In the City of Seven Walls: Jesses ..:.. Auburn

A puddle of silk like a pool of blood.

Rodney sets the lamp on the low table, next to the copper bowl holding oil and flower petals. The perfume permeates the room. The copper glows warm, beaten by hand into its shallow shape. It is the only warmth in the room, where the windows gather the morning light inside and transform it into blue shadows as the afternoon winds into dusk.

He presses his hand to his back once, feeling the ache of bending over Ancient texts and equipment in the Rale's library hour after hour.

His eyes burn.

He picks up the cool silk from the floor and folds it in half and then again and again, his hands moving without conscious thought, and finally lays it aside, helpless to delay or deny any longer.

Their room is an ell-shape. Though they have no doors, the turn hides the bed from where Rodney stands.

He lights a second lamp, opening the lid of the bowl holding the inert gel and activating it with a drop of catalyst from the bottle of lighter that nestles in a niche at its base, then carries it around the corner. He found the lamps fascinating when they first arrived. The gel will glow until the chemicals are exhausted or a second catalyst is added, stopping the reaction. The bottle of stopper sits next to the lighter catalyst. The lamps themselves are works of art, hand-blown glass tinted and stained, each one different.

The Selket forgo so much technology it is easy to believe they aren't sophisticated, but the lamps and the library give the lie to that, as do the stunner fields they guard their stargate with and the weapons that defend the fortress that surrounds the city.

John sits on the floor, his head tilted back against the wall, his arms resting on his bent knees, hands dangling loose. Gold glinting at his wrists.

He turns his head just enough to watch Rodney hang the lamp from a hook high on the wall, but he doesn't speak.

Rodney joins him just as silently, sinking down to sit beside him, shoulder to shoulder. He wants to ask if it was bad this time, but John never wants to answer, so he doesn't. He can judge by the way John breathes, steady and slow, the half-lowered eyelids, the open hands, that it wasn't the worst. Either that or John doesn't care anymore. Rodney doesn't know how to deal with that, if it's true.

The kohl smeared around John's eyes leaves him looking bruised. Rodney wants to wash it away, wash everything away, the smell of incense and sex clinging to John's skin, the memory of all of this, or the memory of who they were. Forgetting makes it more bearable.

He'd like to forget what it means when John stands in the garden, his head tipped up, eyes on the wide, wide sky.

Soft shuff of sound—bare feet—from the other end of the room accompanies the scents of a tray full of food arriving. John opens his eyes.

A shiver runs through John, exhaustion and the chill floor taking their toll. He draws his knee to his chest and grasps one foot. The bells at his ankle chime, once, and he silences them with his hand. Still. He slips the rings off his toes, then the belled anklet. Then the other foot. Like the silk, John leaves the ornaments were he drops them. The wrist manacles clang against each other.

They're only decorative. John can take them off any time.

He pushes up and walks away from Rodney, into the bathing room. The sound of water serves as a counterpoint as Rodney gathers the pieces of gold up and returns them to their place. He goes back to the front part of the room, finds a pillow and sets it on a rug, sitting down before the low table, the copper bowl, the lamp, the tray filled with dishes of succulent delicacies.

John joins him as he's lifting the lid from a chafing dish. He bends and inhales—meat and spices—his hand, still painted, resting on the bare back of Rodney's neck, just over the knob at the top of his spine. When he exhales, his breath gusts over Rodney's temple. Rodney bows his head just a little and John doesn't lift his hand away. He settles himself next to Rodney, so close their knees and thighs press against each other.

The lamp throws a single pool of light in the otherwise dark room. It lights Rodney's hands as he pours sweet tea into handleless cups. A wisp of steam diffuses from the surface of the tea. It smells like nothing from anywhere Rodney still remembers.

John accepts the cup with an tiny grimace and sips. A single trickle of water slides from his damp hair down to his collarbone. Rodney watches it slip down past a reddening bruise from a mouth too large to be the Haralim's.

John's breathing hitches, but then he looks away, eyelashes lowered, everything but the pulse at his neck hidden behind the studied mask of serenity the trainers taught him. His hand falls away from Rodney's neck.

It feels cold without the warm weight of it there.

Rodney drinks his tea.

He wants to say: This isn't who you are.

He's afraid it is. But he doesn't want to be the man who takes advantage of that.

The bed they share every night is wide, so soft their weight brings their bodies together when they sleep. The calls of the night birds in the garden aviary beyond the open windows hold the silence at bay when Rodney wakes with John tangled around him.

He doesn't think this is the drug. That wore off swiftly, the rare times John has returned still dosed. And if it is conditioning that's taught John to want this...The want is still real.

The kiss is lush and heated and slow. John's lips are soft and dry. There's a hot, swollen split inside his lower lip that Rodney licks carefully and John moans. John's tongue does things that have Rodney wanting so much he can't breathe, can't help wondering how John learned to kiss and kiss and kiss, until he remembers with a jolt. Trained. He starts to pull away.

John's hands slip away from his back and his side. He's so perfectly pliant, yielding even to rejection like a willow, that Rodney wants to hurt him. The impulse comes and goes before he can act, before it can be translated into the physical, but it leaves Rodney feeling tainted by his own thoughts.

The darkness hides John's expression. There's only a glisten of light reflecting from his open eyes.

Rodney disentangles them, meaning to leave the bed. His chest hurts. John's leg is hooked behind his knee and suddenly tightens. John's hands cup his face, one sliding around to the back of his neck again, pulling him back, pulling him down.

John kisses him desperately, urgently, like it's the last kiss he'll ever know, bruising Rodney's lips, stealing his air, taking what he needs without an ounce of submission. He doesn't let go until Rodney responds, until they're moving together and lost in each other and Rodney can't think of anything that matters except John: John's mouth and his painted hands and his long body writhing beneath him.

Like flying.

Until morning.

-Fin-

In the City of Seven Walls: Jesses

by Auburn