Allie's War Season Three (142 page)

He gave me a harder look. “Yes. And fuck you for bringing up your infidelity right now.”

I stared at him, feeling his words like a punch.

“Jesus,” I said, pulling away. “So
not
convincing me this is a good idea.”

He shook his head, catching hold of my thigh when I started to remove my leg from around him. “Hey. I’m sorry...I’m sorry.” Gripping my leg tighter, he pulled on my light to get me to look at him. “Allie...I’m sorry. I really am. I know how I’m acting right now. I just really don’t understand why you’re not hearing me on this. Our safety as a group is more important than a few hurt feelings and jealous tantrums...including mine. I’m not fucking around right now...”

I felt my mouth harden into a frown. "I am hearing you,” I said. “I'm sorry you don’t like my answer. But no. No way."

He nodded, but I could tell from his eyes he hadn’t dropped it.

I could also see the frustration seething there, almost on the surface, along with something else, I realized. A fear pulsed there, something I almost recognized, but that I hadn’t felt on him in months. Not just fear, a kind of helplessness, like he was lost somewhere, fighting unseen opponents.

It scared me a little, especially when I put it together with the way he’d looked when we were talking about Menlim.

It occurred to me in the same set of seconds that I remembered that fear mostly from the tank, back when we’d still been trying to separate his light from that of the Dreng. Back then, the same feeling seemed to exude out of his very pores. It had been so intense at times I hadn’t been able to sleep. Most of the time, I could barely eat, or think straight, and the fear hadn’t even really been
mine,
strictly speaking.

“Revik,” I said, softer. I rubbed his chest with my hand, watching his eyes close in reaction. “Come on, baby. What is going on with you right now? Just tell me. Stop stalling and tell me...”

He shook his head, gazing out over the table without seeming to see anyone sitting there.

I felt that feeling of helplessness worsen, along with a flush of protectiveness intense enough that my hands tightened on him. When he still hadn’t broken the silence, I tried to turn his head with my hand. He let me, but I could feel the frustration there, still.

“Hey,” I said, tugging on his hair. “Let’s get out of here. Hang out in the room.”

“Not right now,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why not?”

“Not right now, Allie,” he repeated. “You don’t want to be alone with me right now.”

“Yes, I do,” I coaxed.

When I pulled at his light, he shook his head a second time, his eyes unseeing as he extricated himself from my aleimi. Giving in, I nodded, but felt my muscles tense a little, even as I removed my hands from him.

"It's
you
Jon's worried about, you know,” Revik said, his voice blunt. “He’s jealous of you and Wreg...probably because on some level he senses what happened in China. I don’t see how our being together in front of them will make that worse. It might even make it better. If he gets the purpose of that kind of bonding, he’ll realize it’s not personal...not the way he thinks."

Glancing down, he saw my expression and frowned back at me.

“...He wants it, too,” he added. “Jon. The group thing. I’ve felt it on him before now. He might not
know
he wants it, but I can feel it...” When I only shook my head, clicking at him in open anger that time, I saw Revik force his own expression to relax, right before he softened his voice. "Allie...you've got to start thinking like a seer when it comes to some of these things. I’m not going to jeopardize the group...or you...just because your brother and you still think of yourselves as human.”

“Are you actually
pressuring
me about this?” I said, anger edging into my voice. “Pulling the ‘you’re acting like an uptight human’ card? Seriously?”

Revik shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what
do
you mean?”

“I wish you’d just trust me for once,” he said, frustration coloring his voice. “Just trust me and do what I fucking
ask,
Alyson...for once.”

I stared at him, feeling a kind of disbelief as I stared at his face.

His fear was on the surface now, though, vibrating my aleimi as he looked at me. He was breathing harder, and I felt those sparks of current going through his light, making it difficult to comprehend his actual facial expressions.

I fought down the part of me that wanted to get angry at his words, to take them at face value. I fought to hold on to what I could feel behind his words, instead, before this turned into something that would take us days to get past, instead of minutes or hours.

After a longer moment of doing that, I almost succeeded.

Letting out an exhale, I climbed off his lap completely, fighting to extricate his light well enough to think. Whatever this was about, it wasn’t just Revik having an exhibitionist moment. I highly doubted this was even about sex, truthfully. Combing my fingers through my hair, I stared down at the table, feeling his eyes on me.

His light exuded caution now.

“Allie,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I shook my head, my lips still pursed.

“Allie,” he began again. “I mean it, I’m really sorry––”

“If you really are serious about this,” I said, still gazing down at the table. “Then you need to be open about it, with the group.” I raised my eyes, giving him a level look. “You need to put it to a vote. If the group agrees it’s in our best interests, not just a sexual free-for-all, then I’ll agree to it, too. With the caveat that anyone who wants to opt out, can. And the caveat that it
not
be a sexual free-for-all. Not for me, anyway.” Giving him a more pointed look, I added, “...Not for us.”

Seeing something in his eyes react, I hesitated before adding,

“...And before that, you need to talk to Jon. Don’t lay it on him in the moment, without any chance to think it through. If you do that, you’re just being an dick...” Muttering into my coffee, I clicked under my breath. “...Not that
I
want him involved, mind you. You also might have to get me really drunk. Or erect a wall between us...something.”

Shuddering a little, I pushed the image away.

“...And you’re going to owe me, either way,” I added, sharper. “Big time. And this better really be about the group’s security, not some weird possessiveness thing...”

Revik’s eyes changed as I spoke.

I saw surprise flicker there, along with a relief so palpable that it shocked me.

I watched him think over my words, even as his hand reached out, and he started to rub my leg again through my pants. His caresses grew more deliberate as he continued to think, until I started finding them really distracting again. I bit my lip as he gazed out over the table, feeling his light coiling into mine again, even with the serious look on his face as he seemed to be assessing the group, then me.

“You won’t be angry with me?” he said finally. Without looking at me directly, he added, “Not that I’m not willing to have you be a little angry with me. I just want to know.”

I shook my head, more confused than angry at that point. “Revik...what the hell is going on with you right now? Are you going to tell me?”

“No,” he said. “Not right now.”

“Does that mean not later in the room, either?” I pressed.

“No,” he said, then amended his words. “I mean, yes...not then, either.” He hesitated, glancing at me. “You know part of it already, Allie.”

“Menlim?”

He nodded, once. “Menlim,” he said.

Thinking about his words, I glanced over the table, too, watching as Wreg spoke to Jorag, resting a hand on his shoulder. Watching the group interact together, my nerves worsened.

“I reserve my right to opt out, too,” I added. “To change my mind, I mean.”

Revik looked at me, but only nodded, his expression noncommittal.

"Why do seers have to be such lunatics when it comes to sex?" I muttered.

For some reason, this was the thing to break the impasse.

Revik relaxed next to me, enough that I wondered if he’d been holding his breath. In any case, he was watching my reactions more closely than I’d realized. Leaning back in the leather padded booth, he shrugged, lifting his coffee cup and bringing it to his lips.

I saw his eyes still gauging my face as he took a sip.

"Once the bond is complete, seer marriages are more stable and harmonious than probably ninety percent of human marriages,” he said cautiously. “Mates will give up just about anything to make the other one happy, including their own lives..."

“Everything but group sex, apparently,” I muttered, giving him a pointed look.

He smiled, but I saw that harder look back in his eyes.

"And that's really just biology?" I prompted, picking up my own coffee. I wanted the argument to be over I guess, if he wasn’t going to talk to me. Even so, I noticed his eyes glowed faintly again when he glanced my way. "...You said on the ship that seer relationships were 'largely biological' and that I shouldn't take it personally. Is that really true?"

He rolled his eyes, leaning forward to plunk his elbows on the table on either side of his plate. Even so, his complexion abruptly darkened.

The last trace of that harder scrutiny vanished, even as he let out a sharp exhale.

"Christ," he said. "I'd forgotten that." Running a hand through his hair, he gave me a look that lived somewhere between shame and an apology. "Allie...I'm sorry. I'm really sorry I said that. That's not how it works at all." He made a vague gesture with one hand, the one not holding his coffee. "I was terrified of you. You know that, right? When I wasn't jerking off in the shower to keep from trying to fuck you, I was trying my damnedest to convince both of us that nothing was going on...that the whole thing was just a giant misunderstanding. Or that Vash could somehow 'fix' it when we got to India..."

When I laughed, genuinely that time, he smiled with me. Even so, I felt another pulse of that embarrassment on his light. Glancing at me, he shrugged with one hand.

"...Why you haven’t left me is completely beyond me, wife,” he said. “Most seer females would have knifed me in my sleep by now. You know that, right?"

I smiled, rolling my eyes, even as I bumped into him lightly with my shoulder. In the process I sent him a pulse of reassurance, along with a warmer one from my heart.

"Apology accepted," I said.

“For which thing?” he said, smiling faintly below the seriousness of his eyes. “For me being an dick just now? Or back then?”

“Both,” I said, smiling back. "...More or less.”

“More or less?” He eyes drifted to my lips. “Does that mean I’m going to pay for it later?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding decisively. When his eyes remained on my mouth, I bumped him again with my shoulder. “So how does it work then? If we’re not all slaves to our biology, then what are we?"

He sighed, looking away.

I saw him thinking, even though I could still feel that embarrassment on his light, along with a denser pulse of something else, what might have been preoccupation with sex, more of that fear, or both. In either case, he was pulling on me with his light, that faint glow still in his eyes.

Shifting a little in his seat, he shrugged.

"It's more like we deal with the more animalistic side of things first," he said after a pause, gesturing vaguely. "Our light essentially makes the choice, then our bodies and instincts have to catch up. Really, most of what you see in seer couples who are likely to end up mates...in the beginning, I mean...is resistance to the bond. Our survival instincts fight back. It looks like possessiveness, but that's only the surface reaction. It's really more selfish...the 'me first' principle that's looking for a way out of the bond. It accuses the other person of unfaithfulness, untrustworthiness, duplicity. It worries about them dying, being stolen or taken away, which would endanger
our
lives. It really looks for any excuse to see the potential mate as someone 'other,' and as unworthy of our trust. A threat...someone who might even destroy us. At the very least, someone who forces us to think of someone's needs other than our own..."

I laughed, staring at him. "Really? You're being serious?"