan has a shirt that very same color, a soft pink that also reminds him of roses, and cherry blossoms, and those pretty trees that grow all over Kyrat. One of Pagan’s shirts matches it so well, pale pink silk, the very same delicate shade of pink as his rapidly dying brain.
That shirt was one of his favorites, he thinks…but that doesn’t make any sense. How the hell would he know anything about what fucking shirts Pagan Min does or doesn’t own. All that matters is that the fucker is currently gasping and bleeding and dying at his feet.
Wrong, something deep inside him whispers.
Ajay shakes his head to clear it. He should feel so proud, swelling with relief and accomplishment. He’s a hero to the Kyrati people, his father’s devoted son, and he’s helped his new friends so much and did everything they asked him to do.
He tells himself all this, but the vague sense of unease in his heart only grows.
Wrong. The path of gold was never right. Only the one strewn with ashes.
No, he’s…he’s just saved his country from a tyrannical dictator, just like he was supposed to, and…shot him right between the eyes, his warm brown eyes that are so remote now, no more love or laughter in them, never again. One of Pagan’s big hands twitches near his ankle, almost as if he’s trying to touch him one last time, but he can’t, that movement is only the last spasms of his failing body. A body that he won’t ever get to feel again, always solid and strong against his own when they’d hold each other. The way that against all odds, love grew there, in that place between their arms. In fits and spurts at first, but then steadied and grew as solid and strong and safe as Pagan’s body against his; warm and solid like the first time they slept together. Both of them so damaged but not so far gone that they weren’t able to touch that, not beyond the ability to find solace in each other.
Oh god. Oh, oh god, and as the spreading pool of Pagan’s blood creeps closer and closer to the toes of his shoes, the enormity of what he’s done slams into him and splits him open, a flood of raw horror pouring in like a tide of icy water. He wavers and drops to his knees beside the man who loved him for so long, for so much of his life, and his chest burns so fiercely and painfully that he wonders if he’ll even be able to scream.
Ajay's own lungs shudder along with Pagan’s, suffocating…
…and his eyes snap open, his own panicked moans and gasps finally waking him.
Not enough air in the room, maybe on the fucking planet, as he lies there and gulps painfully, like someone who’s had the wind knocked out of them. But after a series of thumps and the sound of wood sliding against wood, cold air touches his face. Better, and he tries to focus on just breathing steadily. The curtains billow in the night air and let in both moonlight and the icy breeze that feels so good against his sweating skin. It calms him enough that he recognizes the arms that slide around him and makes them a comfort, instead of a too-tight cage.
They learned that lesson, early on. Bruises on both of them from his panicked flailing.
“It’s all right,” Pagan murmurs, husky and gravelly with sleep. “It’s all right now. The same one?” He nods against his shoulder in relief, even though he can’t stop shaking. It’s always the same one. “Well, here I am, all safe and sound and so are you. See? We’re both here in our bed, right where we ought to be. Together.”
Pagan knows that he often feels as if part of him is still trapped in that dream, sometimes for hours and hours after he wakes. A piece of him lost and trapped in that other world, where he made a different choice. Ajay shuts his eyes tight and burrows his face into his warm, good-smelling and obviously alive throat and presses his lips to where his blood throbs under that tender skin and tries not to fucking cry on him.
Tries to shove away the distinct feeling that he’s going off the deep end.
It’s been a little more than a year since that day he keeps having nightmares about, more than six months since they wound up together, and it’s not like Pagan hadn’t forgiven him.
He’d forgiven him for everything.
The day he’d marched up to the Palace and kicked doors in until he found himself training his gun on Pagan’s forehead and holding it there for a span of time that felt like an eternity…but was no more than five seconds or so. Just long enough for his fucking sense to kick in, thank god. He still doesn’t understand exactly why, as he was making his way up the road from the fortress, it had felt like that was the only answer.
And unlike when they first met, Pagan hadn’t exactly welcomed him with open arms. Cuttingly sarcastic and smirking by turns, almost taunting….as if it were all a big fucking joke to him. Which he now recognizes after more than a year of dedicated Pagan-watching for what it really was: a measure of wounded self-protection. But Pagan never let on at the time, of course…had just steered him out back and told him all the stuff about their family that would have died along with him, as he stood there with his own mouth probably hanging open. Because he was an idiot.
And there in front of that little shrine he’d come so far to find…he watched him go. Had watched as Pagan left Kyrat, and him, behind.
Which was a logical and reasonable thing for Pagan to do; after all, hadn’t he made it abundantly clear that, while he wasn’t willing to kill him, he still didn’t want Pagan around? Wasn’t that what he wanted?
Without realizing he was going to do it, he had grabbed his radio and thumbed the dial to the channel that Pagan had always used and prayed to whoever might be listening that Pagan still had his with him; with sudden, desperate hope that his stupid ass didn’t leave it until it was too late to matter.
Finally, after so long, Ajay answered him back.
Don’t go. Not now. He shut his eyes, momentarily blotting out the dark speck of Pagan’s Blackhawk in the distance, and swallowed.
Please.
It seemed to take forever, but as he stared at it with his eyes watering in the cold wind, eventually that little speck had made a wide, but definitive turn in the sky and and headed back in his direction…and the sheer depth of his own relief had shocked the shit out of him.
But even so, it had been awkward at first. Really, really awkward. To Ajay, it felt as if they were two wary animals, circling each other and waiting to see what the other would do, though Pagan had seemed cheerfully determined to pretend that everything was completely normal. As if there could be anything normal about a situation like theirs. Both of them obviously curious, but hesitant to approach. Hesitant to get closer…but deep-down, wanting to be closer. Drawn to each other, inexorable.
In a way, they always had been.
Him and Pagan…there was so much blood on their collective hands. For many of the same stupid, misguided reasons, and that understanding made them more alike than not. Blood and pain and anger that couldn’t just be washed off or waved away.
Kyrat had changed him, just like Mom knew it would.
Ajay pulls himself out of Pagan’s arms without looking at him, not ready to deal with whatever he might see in his eyes. Anger, for violently waking him up. Annoyance at having to deal with yet another of these stupid…episodes or whatever, at having to put up with him and his trembling upset in the aftermath.
Might be pity there, in Pagan’s eyes.
Worry.
Love.
Another part of him wants nothing more than to throw himself on top of him, to wrap him up in his arms and squeeze him as hard as he fucking can while he buries his face into Pagan’s bare chest. If he could hear it, then maybe he could convince his own still racing and terrified heart that Pagan’s isn’t going to stop anytime soon.
Instead, he avoids his gaze and walks into the bathroom to get the shower started.
A few minutes after Ajay’s gotten in and is grimly sluicing off the reek of his own panicked sweat, Pagan shows up in the doorway and just climbs into the glass cabinet with him, not bothering to ask if he even wants the company. And then hisses through his teeth like an angry cat when the spray hits him.
“Jesus…why must you insist on turning it down so bloody cold?”
“Get out then,” Ajay says flatly. “Go on back to bed, I don’t need a fuckin’ babysitter.”
“Now now, don’t be that way,” as he gingerly eases himself under the shower head. “What’s that unbecoming scowl for, hmm? Surely you don’t think you can rid yourself of me that easily.” He says it easily too, nearly flippant.
“I was going to kill you that day,” Ajay mumbles, dull and leaden. “I had to psych myself up for it…but I was ready to. Ready to pull the trigger and put a bullet in your head.”
“But you didn’t. You made a different choice,” and the easy confidence, the trust in Pagan’s voice makes Ajay suddenly want to hit him. As if he doesn’t relive that very moment in his dreams, making that same choice over and over…and every time, chooses to kill him.
He fires. Every single fucking time, he squeezes that trigger, and fires.
It feels like it’s getting harder to tell the difference between the two. Every time, it takes him longer and longer to come back from it. For the raw horror to fade, to be able to stop thinking what if this is the dream, and I’m going to wake up any minute in the wrong world. The one where I really did choose the other path that day…and destroyed everything. What if I’m trapped there, and am only dreaming that I chose Pagan? How do I know I won’t wake up sobbing, because I dreamed he was still alive, warm and alive and in bed with me. Any minute, I’ll wake up and realize he’s dead, and none of this is real. That I only want it to be real. Any minute now…
“I can’t tell what’s real anymore,” he whispers. “You can’t trust me…I…I don’t…”
With no warning, Pagan shoves him up against the tiled wall.
Leaving him with no way to escape as Pagan’s big hands seize him and pin him in place, clamping down on his biceps almost to the point of pain. Just zero to sixty craziness right up in his face, with his eyes gone hot and intense and glittering as they bore into his.
“Look at me, boy. Look at me,” Pagan rumbles deep in his chest, low and rusty and fierce as Ajay stares back in shock. “You can’t get rid of me that easily…understand? I’m not going anywhere.”
His hands turn gentle again just as quickly, caressing him instead. Warm compared to the tepid water, his own chilled skin.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Pagan says again, but this time in a soft murmur. “I’m not. I’m not fucking going anywhere, do you hear me?” Almost pleading. “I’m right here.” Touches him tenderly, his palms gliding over the red marks his grip left behind, as if to erase them.
And Ajay breaks. He can’t help it; not able to stop himself from throwing his arms around Pagan’s broad shoulders and back and cling to him like a child. Not able to stop himself from seeking out that comfort, from burying his face in Pagan’s shoulder as his stupid tears burn in his throat and drip off his clenched jaw, mixing with the shower water.
“Before, when you said ‘you can’t trust me,’ what exactly did you mean by that?” Pagan murmurs near his ear, after they've gotten dried off and back in bed. Quiet and serious and sober in a way that he so rarely is.
Ajay sucks in a shuddering breath and then lets it out.
“When I wake up from those dreams, it’s getting harder for me to…to be able to tell what’s real and what’s not. Or if this is a dream too, and the nightmares are the part that’s real. That I’m trapped there, that I’m really living in that other world where I did shoot you that day…and you can’t trust me because I do it every time, Pagan, I dream about it and it’s like part of my mind takes every single fucking chance it can to pull that trigger, over and over and over again and I don’t…I can’t understand why.”
What if I do it, Pagan? What if I get so mixed up and confused that one day, I pick up my gun and actually do what I keep dreaming about? But that’s more than he can bring himself to say out loud.
In bright daylight, he can admit the irrationality of it…but after one of those dreams, it looms over him, hanging heavily. His secret fear that he buries deep, dark and raw and exquisitely painful.
Pagan’s quiet for a while after that, like he’s mulling it over.
Finally, he says, “I’m thinking of flying someone in…someone you can talk to.”
“You mean like a shrink or something?” At Pagan’s nod: “No way. Fuck that.” God, worse than admitting to that fear, to any of this craziness at all would be to have it dragged out into the light and picked over by some stranger. “No.”
“Trust me, I’m about as fond of the idea as you are. But that I’d even suggest such a thing…I’m concerned about you. I never would’ve brought it up otherwi....”
“No.”
Pagan sighs. “I wish you’d at least consider it.”
Ajay barks a laugh. “What would they even say? Fuckin’ snap out of it? Here’s a bunch of pills and shit, hope it helps?” He shakes his head. “What if…what if I’m still dreaming right now, huh? How would some doctor help that? Dreaming that you’re here with me because I want it so bad…but the truth is that you aren’t and can’t ever be again and soon I’ll wake up and that will be what’s real…”
“Ajay, beloved boy, I’m as real as anything. I promise.”
“But how do I know I’m not just…making that part up too? Making all this up just to feel better for a little while?”
“Why, I’ll prove it to you!”
Pagan leans in and runs his lips along the side of his throat…and bites down.
Hard.
Nips him hard enough to bruise, nearly hard enough to draw blood. Ajay hisses at the unexpected sting and almost recoils from him, with goosebumps popping out all over. But Pagan touches his lips to the now tender spot in a small, velvety caress, tongues over it so gently, and he shivers and relaxes against him.
“Ha! Could you have slept through that? Could I have given you that little mark, if I were a mere figment of your dreaming mind? I should think not,” he announces with satisfaction. Just a little smug about it too.
Ajay blinks, thinking that over. Like a lot of things having to do with Pagan, this line of reasoning sounds batshit on the surface, but manages to loop around until it makes a bizarre kind of sense.
And then on total impulse, he twists his head and bites him the same way.
Pagan grunts and stiffens up against him. Obviously hadn’t been expecting retribution, but like he did, quickly relaxes again; even lets out a tiny, pleased sigh when Ajay soothes over the spot with slow strokes of his own tongue.
“There,” he whispers against that small bruise marking Pagan’s throat. “Now we match.”
“And I have a bloody finance meeting at nine,” he grumbles. “Couldn’t have possibly put it just a bit lower, now could we? No, of course not. Absurd to even consider it.”
“You’re so fucking melodramatic,” even as he tilts his head to examine his handiwork and feels his own sense of satisfaction. “Since when did you start giving a shit about what other people think? Just put some makeup on it or something.”
“Ah, you have a point. Very well,” and sighs a fake, put-upon sigh. “If you insist, I shall parade around with my love bites and suck marks on full display. I’m sure Gary will get a kick out of it, if nothing else.” He quickly drops the pompous act in favor of nuzzling his nose along his scruffy cheek. “Anything to rid you of these shadows that weigh so heavily on your heart. To see that brightness come back into your eyes, just as it is now? There’s very little I wouldn’t do.”
“Yeah, I know, I…thanks. For putting up with this.” Putting up with me. “You didn’t sign up for any of this shit.”
“Ugh, yes, you’re such a burden. However shall I possibly carry it?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I, dear boy, so am I! Tell me, do these hands look as if they’re meant for manual labor? Am I a pack mule?” He grins, a flash of teeth in the low light. “But the real question is…do you believe me now, hmm?”
He does. He really, really does, with profound relief.
“Sure. You did pass the bite test, after all,” he says playfully. “The test you made up yourself, but…”
Pagan growls and pulls him in; growls and nibbles on whatever he can reach, and Ajay bursts out laughing. Especially when Pagan tries to pin him down, nibbling on him all the while.
“Get off, asshole!” he howls, his token protest interspersed with peals of laughter. “Fuckin’ tickles!” Not able to do much but squirm in place.
A few more moments, and the tenor of Pagan’s silly growls shifts to become purring instead. A deep, rumbly purr that he can feel in his own chest and belly, and as his nibbling turns to kissing, hot and open-mouthed against his skin…he finds himself squirming under him for completely different reasons.
“You sure? You gotta get up early,” Ajay whispers, even as he slides his arms around him and wriggles to get closer.
“Don’t care, I’m suddenly in the mood. And besides, I’m always dozing off during those things anyway. May as well have a good reason for it.” And then makes that noise down in his chest again, the one he loves to hear. Can’t get enough of it. Happy Pagan noise. A pleased, appreciative, turned-on Pagan noise, feeling him already getting hard against his thigh.
Ajay groans in response and lifts his legs to wrap them around Pagan’s hips. “Want you…want to feel you,” he whispers, kind of breathless already. A situation that doesn’t improve when Pagan lowers his head to kiss him. Satiny friction in the warm slide of his tongue, of warm skin sliding against his as they rub together, hands all over each other.
With how late it is, he would’ve been perfectly happy with a quick fuck and then rolling over and going back to sleep, but Pagan insists on taking his time with it. He’s sweet like that.
Panting breaths and thudding hearts as he’s cradled in his arms; thick and heavy and velvety-hot inside him and alive, so alive.
After that, the last of of the dream fades, and he sleeps like a stone.
The next day, Pagan’s up well before he is, leaving him with a vague recollection of being kissed good morning and goodbye at the same time. Ajay sees him only in passing; yawning and groggy and still in one of Pagan’s robes as he shuffles into the dining room looking for breakfast, Pagan already showered and shaved and shined up for the day and washing his last bite of toast down with the dregs of his tea.
In the daylight, that bruise on his neck is way obvious.
Pagan catches him looking and reaches up to touch it, just above the edge of his crisp, freshly starched collar, and smiles. He taps it pointedly with one long finger as he offers him a sharp, hard grin, a lazy challenge in his eyes: Still real as anything, my boy. And here’s the proof of it. I’m not going anywhere, remember?
He slowly raises his hand to touch his own, and that dull little throb under his fingers does feel sort of…grounding, somehow. Pagan meets his eyes and nods once, decisively, before turning to leave. As if they’ve brokered some kind of agreement.
After he saunters out, Ajay helps himself to a slice of leftover toast, chewing meditatively.
The days flow by in a blur of studying up on how to run a nation. Like to actually run it way it should be run, and not just half-assing it…although he can’t really blame him. And even if he did, blame doesn’t help set things right. Pagan might be handling the budgetary parts and the outside diplomatic stuff, which is still a lot, but most of the rest he’s already shouldered the burden of himself. And it is a burden. Sometimes a pretty heavy one…but also a satisfying one. For the first time in a long, long time, things are getting better in Kyrat. Not drastically, and not overnight, but at least he’s starting to feel like he’s finally reversing some of the damage. His country, and he wants it to be a place worth being proud of.
Their country. The two of them, together.
A week and a half later, he has that same fucking dream again.
The same ordeal of jerking himself awake in panic, sweat and tears pouring down his face and feeling like he might as well be the one dying over and over again, because it hurts that much. Startles Pagan so bad that he bolts upright and lets out some hoarse, inarticulate sound, very clearly not a corpse.
“Shhh, it’s all right. I’m here, I’m right here,” Pagan whispers, after he wakes enough to realize what’s going on and shoves the old window open. Gathers him up and presses a kiss to his damp hair and that makes him want to cry even harder.
“I fucking hate this,” he mutters in self-disgust, chest still heaving and with the old familiar sense of reality being elusive. Like his scrabbling fingers are trying to get purchase on it, but what’s real remains just out of his grasp…
A sudden, sharp pain at his throat, as Pagan bites down.
The shock is enough to take his unsteady breath away, but only for a second before he goes completely limp. Tension drains out of his body until he’s a wrung-out rag in his arms, as Pagan soothes over the new mark forming on the faint trace of the old one. The gentle warmth of his mouth moves over it, the softest touch of his tongue.
“I’m right here,” he whispers again, and this time…this time Ajay can believe him.
Weirdly enough, just the presence of that little bruise on his neck seems to be enough to keep the dream at bay. He does have it one more time after that, but even then it isn’t nearly as vivid and disturbing as usual; like a ghost of its old self, as if it’s being drained of its power.
And then, just like that…they stop.
Now Pagan won’t let him go more than five days without nuzzling in and carefully renewing that mark. Doesn’t even mind when Ajay grins and nips him back, only grumbling a little under his breath until he licks it better. Pagan never makes any attempt to cover it either. Maybe he wears it out of solidarity, but when he catches Ajay looking, he makes a point of tapping it with that same lazy glint in his eye: Not going anywhere, my boy. You can’t get rid of me quite so easily. Not leaving you that easily.
I love you. And I’m not going anywhere.
End
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