InsaneJournal

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Entry tags:	fan-fiction: all, fan-fiction: mbotf, genre: slash

What's that you say? New fandom? Maybe.
Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series has eaten me alive. Are you sick of fantasy where brown people are either evil or nonexistent? Did you stop reading the genre because there were too many evil/tragic gay characters? Are you tired of 'realism' which boils down to 'heartless, cold, and humorless?' Does the Dark Elf trope give you hives? Wouldn't it be nice to have more than one -- or one *type* -- of strong female character? Do you get a little chub for discussions of philosophy, theology, and sociology? Wouldn't it be nice if the writer talking about lost/ancient civilizations had any idea whatsoever how that sort of thing worked?

If you answered yes to any or all of those questions *and* you still have a soft spot for sword and sorcery somewhere within your embittered soul... you might want to give these books a try. The first eight books are available here, the ninth is available in the UK, and the tenth -- and last -- *will* be out next year. No waiting, baby.

Jack and I have been devouring these books with unholy glee for the last several weeks, and we are in love. We've been using the ILL system, but we *will* be buying copies of all of them as money becomes available, because, yes, they *do* get even better once you reread them. It's like *that*.

Here's the wiki. Be careful of spoilers as you ramble around.

Here's a lovely fandom_of_one introduction.

NOTE: I have not yet finished Book #7: Reaper's Gale. Spoil me and I bugger you with a short-sword.

So, I've pimped. What's the other point of this post? Jack's birthday was yesterday and I was unable to get the DCU story I'd planned to work for me, so... I wrote one for *this* universe. Nice and short and just a little dirty, featuring two of our -- many, many, *many* -- favorite characters.



Ben Adaephon Delat, aka Quick Ben, is a mage who is pretty much insane. He's a tall, skinny, dark-skinned man who has a large amount of fun playing chicken with gods -- and whoever else pisses him off. Or makes him curious. Or is around when he's bored. He's generally cheerful -- even when he's terrified by the insane shit he gets up to -- and often reminds me of what would happen if toonverse Timmy had grown up the way everything but Return of the Joker suggested he would. When he wound up on the wrong side of the invading army of the Malazan empire, he cooked up a plan with his bff Kalam Mekhar which involved Kalam leading the Malazans into the holy desert Raraku on Quick Ben's trail.

Traveling with Ben were eleven other powerful mages who were also trying to get away from the Malazans. Somehow, Ben convinced these people -- one by one -- to let him swallow their souls and thus take their power and survive a little longer. This would let him set a trap for the pursuing Malazans. Lots of other crazy shit ensued.

Kalam Mekhar is a very large, also dark-skinned assassin who is pretty much Batman in terms of how ridiculously hardcore he is. We don't know *why* he got to be friends with Ben, but we do know that he pretended to join up with the Malazans -- convincing them of his new loyalty -- in order to set them up for Ben to destroy. He's taciturn, inclined toward moments of broodiness leavened with black humor, and he has a tendency to find secluded places where he can snuggle up with Ben for a while.

As you might've guessed, I am wildly in love with both of them. Here's my look at how things might've started between them.

Gather into one hand
by Te
September 8, 2009

Disclaimers: Everything here belongs to Steven Erikson, who pretty much rules.

Spoilers: Vague, *vague* mentions of events up through Memories of Ice. (Book #3 of the main series.)

Summary: On the desirability of scars.

Ratings Note/Warnings: Sexual content some readers may find to be way too short and/or olives.

Author's Note: I'm learning this universe as I go... and I hope you can join me for the ride.

Acknowledgments: With much love to Pixie for holding my hand as I hammered this out, and to Jack for being my awesome hon-hon.

*

"All right, this is the plan --"

Kalam has had any number of nightmares which begin with those words, many of which he views with the same kind of painfully twisted fondness he has for some of his more unnerving scars.

This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that those words -- those six simple words -- are the best warning Kalam has ever had that more scars are forthcoming.

*

"Look, first and foremost, I know you're here to kill me as thoroughly as possible, but I really think we should talk first."

To this day, Kalam has no idea whatsoever why he'd let Ben Adaephon Delat get that sentence out.

It certainly wasn't the first time a target had tried to reason with him -- for all that he'd rarely given them the chance to do anything of the kind -- nor was there anything remotely notable about the words, the tone, the position of the moon, or Kalam's own mood.

Still...

Ben had known he wouldn't die that night. Kalam would swear it by the names of any number of gods, and, more to the point, he would swear it by important things, as well.

*

"You can't possibly be that grim. *No* one is that grim. There are statues of Dessembrae with more life than you're showing right now, and I think -- I really do think -- that something needs to be done about that. Which really should tell you all you need to know about why this temple is about to burn to the ground, and also -- also, you really shouldn't put your foot down there on that booby-trapped tile. I'm just saying."

A mere two weeks after Ben had paid for the information on how to convince the Falah'd to cancel the contract on his life with little more than conversation, the sort of wine technically illegal to consume for anyone other than the nobleborn, and an infinitely useful mental trick designed to make otherwise attentive people *inattentive* at crucial moments --

Two weeks, and Ben decided that they both needed far more money than they had.

Kalam distinctly remembers pointing out that he was already comfortably wealthy. It's just that he also remembers Ben smiling as though brilliance was something which could -- and did -- fall from the sky like insanity-causing dates --

He remembers rapidly finding himself lost in the muddle of his own abject failure to apply reason-assisting metaphor to a life -- a *man* -- who could only --

Who *did* only --

Kalam had shaved his head after the fire which had left him -- indirectly -- significantly wealthier and -- very directly -- scarred. It was just too difficult to get the reek of blast-charred incense and sacrificial offal out of his hair.

*

"Oh, my friend, you would not believe what I have to tell you... why, yes, that *is* because it's all a tangled pack of lies, but still, I think it's important that you know how singular it is that *you* won't believe it."

When Ben drinks, he never becomes maudlin. He never becomes violent, or even aggressive. He never throws himself at amusingly -- in terms of the morning after -- raddled whores, or gambles to excess.

What he does... is talk.

Feverishly. Endlessly.

Wildly dishonestly --

"No, no, *no*. Look, I know the Rope is your -- your patron god and all, but you have to understand that he's just as bound by the rules as I'm *not*. And one day -- all right, I don't care for assassins -- no offense to you whatsoever, because you're a wonderful man and very -- very large -- which is why I'm going to bugger the Rope one day."

Kalam hopes it's dishonest.

*

"I don't have a family. Well, of course I have a family, but I don't have one. I mean, they're all hostages aren't they? Potential hostages, anyway, and I don't think -- some people can't afford hostages. Family."

When Kalam is stalking a target, there is often a great deal of time to think. The target spends a certain amount of time eating meals while surrounded by too much in the way of collateral damage; the target sleeps behind wards which are only breachable by the sort of magery which Kalam prefers to do without -- that sort of thing.

There are any number of professions which provide similar stretches of quiet time, but Kalam was marked for this sort of service at an age he can barely remember. By the time he was out of his training, he had little enough in the way of family, too, for all that most of them had survived, in their way.

It takes a certain sort of dedication to eradicate a tribe and, for the most part, the Malazans lack it.

He has not missed his people. He enjoys the pace of life in the city, and a large number of the city's comforts. He enjoys the ability to pay for women who are not as large as he is, and who have soft skin which has known little of labor or even the sun. There are weeks when he drinks from a different cask every night -- sparingly -- and there are weeks when he eats only foods which had never graced any of his tribe's platters.

He has not missed his people... but he thinks, perhaps, that Ben has. Within every fever, there is a hard knot of infection.

Kalam is not so convinced of his wisdom that he believes he has eased Ben's knot out from his fire, but...

Perhaps he has had a taste of it.

Or, perhaps, it is simply that he has bored himself senseless watching this walking dead woman berate her all-too-talkative-for-his-purposes slaves.

*

"Listen --"

A month after the Falah'd hosts Ben in a banquet celebrating their friendship -- which is, of course, of long standing -- Ben appears in Kalam's rooms over the Rotted Camel inn with a bottle of wine, a vast armload of flatbread, and the cheese Kalam knows for a fact the innkeeper had been saving for the holiday.

It's the fifth bell after moonrise.

Kalam's eyes are grained with sleep, his muscles are protesting the truncated rest with acid vehemence, and Ben is smiling at something which appears to be both within this plane of existence and somewhere within the desperately unnerving --

He would never say 'unmanning' aloud --

Kalam has learned that there are pieces of Ben scattered across realms he will never see, spaces and times he will never know. The fact that he has no desire *to* know them does nothing against the curious frustration of this fact.

The wordless need.

Kalam eases his long-knife from the curve of Ben's entirely too vulnerable throat and sighs.

There turns out to be a sack of perfectly brined olives hidden -- somewhere -- within Ben's telaba.

*

"*Listen* --"

Kalam has known assassins who longed for human companionship. Many of them, even.

The fact that he's been forced -- in one way or another -- to kill most of them does not necessarily mean that there's an essential problem with the desire --

Except, of course, for how it does.

*

"*Your* problem, Kal -- and I hope I can call you Kal, because I'm attached to each and every one of my limbs, vital organs, non-essential organs, and place on this side of Hood's gate --

"Your problem is that you listen too much."

To what? It's not necessary to ask that question. The only necessary questions with Ben are 'why' and 'how,' and since the answers to the former lead only into blinding sandstorms built on the degradation of human reason...

"How," Kalam says, and cups Ben's face, finding only unease at the feel of his thumbs pressed against fragile cheekbones covered by no more than a thin layer of skin.

"I --"

"*How*," Kalam says, and there are so many satisfactions inherent to throwing a mage to the ground, in pinning him, and, yes, in moving within range of the *unknown* --

"You --"

"*How*," and telabas tear, loincloths unravel their knots, bodies seek, bodies *find* --

He would've thought that there would be words for this -- there were words for everything else --

He would've thought, if he would've given himself leave to do that thing --

There are no words, and Ben's eyes are as bloodshot and wild as an enkar'al's by the end, Ben's eyes see so much, Ben's eyes --

"Ben, *how*!"

But Ben only shakes his head mutely in the moments before he spends himself between them.

In the moments before Kalam loses himself to his own need.

*

"Something has to be done about these Malazans, Kal."

And that... well, Kalam had had to admit that he hadn't had much in the way of enthusiasm for the 'die bravely and pointlessly' option.

The men and women who had trained him would have, perhaps, been disappointed in him for that, but, one, they might *not* have, and two, Kalam honestly didn't care.

Not then, not when the Malazans had accepted him into their fold with almost embarrassing speed, not when Ben had explained his mind-bogglingly terrifying plan, not when Kalam had provided the means to make that plan a reality...

Not now that the holy desert has winnowed him and the Malazans to something pure and clean, dangerous, *alive* --

As alive as Ben, and thus infinitely more alive than the mages who had clearly found within themselves enough testicle-shriveling terror of the Malazans to actually trust *Ben* to both know what he was doing and to not do what he had done.

Kalam...

Kalam should've known he could follow no man who couldn't leave a trail of dessicated bodies in his wake should necessity and opportunity arise at once.

Ah, Ben...

No, Kalam cares nothing for the loyalty burgeoning within him to both the desert and the Malazans themselves.

The loyalty to Ben is something else, entirely.

*

"You can't just go looking for -- for *reasons* all the time, Kal. Look, if you do that, you get chained in rationality, bogged down in notions of right and wrong -- all right, maybe you wouldn't. And neither would I. Much. All right, no, not at all, but the essential point remains the same, and when you look at me like that... yes, like you're about to crush my windpipe with your pinky. When you give me that look, I feel all tingly."

There is an essential difference between being a soldier and being an assassin. His new commander understands this down to the admirably grizzled bone, and so has done nothing whatsoever in the way of trying to clear up the conflict for Kalam.

Kalam can respect that a great deal, as can Ben, who often fails to understand that dancing on freshly-sharpened -- and edge-poisoned -- tulwars is not a skill to which everyone is born to, nor does he understand that not everyone finds the attempt cheerfully invigorating.

Ben seems to think that Kalam is one of those countless functionally mad people who live within his crowded -- gods ignore them -- warren of a mind.

Ben is never more murderously infuriating than when he is right.

*

"Gods below, are you *smiling*? Stop that *immediately* and listen to the *plan* --"

Kalam reaches within himself for knowledge, however murky, of where the new scars will be.

He is not overburdened when he finds nothing at all.

end.