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Their bodies didn’t fit together seamlessly, weren’t the parted halves of a perfect whole. If a sculptor shaped them, then it was with calloused hands and raw clay, and though the years had polished some of the rough away, it was an imperfect process. There remained uneven lips, rough catches, weak points where the clay was flung thin and fragile.
He could have asked for no better form.
There was a kind of wonder in still learning more about Malik after this many years, and this – this was a world of lessons.
Malik sprawled out beneath him, all loose muscle and easy confidence. There was a softness to him now that was well-hidden by the robes and authority of Dai. This gentling was for Altaïr alone.
“Are you going to stare all day?” Malik asked, humor apparent through his impatience.
“I am thinking,” Altaïr said and didn’t move his hands from where they cradled Malik’s hips.
“I’m not a fortress to conquer, Altaïr,” Malik said. “You don’t need a battle plan.”
He pulled Altaïr down into a kiss, and Altaïr answered readily before pulling back with a raised eyebrow.
“Aren’t you always saying I’m too impulsive?” he objected.
“Certainly not in this.”
Grinning, Altaïr leaned down to kiss him once more. This time, he deepened it, and Malik’s lips parted readily, hungrily. Altaïr slid his hand up the firm line of Malik’s side, drawing them together until their bodies were pressed into a single line.
It was far from his first time, and he’d never called himself shy—but there was a certain kind of nerves fluttering against the backs of his ribs. He wanted to do it right, to please Malik, to have him sated and hazy with pleasure. And yet, for all that he knew Malik better than any other, he had not known him in this way. Every touch was an exploration, an experiment to see what elicited soft moans or the quiet catch of his breath.
He shifted to mark a trail down Malik’s neck and pressed his lips to the divot between his collarbones. Beneath him, Malik’s ribcage gave a stutter-start fall and Altaïr hummed at the response, lingering there. The scrape of teeth against his pulse point had Malik’s head falling back, neck bared as an invitation. Fingertips trailing featherlight against the soft skin at the crease of his hip brought out a shuddering breath, gooseflesh budding under his touch.
He catalogued each reaction, noted and bookmarked every shiver and sigh with the same attention he applied to their studies when they were novices—more. Classes came easily to Altaïr when he was a child, but he applied himself to this with greater focus than he ever had to their lessons in geography and history and poetry.
His body was a weapon honed over years to never miss its mark; he could calculate the angle needed for a throwing knife to catch its target’s neck in the half-light of a shuttered bedroom and measure the twist of his body to miss a driving spear’s head by a hair’s breadth. He was determined to master this, too, to know Malik’s body as intimately as his breath knew his lungs.
His studies progressed southward, mapping the slopes of Malik’s low belly, until he had to drag himself up to kneeling in order to press any further.
“Wait, Altaïr. Stop,” Malik said.
His voice came out a little breathless, but his hand pressed against Altaïr’s shoulder clearly enough. Altaïr pulled back immediately, frowning. He’d thought it was going well, that Malik was enjoying himself.
“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Did I do something?”
“No – not”—Malik exhaled shortly, dark brows creasing together—“Are you enjoying yourself at all?”
That was not at all what Altaïr expected to hear. He frowned down at Malik in confusion. Did he misread all of those signs? Was Malik only trying to put on an act, pitying Altaïr in the attempt? His stomach turned over and tightened in an uneasy squeeze.
“Are you not?” he asked instead of answering.
Uncertainty crept through him. Lips pursing, Malik pushed himself back to sit upright. Between them, the space yawned gulf-like and Altaïr retreated from its edge, sitting back on his heels.
“You can’t even answer that?” Malik demanded.
“I am,” Altaïr replied, belated. “I don’t understand what’s wrong.”
Malik had seemed pleased, had tugged Altaïr eagerly to him and crowded him against the wall of the abandoned house.
Malik scoffed and Altaïr bristled. His hands fisted in his robes where they spilled open around him, eyes narrowing.
“I’m not a flail for your martyrdom, Altaïr,” Malik spat.
“And I have never pretended to be a martyr,” Altaïr snipped back. “What is this about?”
At that, Malik pulled back with an eyebrow raised pointedly, and Altaïr flushed hot with shame. He knew how he’d behaved after being stripped of his rank, but that was months ago. He’d thought they were free of its shadow.
“Then, what? You’re just going to suck me off out of altruism?”
Stung, Altaïr recoiled. Anger rippled through him, white-hot flame that sealed his lips and left him smouldering and still. He was used to being a step or three behind in conversations, but this felt less like he was chasing behind Malik and more like they were running in different directions entirely. Malik scoffed and began yanking his robes back on with jerky, harsh motions.
“I’m not sleeping with someone who’s only doing it out of pity,” he sneered. “You left me one hand to still take care of that, at least.”
He slammed the door as he left, robes haphazardly tied. Birdsong and the distant chatter of vendors filled the space in his wake. Altaïr stared after, unseeing, as the fire cooled to an obsidian pane between his thoughts and the outer world. He began, mechanically, to fix his robes from the disarray caused by their tussling. A dove landed on the window, stared at him, and then gave a quiet curu as it strutted along the sill.
He’d found this place by accident fleeing from the guards; apparently abandoned in haste, the building had enough rooms to house a whole family—or a decent complement of Assassins. The latter had been more to his thinking when he showed it to Malik. Malik had been the one to grin, mischief in his eyes, and pull Altaïr into a shadowed corner. He’d answered happily, eagerly—
He swallowed the coal in his throat, working around the rough edges. He didn’t understand what had changed, couldn’t track the pattern of Malik’s mood at all.
Sex wasn’t something he’d often sought out, but he was hardly new to it. Over the years, none of his partners had complained when he had little interest in receiving their attention and preferred to focus on their own pleasure. Some had teased him, but none had been—
His lips pressed together in frustration, trying to feel out exactly what had been in Malik’s tone. The anger meant little—since they were children in novices’ robes, Malik had waved anger like a torch to scare off anyone from looking past it. The doubt, the bitterness—those were closer to the truth, but he still didn’t understand them.
Rubbing at his forehead, Altaïr gave up and dragged himself up to his feet. For all that their childhood studies, the arithmetic of killing and geography of human bodies, came easily to him, people never had. And Malik—Malik, who read Altaïr as easily as any of his maps, only ever let Altaïr understand him.
Too irritated and raw to deal with the streets, Altaïr pulled himself up to the building roof and took a long route back to the bureau. The afternoon sun beat down, melting his white robes to mirage and dripping sweat into guards’ eyes, but he picked a slow route anyway. He wasn’t ready to drop back into the bureau and Malik’s anger quite yet. Without knowing what he’d done wrong, the thought of apologizing ground in his chest like sand against a half-stitched wound.
He wasn’t stalling, exactly, or avoiding the bureau, but he wasn’t hurrying, either. When he heard the shriek and the rattle of armor two streets over from the bureau, he didn’t hesitate before dropping down into the alleyway.
Three guards squeezed down the alley, the sun blinding where it glinted off their helmets. On the other side: two youth in the grey robes of novices.
If he had looked first, Altaïr might have left them. Not all teachers in the Brotherhood were as kind as Rauf or harmless as Samir. They all had to face an enemy's blade at some point.
But.
Under their grey hoods, their faces looked so young. They stood with grim obstinance, their plain swords bared, but looking at them, he saw himself and Malik on their first mission together, the fear and bravery they'd clung to with both hands. There were other lessons to learn.
He drew his short sword from his back and stole forward in two quick strides. In a cramped space like this, the goal was to use the maneuverability of surprise. The guard’s arm lifted, sun ricocheting off the spikes of his mace. The curved blade carved through his bowels, up to his heart. A wet gurgle choked out. Releasing the sword as the guard started to fall, Altaïr threw himself at the next guard, hidden blade slicing through their throat as they turned.
“Mentor!” one of the novices whooped.
That, Altaïr noted as the third guard parried his blow, would need to be trained out of them.
“Heathen,” the guard spat in French, emphasizing it with a wet glob of spit on the stone. “Good. You can show your bastards how to die.”
“You're mistaken,” Altaïr answered evenly, closing the hidden blade and drawing his own longsword. “I will not be the example this day.”
The man was strong, and he knew the weak points of his armor well enough to guard them. Fortunately, he was also angry. He swung in great blows that would have had Altaïr's hands stinging if they connected, and he chased when Altaïr feinted back. If the novices had any sense, they would use the opening he'd created to scramble up and away. Then again, he heard in Malik's voice, they are novices. That alone precludes any wisdom.
He skirted back and in, placing the wall and sun to his back and forcing the guard into uncomfortably close range. They were nearing the mouth of the alley, too close to the wide open street and far enough for the novices to be safe. The guard brought his sword down again. The blow shuddered through Altaïr’s arm. He stepped in, let it slide down his sword, rammed his hidden blade up through the soft underbelly of the guard's jaw. The guard spasmed, choked around his new steel tongue. Rolling his sword free, Altaïr swung it up and through the guard's belly to finish him.
“Thank you,” he said in icy French, “for the lesson.”
“Altaïr!”
Motion in both directions, a jolt of pain through his side, glancing off the thick leather of his belt. Metal flashed before him, and half-seeing, he turned with the thrown knife to bury his blade into the fourth guard's chest. It slotted through their ribs like a key into a lock, and they fell backward with red flooding through their tabard and a throwing knife buried in their left eye.
Exhaling carefully, Altaïr flicked the gore off his hidden blade before retracting it. He'd clean the mechanism later. Now he turned back to the alley with adrenaline reigniting his anger.
Malik had dropped down into the alley, and the novices had sheathed their swords to venture forward. In doing so, they revealed what they'd been protecting: a child, eyes wide in their dirty face. The child clutched an arm to their chest as if it hurt to move, and Altaïr noted minor injuries on the novices: a shallow cut over one’s eyebrow, blood soaking the pant leg of the other.
“Mentor, Dai,” the novice with the bloodied face greeted, and both bowed quickly. “Thank you. We were trying to get out over the roofs, but the guard hurt the child's arm and he couldn't climb.”
“Could you climb the towers of Masyaf when you were his age, Qasim?” Malik scoffed. “Perhaps the famous Eagle could, but I see no wings on this child.”
It was thrown out lightly, a barb and invitation in equal measure. Altaïr could parry it. He could ignore it and mentor the novices. He—He did not want to pretend things were fine. Anger and confusion still roiled under his skin. He looked at Malik and felt hands shoving him away, the sting of rejection.
“Attend to your Dai’s lesson,” he said sharply, wrenching his short sword out of the corpse and turning away.
“Altaïr—" Malik called, voice pitching up sharply, but Altaïr didn't turn back.
It was poor practice for an assassin to be predictable, but Altaïr had a few favorite perches mapped out across Jerusalem. The one he climbed to now was an old dovecote, long abandoned except by ownerless birds left to fend for themselves on the streets. From the doorway, he could see most of the area around the bureau but was still sheltered from prying eyes.
Dropping down, he exhaled and immediately winced. The adrenaline had faded the further he got from the fight, and as it receded, the pain on his side had grown. He twisted to examine it, his lip curling in frustration at the red seeping through the side of his tabard. The cut angled up over the bottom of his ribs as if the guard had aimed to disembowel him but ricocheted off the belt instead.
Against his preference, he tried to unbelt his equipment slowly, so as not to aggravate the wound. His swords rested together, both in need of thorough cleaning. His throwing knives and bags went to the other side, then his belt and sash. Even if the rooftop was secluded, he didn't care to be completely defenseless, so he kept his left bracer on even as he tossed his hood and outer ropes into a pile just inside the dovecote. Down to his undershirt, he slid the right sleeve off and shucked the rest up out of the way to get a good look at the wound.
The fabric had soaked up much of the fresh blood, so the actual cut was mostly clean aside from the blood smeared around it from his climb. He wiped half-heartedly at it with the edge of his shirt, to little avail, before reaching for his medical kit.
He had just pulled the first stitch through when he heard the quiet scuff of someone climbing. Stilling, he blinked into his second sight and readied his hidden blade. Familiar blue emerged with the wind-tousled black hair and Altaïr cleared his vision in order to scowl as Malik's head and shoulders appeared above the roof’s edge. He paused, eyes finding Altaïr, and then pulled himself all the way onto the roof with a grunt.
“Has the Eagle of Masyaf become so domesticated?” he remarked with a pointed look at the dovecote, wiping his hand on his thigh.
“How did you find me?” Altaïr demanded, turning back to yank a new stitch through his skin.
A fat drop of blood welled up in the needle’s wake.
“Don't be obtuse. I've always known where to find you,” Malik scoffed. “I just look for the nearest high place an idiot might like to bleed out in.”
“I wasn't going to bleed out,” Altaïr snapped.
Malik had drawn near, sidling up more slowly than usual. He let out an annoyed noise before kneeling and batting at Altaïr’s hands.
“You’re terrible at this,” he said. “You’re always too impatient and make it scar.”
Scowling, Altaïr bit back a rebuttal. Malik wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t want his care right now. His skin still felt too hot, too bright, like an ember only an incautious touch from kindling. He let go only because he didn’t have any words left to fight.
“If,” Malik said eventually, voice measured and head dipped so that Altaïr saw little more than his black hair, “it is only women that move you, you need not be so circumspect.“
Part of Altaïr wanted to simply punch Malik, to take what he could not translate into words and turn it to action. The needle still threaded through his skin, however, made a mildly convincing argument to abstain.
“What could possibly indicate that I am only attracted to women?” he demanded instead.
He had always been equally attracted to any gender—which was to say not very and only in certain exceptions. Sex had little to do with it and gender less.
“Your body indicated it clearly,” Malik snapped, gesturing toward Altaïr’s lap and tugging the sinew with him. “I know you and Adha—“
Biting back a wince at the yank of sinew in his skin, Altaïr fought back a greater curl of anger deep within. Yes, he loved Adha. Adha had taught him gentleness, shown him how to peel away the delicate layers of her dancing clothes without snagging them on his rough hands, how to be soft and idle and content. Adha had been the first—the only—person to make him understand what it meant to meet someone and immediately, intimately, want them.
Malik had been at his side for so long that Altaïr could not point to a moment when he started loving him, could not remember a time when he had not. They had grown together like two trees, with roots tangled and overlapping, until Altaïr could not see the shape of his own soul without Malik’s imprints all along it.
He had loved Malik first, had loved Adha faster. It didn’t mean he loved either more or less—how could he ever love two different people in the same way? Comparing them was stupid, and suspecting Altaïr had room in his heart only for a ghost fanned the anger hot in his belly. It pricked down the backs of his legs and made him want to storm off, leave Malik here alone on this rooftop if he wanted so badly to twist himself into knots.
Again, the needle, the sinew, the tether binding him to stillness.
“What part of my body?” he snapped. “What stroke is given voice over the whole of the character? My hands? My lips, my tongue? Did they speak in a manner unpleasant to your ears?”
Malik looked up, brows knitted together in a fierce scowl. Under their beetling, though, uncertainty flickered in his steel eyes.
“It may have escaped your notice, but men usually react in certain clear ways,” he snarked.
Altaïr squinted at him. This was the stupidest argument they’d ever had. It hit him all at once, a bewildering relief amidst the still-taut confusion strung through him.
“We were in an unsecured abandoned house that I was showing to you as a backup location for the bureau,” he pointed out.
Pausing, Malik gave Altaïr an unimpressed look.
“Do not tell me you were thinking about guard rotations when you were about to put your moth on my dick.”
He hadn’t been thinking about guard rotations, but he hadn’t not been conscious of the risk.
“You won’t be pleased by anything I say,” Altaïr said shortly, picking up a knife to cut the sinew Malik held taut.
He knotted the loose end while Malik visibly started to respond to that and then stopped and exhaled. He turned the needle over between his fingers, tapping the point lightly once before placing it delicately back in the kit. Turning back to Altaïr, he laid his hand on his thigh and met Altaïr’s gaze evenly.
“Do you like sex?” he finally asked.
Altaïr shrugged and unbuckled his bracer. He could at least take care of his weapons if they were going to sit here dissecting preferences.
“It’s nice,” he said. “I like the closeness.”
Once he’d gotten a sense of it, he’d relished that. Bodies had always been weapons and targets to him, hard lines and soft spots, but here, the way they pressed together, the way they gave to each other. He liked the different tells and triggers, the way he could map his partners’ bodies with tongue and touch.
Malik reached over, picked up the shortsword and laid it on his lap to unsheathe. In the midst of scrubbing out the inner gears of the hidden blade with one of his small brushes, Altaïr watched him do it before setting down the brush to pass a cleaning cloth to Malik.
“But it could just as easily be bathing together,” Malik suggested, as if posing a possible answer to a riddle. “If it achieved the same closeness.”
Altaïr shot him a sideways look.
“It’s not as if it doesn’t feel good.”
Malik rolled his eyes, but his shoulders relaxed a little at that. It still felt as if they were blundering toward each other through thick fog, but that was enough of a sign for the tension strung through Altaïr to ease as well.
“If it was not an option, you would not be put off,” Malik amended, watching Altaïr from the corner of his eyes.
Altaïr shrugged again.
“It’s just sex.”
At that, a burst of laughter rattled out of Malik, and he sat the cloth down to briefly drop his face into his hand before taking a deep breath and straightening. Altaïr narrowed his eyes.
“It would matter to you,” he pressed, newly aware of a concern he hadn’t known he should have.
Malik paused, tilting his head.
“I don’t know,” he said, which was an unwonted thing for Malik to say at all, much less about his own preferences. He’d always been decisive, even when his decision put him in the minority.
He picked up the cloth again and continued to scrub at the blade.
“I would miss it. I do miss it,” he said thoughtfully. “If it was someone I was just sleeping with, it would matter. But it’s not what matters most.”
Altaïr hummed in understanding as he gave the blade a last wipe and packed away his brushes. It didn’t seem so different. He didn’t miss the physical aspect much—that was taken care of easily enough without a partner—but there were times when the only touch he felt was the last grasp of dying men trying to hold onto life by grabbing onto him.
“I have never pitied you, Malik,” he said after a moment.
He’d felt horror, shame, guilt, dread, a miasma of confused and miserable emotions, but pity implied a superiority that, even at his most arrogant, he’d never felt toward Malik.
Malik’s shoulders tensed, and he kept his gaze down as he oiled the now-clean blade. An open wound, still. Altaïr reached for his long sword rather than pressing on that any further.
“Not even when you broke your leg and I had to carry your meals up every flight of stairs in Masyaf?” Malik sniffed. “How heartless.”
Rolling his eyes, Altaïr kicked Malik’s shin with the leg that had been broken so many years before. It had healed as straight and strong as its match, never even bothering him when the weather turned.
Malik grinned and elbowed him back, and there was a brief tussle in which they both tried to get the upper hand while avoiding the blades in their hands. It ended with Malik closer than before, his shoulder pressed against Altaïr’s even as he sheathed the short sword and laid it gently beside Altaïr’s other equipment. Altaïr shifted a little closer, pressing their sides together in a single seam. Observing this adjustment, Malik let out a quiet breath of laughter before leaning more fully into him.
“We’ll have to move in stages, so the guards don’t pick up either location,” he remarked, dropping his head back against the wall. “And before that, an engineer should check the stability of the building.”
Altaïr blinked before ducking his head to return to cleaning his sword, a small smile curving his lips.
“An engineer will be easy. Have one of the visiting Brothers pose as a merchant seeking to buy a new home,” he suggested. “He can pay the engineer for the inspection without raising suspicion, then.”
Malik tilted his head, considering. He made a face.
“Our Brothers are not known for their acting abilities,” he pointed out, jabbing Altaïr in the ribs with his elbow. “Even a brothel couldn’t teach you.”
“The brothel taught me plenty,” Altaïr retorted, kneeing Malik lightly before stretching his leg back out so they fit together from hip to ankle. “Omar has travelled with merchant caravans before; he could play the part.”
Malik’s djellaba fell lightly over his leg, dark over the grey of Altaïr’s trousers. The wind picked up as the sun began to sink toward the horizon, but the bulk of the dovecote sheltered them from the cold. With Malik’s warmth pressed against him, it was only a breeze, carrying their plans forward into the future.