#m!sidestep

The clothes comes off with struggle, he practically tears yours off. The man is impatient, if you haven’t given him the lube, you suspect he would just go like that. Who cares about the pain? Just pleasure. Just the need to get off. Just to fuck.

He is heavy on top of you and it’s perfect. He is trying to take control and it’s fruitless.

He sinks down and you both groan out loud. Too much. Everything suddenly becomes too much. And Chen is not waiting for that too much to past. Too much is never enough. He is already moving. His face contorts in pain. He is struggling to remain in control.

But he can’t. Because he is not in control. You pull his head down, reminding him of that fact. And you calm him down, fingers stroking his sweaty back. Like calming down a big stallion.

“You are not enjoying this.” You says to him and glance down to look at his flaccid cock in between you.

Chen grunts, pulling your attention back to his mouth, fingers digging into your shoulders, leaving bruises, marking skin. “Shut up. I’m old.” He says between kisses. “I don’t need to get hard to enjoy this.”

“It’s hurting you.” You says again, letting his tongue dominate yours as he rides you with force that’s hurting the both of you.

“Shut up.” And you understand, because sometimes, you need to feel pain too. To feel real, alive. But the difference between you two is, he is actually alive. You are just operating. Or is that how Chen feels too? Can he even tells where skin begins and metal ends on his body? Is that what makes him feels like a machine rather than a human being? Is that why he is out, looking for someone to take to a cheap motel, to kiss, to fuck?

It’s *the* night, too.

Is it for Anathema? Or can it be for you? Such stupid thought, of course it is not for you.

“You are tight.” That is an understatement. You know somewhere in between, Chen is already bleeding down there. This is bad, the situation is dire but this is what he wants. Who are you to stop him?

“Shut up.” He might hit you. Would that be nice? Is that what you want?

“Li.” You almost pat yourself on the back. When Chen’s scent is all around you, intoxicating you, suffocating you, you still manage to remember his fake name. What is the point of lying though? The moment he takes off his clothes, his secrets are out. So why bother? Is he testing you? Does he know? That you are actually the kid Ortega brought to the Gala? Is that why he is here, to tell you off? Ah, good old time.

“What?” He is close, you are close too. And when you roll your bodies, he is caught off guard. His instinct kicks in and he swings, would have hit you had you not leaned away. You chuckle and take hold of his wrists, pushing them up on top of his head, holding them down and trapping him there. He is letting you. Wei Chen is relinquishing control. Has he grown too tired of being in charge all the time? Or this is just how he has always been? Interesting nonetheless.

His mouth tastes like yours now. It’s nothing new anymore yet, you can’t stop.

Relief pushes in like waves, hitting hard and washing away everything, leaving your mind white and blind.

“What is your plan?” Chen asks while you are still coming down from the ecstasy. His voice is rough, hoarse.

You push yourself of him, reaching for the pack of cigarette that has been stomped over. Luckily, it’s still usable. You light it up and take a drag. Chen is still watching you. Of course he knows you are that kid.

“Nothing.” You shrug. Which is a half lie, half truth. You didn’t plan for tonight and no, you have never a spontaneous man. Maybe it’s because you have been staying inside Eden for too long, it’s bleeding over. But when you saw Chen sitting at the bar, head hung low, drink in hand, you couldn’t help it. It was dumb, really. Though, you don’t regret it.

“Bullshit.”

You don’t say anything else, just pull another drag of cigarette before putting it on Chen’s lips. He takes it and let you roll him to his side, there is a red spot there, not big and you know there is some too on the condom.

“Don-“ But before he can finish, you have already dropped down, thumbs carefully pushing in and spreading it out. Sure enough, you spot the tear.

“I’ll go buy something for that.” You tell him and let go of the older man. He is flustered but he hides it well. Ever the cautious man. You don’t care though, because you know, once you are out of this door, he won’t be here when you come back.

Doesn’t matter. Nothing is. Not even your aching heart.

“It’s a sad day.” You hear him whisper when you close the door.

  You’re just barely awake enough to dodge the fist aimed at your face. You roll back just as it lands with a hard thump against your pillow. CB whines loudly in his sleep his body shaking uncontrollably as his hand blindly grips your pillow. You sit up watching him, trying to determine if the nightmare is severe enough to warrant waking him up or if it’s better to let him try to sleep through it.

 It’s difficult to respect his distance when he’s right in front of you, where you can easily reach out to touch him, to hold him and try to comfort him but you know it’s necessary. Sometimes it’s better to go through the nightmare, he’ll hopefully forget he even had one when he wakes up in the morning. Unless, of course, he starts turning violent…that’s already happened a number of times.

 You’ve awoken before to find him tearing through the sheets trying to claw off his skin. Absolute terror pouring off of him, directly affecting your own state of being without him meaning too. It doesn’t happen as often as it used too but the progress to stop that behavior has been paltry, to say the least. He’s also incredibly jumpy when being woken from a nightmare; coming out of it and at first immediately registering you as a threat through his hazy mind. That thankfully has only happened a few times.

 So you wait and you watch as he brings your pillow closer to his chest, whimpering into it. His breathing starting to slow and even out. You think he might fall back into a natural sleep until his eyes immediately shoot open, a scream tearing out of his throat. Terror and dread flow through you and you bring up the shield he’s taught you to build, a small defense against his uncontrollable projected emotions.

 He sits up breathing heavily, you don’t move to immediately touch him. Waiting for his mind to process where he is. It takes a few minutes for him to settle his breathing, for the haze to clear from his eyes. He looks up at you tears starting to form but he quickly uses his sleeve to rub them away.

 "Hey,“ he croaks out, his voice shaky.

 "Hey. Can I…?” You leave the question open as you hold a hand out towards him and he eagerly takes it pulling you close so that you can gently hold him against you. “Do you want to talk about?”

 After a moment of hesitation, he shakes his, “No… it’s already fading anyway.”

 "Alright,“ you stroke his hair lightly and he takes in a large steadying breath of air. "Did you want to try to sleep again?” You ask but you already know the answer.

 "Not really,“ he mumbles against you.

 "Coffee and mindless television than?”

 "Fuck yes,“ he pushes a bit off you and you find him pressing his lips against yours in a chaste kiss that turns slow and languid. When he finally pulls away he has a small relieved smile on his face.

 You follow him; leaving the bed to go straight to the kitchen. The usual nightly routine you’ve both fallen into when one of you wakes from a nightmare. Neither of you has tried to go back to sleep afterward, not wanting to risk another nightmare disturbing either of yours sleep.

 Spoon happily pads into the room with the both of you, sitting happily next to CB as he takes his usual seat. You immediately start brewing the coffee turning to watch him blankly stare at the table as his hand automatically pets Spoon. Spoon happily wags his tail setting his head onto CB’s lap.

 The coffee pot dings and you fall into the habit as you finish making your coffees. You lightly put his cup on the table, sharply rasping your knuckles on the table next to it to get his attention. His head sharply moves gaze finding yours as he looks at you blankly before shaking the fog from his brain.

 "Thank you,” he murmurs reaching for the cup with one hand and giving Spoon one final scratch before motioning him away. CB stands following you quietly into the living room, immediately snuggling close to you as you both take a seat on the couch. Spoon jumping up to join the both of you.

And you know from the way his voice cracks that he doesn’t just mean what’s about to happen between the two of you. (Though you’ll be gentle. Of course you will.) He means the fact that he’s Eidolon, and you know it; that he’s broken, and you know that too. You could so easily be the last touch that makes him shatter along his fault lines.

He’s warm and alive in your arms, and he thinks you might destroy him.

Breath always sounds louder in moments like this. You want to kiss his forehead and promise that you won’t hurt him, but that could all too easily become a lie. His scars go so much deeper than his skin and they bind him to Eidolon with strings you don’t know how to cut. But you need to try. You need to stop him. For your team’s sake, for the city’s, for yours, for his. 

And he knows. He’s not asking to be saved. He’s not asking you to never hurt him, because he’s resigned himself to that being inevitable – just for you to hurt him gently. He’s begging for kindness, not forgiveness.

There’s a part of you that wants to scream, but you’ve never been one for screaming. So you cup his face with one hand instead, and don’t bother to fight the hoarseness in your voice. ‘Please let me.’

Please don't force me to fight you.

Jalal’s eyes flicker aside, and his head twists away from your hand – so you catch his cheek and turn him back. For a second, he watches you, silent. Then he closes his eyes, breathes in until his chest rises against you. Exhales. Gives you a small and wondering smile.

‘I’ll try,’ he says.

It’s the first time you’ve heard him talk like he has a future.

He slides his hands up to your head and leans up to kiss you again. And you lean in to meet him, then drag your lips down over his chin, his neck, the base of his throat. Learning his body with your hands, metal fingers tracing acid-orange markings. Gently as you can, of course.

Maybe you can tell him – with the way you kiss the path of his freckles over his collarbone, the way you knot your fingers into his hair until he gasps – that for once, something in the world is not waiting to hurt him. He is wanted. He is real. He is safe while you hold him. While you urge him with every touch into letting go and letting himself feel until his heartbeat is furious against your chest and he’s coming apart under your hands.

He asked Ortega about it once, about why an ally would see fit to hide his voice and his thoughts from the rest of the team. She just smiled and shrugged. ‘Not everything’s a conspiracy. Jalal’s shy. It took him two months to start speaking to me, and maybe he’d do the same around you if you ever stopped glaring at him.’

So Chen tries not to glare now. Just studies the man before him carefully, evenly, while Sidestep looks back from behind battered glasses and a small frown. ‘I assume you have some experience in fixing mods.’

Sidestep dips his head, and Chen files the information away, flagging it as another reason for caution. People as young as Sidestep do not simply know how handle technology like this, not unless they’ve been trained.

And yet Chen still finds himself nodding and sitting back. Leaving his body in the hands of a man he cannot trust.

He tends to notice hands, since he lost his own. It’s not jealousy, exactly. Just that the dexterity he now lacks and that others have is so… so prominent now. Something he can’t help seeing. And he sees it now more than ever, as Sidestep crouches before him and begins reconnecting circuits with practiced ease. His fingers are thin, the brown skin marked with burns that Chen has seen before on technicians’ hands. They are also freckled.

Silently, Chen scolds himself for that thought. If he’s watching Jalal’s hands, let it be to keep an eye out for sabotage, not to notice freckles.

‘You’ve done this before. More than once.’ Jalal is working too swiftly and too skilfully to be an amateur. ‘Where did you learn?’

He half-expects there to be no response. But Jalal’s silent only for a moment, teasing a tangle of wires apart before answering. ‘Some of it, I, uh, learned myself. After I came to Los Diablos, I started offering tech repairs, and I… I had to learn fast. A lot of mods out there need a cheap technician to keep themselves running.’

‘Yes. Most of them are criminals.’

Jalal glances up. His eyes are unreadable, and not only because the light is catching on his glasses. ‘Most of them are desperate.’

‘Is this how you got the money for your suit? Your weapons? You do repairs for mercenaries who can’t afford official help?’

‘Would you think it was a bad thing if I said yes?’

There’s no challenge in the words, but Chen finds himself irked all the same. ‘I’d think it wasn’t the whole truth. I’m sure telepaths have their own ways of acquiring funds.’

There’s a second, then another, where the only sound is the faintest mechanical hum from the malfunctioning limb. Then Sidestep snaps a piece of torn cabling and flings it aside. ‘And you wonder why I don’t speak to you.’

There’s something unexpected in his voice. Hurt. And Chen reminds himself that Jalal is fixing his mods, fixing them with hands that have been not only deft but gentle. And that he broke his months-long silence for the sake of offering help. That no matter how many alarm bells his presence rings, he is a only a potential threat. Not a confirmed one.

Anyone who lives in a city like Los Diablos should know how to live alongside potential threats. The very earth you walk is one.

So Chen breathes in, slow and careful. Watches the movement of Jalal’s hands, and lets himself notice the freckles. ‘You’re right, I do. Why have you never spoken to me before?’

‘It’s not just you. I… find talking hard sometimes.’

‘You talk to Ortega.’

‘Not all the time. Some days I just…’ He bites his lip. ‘Can’t. But I think she gets it, she never pushes me to speak. And I know that when I do talk, she wants to hear it, and that helps. With you…’

He’s very determinedly looking at Chen’s leg, and not his face. ‘I sort of get the feeling that you don’t want me to talk to you.’

‘Why would you think that?’

Jalal puts down the tools he was holding, and settles himself cross-legged on the ground. Still doesn’t look at Chen. ‘You know I can feel it, right? The way your focus shifts to me whenever I walk into a room. Watching for me to do something that hurts your team, looking for hidden motives in everything I do. It’s like I’m a tripwire, and you’re waiting for me to snap.’ His fingers bunch into the hem of his coat. ‘I didn’t come here to make things hard for your team. I don’t want to be a reason for the Rangers having problems. But I don’t want to leave either, so… I guess this seemed like a decent compromise.’

Unsure of how to respond, Chen watches as Jalal shrugs and picks up his handful of devices again. It’s true; he has been watching Jalal. Focusing on him. For some reason, he feels as if he’s been caught doing something intrusive – a ridiculous thought to have when he’s standing next to a man who reads minds, but an uncomfortable thought all the same.

So it’s a relief when Jalal speaks again. ‘It’s easier for me, too.’

‘Easier how?’

‘You’re…’ Jalal glances up at last, and is he smiling? ‘You do realise you’re sort of intimidating?’

He is smiling. And just this once, maybe Chen can smile back at him.  ‘So I’m told. It’s not always intentional.’

Jalal’s gaze flicks back down, but the smile is still there, a ghost at the edges of his lips. ‘I kept trying to think of something to say. Something that wouldn’t make an awful first impression. But I couldn’t, because I’m stupid, and then it had been a month, and the longer I left it the harder it got, so I didn’t say anything, and… you know. Not talking was easier.’

He closes the open panel at the front of Chen’s leg, and inches back. ‘There. That should work now.’

Chen extends the leg, then brings it back down. It obeys. He stands, remembering with… not a pang, but with a little fond wistfulness, of a time when he had flesh-and-blood legs that would have been stiff after so long staying still. He tries a few steps, and his feet come down firm and true.

To make sure, he walks a lap of the room, then turns around to look back at Jalal. ‘So this was what you decided on. Your good first impression.’

There it is again, that hurt flash in Jalal’s eyes. Which might not be so noticeable if his eyes weren’t so very green.  

‘No. I asked if you needed help because you were having trouble. And because I like fixing things. Mods. Tech in general. Toys I find in the trash that need sewing up and patching.’ For the first time, there’s an edge of heat in his voice. ‘I’m not your enemy, Steel. I’m not here to manipulate you or pull your team apart. If I broke this team, I’d feel it and hear it and it would hurt. I don’t like pulling things apart. I’m in this suit because I want to mend things. That’s all.’

He gets to his feet and strides towards the door, tugging his sleeves over his hands so that most of the freckles are hidden. Chen wonders, with a flash of absurd panic, if Jalal overheard him noticing them.

He also wonders why it feels wrong to leave things like this.

‘Jalal.’

His hand on the doorknob, Jalal stops.

‘Thank you.’

A long pause. Jalal doesn’t smile again, and doesn’t turn around, but he nods. ‘If you need help with this again, you can ask me.’

The door closes behind him. And Wei Chen is left with two problems, though not the same ones he had fifteen minutes ago.

One: it is very hard to remember that Jalal Ahadi is a threat after watching him fix his mods with clever, careful hands. After learning that he has a nice voice and a nervous charm.