Rei
Rei heard Ellisandre's words from the end of a long tunnel.
His body was leaning against Lisa’s but the part of him that was aware was running from his body, leaving his limbs cold.
His heart pounded in his chest. The future was rushing towards him, bright skies and sunshine.
Sevastyan walked hand in hand with this beautiful person down the sidewalk.
Sevastyan turned and smiled and Ellisandre smiled back.
And behind them, in the shadows, Rei himself grew smaller and smaller, trapped in the dark.
He needed to run. Out the door, onto the street. But he couldn’t. The Merchari would find him. Sevastyan’s schemes would be uncovered or he’d lose status for misplacing a high-value slave. All the plans to end the Merchari would collapse. Sevastyan still needed a slave.
There was no leaving until Jun was safe. If Rei left now, then the last eleven years of his life would have been for nothing.
He just had to find that place inside, the one he hadn’t needed since being owned by Sevastyan. The one where he didn’t exist but his body continued to move day after day. He just had to find it, slide inside, and wait. A few months, a year, and the Merchari would be on their knees.
Then he could fade.
Sevastyan belonged to Ellisandre.
If only the world would stop. If only Rei could faint and disappear. Fall asleep and wake numb where none of this hurt.
Or perhaps he could have succumbed in the days previous, everything ending before he had witnessed a world where Sevastyan wasn’t his.
The world was very cold, but that didn’t matter. He just had to stay here, stay still long enough to pull the pieces together to find a way to exist, to follow Sevastyan into whatever rooms they needed to pierce until this was over. Until Sevastyan was free and Jun was safe.
Until he could rest.
Something slapped his face. There were voices. There were hands in his hair.
“Rei, answer me.”
That was his master. He had to answer. But he wasn’t ready. His walls weren’t rebuilt.
“Rei!”
“Do you think he’s been having a brain bleed this whole time?”
“He needs a hospital.”
“What hospital could we possibly take him to?” His master sounded wrecked, like he was crying.
Rei’s chest hurt from the sound of Sevastyan’s voice. He never made his master cry. The rest of the world was wrong. He had to make it right between them. That was how they survived. Wherever they were, whenever they were alone, they made the world right.
His eyes wouldn’t open, but he could lift his hand. Sevastyan was crouched over him. The larger man’s heat was a beacon. He pressed his palm against Sevastyan’s cheek. It was rough with scruff. His master needed to shave.
The shouting drifted away. His master covered his hand with his own. That was how it was supposed to be. Rei smiled to himself. He could do this. He could make Sevastyan quiet. Peaceful and quiet.
“Rei.”
Rei blinked, opening his eyes. They were on the floor beside the bed, in the narrow space between the mattress and the closet. Sevastyan was crouched over him, knees on either side of Rei’s hips. Lisa was in the doorway of the closet. Ellisandre leaned in from above his head.
He blinked slowly. “Master.”
“You went away, Rei. You went away.” Sevastyan’s eyes were bloodshot. His face was wet.
Rei moved his fingers, touching Sevastyan’s tears. More slipped from his master’s eyes, running through Rei’s fingers and trickling down their intertwined hands.
“I’m here.”
Sevastyan closed his eyes, his shoulders shaking.
Tears spilled onto Rei’s cheeks. His master shouldn’t cry for him.
He had to make this better. He raised his other hand.
“I’m here.” He looked at Lisa. His fellow slave’s eyes were wide and frightened.
He had his arms wrapped around himself. No answers there.
Rei tilted his head back, looking at Ellisandre.
Shadows. Ellisandre’s face was full of shadows. Doubts. Questions. Fear. They were all afraid. All focused on him.
“I didn’t go away.”
“You went cold,” Lisa said. He paused and glanced at Ellisandre.
Ellisandre swallowed. “You wouldn’t respond. Only Sevastyan got you back.”
Sevastyan. Ellisandre. Sevastyan.
Sickness filled Rei from his belly, rising towards his stomach. His hand flexed against Sevastyan’s face. He looked up at his master. Then reached for him. Sevastyan pulled Rei off the floor and into his lap, burying his face in Rei’s shoulder. “Don’t do that, precious boy.”
Rei gripped Sevastyan’s shirt. There were words. He needed to find words. And he wanted to stay here, straddling Sevastyan’s lap and feeling his warmth and his arms squeezed painfully against his battered ribs until the sun burned out in the sky.
“Master,” Rei whispered.
“Yes?” Sevastyan said.
Rei reached for something, something that only touch, only the strangeness of the room, the smell of cedar and apple cider seemed to make possible. Reached for something from a time before. Something that memory and tears, that years of promises could carry.
Tears. Like he’d seen on his master’s face as he changed burned bandages on his face. Tears like Sevastyan had cried leaning over him in that bathroom in Russia after that day.
He spoke in Mandarin, the first language they had ever shared. “Am I still yours?”
Sevastyan’s chest expanded and collapsed and filled again beneath Rei. “总是”
Zǒng shì. His master repeated the word in every language they shared. “???”, eonjena “いつも/Itsumo. Stets. Always.”
Rei stroked Sevastyan’s face with his fingers.
Sevastyan reached up, cradling the back of Rei’s head. “I’ve always been Ellisandre’s. As long as you’ve been mine.”
Rei’s lungs moved in and out. He was trying to form thoughts through the thunder in his mind. “Are you mine? Are they yours?”
“I’m yours, Rei. They are mine. I don’t know how to belong to you and to them. But I always have.”
“You don’t have to know how to exist,” Rei whispered.
“You just exist.” Like inhabiting space.
Like following Sevastyan into danger. Like strangling a man to death.
Like watching Jun and Geun, and Yoihei and Jaewoong dancing with Su-jin for all the world to see via little glass screens.
Knowing was unnecessary. You fixed yourself on what had to be and then you became.
“I thought I needed to leave,” Rei whispered. “But I had to stay. You need me to stay, and Jun needs me to stay. And I had to let you go. I tried to let go, to stay and let go.”
“No,” Sevastyan rasped. He pulled Rei closer, if that was even possible. He brought their foreheads together. The air smelled of salt and water. “Rei. Don’t let go. I only came here, I only found Ellisandre so you wouldn’t let go.”
Rei closed his eyes, leaning into the weight of Sevastyan’s body.
Even reaching down into the deepest part of his submission, of his desire to give, he couldn’t find the will to release Sevastyan.
He fisted Sevastyan’s long hair, letting the strands press against the wounds in his palms.
“I am your slave, but you are my master.”
“Yes,” Sevastyan breathed.
The world returned to equilibrium. The thunder in his thoughts quieted.
He didn’t know how to exist in this new state any more than Sevastyan did.
But he didn’t have to. Not yet. Five years and nothing had changed their dynamic like Ellisandre since that day.
But all he had to do here and now was breathe.
“I’m tired, master,” Rei whispered.
“Let me check his pupils before he sleeps,” Lisa said.
Sevastyan held Rei while Lisa checked Rei’s eyes and touched his hands. “Still cold but signs of shock are leaving. Rest and warmth. Food and liquids in twenty or thirty minutes.”
Sevastyan nodded to Lisa and stood, lifting Rei with him. Rei dropped his head to Sevastyan’s shoulders.
As Sevastyan arranged them both under the covers in the bed, Rei opened his eyes. Ellisandre was still standing by the bed. They were a question, a towering, striking unknown. The person who had touched Sevastyan before him. The one who had not been there for ten years.
“Sleep,” Lisa said, stepping into Rei’s view, blocking Ellisandre out. “Ellisandre and I will be outside. Your master has you.”
Rei lifted his hand towards Lisa’s face. He hadn’t checked to see if Lisa was okay. He had looked so shaken. But now there was a hard edge in his friend’s eyes.
“I’m okay.” Lisa pressed his fingers to the back of Rei’s palm. “Master Sevastyan needs to rest. Help him rest.”
Rei’s eyes were already growing heavy. A different kind of stillness, this one cradled against the solid weight of Sevastyan’s chest and hips against his own was pulling him under. He pulled his hand towards his chest, gripping Sevastyan’s arm where it was wrapped around him.