Work Text:
After they made it to the Thousand and navigated the swollen rivers filled with ecstatic frogs and thriving fish, their skin bitten by flitting insects and their eyes dizzied by the depths of the greenery and all the dangers it hides—
After the fisherwoman Mira stayed her hand (his bowed head too similar to her nephew’s, with his hair falling forward over his face; his stubborn pride unable to hide the slightest tremor of instinctive fear) and left Jun with naught more than a scratch on the nape of his neck—
After the Moon rose and gilded the world in silver, still such a new and wondrous sight—
Only then, their bare feet dangling in cool mercurial water, does Keema ask Jun, “What do you want to do now?”
It’s a question Jun has never asked himself before. Not truly. In the past, he has always had someone to answer to. His father, mostly. His grandmother, most recently. Now there is nobody to answer to. Nobody to whom he has sworn an oath, save the most private unspoken oath that he renews each time his lips meet Keema’s and their bodies press together in the oldest dance. There is only Jun, once a Red Phoenix, once a child god, now only himself.
He circles his foot in the water. A meditation. A motion to disrupt the slowly-accumulating insects drawn to the heat of his body. That it nudges his skin against Keema’s is inevitable. They are no longer able to sense each others’ thoughts, but they are still drawn to each other as a lodestone to iron. (Which is which? They could—and will—debate that, laughing on the long roads, swaying to and fro to tease and prove their points. In the end it doesn’t matter. They will come together, and they will touch, and there is nothing more that needs to be said, for they are neither of them made of stone or steel; they are flesh, through and through, with all the desires and pleasures thereof.)
“You haven’t thought of it,” Keema says. In another tone, it could be an accusation or a taunt. As it is, Keema laughs, and it’s warm and full of fondness. “You thought your path would end here.”
“Would it have been so bad an ending?” Jun leans back and looks up at the canopy. He can see the Moon only as brightness scattered through the leaves. “It would have brought closure.”
Keema is not so sure. But, then, he wears his scars and shames more practically than Jun does. There is no hiding behind the tattooed fan of an elegant peacock’s tail for him; there is only the equally-visible evidence of his bad luck. His missing arm does not bother him, but it is impossible to forget. Even if Keema considers his body perfectly whole and hale, the reactions of those he meets as he travels make it clear that to them he is not, and never will be.
He has been silent too long, he supposes, because Jun looks at him. He no longer wears a mask when they are alone. Not just the painted masks of their journey east, but the more subtle masks of the soul. They had those stripped from them by their godhood; upon their resurrection, it had been a relief to know they could set them back in place, but the intimacy they found in their bodies makes it ache to put up such a front. The face Jun wears now has a furrowed brow, an uncertainty to how his lips are pressed together.
Keema waits.
After some time—an indefinite span too long to count in heartbeats—Jun says, “What do you want to do? We came here by my wish. Is there anything… Any closure you would seek?”
It’s such a perfectly Jun answer. Keema sprawls onto his back. The dock’s well-worn wood does not cradle him, but neither does it prick his skin. “No,” he says, his eyes fixed on Jun. The peacock framing his eyes, which at first was so unsettling, has become familiar and beloved. “I already found what I was seeking.”
Jun blinks. Then, visible even in the moonlight, a blush spreads across his cheeks. He tilts sideways until his arms frame Keema’s shoulders and Jun’s face hangs above Keema’s like the Moon teasing the Water.
“Is that so?” Jun’s breath tickles Keema’s cheeks. “Is there nothing else you might want?”
Keema reaches up and rests his hand on Jun’s neck. His thumb brushes the scrape there, and Jun shivers at the sensation. Keema doesn’t move his hand as he says, very simply, “So long as we travel together, I am content.”
Memories writhe under Jun’s skin. Only some of them are his. There are plains he has never seen with his own eyes, berries he has only tasted with Keema’s tongue. His ghosts—faint after he entered their realm and returned, yet still present as a chorus of guilt and grief—murmur that he cannot choose anything good for himself.
Jun looks into Keema’s patient eyes and thinks about the way it feels to make their bodies a singular whole and says, “Perhaps we could search for the Daware Tribe.”
Beneath him, Keema’s body jolts. His lips part, then close, then part again. His fingers tighten, and he pulls Jun down until they are chest-to-chest, cheek-to-cheek, and Jun can feel the rabbit-quiver of Keema’s heart and the harsh gulps of his breath.
Keema, Jun realises at that moment, has never given serious thought to finding the people he names himself for. This path has not been open to him, because of the fear of not succeeding and finding himself alone.
Jun closes his eyes and breathes, slow and deep, until Keema’s body calms and the wet trickle of his tears no longer joins their eyes. He can wait. He can be patient, though Keema is often better at it.
The night is cold and their feet—lifted from the river’s embrace when they found each other’s—have dried by the time Keema says, “I would welcome your company on that journey.”
Jun smiles against Keema’s cheek, and Keema’s face turns into his, and the rest of the night—and many of those which follow—is warm.