There was always one easy trick to gain the favor (if not the respect) of vigilantes.
He did not call it such an indelicate term as fuckboy, but there it was, if charming words or coin did not succeed. He got used to it after time. Zihark studied a leaf as it fell aimlessly to the autumn-forest floor in Begnion. No, that was a half-truth; if anything, it was an urge he defaulted to, the same as any army at night throughout history.
Comforting would not be the word he would use for the sudden acrid bitterness that flavored his mouth, but there was monotonous predictability in ... sinking to the baser flavors of humanity. Advantages, too, when it came time to cut them down like red ribbons of wheat later. Their betrayed surprise always gave a lethal opening for a blade between the ribs, and Zihark was not above using such tricks to stay alive.
Not with the types of men the laguz-hunters always revealed themselves as.
Muarim idly reminded him of one of the more memorable vigilantes, once. Strong, stoic; he didn't ask questions, knew when to shut up, and looked like he could keep tacit secrets and give a good fuck -
The tiger laguz was also crafty, far more than most assumed for somebody so quiet and placid. The first clue for the swordsman was his eyes – how he competently tracked everyone’s movement with his back to a wall and close to a door, ready to melt away or appear as needed. Mostly away; the muscular man was not fond of confrontation despite his brawn, something that intrigued the swordsman, and felt incongruous with both of them no strangers to bloodshed.
It was after one such skirmish that Zihark was amused to watch him play a game of cards once with some of the hawks while they were closing in on Daein’s capital. Despite being an unknown playing against the hawk king's observant eyes and ears; Muarim won the meager pot, much to everyone’s surprise. Zihark never bet against the tiger again or forgot him, though Shinon's colorful cursing and tantrum was a highlight of that night, if wince inducing at times.
"That was a good game." Zihark mentioned to the tiger in the chilly morning after, playfully.
Muarim's ear flicked as his glance slid over to the swordsman.
Caution? Unease?
"... Thank you." The big man finally said, his voice an even and lovely timbre on the wind. "They were fine opponents. It was only by luck that the game went in such a direction."
"Care to play sometime with me?"
The hesitation threatened to stretch into a longer, more awkward silence, and yet Zihark pressed on, unperturbed--
"You could invite Tormod over. The kid could probably teach me a few tricks if he's used to your hand."
That finally got the briefest smile out of the laguz. Too brief, too wan, but it was there, and Zihark felt lighter than he had in months since joining this odd mercenary band.
"He ... we would like that. Yes."
It continued after that impromptu card game.
Muarim was reserved, and Muarim did not have many tells for Zihark pick up on. but it was enough that he kept showing up. Surprisingly, after a while, the tiger even brought different boards games, challenging ones at that.
Tormod came too, sometimes. Though other times Zihark got the feeling that he was bored by the long stints of the two men staring at the pieces on the board with no words exchanged until the sun set. the boy, while meaning well when he nagged at them to eat or spar, did not quite understand the rarest company of fond silence between grown ups.
(It did not help, surely, that he wanted very much to do grown up things with Muarim, Zihark thought with a hint of snippiness. In private.)
____________________
Picking up on Muarim's tells was also a game of its own in Zihark's mind.
Sometimes he passed the hours of marching by watching the laguz out of the corner of his eye. It was when Muarim was still that was the key, he decided after the course of a few days through the bitterest of Daein’s canyons. Muarim’s nosed twitched in either form, sensing the air, otherwise motionless with the stillness and grace of a natural-born hunter, save for a dancing tail, especially when a lone robin flew by in a flash of motion --
Once he asked Tormod, the little mage-boy that always followed along like the noisiest of shadows, what they had liked to do during the dead hours in the endless sands of the Grann desert. The swordsman was not the least bit surprised to hear that Muarim had a closely-guarded hobby of bird-watching, It was practical, one of the few ways a slave could distract himself from bonds both visible and invisible, with a mind temporarily free and wandering.
It also befitted somebody who was so aware and so in tune to the world. Mysteriously, and after slyly pumping Tormod for additional information, Zihark always had a few coins enough to spare for some old bread or seed in the evenings when they were off-duty, and to admire what creatures came by on the road-side.
Yet.
The little nothings came to a grinding halt when they camped out in front of the capital, bracing for yet another grueling battle.
The stupid thing was, he was distracted.
Not by the next battle which would at least be logical, or fretting over his weapons which would also be sane, but by which day it was. Zihark did not remember very many days let alone anniversaries, but the one where his life went to hell was one he would never forget despite every attempt otherwise.
Such as drinking.
Zihark did not usually care to drink -- far too easy for fatal secrets to come spilling out, and it was the vice of men he cared least for; too messy, too crude, too loud --
And yet, other oblivions were not available – so hissed his mind with resentful lucidity – so he took the least permanent one in lieu of a better solution, with a hangover being a price he was willing to pay. (Of fucking course this time didn’t work; he was normally out like a drunk by his cot after one bottle of something that masqueraded as alcohol, but three, three, and he was still - )
He was on the edge of the camp, where the more reticent members of the mercenary band brooded alone or a lone watch-guard patrolled, ignoring them with equal brusqueness. He had forgotten he always hated this part of being with a company, the damned lack of privacy.
As if on cue, he saw bright eyes briefly glint amongst the dark trees, and the telltale blur of a green tiger shifting back to human form.
Speak of the devil.
Muarim delicately padded around the empty bottles, far more graceful than he had any right to be for somebody strong enough to lift boulders with ease. Zihark got the concerning feeling of being stalked by a cat – and in his inhibited mind, decided that it was quite the pleasant feeling, a different and more heated buzz than the wine had been. More effective at distraction, too.
“Oh hellooo, Muarim.” He slurred, saluting sloppily with a nearly-empty bottle in hand.
“Are you injured?”
Zihark laughed, a crude, jagged, and wounded sound that echoed.
And laughed, and laughed, until it all came up suddenly as wet uncontrolled retches, one after another.
(He would have flinched at the naked edge of the sound, had he been of sober mind.)
“Aren’t we all?” Zihark giggled between dry heaves, patting Muarim’s burly arm with an incoherence that the tiger was bothered by, along with the rest of the sorry, wild-eyed disheveled state. The laguz also didn’t miss the more-than-brotherly bodily responses, but chose to ignore it, only steadily holding the silvery hair back from the swordsman’s sweaty brow.
Pity would have been the last thing the man or his pride would want; and Muarim recognized it with masked sorrow and recognizance. (In another life, he saw the ghost of himself in those shards that masqueraded as a man, ground down to the hilt by a brutal world.)
Muarim didn’t know what possessed him to do anything more than stand there, and hold the limp body of the strange beorc. He had no answer to taking him back to the camp, nor for gently laying him down on the cold cot.
Least of all, for when he lingered and decided to curl up next to the pathetic heap, laguz-fur keeping them both warm until the early hours of the morning.
____________________
In the end, it was Muarim that made the first move, a few weeks later.
It had been after a particularly brutal battle in Crimea, on a plain with a name Zihark had forgotten already. A bolting sage had nicked him with the shock field, numbing his arm with ugly splotches of dark purple and grey, his hand locked around the dripping sword-blade for hours until the healers so very gently pried away each and every swollen finger until his throat was raw from moaning around the rag stuffed in his mouth --
But Muarim had found him.
Muarim was the one that heard, and found him in his tent, an unnecessary act of kindness. He came bearing a new board game to distract from the dull pain, somehow stashed away; and stayed and played until the night grew long and the hot tea he had made had long since cooled.
It was that night --
It was that night Zihark voiced the unsaid, gravely voice barely above a whisper with need.
"Break me, please. Please."
(Zihark was no stranger, too, to begging.)
It was an ugly thing, to use Muarim's caring nature so selfishly. But then, it looked like Muarim was also thinking the same in that moment, looking down at him with a pained expression and Zihark wanted less bloody fucking thinking in that moment and more --
All coherence slid right into gibberish as Muarim’s hot, wet tongue and lips wrapped sloppily around his cock, and sucked until he was a wrecked writhing heap of moans and worshipful curses on the way to a climax-fire that left spots in his vision -
Until he came messily with precum and come, still twitching on that cot, panting as he saw the fleetest satisfactory gleam in Muarim's eye, the intimate gleam only prey saw, and that reduced him gladly to an animal.
It didn't last long as Zihark had sardonically flashed his teeth in challenge and nuzzled down the length of Muarim’s hairy chest, biting and nipping along down and down luxuriously to the man’s own erect length; he had caught him by surprise. It was with vicious pride when the swordsman felt him go limp and throb with heated pleasure at the masterwork of his tongue and mouth, and oh -
He liked – oh, he deliriously liked – being this kind of useful. If there was an oblivion he could pick, it would be this one, half choking and drooling on a cock with a fist in his hair, incoherent groans and grunts mingled in the sweat-stink of the tent, goading the other man to a climax of his own. Or giddily being ground and split in half like a rusty spear with the tiger’s massive hands guiding his hips. There were many ways that could go, he thought smugly afterwards.
Would, as he teased the coarse hairs on the man’s thighs with a fingertip in the sleepy moments afterwards.
“I hate to disappoint, but don’t expect a reach-around anytime soon with this arm.”
Muarim just slowly shook his head with fondness, but Zihark, by now, could tell he was amused, with the lazy flick of a tail around his bare calf. A satisfied Muarim had a whole host of tells, evidently – he fully intended on taking advantage of each and every one of them.
“Beorc humor … You need to rest, not indulging in my … weakness.”
“That’s rich from you, I haven’t had a workout like that in a while.” Zihark teased back with a rasp, his throat impossibly shot for the next few weeks, and yet …
And yet, he was undone and happy.