The Dealer

Of all the things that are hard, complex, guarded about Malos, he's surprisingly easy to kiss. Jin's decidedly not that way, but, so, when they're wandered into a bunk in the Marsanes together, armor falls off, clanking part by clinking bit, and Malos goes willingly, urgently, to be the one who supports from underneath.

So they're there, joining at the lips and then at the Core Crystal and then at stunningly intimate combinations, permutations of each and both, feeling fuzzily around the fact of I am nothing without you and you live inside my body as much as you live inside my mind and I would kill myself for you I would kill myself to be with you I would kill myself if I wasn't with you--

"I could kill you." His hands are caved into the curve of Malos's shoulder blades and the crest of his hips, places where no man nor monster would ever dare to touch because they are never seen, they quite obviously exist and yet they quite obviously do not exist for anything dreamably, conceivably close to this purpose.

Malos is, on the surface, unperturbed, almost like he's heard it before but for the fact that he's never, not really, heard it before. That is to say, I'm waffling awfully, but he has heard it in intent, people wanting to scour him from the face of the world, but he's never heard it backed with capability - except, that is, from the old Jin. And so from this new Jin, it should be terrifying.

It should be terrifying, but to Malos, a beast of unborn terror, it is simply two cents' worth of unnerving. Okay. So you could kill me. I know that. On with the bluster.

"You what? Come on, Jin. Next thing I know you're gonna be telling me you've been thinking about drinking the blood of billions a lot lately, or something."

Jin shrinks back. Looks down at his hands. In a way, they're the part on him that's both the most and least fragile, wavering in and out, off and away, to and towards, far and from frailty. Hands are the instrument by which all is done.

Hands put Lora's heart into his chest, and of course before they did that they took the same, wrenched it, out of hers.

Jin's hands shake, always. You'd never know it, to look at the swiftness of his sword as it strikes, but a long sword balances tremors well, just like centuries will crust over the wrongs done in infancy.

Now, no one does wrongs in infancy (and no one lives for centuries either). No one but Blades (only they don't usually do that, now do they?).

This is only Haze's second awakening (only the second that matters - as much as Jin hates to admit that this one does in fact matter, all too much - regardless of whatever gruesome cleansing procedures could have come in between) and she even as she is a gentle, zephyrous priestess is committing the ever-egregious sins of absent complacence, literal indolence upon the back of the brilliantly lazy, lazily brilliant dragon that is Indol.

Jin deals in life. Then again, Jin also deals in death. Because Jin deals in Core Crystals and all their dealings and he kills to save and he saves to kill, and he...

"I-I have."

Now Malos peers in with interest. Jin's sitting lonesome on his crotch, and that's only sexy for pre-teens; here it's just awkward, maybe a little bit uncomfortable, whether he's got proper human genitals of the proper human gender or not. No, I won't bother with the scare quotes. The only audience watching this playact of a philosophe already knows what's going on.

"You sure about that? It's not just an iron deficiency to go with your ether deficiency? Not like that heart you got came with blood to pump through it." Crass joke. Of course.

From where Jin sits aback, the arch of Malos's neck is woefully, beautifully apparent, his head cocked in some of the most genuine of curiosity because it's Jin he's asking about and oh, Jin, what is in your head, what is behind your mask?

Those are Malos's thoughts. Jin's thoughts, as the roles reverse, stray much more carnal. In the way that he'd like to bite intimacy into that skin, or not skin, or whatever it is, and in the way that he'd like to bite life out of it, vampiric.

So he tries to still, to calm. Tries to be rational, unwavering, judicious, honorable, kind. "It's like a gateway drug. You know?"

Malos doesn't know. Malos never knew anything else, so the comparison quite literally could not be more alien.

"That it's not enough to rid the world, to cleanse it, of the soldiers. The women and the children and the farmers and the teachers do just as much to oppress us. They are just as guilty in this horrible, worthless world."

Malos cocks his head still further. His smile, nigh a leering grin inflected with impossible warmth, echoes that which he gave Jin upon their first meeting, their first fateful anti-spar. "You sound like me there. Only, I didn't know that I was guilty too. And I think you know that."

Oh, Malos. The all-knowing. I love that about you, do you know that? But it hurts to do so.

Jin looks at his hands again. "I am guilty," he murmurs. "I am evil. I am irredeemable." Then his eyes snap up to Malos's. "We both are."

Malos, the bastard, laughs. "Yes, babe, you're sick and twisted. And so am I. Now come on-" his bulky arms hold out invitation, lifted up from where they'd curved around Jin's waist bare of the skirt, and Jin glares. Malos sighs.

"Yes, of course, you're evil and irredeemable. Now can you please cuddle with me?"

Malos, alive, is easy, too easy, to kiss. But for now...maybe Jin can bear to stop thinking about anything else.