Chapter Text
It was cleaning day, yet again.
It was a monthly routine. Kalim was spoiled - he’d never learned to clean up after himself. He kept his floor relatively debris free, but that was only so he could use his ample space to dance about at ungodly hours of the night, or when he was procrastinating on his homework. The encrusted dust and grime was only ever scrubbed from the gold gilded floor by Jamil’s hands, the bed was left unmade and he was the only person who sorted the dresser.
Oh well.
He glanced around the room, taking stock of the work ahead of him, a tote bag of supplies slung over his shoulder.
Kalim had a full schedule that day, so he’d made sure to clear his own. He hadn’t mentioned that today was the day he was going to clean - Kalim never cared, and it was easier if he didn’t have to get the newly developed speech about how Kalim was ‘so grateful’ and he’d ‘make sure to make it up to him’. It made him feel guilty about it all, even if the sentiment was mildly flattering.
Everything looked to be in roughly the right place, at least. Jamil sighed to himself and let his bag slip off his arm and slide to the ground with a plastic clatter.
First things first, reorder the bookshelf. Then empty the dresser, sort and fold the clothes, and put them away. Reorder the cushions on the wooden loveseat, dust the windowsill, empty the incense burner, make the bed, vacuum the carpets and mop the tile. The list went on.
Well, it would never get done if he never started.
Jamil crossed the room with soft footsteps, posture perfect. One might’ve expected that the daily toils of his job would cause his shoulders to slump, but he had trained his body well, and it stayed dignified no matter his exhaustion.
The books on the shelves were dusty and untouched, save for a red hardcover sketchbook.
Hm. Intriguing. He reached out and pulled it off the shelf, thumbing it open.
The first page was idle sketches of classmates, likely made while ignoring the teacher in class. They were well done, maybe even better than Jamil could’ve drawn. Kalim had always had a knack for faces, and the adults would often tell him to color when he’d get upset as a child; he had a lot of experience with pencil and paper.
He flipped the page and a drawing of himself greeted him. It was colored, and the background had a steady, monotonous teardrop pattern. Jamil looked happy in the sketch, like he was playing in the rain. Something jealous, bitter and heartbroken broke to bits in his chest, a shattered vase of shattered dreams. He turned the page.
A self portrait, scribbled out and stabbed in countless areas, primarily his face and waist.
Jamil’s eyebrows furrowed. He started flipping faster.
A mandala. Another, half finished. Doodled portraits of Jamil, smiling, laughing, glaring, flying on a broom. Several sketches scribbled out, all of… Rook? He was holding something. A bottle, perhaps? Pages of repetitive, therapeutic patterns - be they flowers, vines, cartoony vials of poison, hearts, or smiley faces - colored in increasingly warm, dark tones. Half-finished lines of music, scribbled out with little angry notes done in ugly, messy handwriting (locrian??? Who is the audience for this???, this bit would sound awful done live, who is even playing this part???). Another mandala. A finished colored pencil drawing of-
What was even happening in this…? Blacks and reds, a human form melting into another pinned under it, flesh and blood flowing into itself like fresh mozzarella sticks. It was abstract enough that even those details were hard to discern. It wasn’t a piece designed to look like something. The strokes were meant to elicit feeling, not familiarity.
Whatever. Kalim could make creepy doodles if he wanted to. Jamil didn’t come in to search his sketchbooks, anyway. Face still tense with some foreign emotion, he snapped the book shut and slid it back onto the shelf.
Where was the feather duster…?
—
An hour later, he was sorting the things in Kalim’s nightstand, lifting the furniture and vacuuming the carpet behind him with magic. He’d gotten used to doing tasks with incantations without looking, considering how constantly he was multitasking.
The top drawer had a variety of useful bits and bobs, all with a proper space in the plastic dividers that had been put in to help him stay organized. Of course, this backfired terribly, and the items were just as scattered as they would’ve been without, the only difference being that Jamil had to actually take everything out and put it in specific places.
Aspirin, dimenhydrinate, ibuprofen, lamotrigine, and activated charcoal tablets clattered against their bottles and blister packs as he tucked them into the first section. Individually wrapped candies crinkled into the second, office supplies, the third. An assortment of rings and gold earrings jangled into the fourth and final compartment.
One down, two left. The motor of the vacuum growled in the background.
The middle drawer kept Kalim’s scarves and other varieties of headwear. Despite how often he had told him to fold them when he took them off, all of the headwraps were tossed in without a care.
Jamil sighed and picked up one of many lengths of silk, shaking out the wrinkles from the fabric.
The windows beyond him were enticing - they sang nostalgia for places he’d never visited, lands he’d never explored. They were so vivid. He’d never been to any of the cities that called him back. He’d just run the dreams through his head often enough that, like walnuts rolled in one’s palms for years, they’d grown smooth and started to form to the grooves of his brain.
Another scarf ran through his hands, cold to the touch.
Cold air running its fingers through his hair, wind whistling past his ears. Realistically he’d have his hair pulled back while flying, as it was far more practical, but in his fantasies, everything was free. His hair, his movement, his soul. The snowy banks below his broom looked exactly like the snowglobes sold in the bazaar.
Jamil blinked. A stack of silks sat on the table in front of him.
Right. That wasn’t for this lifetime.
He put the tidied scarves away and pushed the middle drawer shut, squatting to pull open the bottom one. Like usual, it just had water bottles. Kalim had a tendency to wake from night terrors, and-
Was that a bottle of vodka?
Shot out of his daydream daze, Jamil grabbed the glass bottle surrounded by ones made of plastic and lifted it into the light.
It wasn’t an expensive kind - not expensive enough to be carefully kept by the Al-Asim’s, anyway - but he’d have had to have stolen it from the storerooms. And, while perhaps that wasn’t out of line for Kalim, imbibing was haram. The country was no longer particularly strict about such things, and his parents were known to partake socially, but… this wasn’t something Jamil had come to expect of Kalim. He’d always spent a lot of his time with his more devout grandmothers, as they were around the palace and idling more often than not. He cared a lot about what his relatives thought of him, and he most certainly knew they’d disapprove.
Something seething and leashed thrashed about in his chest.
When did this start? Why didn’t Jamil know, why hadn’t he told him? Kalim would never keep something like this from him- No. That was irrelevant. How hadn’t Jamil known regardless of Kalim telling him? How hadn’t he noticed? Surely there had been signs. He’d just gotten sloppy, started ignoring things, how hadn’t he-
Kalim was a 17 year old boy. He could drink alone in his room if he wished. It wasn’t an activity unexpected for their age bracket.
His hands were literally shaking with rage. The frosted glass trembled in harmony with his fingers.
What did Kalim have to drink about, huh? He couldn’t even begin to understand how much work Jamil did; he woke up to wash dishes, he did homework while cooking, his hair would go days past when he should’ve washed it because by the time he got any free time it’d be eleven at night. And Kalim was the one with a nightcap?
He probably thought about that while he drank, too. Self-pitying drivel about how he didn’t notice all the stress Jamil was under, like it didn’t lie in the margins of every word they’d exchanged since fourteen. Like Jamil wasn’t by his side all hours he wasn’t at school or with his family. Like he shouldn’t have known.
Jamil should’ve noticed this. Was he stupid? Was Kalim taunting him by leaving the bottle in a place so easily found? Was this intended as some sort of payback? ‘I don’t know you as well as I thought I did? Look, you don’t know me either, take that’? How dare he! Kalim had no concept of why he’d done what he did, how-
Just get. Back. To cleaning, Jamil. He could question him later. There were still floors to mop and a bathroom to tidy.
Oh seven, he had to scrub that grout again, didn’t he? Great. The day couldn’t stop getting better.
He threw the bottle back into the drawer, its fall softened with the plastic scrunching of bottles, then stood and kicked it shut.
Pain ran up his leg, his sandals doing nothing to protect him from stubbing his toe. He doubled over, gritting his teeth and silently screaming in agony. It took all of his very, very strained willpower to take a deep breath, straighten his spine, and walk over to his bag of cleaning supplies.
—
Kneeling with a toothbrush and a bowl of baking soda paste, Jamil took out his inexplicable, homicidal rage on the cement between the bathroom floor tiles. He scrubbed the stains of a hangover from them with nothing but raw adrenaline.
At least, he assumed the vomit stains on the tile beside the toilet had resulted from that. He could think of little other reason why they would be there. The fan whirred softly in the background.
He was always cleaning up Kalim’s mess.
The worst part about Kalim was that he wasn’t selfish. No, no, that would be too easy. He was just so genuinely, blindly self-centered that he didn’t notice all the work he made for others. Didn’t think to wonder how much trouble Jamil would be in if their families were to find out Kalim had started partying in a wholly different way while they were both at school. While Jamil was fully entrusted with his handling.
What was he trying to drown in a bottle, anyway? He didn’t have chores, or responsibilities, or homework… well, technically he had homework, but Jamil was always the one who ended up doing it. Who was Kalim to hide from a life so much easier than his own?
Maybe he should do the same. Leave out a few liquor testers or a razor blade for Kalim to happen across, make him feel the pain Jamil felt when he found-
Focus on scrubbing, Jamil. The sound of grit against stone, the scent of lemon. Focus on reality.
And his organs! They were already damaged from the poisonings during childhood, if one of them failed under Jamil’s watch, he’d never forgive himse- he’d never be forgiven by the family. He’d be tossed out onto the streets, Najima would starve, his parents would have to beg like dogs, they probably wouldn’t even let him into the funeral ceremony.
That irresponsible idiot! Did he not realise what precious cargo he was? How vital it was that he stayed in his display case and didn’t get scratched? Did he not know the price tag on his life?
Of course he did, he’d seen the bounties after kidnappings. He just didn’t care. But Jamil did. He cared, he cared, he cared. He was expected to do so for two, to feel the weight of things twofold, to watch and ensure-
The bathroom door creaked open behind him. Jamil, irresponsibly off-guard, didn’t even notice until the air brushing against his back spoke.
“Jamil? What are you doing here?”
“Kalim.” Jamil dropped the tools in his hands instantly, whipping around. His voice didn’t properly convey his anger - vocal cords didn’t have the capacity to express it. His eyes, likely glowing red, met the naturally sanguine ones in the doorframe. Kalim look startled, confused. “I've been cleaning.”
He let the pause linger. Kalim just stared, further baffled by the tone Jamil was using. When waiting didn't give Kalim the revelation he'd been waiting for, he sighed, then asked with no small amount of hostility in his voice, "Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“H-Huh? What’re you talking about, Jam-”
“Don’t pretend to be stupid. Why is there liquor in your nightstand?” Accusation flooded his voice, turned it to a shout.
“O-Oh.” That annoyingly bright face fell, and his gaze dropped down to his shoes. It was already angled down to accommodate the fact that Jamil was knelt. “Um… listen, i-it's not wh-”
“Answer the question. Directly.” Kalim could deflect his way out of a murder charge. Jamil knew this, and had little intention of allowing it. Why had this been kept from him? Kalim told him everything. He needed answers.
Asim squirmed under the scorn, hugging himself in hopes it would calm him down. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened and closed again. “I-I… I have homework to do.”
He turned on his heels, trying to walk away from the situation by walking away from Jamil.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Stumbling to his feet, Jamil seized Kalim’s bejeweled wrist and spun him, pinning him to the wall beside the bathroom door. Wide red eyes watched him with terror, then, after no more than a few seconds, glazed over acceptance. “Stop running away from your problems and answer me.”
Was it that he hadn’t done his job to Kalim’s satisfaction? Why had he been forced to sacrifice his entire childhood if Kalim was still so fucking unhappy? What was it all for? And what if he got hurt? What if it interacted with a medication and he-
“I… I don’t have an answer, Jamil. Let me go.”
“Yo- You don’t- What?” What the hell was that meant to mean? He ‘didn’t have an answer’? Did it magically manifest in his drawers?! “What is that supposed to mean?!”
“Stop.” The bejeweled boy muttered at the carpet. “I don’t want to-”
“I don’t care what you want! Kalim, do you have any idea how irresponisble-”
“I KNOW!” Palms slipped out of Jamil’s grasp and collided with his chest, knocking him backwards. He looked up, staring with awestruck rage at the figure towering over him. “I know, okay?! I get it! Nothing I do is right and I’m stupid and you hate me! I get it, you don’t have to keep shouting at me! I already told you, I don’t have an answer, okay?!”
Kalim looked away, sniffling, face flush. He stormed over to his bag and threw it over his shoulder, spinning on his heels with fully intending to leave. But, when he got to the door, he stopped, hand hovering next to the handle.
This was Jamil’s chance.
“I-I’m sorry I yelled at you, I just-”
Jamil rushed to his feet and darted across the room, grabbing Kalim’s jaw and forcing him to meet his eyes. The panic written across his face was unmissable. Jamil didn’t allow it to faze him, no matter how familiar it felt, no matter how childhood instincts told him to soothe those nerves.
“The one you behold is your master.” Kalim’s eyes, teary, widened further as their pupils began to pulse orange. He made frenzied humming noises of rejection, trying to shake the hand off of his face and failing. All that did was make the fingers tighten. Kalim would give in. He knew the pain the spell would cause if he failed to. “When I ask you a question, you will answer. When I give you a command, you will ascent. Snake charmer!”
The muscles of his target’s face relaxed, body losing all tension as the mind operating it lost all control. Expression dulled beyond anything Kalim would’ve done naturally, his suddenly monotone voice replied, “I await your command, master.”
This was going to be harder than ordering him around, for obvious reasons. Snake charmer was not a truth spell, it was mind control. If the mind he was trying to pull information out of was far off, it would be significantly more draining to dig through.
But it wasn’t like Kalim had given him much of a choice.
Jamil let his hands fall to his sides, releasing the wrists clutched inside them and staring at the wooden nightstand across the room.
“Why was there alcohol in your drawer?” He asked once again, repeating himself for the body’s new puppeteer to hear.
“It’s an effective pain reliever. Do you want me to dispose of it for you?”
He whipped his head back to the speaker. “What?”
“Do you want me to dispose of the bottle?” The thrall reiterated, monotone, lifeless.
“No, no, I- I heard what you said… but why would he need a pain reliever? Is he hurt? Why didn’t he tell me he was injured?” He no longer spoke to the body like it was Kalim, because it wasn’t. Kalim allowed Jamil to order him around; that was the only option for the figure standing by the door.
"I am not. I use it for aches, master.”
“Like, from dancing? Pulling a muscle?” Why would he do that? There were far simpler options for such things, both in ease of attainment and ease of mind consuming - like the ibuprofen two drawers up. Why use alcohol?
“No, I was referring to flare-ups.”
“What?”
Kalim had never mentioned anything like that to him. He whined about the occasional headache, but nothing beyond. And he was dramatic about pains. He’d catch colds and act like he was on his deathbed. There was no possible way Jamil missed something like that. It would’ve been obvious, should have been obvious.
How had he failed at his job so blatantly?
“Flare-ups. It’s a common term for when symptoms of chronic issues present heavily on-”
“I know what it means! But of what? He’s always seemed perfectly fine to me, save for when he was in the hospital… How has he never mentioned this to me? How did I…” He started pacing, rubbing a strand of hair between his forefinger and thumb.
His parents would be furious if they knew he’d missed something so important. Was it a condition, did he have something wrong with him? What if it was one of his organs failing and Kalim just hadn’t put two and two together, how didn’t Jamil notice? How had he gotten so sloppy?
“I didn’t want you to know, and I didn’t want it on record.”
Every time the thrall spoke, Jamil could feel the energy ebbing away from him. He couldn’t keep doing this much longer, not if he intended to wake up without punishment from his own body.
But he needed answers.
“What does that mean? What record?”
“My medical chart. I’ve never gotten to see it myself, but I have seen it in the hands of my family. I have no desire to worry them, nor to be wheeled around the palace. Therefore, I took to handling it alone. I apologize for confusing you, master, it isn’t my intention to be vague. Do you wish for me to-”
“No. Don’t do anything, just…” Jamil sighed, pulling a piece of his hair from its follicle. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to come to his senses, or to try. The mind fog from overusing his abilities was starting to set in. Snake charmer was never meant to be used like this. “Where is it affecting? How did this develop? Why didn’t he tell me? I don’t have his records.”
“I cannot answer your first two questions. To the third, I knew you would panic, or be angry, as you are now. I didn’t want you to worry.”
“You can’t say?! You’re a thrall, you answer to me.”
“It is not my decision, but the host’s. I apologize, master.”
“The host’s?! That’s not possible, the spell doesn’t work like-”
A violent, sudden wave of fatigue crashed over him, almost sending him to the floor as he tripped over his feet pacing. Jamil felt his hands begin to shake, knees buckle. Cold, cloying nausea settled in his throat. Chills ran up his limbs. A sharp needle stabbed through the side of his head.
Right, he wasn’t an endless fount of magic.
He had to stop. He didn’t have the capacity to continue wrenching thoughts from a brain his own magic had turned off. He needed to think, figure out what to do with this.
Without another word, Jamil stumbled to the door, leaving both Kalim’s room and his mind in a dazed state of overwhelm.