(no subject)
Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Characters: Altair Ibn'La-Ahad, Malik Al-Sayf
Rating: G
Warnings: Kink meme request: Malik kicks Altair's ass at racing.
At the top of the ramparts of the Masyaf fortress, even the wind was a force to be reckoned with. It swept up their robes and whipped it around their knees, buffeted their backs with enough force that it seemed as though it might sweep them off their feet. Stronger than the wind, strong enough to have ridden it, Altair raised his arm and pointed at a lone tree sitting atop a raised cliff, far below where they stood, and a good ways into the Kingdom. “There,” he said, “That should be sufficient.”
“And after that, you will return to work?” Malik prompted, exasperated.
“After that, I will sit at that blasted desk for as long as you will have me do so,” Altair recited, grabbing Malik's shoulder to turn him in the direction he had gestured in. “Now look.”
Without the shade of a drawn hood to hide under, Malik raised a hand to shield his eyes before he could squint and follow the line of Altair's finger, doing the numbers in his head. He imagined a compass, its pointed ends dancing around each other as they traced out the distance from one point to another, and leaned back on his heels, appraising. “One or two parasang, I wager.”
“There are dirt paths leading up to it on either side. It can be reached on foot or horseback,” Altair added, nodding to himself as if proud for this foresight.
Malik turned to him, tilted his head, and looked mildly amused. Altair loved this expression, because it was all challenge that he itched to to take. “And?” Malik asked, loftily. “What does that have to do with anything?”
-----
It was folly that had made him agree to this horseplay, and it was pride that kept him in it, but Malik could not help but laugh as they burst through the fortress gates together, startling novices and civilians in their wake. Altair kicked off with a burst of speed and began to grow the distance between them, as Malik had expected him to, and it made it easier for him to hide his smile when no one was looking for it, attention too distracted by the Eagle of Masyaf.
Well, no one save one: Altair threw one glance over his shoulder and grinned back before leaping off one of the ledges on the road leading down to the city and into a pile of hay. Malik was quick on his heels, taking advantage of the path Altair had cleared in the sea of pedestrians, and he let gravity do the work for him, because as fast as he was on foot, Altair fell just as quickly as everyone else.
“What-” Malik landed in a pile of limbs and prickly straw, apparently having squashed Altair down onto his stomach as the other man had been preparing to slip out of the mound. The next few seconds were a flurry of limbs, kicking out at each other and trying to both simultaneously untangle themselves while keeping the other down.
Altair made the mistake of reaching for an arm that wasn't there, the hay narrowing his vision to near-golden-yellow-blindness, and Malik's legs kicked out from under him, a knee knocking the young Grandmaster to his side. Malik rolled on top of him, using Altair's own weight to trap one arm under him, and using his foot to stamp down on the forearm of the other. He leaned forward until the hay gave way for his head, and smirked down at the face his hand was holding in place, fingers to either side of Altair's chin.
“I'm sorry, I did not realize this pile was occupied,” Malik drawled. Altair tried bucking him off, with little success, and Malik could already hear the shift of cloth and straw as the man slowly squeezed out his arm from under him. Malik braced himself for the blow.
“What is it you always say? 'Look before you leap'?” With a mighty shove, Altair threw Malik off to the side, out of the pile, and pulled himself up into a sprint almost immediately.
Rolling with the hit, Malik gathered himself to his feet and took off soon after. He was not as fast as Altair, nor was he as nimble, and his world had boundaries that Altair could not even begin to fathom. When the Grandmaster stared down the world and only saw places he could go and climb, Malik thought of circumventions, interventions, and places he could fall. Together, they were impenetrable and unstoppable, but pitted against each other, it was hard to say.
Altair ran, taking them out of Masyaf, and he broke off to scale the nearest hill too quickly to see Malik turn in the other direction.
-----
Altair leapt off the edge and landed on the small plateau. The impact kicked up the dust around him, and he eased out of the crouch to smile at the tree in front of him. There was a sheen of sweat across his brow, and the heat, greater the higher he went, closer to the sun, made a bead of it roll down the side of his face as he lowered his hood. He had made good time - exceptional time, in fact, even by his own measure. He turned to glance behind him - Masyaf was only as small as the length of his thumb, far away, and Malik was nowhere in sight.
He was padding around to find a perfect position to wait, preferably one he could spring from and surprise Malik with, when he heard the sound of splashing. Instantly on his guard, Altair quietly let the hidden blade fall from his wrist, advancing towards the source of the noise.
“That is taking it a little far, don't you think? What a sore loser you've turned out to be, Altair.”
The blade slid back into its sheath in his surprise, and the recoil only added to his jolt to attention. “Malik?” he said, as if his eyes were deceiving him, because not only was the man already here, but it looked like he had been for a while now. He was stripped to his breeches, his tunic laid out on the ground to his side as he wrung out one end of his dark scholar robe, the other trapped between his knees. The moisture clinging to its weave made the black fabric shimmer in the sun.
Altair scowled. “What sorcery is thi-”
“Sorcery?” Malik echoed, tilting his chin up in that same look, full of daring. “Surely you do not think a man needs to possess some sort of sorcery to best you?”
“Then it is impossible. How did you-” Cutting himself off and trailing into silence, Altair took in the sight of him. It only took him a moment, though it was a moment longer than it should have. His frown deepened.
“There is a river that flows at the edge of the kingdom, and breaks onto shore just a little south of here. The flow is surprisingly swift, but the riverbed is not that deep,” Malik said, pushing off the ground to stand, drawing himself up to face Altair. With only one arm, no steed to sit atop of, laid half-bare, Malik stood as proud as any man, with every right to. He had lost a brother and a limb that day, but that, although substantial, was all. Even Altair was not strong enough to rip a man's pride from him.
Face to face, Malik grinned, not in challenge, but in victory of it. “How was your climb?”
Altair did not back down. He raised a hand to push Malik away, indulging in the idea almost sulkily, except his hand stilled on the other man's chest, just below the shoulder, his fingers bending with the curve of his collarbone. The river water had not dried from the other man's skin, and it was cool to the touch against his heated hand. It bit into the little scrapes and cuts in the crooks of his fingers that he had acquired while climbing, small injuries that no longer hurt when they bled because of how many times he had broken the skin there, but he hissed just the same, feeling the boiling of his blood meet with the cold dampness clinging to Malik's skin.
“Long,” he answered, raising his eyes before lowering them again. Malik was watching his hand with hawk-eyed attention. An assassin's hand so close to one's heart was no trifling matter. “And a bit humbling.”
Malik raised his head, and even without looking, Altair could feel it in the shift of air. They were standing close enough that the very energy coming off of them seemed to ripple the atmosphere. “I've won, Altair,” he said, voice quiet and deep, like the underwater current, and as if sensing the danger, in a blade by his heart, in the connotations that came with water, they both stepped away, wary of the step they took to bring them ever closer. That, at least, was not a race.
It took him a second, and it was not without great reluctance that the Grandmaster nodded, jerkily, and admitted, “Yes. You have.”
Because he was not merciless, Malik smiled as he bent to retrieve his clothing, hooking them over his arm as he allowed Altair a moment longer to procrastinate. “Good. Then come walk with me. We will return together.”
Altair's head snapped up, eyes wide in alarm as he looked first to the other man, still dripping, and then to an imaginary place to their left, where, past the edge of the cliff, there was a river running quick and treacherous beneath their feet. As tormenting as the heat was, the Grandmaster was no more inclined to partake in a swim than he usually was. “What?” he asked, hoping he had heard wrong. Surely, Malik would not be so cruel a victor as to demand that of him. (But he was a tyrant in his own right, Altair knew.)
Malik did not laugh, but his smile was obvious, biting deep at the edges into his cheeks as he tried to quell it, not wide but inset, and bright just the same. Altair's train of thought was as clear as the wrinkle in his brow, for the man was very poor at hiding things other than himself. “What?” Malik echoed, innocently. “There are footpaths, are there not? You said so yourself. It can be reached by both walking and on horse, and unless you are up to carrying me back at a passable gallop, I suggest we walk.”
“I make a very sorry horse,” Altair muttered dryly, but only upon recovering from his relief.
“Perhaps you should start sleeping in the stables and learn a thing or two from the masters,” Malik retorted easily, falling into step with him as they began to descend. Altair shoved him lightly for that, but eventually, their shoulders came to brush together as they walked anyway, and the journey back took much longer than the journey to, but for once, Malik did not complain.
Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Characters: Altair Ibn'La-Ahad, Malik Al-Sayf
Rating: PG
Warnings: Request: Malik smiles.
Malik looks up from his map for the sixteenth time as he feels the slight tug on his robe from his left shoulder, not from phantom pains for an arm that is no longer there, but because there are two hands at his side, fumbling along the hem of his sleeve, trying to sew it right below his shoulder seam. “Remind me why you are doing this instead of searching for your informant again, Altair,” he says slowly, with controlled, long-suffering exasperation.
Altair frowns as he pricks his middle finger in the exact same spot for the exact fourth time. (It has to be sorcery.) “It comes loose too often when you pin it, and then sometimes it snags.” And I wanted to stay with you a second longer, he doesn't say, doesn't even think, because it's something his heart already knows. He looks past his clumsy hands and smiles down at Malik from atop his perch on the table, heels brushing against the floor and kicking against the legs of the other man's chair. “I am not distracting you, am I?”
Malik raises his brow at the hopeful tinge in that question. “You always are,” he replies, probably not meaning for it to sound as fond as it comes out, so he amends it quickly with, “And you are getting blood all over my robes.”
Altair returns that with a haughty look, turning back to his task with single-minded determination, and for the next four stitches, manages not to break skin with the needle once. (He knew it, he is a natural at this.)
It is only when he breaks his concentration to proudly report his success that he realizes the sound of Malik's pen scratching over textured paper has not resumed, and in the stillness of the Masyaf castle at high noon, he looks up to find Malik's attention fixed on his hands, the scars on his palms, the worn skin on his knuckles, the callouses on all nine of his fingers - a pair of warrior's hands, getting in each other's way as they try to hold the delicate spine of a needle, fumbling when it isn't as thick as the hilt of a sword or the handle of an axe - and the warrior they belong to, proud and powerful, leader of their fortress city, humbling himself to do a woman's work for a one-armed man.
Malik is smiling, at peace and at a point where he doesn't have to hide his amusement behind a barb of words, and the expression softens his entire face, like someone had raised a silken veil and simply brushed away all those sharp edges with a single swipe. It looks like it had no trouble climbing onto his face for once; it is a smile that met no resistance as it bloomed, and it is incredibly intimate, to the point where Altair stills his breathing like he does when his target is near, body tensing as if he could drag the entire world to a halt if he held firm enough.
It doesn't work - his heart is beating so loudly that every beat threatens to expel the air from his lungs, and every fiber of his being wants to reach out and pickpocket this moment, steal it for himself, tuck it in his hand and hold it to his heart, swallow it down until it becomes part of his blood, so that one day, when the Assassin's way of death comes to claim his bones, that will be the last thing he sees.
Malik looks up, noticing Altair's sudden silence, and slightly frowns, breaks the spell. “Altair?”
Altair lets the thread fall out of the needle's eye, sets the sliver of metal on the table, and decides that six stitches (four in addition to the two he had labored through earlier) is enough for the time being. “Again,” he commands, and Malik's forehead wrinkles with confusion. “Again,” Altair repeats, pulling Malik from his side to his front, much to the other man's bewilderment. He wraps his arms around Malik's shoulders, lets the friction of their cheeks brushing together tug his hood down to his back. “I love you,” he says. “So do that again,” he mumbles, and he repeats those three words like a mantra until Malik does.
Characters: Altair Ibn'La-Ahad, Malik Al-Sayf
Rating: G
Warnings: Kink meme request: Malik kicks Altair's ass at racing.
At the top of the ramparts of the Masyaf fortress, even the wind was a force to be reckoned with. It swept up their robes and whipped it around their knees, buffeted their backs with enough force that it seemed as though it might sweep them off their feet. Stronger than the wind, strong enough to have ridden it, Altair raised his arm and pointed at a lone tree sitting atop a raised cliff, far below where they stood, and a good ways into the Kingdom. “There,” he said, “That should be sufficient.”
“And after that, you will return to work?” Malik prompted, exasperated.
“After that, I will sit at that blasted desk for as long as you will have me do so,” Altair recited, grabbing Malik's shoulder to turn him in the direction he had gestured in. “Now look.”
Without the shade of a drawn hood to hide under, Malik raised a hand to shield his eyes before he could squint and follow the line of Altair's finger, doing the numbers in his head. He imagined a compass, its pointed ends dancing around each other as they traced out the distance from one point to another, and leaned back on his heels, appraising. “One or two parasang, I wager.”
“There are dirt paths leading up to it on either side. It can be reached on foot or horseback,” Altair added, nodding to himself as if proud for this foresight.
Malik turned to him, tilted his head, and looked mildly amused. Altair loved this expression, because it was all challenge that he itched to to take. “And?” Malik asked, loftily. “What does that have to do with anything?”
-----
It was folly that had made him agree to this horseplay, and it was pride that kept him in it, but Malik could not help but laugh as they burst through the fortress gates together, startling novices and civilians in their wake. Altair kicked off with a burst of speed and began to grow the distance between them, as Malik had expected him to, and it made it easier for him to hide his smile when no one was looking for it, attention too distracted by the Eagle of Masyaf.
Well, no one save one: Altair threw one glance over his shoulder and grinned back before leaping off one of the ledges on the road leading down to the city and into a pile of hay. Malik was quick on his heels, taking advantage of the path Altair had cleared in the sea of pedestrians, and he let gravity do the work for him, because as fast as he was on foot, Altair fell just as quickly as everyone else.
“What-” Malik landed in a pile of limbs and prickly straw, apparently having squashed Altair down onto his stomach as the other man had been preparing to slip out of the mound. The next few seconds were a flurry of limbs, kicking out at each other and trying to both simultaneously untangle themselves while keeping the other down.
Altair made the mistake of reaching for an arm that wasn't there, the hay narrowing his vision to near-golden-yellow-blindness, and Malik's legs kicked out from under him, a knee knocking the young Grandmaster to his side. Malik rolled on top of him, using Altair's own weight to trap one arm under him, and using his foot to stamp down on the forearm of the other. He leaned forward until the hay gave way for his head, and smirked down at the face his hand was holding in place, fingers to either side of Altair's chin.
“I'm sorry, I did not realize this pile was occupied,” Malik drawled. Altair tried bucking him off, with little success, and Malik could already hear the shift of cloth and straw as the man slowly squeezed out his arm from under him. Malik braced himself for the blow.
“What is it you always say? 'Look before you leap'?” With a mighty shove, Altair threw Malik off to the side, out of the pile, and pulled himself up into a sprint almost immediately.
Rolling with the hit, Malik gathered himself to his feet and took off soon after. He was not as fast as Altair, nor was he as nimble, and his world had boundaries that Altair could not even begin to fathom. When the Grandmaster stared down the world and only saw places he could go and climb, Malik thought of circumventions, interventions, and places he could fall. Together, they were impenetrable and unstoppable, but pitted against each other, it was hard to say.
Altair ran, taking them out of Masyaf, and he broke off to scale the nearest hill too quickly to see Malik turn in the other direction.
-----
Altair leapt off the edge and landed on the small plateau. The impact kicked up the dust around him, and he eased out of the crouch to smile at the tree in front of him. There was a sheen of sweat across his brow, and the heat, greater the higher he went, closer to the sun, made a bead of it roll down the side of his face as he lowered his hood. He had made good time - exceptional time, in fact, even by his own measure. He turned to glance behind him - Masyaf was only as small as the length of his thumb, far away, and Malik was nowhere in sight.
He was padding around to find a perfect position to wait, preferably one he could spring from and surprise Malik with, when he heard the sound of splashing. Instantly on his guard, Altair quietly let the hidden blade fall from his wrist, advancing towards the source of the noise.
“That is taking it a little far, don't you think? What a sore loser you've turned out to be, Altair.”
The blade slid back into its sheath in his surprise, and the recoil only added to his jolt to attention. “Malik?” he said, as if his eyes were deceiving him, because not only was the man already here, but it looked like he had been for a while now. He was stripped to his breeches, his tunic laid out on the ground to his side as he wrung out one end of his dark scholar robe, the other trapped between his knees. The moisture clinging to its weave made the black fabric shimmer in the sun.
Altair scowled. “What sorcery is thi-”
“Sorcery?” Malik echoed, tilting his chin up in that same look, full of daring. “Surely you do not think a man needs to possess some sort of sorcery to best you?”
“Then it is impossible. How did you-” Cutting himself off and trailing into silence, Altair took in the sight of him. It only took him a moment, though it was a moment longer than it should have. His frown deepened.
“There is a river that flows at the edge of the kingdom, and breaks onto shore just a little south of here. The flow is surprisingly swift, but the riverbed is not that deep,” Malik said, pushing off the ground to stand, drawing himself up to face Altair. With only one arm, no steed to sit atop of, laid half-bare, Malik stood as proud as any man, with every right to. He had lost a brother and a limb that day, but that, although substantial, was all. Even Altair was not strong enough to rip a man's pride from him.
Face to face, Malik grinned, not in challenge, but in victory of it. “How was your climb?”
Altair did not back down. He raised a hand to push Malik away, indulging in the idea almost sulkily, except his hand stilled on the other man's chest, just below the shoulder, his fingers bending with the curve of his collarbone. The river water had not dried from the other man's skin, and it was cool to the touch against his heated hand. It bit into the little scrapes and cuts in the crooks of his fingers that he had acquired while climbing, small injuries that no longer hurt when they bled because of how many times he had broken the skin there, but he hissed just the same, feeling the boiling of his blood meet with the cold dampness clinging to Malik's skin.
“Long,” he answered, raising his eyes before lowering them again. Malik was watching his hand with hawk-eyed attention. An assassin's hand so close to one's heart was no trifling matter. “And a bit humbling.”
Malik raised his head, and even without looking, Altair could feel it in the shift of air. They were standing close enough that the very energy coming off of them seemed to ripple the atmosphere. “I've won, Altair,” he said, voice quiet and deep, like the underwater current, and as if sensing the danger, in a blade by his heart, in the connotations that came with water, they both stepped away, wary of the step they took to bring them ever closer. That, at least, was not a race.
It took him a second, and it was not without great reluctance that the Grandmaster nodded, jerkily, and admitted, “Yes. You have.”
Because he was not merciless, Malik smiled as he bent to retrieve his clothing, hooking them over his arm as he allowed Altair a moment longer to procrastinate. “Good. Then come walk with me. We will return together.”
Altair's head snapped up, eyes wide in alarm as he looked first to the other man, still dripping, and then to an imaginary place to their left, where, past the edge of the cliff, there was a river running quick and treacherous beneath their feet. As tormenting as the heat was, the Grandmaster was no more inclined to partake in a swim than he usually was. “What?” he asked, hoping he had heard wrong. Surely, Malik would not be so cruel a victor as to demand that of him. (But he was a tyrant in his own right, Altair knew.)
Malik did not laugh, but his smile was obvious, biting deep at the edges into his cheeks as he tried to quell it, not wide but inset, and bright just the same. Altair's train of thought was as clear as the wrinkle in his brow, for the man was very poor at hiding things other than himself. “What?” Malik echoed, innocently. “There are footpaths, are there not? You said so yourself. It can be reached by both walking and on horse, and unless you are up to carrying me back at a passable gallop, I suggest we walk.”
“I make a very sorry horse,” Altair muttered dryly, but only upon recovering from his relief.
“Perhaps you should start sleeping in the stables and learn a thing or two from the masters,” Malik retorted easily, falling into step with him as they began to descend. Altair shoved him lightly for that, but eventually, their shoulders came to brush together as they walked anyway, and the journey back took much longer than the journey to, but for once, Malik did not complain.
Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Characters: Altair Ibn'La-Ahad, Malik Al-Sayf
Rating: PG
Warnings: Request: Malik smiles.
Malik looks up from his map for the sixteenth time as he feels the slight tug on his robe from his left shoulder, not from phantom pains for an arm that is no longer there, but because there are two hands at his side, fumbling along the hem of his sleeve, trying to sew it right below his shoulder seam. “Remind me why you are doing this instead of searching for your informant again, Altair,” he says slowly, with controlled, long-suffering exasperation.
Altair frowns as he pricks his middle finger in the exact same spot for the exact fourth time. (It has to be sorcery.) “It comes loose too often when you pin it, and then sometimes it snags.” And I wanted to stay with you a second longer, he doesn't say, doesn't even think, because it's something his heart already knows. He looks past his clumsy hands and smiles down at Malik from atop his perch on the table, heels brushing against the floor and kicking against the legs of the other man's chair. “I am not distracting you, am I?”
Malik raises his brow at the hopeful tinge in that question. “You always are,” he replies, probably not meaning for it to sound as fond as it comes out, so he amends it quickly with, “And you are getting blood all over my robes.”
Altair returns that with a haughty look, turning back to his task with single-minded determination, and for the next four stitches, manages not to break skin with the needle once. (He knew it, he is a natural at this.)
It is only when he breaks his concentration to proudly report his success that he realizes the sound of Malik's pen scratching over textured paper has not resumed, and in the stillness of the Masyaf castle at high noon, he looks up to find Malik's attention fixed on his hands, the scars on his palms, the worn skin on his knuckles, the callouses on all nine of his fingers - a pair of warrior's hands, getting in each other's way as they try to hold the delicate spine of a needle, fumbling when it isn't as thick as the hilt of a sword or the handle of an axe - and the warrior they belong to, proud and powerful, leader of their fortress city, humbling himself to do a woman's work for a one-armed man.
Malik is smiling, at peace and at a point where he doesn't have to hide his amusement behind a barb of words, and the expression softens his entire face, like someone had raised a silken veil and simply brushed away all those sharp edges with a single swipe. It looks like it had no trouble climbing onto his face for once; it is a smile that met no resistance as it bloomed, and it is incredibly intimate, to the point where Altair stills his breathing like he does when his target is near, body tensing as if he could drag the entire world to a halt if he held firm enough.
It doesn't work - his heart is beating so loudly that every beat threatens to expel the air from his lungs, and every fiber of his being wants to reach out and pickpocket this moment, steal it for himself, tuck it in his hand and hold it to his heart, swallow it down until it becomes part of his blood, so that one day, when the Assassin's way of death comes to claim his bones, that will be the last thing he sees.
Malik looks up, noticing Altair's sudden silence, and slightly frowns, breaks the spell. “Altair?”
Altair lets the thread fall out of the needle's eye, sets the sliver of metal on the table, and decides that six stitches (four in addition to the two he had labored through earlier) is enough for the time being. “Again,” he commands, and Malik's forehead wrinkles with confusion. “Again,” Altair repeats, pulling Malik from his side to his front, much to the other man's bewilderment. He wraps his arms around Malik's shoulders, lets the friction of their cheeks brushing together tug his hood down to his back. “I love you,” he says. “So do that again,” he mumbles, and he repeats those three words like a mantra until Malik does.