Partner

I tried for smex for this and... well look what happened. Good to know I don't have control over them and they've just been going along with the plot.

I have no idea what the markings on the wall mean, go me. But I suspect I know who wrote them and it's a bit hard to question the person... as they're dead. So we'll all find out how what and who together.

Read, Review and Enjoy




Mik groaned at the idea of the mesa sleeping with them. Again. He knew it was bad of him to think that and he knew that other parents didn’t get ‘quiet time’ like they did and most parents didn’t have a tribe full of Sidhe to help raise a mesa. They did and he should have been thankful for the quiet time they did get.

But he wanted… ‘quiet’ time. Their sex lives had been going downhill since the mesa was born. It was just one thing after another after another and it just never seemed to level out for more than an hour and… well… they needed more than an hour.

He walked into the apartment and batted the thought down. His keys went on the counter, he nodded to the stranger standing in his territory and then moved on and into the living room. Once in the living room he frowned, backed up and looked at the stranger, doing a double take.

Stranger in his house and he walks right by the man? Stranger in his house and his only problem was that there was someone in his territory. Like. He had marked the apartment or claimed it in some fashion.

He glared at the kitchen counter. They hadn’t ‘marked’ that yet.

Damn it, there he went again!

“Who are you?” he asked the stranger.

“Dart, Paw’s new partner.”

“Well… may the gods have mercy on you, because he won’t.” Mik muttered, “but what are you doing here, in my apartment?”

At least he hadn’t demanded to know why the male was on his territory.

“Partners are supposed to stay with their Sidhe at all times. To learn from the Sidhe and care for the Sidhe.”

“In my absence. Paw doesn’t need to be cared for while I’m here.”

“But the program says- you said-”

“Kid,” because the other was quite a bit younger than Mik, “who has been caring for Paw over the last nine months?”

“Uhm… you… were?”

“Mm. So I might know a thing or two about caring for a Sidhe, don’t you think?”

“Uhm…”

“The answer to that one would be yes. I wasn’t removed because I was unqualified for the job.”

Paw came out of the bathroom, naked besides the towel that covered one nipple as he scrubbed his hair dry. He looked from Mik to Dart and back to Mik before striding to Mik and pecking his cheek.

“Bad day?” Paw asked Mik.

“Mm,” he kept making that damned sound too. Ever since he had been told that was the male’s name. Which meant he always said it with a capital. Which meant.

“Who’s Mm?”

Mik sighed. Paw blinked at him, waiting for a verbalized answer even though Paw would have known from the sigh alone who it was. Paw was verbalizing for the new partner. Mik felt a moment of flaring jealousy that he managed to reign in as he spoke.

“The male from the farm.”

Paw’s features shifted from horrified to confused to a dawning something or rather that immediately got away from Paw’s quick mind. The creature was grasping at straws. He jabbed a finger at Dart.

“Leave, now, door over there. Go. See someone, dun care, go,” as Paw spoke, the tone of his voice got darker and deeper until Dart fled the apartment, trying to get away.

Mik looked at Paw as the creature’s eyes fell to the floor and darted back and forth, back and forth over the ground. This was not Paw searching with power, this was him searching his actual memory, his mind. All that history, all that stuff that Mik wished he could skim over at the very least, Paw was searching through his memory.

Considering how quick Paw was to pull up facts, to absorb them?

“Is it being Whisper, or is it alluding you?” Mik asked, because he had to. He had to know if his Whisper was losing the man he loved.

Wait. Had that just been all…

“Alluding,” Paw murmured, hand playing over the air as if tracing something. “trace it back and it’s a dead end. Trace it forward and nothing’s there. Fragmented.”

“You sound like a crazy person.”

Paw snorted, stopped his searching and looked up at Mik, “crazy people imitate those around them who act contrary to what society wants, it’s the mind telling the body to act out because it’s sick. There was a woman once, who the Valeasan government wouldn’t cover. Medical expenses, but at the time we thought it meant they wouldn’t put a roof over her head. We took her in. She was crazy like Auhi is crazy,” Paw turned and looked around the kitchen before moving into the living room and making a motion to Mik to follow, “Her hands would twiddle in the air and she would rock when it got bad. Auhi found that it helped when he was trying to recall … broken things.”

“Broken thins?”

“Historians can’t teach everything by mouth alone. Not enough lifetime to do that. So mind to mind. But not all historians have… sometimes they break down. And so some things are shattered fragments and the next historian has to try and connect the fragments and make a whole.”

“And what is Mm do?”

“Something. A flash across … dappled sunlight,” Paw frowned, “Paw might be making that connection because the male is dappled.”

“How dappled is the sunlight?”

Paw frowned, looking down as his eyes unfocused, “This dapple fit the dapple of male’s hair.”

“That is an odd connection,” Mik murmured as Paw pulled out a permanent marker from the art supplies and uncapped it, “what are you doing?”

Paw shrugged and put the pen to the wall, writing as he spoke, “dappled people are not known amongst people. Sidhe, vampyre, flying bats, all that stuff people know about. People know about aniege and gods and Ayato and ayata and Rava and Una but not know about dappled people. Dappling would be a genetic structure that passed. A blood thing. Females wild about male’s blood. Farmers got specific Sidhe tribe but which tribe is question. Lovelerly things. Male tall as Essuan, height makes good for reaching foodstuffs. Wide as Souse. Male survived because he’s all-” Paw made his hands go out, “almost leader. Almost alpha. Top dog. Where top dog if second dog survived?”

“Why are you comparing him to a dog?”

Paw’s pen on the wall faltered, “what?”

“You guys say kitten, cat, we, the partners, even compare your movements to cats. Why is he a dog? Dogs are ground bound. Cats can climb trees.”

“Mik smart, slip of tongue and Mik notice something,” Paw continued to write across the wall, “Cat and dog, cat and dog, what is the whole bit? Why they cats, why we dog?”

“Who are cats?”

“The ones out there.”

“And we aren’t cats?”

“All people are dogs, caught to the ground, bound to the ground, living in their own filth and dying in it. Wolves.” Paw stepped away from the wall and eyed his handiwork, eyes roving over it all, “we are wolves and you are the foxes that we eat in times of need. All dogs, foxes are clever, but small and not smarter than wolves.”

“I… don’t recognise the language,” Mik said, motioning to the symbols on the wall, “but it almost looks like a family tree.”

Paw shook the capped pen, tapping it quickly against his hand, “does this make me crazy?”

“Writing on the wall in gibberish, sudden mood changes and such,” Mik pressed his lips together for a moment, “yes, you would be crazy. Can you read that?”

“No,” Paw looked at it, then back at Mik, “Something something, someone wrote this. Code. Or. Old language. Historian must memorize, historian must pass on, always, always. Dappled sunlight was playing over the floor outside cave when this happened. But forest receded and died and turned to sand and dust and now nothing but hot surrounds the place.”

“So we go searching and find it and see what else is there.”

“It can wait,” Whisper looked up.

Mik’s legs threatened to go out from under him. He worried about what he had done, what he could have done, what he had thought.

“You,” Whisper stepped up to Mik, placing a hand gently on his shoulder, “were jealous of another male. Why do you think the male will take the creature from you?”

“I… don’t know…”

“How little do you trust your own people?”

“About as far as I can throw them.”

Whisper raised his other hand and placed it along Mik’s jaw, “if even you cannot believe in your people, why save them? Why? All the people could be wiped away.”

“No,” that seemed so much worse, “no, for the little girls who play princess and the dreamers and believers. There are good people in the world. They just… find bad people who treat them poorly.”

Whisper’s lips twitched.

He had done that on purpose. Mik’s mind stumbled over the fact that someone could do that, do that at will and the next thing that came from his mouth…

“Illuva is Whisper to the gods.”

“What?” Paw pulled away from Mik, startled, “how does that-”

“What you just did, you led me to a conclusion that was my own belief but I’m betting you can lead people to that conclusion even if it isn’t their belief.”

“Yes…”

“What happens when you take that power and multiply it by a god’s strength and put it in the hands of someone who doesn’t know that that’s their power?”

“Whispers must be trained, even those who do not take on the role of Whisper, must be trained. Those who aren’t either go insane or their powers shut down.”

“Like Illuva’s did when she became a god?” Mik pointed out.

Paw’s mouth fell open. The Sidhe stared at Mik for a full minute before snapping out of it.

“Oh. Oh. Come to the bedroom. Now.”

“Why?” Mik asked, startled himself as Paw tugged at his arm.

“Because I am going to do you, intelligence is such a turn on.”


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