He doesn't let his hands go to the card deck in his pocket. It's the only more personal tell that he hasn't had thoroughly erased, mostly because it was so on-brand no one would take it seriously. But he thinks one of those things, at least, is about to happen, and he wouldn't want the cards to get damaged.
He comes to stand in front of Fives, close enough to be in reach without crossing that line himself, even though it was easy enough before, when they weren't alone, when they weren't talking even around it. His shadow is in the fox form, skipping and skittering at his feet, straining out ahead of him toward Fives' boots.
"... what would?" And it's a serious question, because he needs to know before he lets himself reach out. He doesn't feel confident or safe enough to make any meaningful decision right now. "What... what do you want me to do?"
It's a serious question. It's a kind question, and maybe even, from some sane, objective, respectful perspective, the right question, because certainly there are plenty of things that Fives could do that would only send Jedao running again. 'Whatever you want,' isn't an answer, not a fair or true or useful answer.
But Jedao hates the question anyway, feels something cold clutch in his stomach. He needs - certain boundaries, still, even if he's tried, to think about some of the things Holden said. But he wants so desperately for it not to be about what he wants. He makes a strained, strangled, half-muffled noise in his throat, is too graceful to stumble forward and so tips neatly against Fives' chest instead, his head bent down so that his face presses into Fives' collarbone, his hair tucked against Fives' chin.
Jedao keeps his hands to himself.
"I hate that I'm hurting you," he mutters, his eyes uselessly closed. "I want. To be better. I probably deserve to get shaken a little." That would be - nice. reassuring. To get that kind of pushback, at least a little, as long as Fives wasn't too mad at him.
He really wants the hug, too, but feels too brittle to ask.
Fives doesn't even try to keep his hands to himself, the second Jedao tips into him he wraps his arms around him and holds on tight, face ducked down to press into the crown of his head. He's quiet for a long time, just standing there, breathing, and thinking through... what Holden had said, what Jedao's said, what he thinks it means.
"I hate that you're hurting you," he finally answers quietly, and one big, gloved hand shifts up to curl at the nape of Jedao's neck and give him a firm but gentle shake. Fives is very careful not to dislodge him, though, and still has the other arm curled tight around him. "I can live with you not wanting me, Jed'ika. I can even live with you wanting me but not being able to... to let us have that, because something about it fucks you up. I don't understand it, but I don't have to. I won't ever push you for anything you-" He stops for a moment, not quite sure how to phrase it, because he's pretty sure it would be inaccurate to say Jedao doesn't want it- "For anything you think is wrong."
He tips his head down just a little further, so he can press his nose behind Jedao's ear. "But please don't hide from me?" He feels a little jolt of shame at the way his voice wavers there, but he's beyond being able to hide it.
The big hand on his neck feels as safe as anything has in - a long time, and he melts a little into the grip, sighs minutely, and is then completely unbraced for what comes next. He makes a noise at wanting me but, an inarticulate - something, neither a protest nor an affirmation, part fear and part comedic physical shock, like Fives pulled the rug out from under him in a slapstick routine, just saying it plainly. He still doesn't know how much he can say. But he can let himself react.
He shivers at Fives' breath against his ear, the way it's simply and brutally - affecting, but then sucks in his own breath at the words, at the way Fives says them.
She came for me at a party once, he thinks, and it's fragmented even in his head. My chief of staff saved my life he thinks, and there are no names, even in his head. That's dangerous, to expose her, draw attention to her, a betrayal just as great as shooting her in the head. Which he knows, after all, is not the worst thing that can happen to a soldier.
I was so angry at her, he thinks, and can't wrap his mind around all the pieces of it, the fear that she'd be in trouble for talking treason, that she was safe to be mad at, that he maybe hated her a little, for being straightforward enough and good enough - Kel enough - to say things he couldn't afford to. I was so angry, he thinks, and Fives reminds him of Gized more than is really accurate, or fair to either of them, and he doesn't know why he keeps thinking of that night, when he isn't angry at Fives at all.
Sometimes I want you so much I can't breathe he thinks, darkly hysterically amused, because it isn't a joke at all.
"It's not you. When I'm - I'm hiding from me." He makes himself take a breath. In. Out. Shuddering faintly both ways.
"And -" I was so angry at her. For saying it, for saying it was wrong. For telling -
Even in side his head, he flinches, just a little, from calling it the truth. "Hiding was the only way to - protect anyone. Like he - wanted to teach you." Jedao Vauhan, he means. Not the same scenario, not even close, but something like the same impulse. That much he can understand.
"I know it's not - she can't get you here." This in the barest whisper; an unaugmented human might not be able to make out the words at all, and he switched without thinking of it to speaking Mando'a, the one language he can be certain she wouldn't know. "I know it's not. Useful. It's - instincts. But I'm. I'll try not to."
It helps, it helps more than it maybe should, that Jedao relaxes into his touch, that he so clearly wants it. He can't say how lonely he's been, how unstable and erratic and fractured, not any more clearly than he already has. He can't admit to that kind of weakness, to being a potential liability, not even to Jedao. He's been here almost a standard year now, and it's impossible to escape the growing conviction that he's failed, that he's not good enough. That it's just a matter of time before the Admiral tires of his presence and sends him away, empty-handed. Losing Jedao into the bargain... well, maybe how badly that's affected him is part of the reason the Admiral keeps passing him over. Maybe he needs to be stronger, but he doesn't know how to be. He doesn't know how to be alone.
Any more than he knows how to navigate this emotional quagmire, he thinks, of Jedao's issues and his issues and the way their issues tangle and tear at each other. He'll try, though. He can't not. It helps, at least a little, that Jedao has switched to Mando'a, that it makes him feel that much more solidly like they belong to each other, no matter what.
"I know... I know how hard it is to shake off useless instincts, Jed'ika," he answers, barely louder, and he doesn't shift his grip or posture even a fraction. He isn't going to let go unless and until Jedao asks him to. "Especially when they're what kept you alive, or... or kept your people safe." There are things he can do without hesitation, things you might not expect from a slave, but there are others that make his blood run cold to even think about, still. "But... she can't get you here either, cyare. She can't get you ever again."
"You can't promise me that," he says, soft and grave, voice very even. From Mary Lou Barebone to Immortan Joe, the barge specializes in resurrecting horrors. Sometimes briefly. Sometimes not.
If Mikodez can be here, then Khiaz can be here. If Cain could be here while Cassandra was here, if Arthas and Sylvanas could be here at once - just from the way they talked to each other -
And world clusters don't tend stop at two.
"What did you want to shake me for?" That's probably a thing he should know.
"I didn't say she can't be brought here," he points out, just as gravely, because he knows that just as well as Jedao does. There have been enough horrors from his own galaxy both before and during his time here, even if he hadn't seen examples of other peoples' personal hells played out by the Admiral. "That doesn't mean she can ever touch you again."
And he's not sure he'd manage to control himself enough to care about not getting demoted if she ever did show up, and Fives is positive Jedao would have to incapacitate him to keep him from gluing himself to him to make sure that she couldn't touch him. But he also can't blame Jedao for not believing that.
He sighs and tightens his grip at Jedao's nape, then gives him another little shake. "Holden said you won't... you won't fuck me because you think it would be rape." There's a rough-edged growl to his voice now, because that does make him angry, even if it's just some screwed up part of Jedao's own issues. "As if I couldn't just say no if I didn't want you, or kick you in the gett'se if you were too kriffing stupid to listen. Which I wouldn't. And you aren't."
Another little shake, like a dog with a toy, and his voice softens. "Utreekov. I love you-" Which is so much easier to admit than it had been with Clark, but it's such a simple thing, really. He loves all his brothers. "And I want you. But... but that's the last I'll say of it, if that's what you want." In the end it doesn't matter why Jedao wants it that way, just that he does. "And I'll love you no matter what."
His heart is racing in his chest, suddenly, fast as a bird's, and he doesn't know if it's because Fives is using the word, or saying he wants Jedao, or - he swallows convulsively, tries to follow Fives' certainties, tries to keep his mind on one track, tries to match up Fives' assurances to Holden's.
Fives could tell him no. And Jedao would listen.
Like Khiaz, there's a gulf of asterisks, a sordid sadistic history he's researched in too much depth, a dozen ways he could face her or be subjected to her in perversions of memories that might have nothing to do with her becoming an inmate who could be negotiated with or repeatedly murdered, not that he has any confidence in either of those things successfully holding her off. More than dozens of ways he and Fives could both be changed, perverted, inverted.
But anything could happen and they can't do anything about that part of the barge; it's pointless to live paralyzed because of it, which he knows enough to try and move past it, as a consideration, and yet -
"Maybe. Maybe not think. Maybe. Feel?"
Another kind of instinct. The Kel rules didn't protect him, of course, because he wasn't a real Kel. But they made him feel protected, for a little while. And made him feel - not less like a monster. But a monster with fewer particular worries.
He doesn't know if he wants Fives to not bring it up again. It would be - a relief, but also -
He doesn't know what he wants, except for the things he still doesn't want to admit he wants. He doesn't know how much he can bear to be pushed, or how much he could hate himself for asking Fives to push him. And yet -
"Would you?" he feels like he's bouncing too hard, between all the words, not sure if he can't stop himself or if he's desperate to ride the momentum of conversation as long as he has it. "If you didn't. Want. You need me and you know it -" it could have come out mean, a cornered-rat biting kind of vicious, but instead it's scared and sad, the gentle kind of horror reserved only for speculation, for things one yet hopes might not be real at all, the horror of ghosts half-seen and apocalypses yet to come. "There's nothing that will stop me saving your -" it takes him three tries to get the word out, but he changes it, stammering, not quite shaking, "- our brothers. No matter - there's nothing you ever have to do."
I need to know that you know that, Jedao Vauhan said. Jedao still needs to know that, needs to know it more than ever.
"I do need you," he concedes, low and grave and absolutely honest. He knows he can't do what Jedao's planning on his own, he doesn't have the experience or the training or the... the imagination for it. Yet. He also knows he's learning with every minute he spends in Jedao's company, listening to his plans and theories, helping with his research. He's smart, and he's fast, and his memory is better than most mongrels can ever dream of. He believes he can learn what he needs if he must, if he has time... but he doesn't have to.
"But if you were the kind of man who couldn't take no, who could think that... that my body was yours in payment for your help-" He pauses, sliding his hand up into Jedao's hair and using the grip to urge him to lift his head, to meet his eyes. Because he needs to know that he hears and understands every word of this. "I'd still take it, and I'd choose to pay the price." And he honestly wouldn't find it hard to bear, even if he didn't want Jedao or anything he might want to do to him. Partially because it would be worth any price for a chance at freedom for his brothers and partially because he just doesn't have that kind of association with sex. It's just another thing he can do with his body, or have done to it. "And then I'd pick your brain for every last thing you could teach me... and walk away and leave you here. And if you managed to graduate, somehow-" Because he doesn't want to believe that a man like that could- "And follow me home, I'd kill you myself before I'd ever let you near my brothers." Because there's a difference between a price he's willing to pay himself and one he's willing to inflict on those he loves and is responsible for.
Fives lets that sink in for just a moment, serious and intent, then continues, "But you're not that kind of man, and I've never for a moment thought that your help was... was contingent on anything. I didn't ask you to help me, Jed'ika, you asked me who you'd need to kill to save them." He has absolutely no doubts or fears regarding Jedao's motives in this. "And if I ever did... if you ever wanted me, and I took complete leave of my kriffing senses and wasn't interested, I know that all I'd have to do is tell you no."
He tips his head down so he can press their foreheads together, and when he tries to laugh it comes out too quiet, ragged and sad and a little broken. Much like his voice when he speaks again. "Even if I really can't imagine ever wanting to say no.
It's not just that I trust you, Jed'ika. I trust you with... with our brothers, ori'vod."
Fives's hand in his hair is - so good, a solid reassuring anchor, a choice he doesn't have to make. (Also a little bit hot. But everything about Fives is hot, and he's mostly used to ignoring that.) He opens his mouth to say something at I'd still take it, because he doesn't want that, he can't - but Fives keeps going and he doesn't interrupt. There's an uncomfortable jump in his stomach, a churning of uncertainty, because Jedao has done that, too, slept with people for missions, for information, and it wasn't about him or either of them. He knows that feeling, using his body as a tool, using it well. For all that he kept trying to tell Holden he had a choice - I could have killed her - he understands in ways he has no words for that it was a different situation.
There's another impulse to argue when Fives says he could walk away, as if Jedao couldn't spin it out, keep him on the hook, never share quite enough. But that's just quibbling, because he might have the skill but he hasn't done the groundwork, certainly couldn't sustain it in the face of Fives being Fives, determined and brilliant, no matter what kind of madness struck him.
I'd kill you myself, Fives says, and Jedao smiles like an idiot, feels warm and safe and light, like someone lifted a weight off his lungs. Jedao loves him so much, might have kissed him in that moment in the thoughtless upwelling presence of it, if Fives hadn't still had a solid grip on his hair.
Probably he'd have felt the fear kick in again a moment later; probably for the best that he can't, and is left to enjoy the feeling instead, as Fives presses their foreheads together.
"The last time people trusted me I tortured all of them to death," he says, which he didn't even know was part of this until it's forcing its way out of his mouth, until he hears it hanging in between them.
That smile, that kriffing bloody smile, lifts the weight of the world off Fives' shoulders, and he hadn't even known he'd been carrying it. He smiles back, warm and so very pleased, and gives Jedao another little shake with his grip, but it's soft and fond, a gentle jostling more than anything. And though Jedao's next words wipe the smile away it's not because he's shocked, or horrified, it's because it's something that Jedao deserves he be absolutely serious about.
So he gives himself a moment, holding position and holding Jedao, before he answers, and then it's low and solemn and very very definitely. "The last time people trusted you, Jed'ika, you were fighting everyone, alone, with no help, no backup. "The last time people trusted you... you couldn't trust them. That's not true anymore." He makes every one of those last words clear and distinct, because they're very, very important. "And if I need to die for this, however it needs to happen, it won't be a betrayal of trust for you to order it, or do it, or just let it happen. We're in this together, ori'vod. Traitorous kriffing bastards together."
It's important; and it's not something he's going to be able to accept just hearing it, for all that it's also been reshaping his personal foundations for months, ever since the first time Fives said it. He smiles, his shoulders slightly lopsided between tension and relief, the smile itself a little wan, a little helpless, a little easy, until it morphs imperceptibly into a smirk.
"You can't die on me," he points out. "You called dibs on being the keystone for the chips." Which, while not at all something he actually maneuvered Fives into or planned on, he acquiesced to a lot more rapidly than he might have in other circumstances, for precisely this reason: it makes Fives just as indispensable to the plan as he is to Jedao personally. It removes the need for Jedao to force himself to distinguish between the two, and he is deeply smug about it.
Fives can't resist the urge to grin at the smugness and he huffs a quiet, pleased laugh... and decides that right now is probably not the time to point out that he has every intention (if he ever manages to get his deal at all) to specify that if he dies or is captured or incapacitated control over the chips will pass to Jedao. That's not necessary right now.
Jedao is, of course, in favor of contingencies - even has his own ideas about a clause that lets them retroactively designate a much longer chain of succession, as candidates become viable. But there's still something very powerful in Fives having the role, Fives who was always one of them, Fives who came here to make this all possible.
He snorts softly, nuzzles the tip of his nose against Fives'.
He laughs again, quieter, and as his eyes slip half-shut in content and comfort he just barely catches himself before he acts on the almost reflexive urge to turn Jedao's gentle nuzzling into just as gentle a kiss. Instead he slides their cheeks together, his stubble rough and catching a little, and squeezes Jedao tighter.
"We've both got too much to do be dying any time soon."
There's an urge to sigh a little, stated so plainly. He feels old and wrung out and tired, but that's okay, because he can lean his weight into Fives a little more, and Fives will just hold him.
Fives is more than happy to take his weight, as much of it as Jedao will trust to him. He's just so kriffing relieved to be allowed to hold him like this again, and he sighs as he tucks his head down enough that he can rest his chin on Jedao's shoulder, even if it is a bit of a contortion to manage.
He's quiet for a long time, content just to stand here like this and let at least some of the anxiety of the last few weeks bleed away. "Can we... can we stay here tonight?" he finally asks, quiet and tentative. "It's okay if... if you're not comfortable with that," he adds quickly. See Holden, he's being careful. "... but if you don't mind?"
"I'd be comfortable with that," he answers, his voice equally quiet but sure and warm. "That sounds nice."
The proximity issue still isn't ideal, but he's mostly acclimated to the idea. He knows more about Mikodez than he did when he first arrived, and while he wouldn't say things are settled, they've at least reached a current equilibrium. He wants to keep living in the Roci for now, partly because moving back too soon would feel like he was silly and stupid, bolting in the first place, and partly because it allows him a new avenue to observe his warden, and partly because it leaves a buffer, in the ability to retreat back into his own room.
Which fits, more or less neatly, with Fives' request.
He makes a quiet sound of relief and squeezes Jedao a little tighter--possibly uncomfortably so. He misses the low bed, and Jedao's warmth draped over him, and the warm, diffuse light of the room a soft glow from behind his eyelids. It won't be the same without the glass windchime, but it's enough of the comforting familiarity he's been missing since Mikodez's arrival drove Jedao away.
The Roci's better than his own barracks, but it's still a barracks, and even before Jedao had taken to hiding from him he'd slept alone on the bottom bunk more often than not, on the nights he hadn't spent in Clark's cabin instead. "Thank you, Jed'ika."
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He doesn't let his hands go to the card deck in his pocket. It's the only more personal tell that he hasn't had thoroughly erased, mostly because it was so on-brand no one would take it seriously. But he thinks one of those things, at least, is about to happen, and he wouldn't want the cards to get damaged.
He comes to stand in front of Fives, close enough to be in reach without crossing that line himself, even though it was easy enough before, when they weren't alone, when they weren't talking even around it. His shadow is in the fox form, skipping and skittering at his feet, straining out ahead of him toward Fives' boots.
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But Jedao hates the question anyway, feels something cold clutch in his stomach. He needs - certain boundaries, still, even if he's tried, to think about some of the things Holden said. But he wants so desperately for it not to be about what he wants. He makes a strained, strangled, half-muffled noise in his throat, is too graceful to stumble forward and so tips neatly against Fives' chest instead, his head bent down so that his face presses into Fives' collarbone, his hair tucked against Fives' chin.
Jedao keeps his hands to himself.
"I hate that I'm hurting you," he mutters, his eyes uselessly closed. "I want. To be better. I probably deserve to get shaken a little." That would be - nice. reassuring. To get that kind of pushback, at least a little, as long as Fives wasn't too mad at him.
He really wants the hug, too, but feels too brittle to ask.
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"I hate that you're hurting you," he finally answers quietly, and one big, gloved hand shifts up to curl at the nape of Jedao's neck and give him a firm but gentle shake. Fives is very careful not to dislodge him, though, and still has the other arm curled tight around him. "I can live with you not wanting me, Jed'ika. I can even live with you wanting me but not being able to... to let us have that, because something about it fucks you up. I don't understand it, but I don't have to. I won't ever push you for anything you-" He stops for a moment, not quite sure how to phrase it, because he's pretty sure it would be inaccurate to say Jedao doesn't want it- "For anything you think is wrong."
He tips his head down just a little further, so he can press his nose behind Jedao's ear. "But please don't hide from me?" He feels a little jolt of shame at the way his voice wavers there, but he's beyond being able to hide it.
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He shivers at Fives' breath against his ear, the way it's simply and brutally - affecting, but then sucks in his own breath at the words, at the way Fives says them.
She came for me at a party once, he thinks, and it's fragmented even in his head. My chief of staff saved my life he thinks, and there are no names, even in his head. That's dangerous, to expose her, draw attention to her, a betrayal just as great as shooting her in the head. Which he knows, after all, is not the worst thing that can happen to a soldier.
I was so angry at her, he thinks, and can't wrap his mind around all the pieces of it, the fear that she'd be in trouble for talking treason, that she was safe to be mad at, that he maybe hated her a little, for being straightforward enough and good enough - Kel enough - to say things he couldn't afford to. I was so angry, he thinks, and Fives reminds him of Gized more than is really accurate, or fair to either of them, and he doesn't know why he keeps thinking of that night, when he isn't angry at Fives at all.
Sometimes I want you so much I can't breathe he thinks, darkly hysterically amused, because it isn't a joke at all.
"It's not you. When I'm - I'm hiding from me." He makes himself take a breath. In. Out. Shuddering faintly both ways.
"And -" I was so angry at her. For saying it, for saying it was wrong. For telling -
Even in side his head, he flinches, just a little, from calling it the truth. "Hiding was the only way to - protect anyone. Like he - wanted to teach you." Jedao Vauhan, he means. Not the same scenario, not even close, but something like the same impulse. That much he can understand.
"I know it's not - she can't get you here." This in the barest whisper; an unaugmented human might not be able to make out the words at all, and he switched without thinking of it to speaking Mando'a, the one language he can be certain she wouldn't know. "I know it's not. Useful. It's - instincts. But I'm. I'll try not to."
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Any more than he knows how to navigate this emotional quagmire, he thinks, of Jedao's issues and his issues and the way their issues tangle and tear at each other. He'll try, though. He can't not. It helps, at least a little, that Jedao has switched to Mando'a, that it makes him feel that much more solidly like they belong to each other, no matter what.
"I know... I know how hard it is to shake off useless instincts, Jed'ika," he answers, barely louder, and he doesn't shift his grip or posture even a fraction. He isn't going to let go unless and until Jedao asks him to. "Especially when they're what kept you alive, or... or kept your people safe." There are things he can do without hesitation, things you might not expect from a slave, but there are others that make his blood run cold to even think about, still. "But... she can't get you here either, cyare. She can't get you ever again."
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If Mikodez can be here, then Khiaz can be here. If Cain could be here while Cassandra was here, if Arthas and Sylvanas could be here at once - just from the way they talked to each other -
And world clusters don't tend stop at two.
"What did you want to shake me for?" That's probably a thing he should know.
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And he's not sure he'd manage to control himself enough to care about not getting demoted if she ever did show up, and Fives is positive Jedao would have to incapacitate him to keep him from gluing himself to him to make sure that she couldn't touch him. But he also can't blame Jedao for not believing that.
He sighs and tightens his grip at Jedao's nape, then gives him another little shake. "Holden said you won't... you won't fuck me because you think it would be rape." There's a rough-edged growl to his voice now, because that does make him angry, even if it's just some screwed up part of Jedao's own issues. "As if I couldn't just say no if I didn't want you, or kick you in the gett'se if you were too kriffing stupid to listen. Which I wouldn't. And you aren't."
Another little shake, like a dog with a toy, and his voice softens. "Utreekov. I love you-" Which is so much easier to admit than it had been with Clark, but it's such a simple thing, really. He loves all his brothers. "And I want you. But... but that's the last I'll say of it, if that's what you want." In the end it doesn't matter why Jedao wants it that way, just that he does. "And I'll love you no matter what."
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Fives could tell him no. And Jedao would listen.
Like Khiaz, there's a gulf of asterisks, a sordid sadistic history he's researched in too much depth, a dozen ways he could face her or be subjected to her in perversions of memories that might have nothing to do with her becoming an inmate who could be negotiated with or repeatedly murdered, not that he has any confidence in either of those things successfully holding her off. More than dozens of ways he and Fives could both be changed, perverted, inverted.
But anything could happen and they can't do anything about that part of the barge; it's pointless to live paralyzed because of it, which he knows enough to try and move past it, as a consideration, and yet -
"Maybe. Maybe not think. Maybe. Feel?"
Another kind of instinct. The Kel rules didn't protect him, of course, because he wasn't a real Kel. But they made him feel protected, for a little while. And made him feel - not less like a monster. But a monster with fewer particular worries.
He doesn't know if he wants Fives to not bring it up again. It would be - a relief, but also -
He doesn't know what he wants, except for the things he still doesn't want to admit he wants. He doesn't know how much he can bear to be pushed, or how much he could hate himself for asking Fives to push him. And yet -
"Would you?" he feels like he's bouncing too hard, between all the words, not sure if he can't stop himself or if he's desperate to ride the momentum of conversation as long as he has it. "If you didn't. Want. You need me and you know it -" it could have come out mean, a cornered-rat biting kind of vicious, but instead it's scared and sad, the gentle kind of horror reserved only for speculation, for things one yet hopes might not be real at all, the horror of ghosts half-seen and apocalypses yet to come. "There's nothing that will stop me saving your -" it takes him three tries to get the word out, but he changes it, stammering, not quite shaking, "- our brothers. No matter - there's nothing you ever have to do."
I need to know that you know that, Jedao Vauhan said. Jedao still needs to know that, needs to know it more than ever.
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"But if you were the kind of man who couldn't take no, who could think that... that my body was yours in payment for your help-" He pauses, sliding his hand up into Jedao's hair and using the grip to urge him to lift his head, to meet his eyes. Because he needs to know that he hears and understands every word of this. "I'd still take it, and I'd choose to pay the price." And he honestly wouldn't find it hard to bear, even if he didn't want Jedao or anything he might want to do to him. Partially because it would be worth any price for a chance at freedom for his brothers and partially because he just doesn't have that kind of association with sex. It's just another thing he can do with his body, or have done to it. "And then I'd pick your brain for every last thing you could teach me... and walk away and leave you here. And if you managed to graduate, somehow-" Because he doesn't want to believe that a man like that could- "And follow me home, I'd kill you myself before I'd ever let you near my brothers." Because there's a difference between a price he's willing to pay himself and one he's willing to inflict on those he loves and is responsible for.
Fives lets that sink in for just a moment, serious and intent, then continues, "But you're not that kind of man, and I've never for a moment thought that your help was... was contingent on anything. I didn't ask you to help me, Jed'ika, you asked me who you'd need to kill to save them." He has absolutely no doubts or fears regarding Jedao's motives in this. "And if I ever did... if you ever wanted me, and I took complete leave of my kriffing senses and wasn't interested, I know that all I'd have to do is tell you no."
He tips his head down so he can press their foreheads together, and when he tries to laugh it comes out too quiet, ragged and sad and a little broken. Much like his voice when he speaks again. "Even if I really can't imagine ever wanting to say no.
It's not just that I trust you, Jed'ika. I trust you with... with our brothers, ori'vod."
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There's another impulse to argue when Fives says he could walk away, as if Jedao couldn't spin it out, keep him on the hook, never share quite enough. But that's just quibbling, because he might have the skill but he hasn't done the groundwork, certainly couldn't sustain it in the face of Fives being Fives, determined and brilliant, no matter what kind of madness struck him.
I'd kill you myself, Fives says, and Jedao smiles like an idiot, feels warm and safe and light, like someone lifted a weight off his lungs. Jedao loves him so much, might have kissed him in that moment in the thoughtless upwelling presence of it, if Fives hadn't still had a solid grip on his hair.
Probably he'd have felt the fear kick in again a moment later; probably for the best that he can't, and is left to enjoy the feeling instead, as Fives presses their foreheads together.
"The last time people trusted me I tortured all of them to death," he says, which he didn't even know was part of this until it's forcing its way out of his mouth, until he hears it hanging in between them.
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So he gives himself a moment, holding position and holding Jedao, before he answers, and then it's low and solemn and very very definitely. "The last time people trusted you, Jed'ika, you were fighting everyone, alone, with no help, no backup. "The last time people trusted you... you couldn't trust them. That's not true anymore." He makes every one of those last words clear and distinct, because they're very, very important. "And if I need to die for this, however it needs to happen, it won't be a betrayal of trust for you to order it, or do it, or just let it happen. We're in this together, ori'vod. Traitorous kriffing bastards together."
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"You can't die on me," he points out. "You called dibs on being the keystone for the chips." Which, while not at all something he actually maneuvered Fives into or planned on, he acquiesced to a lot more rapidly than he might have in other circumstances, for precisely this reason: it makes Fives just as indispensable to the plan as he is to Jedao personally. It removes the need for Jedao to force himself to distinguish between the two, and he is deeply smug about it.
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"Well, I'm certainly not planning on it."
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He snorts softly, nuzzles the tip of his nose against Fives'.
"Better not."
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"We've both got too much to do be dying any time soon."
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"Yeah."
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He's quiet for a long time, content just to stand here like this and let at least some of the anxiety of the last few weeks bleed away. "Can we... can we stay here tonight?" he finally asks, quiet and tentative. "It's okay if... if you're not comfortable with that," he adds quickly. See Holden, he's being careful. "... but if you don't mind?"
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The proximity issue still isn't ideal, but he's mostly acclimated to the idea. He knows more about Mikodez than he did when he first arrived, and while he wouldn't say things are settled, they've at least reached a current equilibrium. He wants to keep living in the Roci for now, partly because moving back too soon would feel like he was silly and stupid, bolting in the first place, and partly because it allows him a new avenue to observe his warden, and partly because it leaves a buffer, in the ability to retreat back into his own room.
Which fits, more or less neatly, with Fives' request.
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The Roci's better than his own barracks, but it's still a barracks, and even before Jedao had taken to hiding from him he'd slept alone on the bottom bunk more often than not, on the nights he hadn't spent in Clark's cabin instead. "Thank you, Jed'ika."