Work Text:
What they had was not love. Or, at least, Hytham did not think so.
What they had remained unspoken, even as the first weeks passed and they kept crowding near each other against walls, and he felt his mentor’s hungry mouth on his, consuming him like a ripe fruit. It was the thrill of something forbidden, the quick beating of hearts knowing that death or exile awaited them should anyone come upon them in a moment of this. It was knowing that they would feel the lash of punishment from their very own Brotherhood; perhaps, then, not because they were men, but because it was a mentor, and a student.
Indeed, Hytham was well within his rights to be disgusted by what had happened between them. And he had been well within his rights to consider it an assault when Basim first had grabbed him by the neck, pushed him against a wall and kissed him with a growl rumbling in his throat. He could have stabbed him, he could have fought him off, but he didn’t, because he would have been a liar if he made it seem like this wasn’t his very fantasies come true, like he did not dream about his mentor’s body. Innocent moments in hammams and bathing by riversides had turned predatory from his part. It was hard to quell the hunger when the older, taller man stepped into the water, and Hytham could see the exact way the hair on his body curled and lead downwards, every muscle that held the man up and made him so much wider than him, how his long and thick hair flowed down from his head and so beautifully framed his face and his neck when he tossed it over his shoulder to ease the weight of it.
He wondered, momentarily, if Basim had watched him with the same hungry, unquellable gaze in those moments. If he had observed and analysed every detail about him. He was well-trained but young, and he was aware he still had some babyfat to him. He was strong but didn’t have as much visible musculature, and his body hair was dark but dusted lightly over his body. He was scruffy, and unable yet to grow much more than the equally scruffy stubble on his face. He wasn’t much at all and he wasn’t much compared to Basim, but perhaps that was the exact reason he had seemingly enticed him.
What they had was quick and rough, a wildfire crackling dry bark. Basim was experienced and he was not, and so he was left to desperately try to keep up and reciprocate — clumsily, slowly — whatever was being done to him. His teeth clashed with Basim when they kissed, his hips jerked too hastily and his tugs were too rough and hard-handed. But Basim didn’t complain. He nipped his neck and murmured gentle teasing against his skin, encouragements for practice and soft advice to help his inexperience. He was surprisingly gentle about it all. Perhaps that’s what made Hytham second-guess himself.
Still, no matter if Hytham happened to fall asleep while nestled into Basim’s arms at night, they never acknowledged it in the daytime. He would roll off of the older man and get ready for the day, Basim would trudge up as if his limbs hadn’t fallen asleep in that position, and they were back to what they were before Basim’s self-control had snapped. Not a hint of the previous night’s activities were found on them, they worked in tandem like they always had, they quipped and argued and bantered as if it wasn’t just a matter of time before Basim’s mouth would be on his again and they’d hastily jerk their hips against each other when night had fallen and they were alone in their lodgings.
Sometimes, he admitted, it felt wrong. It was the same kind of momentary feeling of guilt and shame that often haunted him, that had haunted him for most of his life. It was the same guilt he felt when he thrust his hidden blade into the neck of a guard who only really happened to be in the way, who surely had a family waiting for him, even if he was aligned with Hytham’s enemies. It was the feeling that he was doing something wrong.
But when those nights became unbearable, when he laid in his cot and felt it consume him, Basim would slide in next to him. He wrapped him up in his arms, held him close, buried his face against his neck and said absolutely nothing. Hytham had tensed the first time it had happened. Basim’s hands had moved under his shirt and placed themselves on his torso and bare skin, and so Hytham had waited, with bated breath. But Basim was still, the only movement was the occasional nuzzle against the acolyte’s neck, the soft sighs of contentment as the mentor himself seemed close to sleep. He didn’t ask why Hytham was tense, and perhaps he had guessed it was just the unfamiliarity of it all. Hytham had felt Basim’s lips pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck, and a sigh had escaped him, too, as his body melted against his mentor’s.
They never spoke of it, but it was a regularity, soon enough. When they were alone and safe, they spent the nights in the same bed, fingers brushing together briefly when they separated for whatever reasons their plans had entailed. Still, Hytham never dared to assume that what they had was a shared love. He knew Basim was dangerous, obsessive at times, always two steps ahead, and it made him wonder how much of this was just Basim’s way of keeping him comfortable and unquestioning, trusting. But Hytham had gotten soft, perhaps a bit lazy, and he let it happen anyways. Basim had succeeded with his plan to turn his spy to someone that trusted him almost blindly. He couldn’t deny that Basim made him feel safe, more so since he had since he and his mother had left Syria. Pressed against the small beds, covered by Basim’s larger, taller, strong and warm body...
He expected things to start to crack eventually. If this was not love, then it could not go on forever. Perhaps he could convince himself that he already saw the signs of it when they joined the viking expedition around the caliphate. They were never really alone anymore, not even when night fell and they set up camp on a shore by the Mediterranean coast. The distance between their sleeping rolls felt monumental and freezing cold. He rolled over and looked towards his mentor, but Basim did not spare him a glance.
When they woke, and the norsemen still slept, Basim did not acknowledge that it had been one of the first nights they had not spent together in years. He told him that it was time to pack up, to be ready to leave as soon as the norsemen had woken. Hytham tried to quell the bitter feeling that settled in his stomach.
He wanted to tell himself that it was just because they had company that made Basim act the way he did. That the risk of getting caught was now greater, and that they could not afford a single slip if they were to journey to the north with these men. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was the only reason.
Things did not change much until they finally arrived in Norway. Night was already falling when they arrived and Sigurd was quick to show them to the guest-cabin that would be theirs, for however long they would be staying. It was some distance from the rest of the settlement, but it was theirs. Two years with little of that affection he had gotten so used to had made him weary, and the thought of finally, finally being alone with his mentor excited him in equal measure as he dreaded it. But he found little time to think about the first night they would spend together in privacy as the evening unfolded. He was still smoldering with anger and hurt when they retired to their cabin.
He thought, naively, that Basim trusted him, at least respected him. He had led him blind. If Basim had at least told him about his intention to give away a hidden blade like that, perhaps he could have understood it, but he had told him nothing, let him make a fool of himself in front of their hosts, and hushed him like a child. Was this really what they were? Had he led himself to believe that Basim had more respect for him than this?
If Basim, too, had thoughts about how they might have spent their first night together, he did not act on it. Hytham spent the night with his back towards Basim’s cot, Basim spared a few moments to look at his acolyte, before he, too, had rolled over. Hytham felt his entire body tense at the weary sigh his mentor let out.
Only a week or so after they had first arrived in Fornburg, Hytham found himself crippled in a seer’s hut far up on the mountainside overlooking the village. It was a pain he had never before experienced, never before could have imagined, as he drifted in and out of uneasy sleep, only awakened to drink more of the foul-tasting liquids that would keep his body numb and his mind slumbering. Sometimes, in those moments, he turned his head and thought he saw his mentor. His vision swam but Basim’s expression always seemed grim, his arms crossed or hands so tightly clasped together his knuckles turned white. He never said anything — at least he didn’t think so, unable to hear much but the own beating of his heart echoing in his ears — but he stared at him with eyes blazing in anger. Sometimes, when Hytham woke, Basim was not there at all. When Valka told him of althings and rebellion, of plans to escape the clutches of the Fairhaired and sail to distant shores, Hytham wondered if this was it. If this is where Basim would leave him behind.
A liability. A cripple. A bedwarmer he had no use for.
And yet, despite all of his assumptions, Basim had come back for him. Listened to Valka’s advice, helped fasten a wooden splint to his leg, slung his arm over his shoulder and helped him down the mountainside with a surprising amount of care. If he had expected Basim’s presence by his side at all, he would have expected anger, scolding, chastising, but instead he found his mentor’s warm body, rough but gently murmured words of encouragement.
Perhaps, if he allowed himself to believe it, Basim had not just murmured those words of gentle care. Perhaps, if he allowed himself to believe it, Basim had seized that moment they now had alone, far from the gazes of others, and pressed a gentle kiss to the side of Hytham’s cheek.
Things got... Better, in England. For a while.
With the bureau built, the two of them had their own space. When the doors were closed and the windows shuttered, Basim took the fill he had denied them both from their long journey with the Norsemen. Where Hytham stood and organised his scrolls, Basim slid up against him, wrapped his arms against his midriff, buried his face against his neck as if nothing had ever changed. And perhaps Hytham wanted to be annoyed, and mad, that he dared to act like nothing happened, but he found himself too exhausted to argue, the warmth of Basim’s body too comforting, the tingling sensation Basim’s kisses left in their wake too exhilarating. He leaned back against Basim’s body and let the scroll fall from his hands as Basim’s hands moved under his clothing.
But there was only one bed in this bureau. He knew, once more, that it was only a matter of time.
Some days later, Hytham woke up while wrapped in Basim’s arms. He had stayed to not disturb him, but did not allow the acolyte any sense of morning comfort as he wiggled out from their position.
He would be leaving that day, he said. With Sigurd. Who knew when they would be back.
And so Hytham had no choice but to swallow that bitter feeling that rose in his throat. He just nodded, and wished him a successful journey.
When he wandered back to the bureau after saying their farewells, Hytham realised that this was the first time they had been separated — truly separated — since before he had arrived in Constantinople. And perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps he had gotten too attached, perhaps he let those safe moments in Constantinople rule his judgement too much. Perhaps this was it.
As Hytham counted it, he had seen Basim less than ten times during the five years they resided in England, and when his mentor returned to the settlement, it was only for a handful of days, and always was he distracted. Still, they spent the nights together, although Hytham no longer assumed it was because Basim had any ounce of care in him. The distance made them both weary, and if it ever had been love, then it was now only Basim’s half-hearted attempts to quell his own hunger, to calm his boiling blood before he next set out on whatever expedition that lay ahead.
Basim did not make that known, per se. He still kissed Hytham, still brought him the same pleasure he tried to bring himself, even if his own had been reached beforehand. It was just something about it all that gave Hytham that feeling. Perhaps there was no sign at all. Perhaps he just knew.
It had taken him ten years to know, with certainty, that it had not been love.
When Eivor returned from Norway, her head hung heavy, her words quiet and unsure as she told him about Basim’s betrayal. His death. The madness that had set into him as he had tried to slay her and her brother.
When she left the bureau, Hytham sat down in the nearest chair, head swimming with disbelief, with memories, with warnings ignored and tears building in his eyes.
Was this it? Had this really been it? Had ten years by Basim’s side led to this? Had he been so blind?
He should have known. He had been warned. He had known. But Basim’s warm arms that would never wrap around him again had lured him into a sense of security. His lips had quietened his arguments. His hands had kept him soft and pliable and loyal. How could he be strong enough to distrust the man who murmured those praises in his ear when they shared a bed? Had he failed the test?
He knew it, then, at that moment. Once he had dared to hope. When Basim had wrapped him in his arms and held him from behind, nuzzled against his neck and sighed with such soft contentment, he had dared to hope that he was loved. That Basim cared enough for him. That he was just not a flight of fancy, someone to keep his bed warm and his hunger satiated. But he was.
If, at any point of their journey, Basim had ever loved him, he had never made it known. Even now, with tear-stained cheeks in the dark silence of his bureau, he scoffed at the idea that Basim ever would have told him as such. He never told him anything. He led him blindly. Betrayed him like he had betrayed Eivor and Sigurd. He had left him behind.
The wounds still felt raw, years later.
At first he did not allow himself to think of him. To speak of him. He was a deceiver, a betrayer. How could he allow himself to remember a man that had hurt so many? That had strung him along with false, unspoken implications of love? How could he allow himself to remember the man that had hurt him?
But the days and nights grew colder. The wind howled through the shuttered windows and bit his very bones. More than once he remembered those nights when he still had him. When Basim would laugh at how easily the acolyte froze and wrapped him up in his arms to warm him with his own body heat. Those nights when Hytham could still sleep soundly.
Basim’s possessions remained untouched in this bureau. The few things he had left behind. In a drawer of a dresser laid his spare robes, throwing knives that he was going to have sharpened and polished, a small bottle of oil for the hidden blade and another jar with that foul-smelling concoction he had rubbed into his acolyte’s muscles after tense training sessions. Now it all laid ignored in a drawer the acolyte never opened.
It took three years for the weariness to win over his stubbornness, for the ghost of what had once been — what once could be — to move his attention towards what little he had left of the man that once had meant so much to him. He had just returned from Alamut, the brooch with his rank felt heavy on his torso, and the memories of what had once been home could no longer be ignored.
When he entered his dusty little bureau, late into the evening of his return, he had attempted to settle in his cot and forget he ever had a mentor. Forget that Basim had ever existed and that his betrayal had cut deeper than any loss ever had before. But he couldn’t sleep. He did not dwell on the shame as he rose with a heavy sigh, moved towards the dresser that had not been touched at all in over a year.
One of Basim’s white tunics laid folded neatly, its light colour nearly shining in the darkness.
He wondered if Basim had ever loved him, even slightly. And when he curled up in bed with the tunic in his arms, and Basim’s faint smell in his nose, he wondered if he had ever loved him, too.