amatara

Obligatory ten-second rant: Gah! Just spent a full day finishing a presentation for work which I'd thought to get ready in two hours, tops... - so much for a lazy Sunday. *squints half-blindly at screen*

On the up side, after all this blabbing over tentacle!fic, I can finally put my money where my mouth is and post the thing! *g* Please, feel free to tell me which bits do something for you and which don't - my perception of what people expect from this type of story is vague to say the least. Well - okay, I can guess what you expect, but not necessarily how you want it. ;)

So, without further ado I bring you:

Title: Reciprocity
Summary: Even a writer gets tired of words sometimes. Set during season 5's "And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder".
Rating: Ah, hard one. Let's call it R to be on the safe side, for same-sex cross-species snark and sexual situations - but don't get your hopes up too much, okay? The snark is a substantial part. *g*
Disclaimer: Owned by JMS and Babylonian Productions, not me, alas.
Author's note: Inspired in part by this lovely snippet by

selenak.

Reciprocity

Your final chance to walk away; once you call at that door, it is irreversible. G’Kar flexed his hand to feel the familiar pressure of leather against skin, letting it soothe him as he arranged his thoughts into something resembling quietude.

There was really no doubt, not anymore; not, in fact, since he’d watched the pair of Centauri storm out of the Council room, dragging the last of his defences with them. Sitting silent and frozen amid the roar of outraged voices, he had known then and there the inevitability of it: that he, of all people, was to take on Londo’s burdens. Because it was necessary, he had told Delenn – but in truth, and however much he resented it, he would have done it for much smaller reasons. Like the rockslide of emotion in Londo’s eyes when he heard that G’Kar would not testify, anger and suspicion and pride crumbling to give way to that fragile bud of trust: that, it seemed, was all the reason he needed.

There was another reason, of course, one that had nothing to do with Londo and everything with him: that the power of words, the weapons he had taken up with such a passion, only went so far. It was actions that gave the words meaning, turned them into living things that could be changed and erased and rewritten, rather than just immutable scratches on paper. And if the Centauri people’s story was about to be rewritten, he wanted to be there as an agent, not an observer. He had realized as much while packing early this morning, patience worn thin by too little sleep and a sudden, irrational sense of things ending. Groping for the usual balm of pen and parchment, he had tried to write it off, only to grow impatient with the vague justifications which were all he seemed to be able to produce – for what was writing if not stripping away, the superfluous from the necessary, lies from reality? And reality, it seemed, was this: Londo needed him, as his protector and his conscience; just as he needed to go with Londo in order to feel useful once more, to let his actions speak for him instead of just his words. Which was why he truly had no choice at all, except to call at that door.

At the first chime there was no response. Not that this in any way surprised G’Kar; after the catastrophe that was yesterday’s Council session, he expected little else than for Londo to have locked himself away as far as possible from every living soul on the station, and as close as possible to his ample stock of spirits, waiting for a transport to take him home. But even drunk out of his wits, the man had never lost his innate ability to sputter and rant – which was what G’Kar suspected this conversation would come down to, anyway – and so he ignored the silence, pressing the call button a second time, then a third.

The door slid open after the fourth chime, just as he was starting to feel tempted to try the lock override.

“One last attempt to peddle your book, G’Kar?”

The familiar sneer made him wheel back from the security panel to find Londo scowling in his direction, supporting himself with one hand against the doorframe. Letting his eyes slide across the black-and-burgundy-clad form, G’Kar was unsurprised to find an amber-filled tumbler perched in the other hand.

“Why you even continue to try, I do not know,” the Centauri rolled his eyes at him. “Given that I have heard you spout enough philosophy to give the Maker himself indigestion, I cannot see why more of it, in written form, would be something I desire.” An uncoordinated swig from the glass, followed by a harsh chuckle that sounded everything but pleasant. “Speaking of philosophy – I fear you will need to find a new object of consternation for your followers. But I can now be an object of glee for them, along with the rest of my people, which should be just as instructive, no?”

Losing patience altogether, G’Kar shouldered his way past Londo and into the room. “Not the type of instruction I would recommend,” he muttered, curt. “And I think Mr. Allan would have something to say about locking your quarters from the inside.”

Londo chuckled darkly, performing what looked like a botched pirouette in order to keep his balance as he closed the door behind him and reactivated the lock. “Ah, yes, regulations. And what are they going to do, hmm – kick me off the station?” Raising the glass back to his lips, he shot G’Kar a pointed look before registering, with a sigh, that he’d emptied said glass less than five seconds before. “Tell me, who is left to keep it open for? Vir has just gone out, and besides, he knows the codes. As for you–” A frown that looked less displeased than uneasy, at least until the usual bravado kicked in. “Well, I could have suspected you would try to barge in here. Is there any object you left in my quarters and need returned? Your dignity, perhaps? The Maker knows you had to sacrifice that to be seen with me by your compatriots –”

Stifling a twinge of an emotion he couldn’t place, G’Kar watched the Centauri push himself away from the wall and towards the decadent three-seater couch, which he’d come to loathe with a passion ever since Londo had started making a point of offering it to him. The cloying pudginess of too-soft pillows invariably left him with a nagging back-ache – yet another result of too much talk and too little action, he knew.

“I met Vir just a few minutes ago,” he began, casting about for a neutral topic. “We talked, briefly –” Which was odd, now he considered it; most conversations between him and Vir that didn't involve Alliance business tended to get stuck at the stage of polite acknowledgment. But the Vir he had crossed in the corridor had in no way resembled the soft-faced youth of his memory; this Vir had looked haggard and grim and even more restless than he, and the sight of it had stopped G’Kar dead in his tracks. Never mind that he'd planned to keep his joining Londo a surprise – before he knew it, he’d told Vir of his intentions, for no other reason that he could think of except to change the look on the boy’s face to a more hopeful one. While the announcement had had the intended effect, it had also caused Vir to start waving his arms in some agitation, insisting that G’Kar tell Londo before boarding the transport. It was the boy’s obvious distress, along with a lingering melancholy on his own part, that had eventually led him here.

Having made it to the sofa and the bottle of brivari waiting on the table, Londo shot him a suspicious glance. "You spoke to Vir?” His eyes narrowed over the freshly refilled glass. “What did he tell you – that I am in need of a last sermon before returning to the cradle of sin?”

Tuning out the bitterness, G'Kar took a wary step closer, holding Londo’s gaze until he flinched and turned away. "In fact,” he replied, “he said you had told him not to worry, that you would sort everything out. Although I’m unsure I believe that. Or that he believed it, for that matter."

Londo’s head jerked up, crest swaying precariously, and for a moment the façade cracked and the face went slack. “I don’t know what I believe, G’Kar,” he muttered, and plunked down his glass with a thump. “But Vir mustn’t know that. I need him to be… I – I need him.”

G’Kar blinked and, in an impulse, crossed over towards the seating area; while he was fully intending to seek out one of the slightly harder-backed chairs, to his surprise he found himself settling down on the same hated couch as the Centauri. “l wouldn’t underestimate Vir,” he offered, not ungently. “You might find he knows more than one would expect. And if I thought this was a lost cause, I would hardly be coming with you.”

“Coming –” Londo sputtered, staring at him as if he’d just sprouted a tail or an extra set of spots. “You’re not…” A deep breath, followed by a sarcastic look, and then, at last, realization. “You are serious, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes.” G’Kar nodded solemnly, allowing himself a brief moment’s enjoyment of the Centauri’s baffled expression.

“Did Vir put you up to this?” An accusing look that said Londo fully expected him to have corrupted his aide beyond repair. “It would be just like him to start speaking to you precisely when he should not.”

G’Kar went from nodding to vigorously shaking his head. “Oh, no. Vir had nothing to do with it, except that he convinced me to tell you. I’d planned on making it a surprise, you see.”

“Great Maker...” Londo pinched the bridge of his nose, the other hand creeping back to the tumbler of brivari. “You are mad."

Shifting on the couch, G’Kar pried a pillow from behind his lower back and suppressed a smile he knew must look utterly irrational. “That is what Delenn told me as well. Though I must add she chose a more – euphemistic – description.” It came back to him, unbidden, that she had also mentioned something else: the possibility he wouldn’t return here. The memory cut short his swelling sense of mirth, causing the frustration and loss to roll in again with a vengeance. Glancing to the side, he was just in time to see Londo raise the brivari to his mouth, and for some reason the sight of it made his anger spike; fighting a sudden desire to slap the glass out of the Centauri’s hand, he reached out to grasp the drink just before it touched the man’s lips.

Londo tugged back, puzzlement giving way to irritation and then fury; there was a wild flutter of arms and hands, the brivari sloshing over the rim of the glass onto the rumpled waistcoat, and the next moment G’Kar found himself with a warm weight in his arms, followed by a mouth, insistent and needy, pressing down onto his. In his shock, it took long seconds for him to come up for breath and shove the impending body away, much longer than he thought he’d need – long enough to realize he’d been fractions removed from returning the kiss. Bringing up his arms against Londo’s chest to widen the space between them, he was surprised to feel something give way inside him, but pushed back the sensation before it could take root. The grey eyes were still mere inches from his own, wide and hard and very bright, and he was surprised by the force he needed to keep Londo’s arms from latching on to him again.

“Why not?” the Centauri demanded, struggling furiously. “Why not, hmm, G’Kar? We just agreed you have gone insane, so why not this? And don’t try to tell me this is not what you want, because –”

It was. It was, and he knew it, which was exactly why he could not afford this. Give in, and he would be vulnerable – to this man, to his own heart – and whatever else he’d allowed himself to become over the space of these past years, that was not an option. Where is your call for action now? he told himself, bitter, and let go of the arms as they relaxed in his grip.

“You’re drunk,” he whispered, hoarse – as if that would be his reason.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Londo huffed, rubbing his wrist to bring back circulation. "At least I am still in possession of my senses." And he closed the distance again, slow, deliberate now, leaving G'Kar ample seconds in which to protest before the lips, finally, made it towards his.

Despite his resolve, G'Kar found himself leaning into the Centauri's touch, feeling his chest clench with that same odd hollowness. While he knew Londo was doing this for entirely the wrong reasons – to prove something, most likely, and to repress something else – he was surprised to realize he didn't care. It had been so long since he'd touched someone like this; after his captivity on Centauri Prime his old habits had lost some of their appeal, and even those times when he did indulge, it had always been about his needs, to escape, to remember, to forget. He couldn't even recall the last time he slept with someone because they needed it, too, or the last time he had wanted that.

Yet, truth be told, he had let himself imagine this, had even been prepared for it on some level, though the circumstances he could not have guessed. If anything, he'd expected it to be loud and impetuous and not quite in earnest, the result of a challenge or some foolish display of male dominance, but nothing like this – nothing like these pallid hands, pulling at his clothes with sudden urgency, until with a final tug of foreboding G'Kar moved to undo the fastenings himself, leaving Londo to remove his own waistcoat.

The next thing he was aware of were lips trailing across the bare skin of his chest, followed by the points of teeth fastening, ever so lightly, upon the nipple. He tensed involuntarily, too surprised for a moment to even protest. That particular piece of Narn was far more sensitive on males than females – even those who, like him, had never nursed a pouchling in their lives – but it was a little-known fact, rarely put into practice even between Narn lovers, and none of those distinctly non-Narn women G’Kar had lain with had ever made any mention of it. So how did –

He opened his mouth to ask exactly that question, but the tip of a tongue flicking, once, twice, across the edge of flesh and even softer flesh was enough to twist the words into an incoherent noise. The tongue responded by pressing in to trail a lazy circle, nip, and circle again, making him gasp and then shudder, back arching involuntarily only to have a pair of cloyingly soft hands slip under it.

Abruptly the lips pursed and withdrew, along with one of the hands; the other stayed, but was motionless for long enough that G’Kar shifted and pried open his eyes. “Moll–” He frowned, tearing his gaze away from the half-open tunic to find Londo looking down at him with a whirlwind of contradictions sweeping across his face. The hand on his side lifted, coming in again to trace a jagged path up from his back, and G’Kar sighed, seeing the point at last.

Londo’s mouth had thinned into a line, the expansive eyebrows knotting closer together. Propping himself up against the armrest, G’Kar watched him probe the scar with a cautious finger. “How – did you get this?”

This time the sigh was real, not reflex, welling up from the pit of his stomach and leaving him suddenly drained of energy. The familiar spark of rebellion was igniting in Londo’s eyes, stubborn and pained and possessive, and for a brief moment, he wanted to take that spark and squash it, along with the man’s insufferable penchant for meddling. Then reason kicked in again, and with it the realization that what Londo was doing was, in fact, no different than what had sent him here: taking words that seemed immutable – for scars were words, weren’t they, and more immutable than most – and refusing to take them for granted. Interpreting this particular scar for the Centauri was not an option he wished to explore, but neither was lying about it; after all, one did not spend half a lifetime at the Centauri royal court without learning the subtleties of truth, untruth and half-truth inside and out.

“Does it matter?” he went for the tactic of diversion instead, catching the still-wandering hand to nip the knuckles with his teeth. “It happened before you were even old enough to speak, let alone take an interest in adult pursuits like the maiming of Narns.” The sneer, if pure reflex, was enough to make Londo flinch, but G’Kar hardly even noticed. Because – he had been able to speak, hadn’t he, and that was precisely the problem. He’d been too young by far for the subtleties of untruth and silence, an art at which Narns didn’t excel in any case, and as a result, had reacted precisely like an impetuous youngster coming across his mother being stripped half-naked and handled by a Centauri soldier would have reacted – with disgust and disbelief and rage, and then, some breathless seconds later, with his fists. That was when he learned that Narn skin and bone, however resilient, were no match for a freshly sharpened blade. Hence the scar: a word that could not be erased. It could, however, change meaning, as it had, many times in the past; and it was changing again right now, being touched by a man who in a different universe would still have been an enemy.

Some of his thoughts must have been showing in his face, because the hand he was still absently cupping had tensed into a hard little ball. G’Kar shrugged, keeping his tone placating but firm. “All right – so it was a Centauri who did this. Tell me, is that in any way enlightening?”

“I don’t… no. No, I suppose not.” The voice caught, reasserted itself on a harsher note. “Except to confirm what everyone appears to believe: that we are cruel, and warmongering, and untrustworthy, capable only of atrocities –” Londo swallowed, a vein throbbing at the base of his throat, and G’Kar watched it in distant fascination until the man caught his breath and spat out the remainder of the words as if they were poison. “You have seen it: no one doubted for a moment it was true, that we are behind these attacks. Now, considering this,” an angry gesture towards the crisscross of tissue, “perhaps I should concede their point, no? Perhaps you should not come with me at all.”

This time it was G’Kar who took hold of him, spurred not by kindness but a new surge of rage, anchoring himself with a hand at the base of the skull to press his mouth against the Centauri’s. Londo struggled briefly, furiously, hands flapping in an awkward gesture that was more for drama than effect, but G’Kar tightened his grip anyway; it was either this or letting his own anger boil over, and who knew what would come out when he allowed his voice to find itself. Don’t make this about you, Mollari, his brain answered that question, while his free arm locked around a hip and across the jutting edge of bone; don’t use my people’s past to anchor your self-pity, and all the while he drew closer, closer, closed lips stiff and trembling beneath his own, and you’re not fit to judge your people, because you don’t know them, not like I do, not like he knew this man, who was like them and yet not like them, and now, at last, relaxing to let out a breath, tepid and moist and heavy with alcohol and still he was thinking don’t think you know me now you’ve seen one scar, Mollari, because you don’t, you just –

“ – don’t!”

G’Kar started, not sure for a moment if that voice had truly belonged to him. A hand was pressing the side of his face, palm just below the cheekbone, and his own hands were still right where he’d put them; slowly, he withdrew his fingertips from where they dug into now-bloodless flesh. There would be bruises, he thought, tracing a path from the nape of the neck across to the throat in a motion that drew the tiniest of shivers, and reached up to cup a jaw that felt stiff with pride. But the eyes were dark and not quite steady, and despite himself G’Kar felt his mouth curve into something resembling a smile.

“Please, Mollari,” he murmured, tugging up the chin to meet those eyes, “do you have to overcompensate? Once I would have said there was too little shame in you, and suddenly it seems you have too much.” He leaned in again, pressing a kiss on the corner of slowly melting lips, and this time met no resistance as he twined his arms around the other man to pull him down and closer.

“Great Maker, G’Kar,” the head shook wearily against his shoulder, “is that what we are to each other, then – scars? The sting has gone out, but all of this is just – just trying to break through to what little feeling there is left?”

The exhaustion in the tone mirrored the one G’Kar himself felt, and it made his insides tighten just a little. Groping for distraction, he focused on the first thing that caught his attention: the hem of the half-open tunic. “Oh, the sting is still there,” he grimaced, letting the irony seep through even as he struggled to reach below the slippery silk. “It’s just that we’ve grown attached to it, I suspect, much like a crippled man would become attached to a maimed leg: it is a burden, yet it keeps one going.”

Londo huffed, either at the comparison or at the manoeuvre G’Kar was attempting, which was further complicated by the studded gloves; after another few seconds of fumbling, he just gave up and pulled one off with his teeth, ignoring Londo’s pointed look. But then he was there, and was rewarded by the body under his hand going utterly, blissfully quiet. Quiet, that was, except for the heartbeat – right one, he thought, inching a little higher to feel a shivery breath being drawn in response – hammering against his ungloved palm.

The sensation, unexpectedly, made him pause. How transparent these Centauri were, literally as well as metaphorically, all blood and nerves and passion tucked beneath a flimsy skin; if he wanted to, he could snap Londo’s neck with little more than a flick of his hand. To break his spirit, mere words would be sufficient, so where the man had ever found the recklessness to trust him –

His thoughts were interrupted by something warm and agile pressing up against his wrist, and G’Kar hesitated briefly before closing his fingers about it. Cautious, he proceeded to free the appendage from its confinement, watching the head burrow into his palm with all the inquisitiveness of a live thing. From the Centauri’s hooded expression, he gathered the motion was not entirely as voluntary as rumour had it; running a finger across the pointed edge, he blinked at a stir of movement from the five still tucked underneath the silk. He tightened his hold on the one in his hand, surprised to feel that same beat, fast but steady, pulsing against his skin, offset by the rushed susurration of what could only be the second heart. “You have –” he began, giving an experimental squeeze that caused the tip to quiver faintly, “– an artery here?”

It was an absurd thing to say, under the circumstances, but to his amazement Londo just tilted his head to the side and let out a soft laugh. “Ah, yes,” the voice lilted, a little breathless. “I suspect the Maker put it there to compensate for the lack of major veins in our wrists; these are far more convenient to slit, you s–”

Enough, G’Kar thought, with a stir of frustration, watching the eyes widen and then roll back altogether, running his tongue from base to tip and curling down again to meet his hands from where they’d pulled up along the flexible length. Freeing one arm, he reached over to grasp a second target, the motion drawing a faint hiccough of surprise, and his own muscles clenched with sudden wanting. To write is to strip away, he told himself, the line almost an incantation; to live is to strip away, and he wanted to, dear G’Quan, how much he wanted to – shrug off those layers of words he had built around himself, words of reason and justification and defence, and just be, for a moment, something else than his past, wrapped in new reasons. Yet it wasn’t until a hand slipped down across his stomach, sharp nails drawing the promise of relief if not mercy, that he started to let out his own breath at last.