Chapter Text
It was the same as any morning.
Jamil packed their lunches and cooked breakfast as the sun started to rise, casting his work in a golden hour glow. He idly puppeteered many magical hands to knit rows across the right half of his scalp, weaving golden class rebellions into the plaits as they went. His spoon shoveled bites of a personal bowl of masoub into his mouth mindlessly as he penned answers into his many papers. Masoub was typically served for a group, but he was too busy in the morning to sit down and split a platter with Kalim, so he simply made it by bowl.
At six thirty, like always, his alarm to go wake Kalim rang. He sighed, setting his pencil down on the counter with an undue level of aggression, making it click harshly against the marble. He was going to lose his place on this word problem. Whatever, his birthright duties took priority over grades.
Plus, he was starting to, in some very small, very suppressed way, look forward to this. As time had gone on post-breakdown, they’d grown further apart. Kalim had grown more independent. And, really, he should’ve been happy; he had more free time, and with it, freedom.
But his strings weren’t gone; he still cooked, cleaned, woke him up in the morning and walked him to bed at night. All that had changed was that the crosses he used to make Kalim dance had become nigh impossible to use.
That- no. Kalim owned him. Any control he’d dreamt up having over his master was just a way to cope, and that disillusion was positive if anything.
He pushed himself away from the countertop he’d been leaning on and turned on his heels, following the familiar path to Kalim’s near royal bedroom.
—
He’d taken to knocking, now. He didn’t bother previously, and it didn’t usually wake Kalim up anyway. Still, he did it.
After a brief trine on tapping his knuckles on wood, he pushed the door open with his hip. His left hand held a silver tray - not a tray in the color of silver, but a solid, elemental silver platter. Why Al-Asim’s felt the need to eat off such heavy fucking dishes, Jamil had no clue.
The bed was empty, and the bathroom door was open. There was a splatter of bile on the floor.
An entirely internalized panic befitting only a seven-alarm fire started to settle deep into his bones. Was Kalim poisoned? Was he sick? Jamil had cooked dinner last night, so it didn’t seem-
The bottom drawer of his nightstand was slightly ajar.
Oh.
Of. Fucking. Course. Why did he even start with the good faith assumptions when he knew damn well that Kalim had done this to himself?
Jamil’s left arm was starting to tremble under the weight of the serving tray it held up. Suddenly far more irritated than he’d been already, he crossed the room and set the platter on Kalim’s makeshift desk - a chest, likely full of sentimental nick-nacks and jewels alike, the proto-horder. Choking coughs cut the room as Jamil glared over at the puddle on the floor, work made thoughtlessly, recklessly. Spoiled brat.
Still, with a soft sigh, he turned and approached the bathroom, glowing by virtue of it being the only area with a light turned on.
Kalim was hunched over the toilet, as expected. He was a bit twitchy, but simultaneously incredibly stiff. His face was hidden, but the way his fingers flexed read with enough agony for an expression to be unnecessary. Jamil leaned on the doorframe, arms crossed, vaguely annoyed.
That was what he got for making dumb decisions.
But, hadn’t he said…
Irrelevant. He knew where the ibuprofen was. He didn’t need liquor to dismiss a headache; Jamil didn’t and he had to put up with this shit every day.
“Kalim. It’s six thirty, class starts in an hour.” Professional, as always.
“H-huh?” He pushed himself upright with an excessive amount of labour, eyes bleary as he looked over at the door.
“It’s six thirty,” He repeated, taking a few steps forward, waiting for his master to request a hand.
“Oh…” Kalim turned to face forward once again, reaching for a strip of toilet paper to wipe his mouth off with. Jamil supposed he was supposed to feel pity. He couldn’t muster it. Poison made people ill, Kalim already knew that. Still, he took it. Actions had consequences.
The boy on the floor cleared his throat as he tossed the trash into the toilet and flushed it, trying to gain coherence. “Sorry if I scared you.”
“It’s fine if you’re fine,” It wasn’t, his terse tone made that plenty clear, but he offered a hand anyway. “Come on.”
Kalim looked up at his hand with a tired smile and placed his own in it, letting Jamil hoist him up with little effort on his own part. Of course, Jamil always bore the brunt of the work. Kalim was unsteady when he finally managed to get on his feet, knees shaking. Jamil tried to help him a few steps, only for him to careen into the wall nearby, head bumping against the tile with a dull thunk and a quiet squeak of pain.
“Are you still drunk?” It was a rhetorical question, asked with more than a hint of bitterness.
“W-What…? I-I’m not drunk, I…” A soft sob. He let his head fall back against the wall he was facing, shadowing his face with his naturally brittle hair.
“Then what are you?”
“I-I don’t know, w-why are you yelling at me, I…” Now suddenly dismayed, he turned, let his back fall against the wall and his knees give, slowly sliding to the floor and hiding his face in his hands. Sniffling, then, sobbing. His shoulders rolled with heaving breaths, overwhelmed, almost scared.
Something twisted in Jamil’s gut. Something deep, something rejected. He followed his owner to the ground, sat beside him, but didn’t touch.
“I’m not yelling at you.”
“Y-You are! You don’t believe me… Why does no one ever believe me...?”
“I- Do you have a better explanation? Why else would you be falling into walls and throwing up at six in the morning?” He was obviously, audibly unconvinced. The faintest smell of alcohol under the bitter acid, the flush without fever, the stumbling? Sure, the latter two could be chalked up to a variety of other things, but nothing eliminated the ethanol in the air.
“I-It just happens sometimes, I-I don’t know…”
So, he had no explanation. “Right. That doesn’t sound like an excuse at all.”
Kalim gave no response. He just cried, head in his knees, covering his ears with his hands. He was whispering something to himself, but the only comprehensible word was ‘listen’. It was obvious that the lack of intelligibility was intentional on his part.
This was not, in fact, the result Jamil had wanted. He’d wanted a fight, to be quite honest - blow off the steam from having to scrub the floor before the sun had risen. Perhaps this was a bit deeper than he was letting it be; in his defense, it was seven in the morning, but…
Jamil paused. If he actually wanted answers, pressuring the boy wasn’t how he was going to get them, he was sensitive and taught to clam up if people interrogated him. Honestly, Jamil was also just starting to feel a bit guilty about the harsh tone he’d used before, assuming the worst like always, and, like always, being proven wrong.
They were going to be late to class.
This felt more important than class.
Jamil sighed, leaned one of his temples on the wall he sat against. “...I’m listening. Can you tell me what happened?”
Hyperventilating gasps. Jamil resisted the urge to reach out and touch him, let him get his bearings. Kalim would happily throw himself on top of Jamil if he wanted that kind of attention, whether or not Jamil was okay with it. Slowly, Kalim sat up, sniffling and shaking. He kept his eyes glued on the tile. “I-I woke up… and my hips hurt, so I couldn’t really walk… but I was nauseous so I tried to get up… a-and then I fell over, so I ended up throwing up on the floor… I stayed there for a while. I got up at some point. I-I don’t remember when, but it wasn’t sunrise yet. And now I’m here.”
“Oh.” So he’d spent five minutes bullying him for waking up sick. Well. That kinda made him feel like an asshole.
Wait, but…
“Then why does it smell like alcohol?”
“Oh, I-I couldn’t sleep, ‘cause my thighs hurt, so… yeah. I’m sorry, I-I know you don’t like it, but I was tired an’…”
So this wasn’t an illness then, it was what he’d been talking about before. Well, what his body had been forced to tell Jamil had meant, anyway. “Do you know why this happens?”
“No, not really. It’s kinda random. Being upset makes it worse.” His voice was thick, cut with sniffles and mucus. Stress based, then; at least to a degree. That didn’t narrow it down much, though. Most chronic issues would flare under stress.
“When did this start?” Probably some time recently, or the medical team back home would’ve caught it.
“Uh… maybe when I was six?”
Okay, so that meant… wait, what? “When you were six? Kalim, why didn’t you say anything, you have a whole medical team, you-”
“I did! They never believed me… ‘cause I was always dancing and stuff, you know? So they said I was exaggerating. If I was telling the truth, I wouldn’t be running around so much, or whatever.” He turned his face away, muttering to the tiles, “I didn’t like to bring it up, anyway. It makes me feel weird.”
“Weird? Like-”
Kalim visibly tensed at the slight push back, wrapping his arms around his knees and pulling them to his chest. He refused to look over. “Just… weird.”
“That doesn’t-”
“Stop. I don’t… I don’t have an explanation. It just feels weird when I talk about it.” And suddenly, all of those sniffles had become inexplicable agitation. It wasn’t directed at Jamil, really, but the jarring speed of the shift still caught him off guard.
He felt a little rejected.
Not that he wanted to be Kalim’s closest confidante anyway, he was forced to be, and the only things they had in common were things that they had been made to have in common, but… No one would serve as a playmate for 17 years and expect to be shut out the second something got too harsh. Kalim told him everything. He didn’t want to be a councillor, but, after years of having been, this lack of understanding of Kalim’s inner world was getting on his nerves. He was supposed to know everything about Kalim. It felt wrong to be rejected from a mindscape that was essentially his own.
“I… fine. There’s breakfast on your desk. I-I’ll go… make tea, I guess. I have to get cleaner from the kitchen anyway.”
Solid red eyes, both sclera and iris, met Jamil’s. “B-But what about class?”
“It’s fine, Kalim. I’d probably be late regardless, and you’re not going anywhere like this.” Jamil stood, brushing himself off. He didn’t have much going on today, anyway. If he picked up and did all of their homework within the first few hours of the day, he may have even found some free time. Not that he’d know what to do with it. He always ended up vacuuming.
“No! No, no, I can do it! I’m okay, promise, just lemme-” Kalim tried to follow him up, but tripped and hit the tile with a gasp before he’d even taken a step, body becoming rigid with pain. He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut, the hand not propping him up moving to cover his mouth.
Crouching, Jamil began to reach out, started to speak, but was cut off from both with a hiccuped, “I’m useless…”
Well, um. Yes, he was, but Jamil really didn’t like how heartbroken he sounded about that. He’d imagined this to be a moment of triumph - yes, master, you are, I’m better than you in every capacity - but he just felt… guilty. His ribs ached with empathy. Nothing about this felt like winning.
“That’s not… true, you’re-”
“I am! I can’t even walk right… I’m just a tall toddler…”
Again, Jamil was sure he’d said something just like that to him before. Jamil was sure that, at the time, he had meant it. And it wasn’t wrong, but… this boy was curled up on the floor sobbing. He didn’t mean it like this.
But what did he think degrading someone for months would do?
“Kalim… I don’t… think that. I- I’ll…” This wasn’t what he wanted. It was supposed to feel better. It was supposed to balance the scales, why didn’t he feel any better? His chest felt tight. “I-I’ll go make that tea. Stay here. …Please.”
“B-But-”
“Please, Kalim. I- I’m…” He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to say this, but he did want Kalim to stop crying. “I want to help.”
“Liar…” Quiet, sniffled.
“Kalim, please. I don’t mind.” He did. It was just starting to become evident that the resentment he felt around this kind of work was… incomplete in its understanding of the situation. It bothered him much more that he hadn’t noticed all of these struggles than it did to mitigate them - that was just his job. He was bitter about that being his lot in life, sure, but he’d assumed Kalim made his job harder out of ignorance, that was what mostly what irritated him on a daily basis. He’d never considered a person as privileged as him was doing it for a real reason. If Jamil could do it alone, Kalim should've been able to do the same.
He hated serving. But, human to human, he didn’t mind helping.
Kalim stared at him for a moment with glossy eyes, mouth hidden in his knees, watching him with the saddest, kindest gaze. Then, after a moment, he let his face fall back behind his arms. That was the closest thing Jamil was getting to an ascent.
Silent, Jamil stood again. Took a few steps towards the door.
He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to ensure Kalim was medically stable, wanted to check a pulse and walk him through a breathing exercise. He wanted to feel like his presence alone could determine Kalim’s mood again.
But that was what he sacrificed for a moment of magical freedom, wasn’t it?
Was it worth it?
He glanced over at the ball of flesh and silk in the corner, then, with a sigh, left the room.