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This is not fair.
Jake knows there are very many sayings. Phrases. Jangling collections of words that all mean the same thing. They roll around in his mind, in a tongue that isn’t his own, sometimes more like a pretty collection of sounds first, and then the meaning later.
No rest for the wicked.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Both the same, but different. He wonders which he falls into, or if there’s really a difference, underneath it all.
He’s beyond keeping a tally or any attempt at a chart. There is, for him, only one mission and it’s one he has to complete, no matter what the cost to himself, or others.
“You pretend that you do not need this, little worm.”
Do not rise - hah - to the bait. No. Nope.
“...you think that I do not see all the way into your broken mind…”
Well he didn’t see far enough if Marc and Stev--
Khonshu doesn’t like that train of thought, and Jake is punished immediately.
This god is a capricious one, but he’s easy to understand. He’s easy to understand because he’s just like Jake, deep down. It’s why Khonshu will never truly let Marc go, and why Jake has to remain behind to run interference.
He’s bound in wraps of cloth like the god’s own form was, when Marc and Steven still saw him in the shadows of their minds.
But now they are Jake’s, given to him like a rite of passage, or a mantle passed down from mentor to protege.
There is nothing protective about this.
The cloth smells of the night and of aching and longing and spite and rage and vengeance. It curls around his chest tight-too-tight, so that when he breathes he pulls in extra in case it’s the last one he can take. He knows Khonshu won’t let him die (he would never be so kind), but the burn-dizzy-weak feeling of drowning in a room full of air is beyond what even Jake can find a way to enjoy.
“Liar,” comes the purring, growling voice that has every speck of sand in the sea scraping down the back of Jake’s throat. Filling his ears, making his mind stretch and swell with knowledge that’s too much.
Too much.
He wants to close his eyes to it, but the pain of a thousand lives and the weight of a million hearts and…
He can’t keep it all in. He can’t. He can’t. You can’t care about that many people, because it burns and you fall and the human mind can only take so much. So much, before madness snaps you and why does Khonshu show him? Why does he insist on spilling his self into Jake, when he could simply use his fists as he said he would?
Lonely, he thinks. Lonely and afraid. Forgotten and flayed to the bone.
He needs someone to understand, even if it kills Jake over a million times, to be patched back together with magic that never quite fixes that last, splintered part.
Jake does not want to understand. It is hard enough caring for two - and then their plus one - and caring for people who died before he even was, and who he can never see… no.
“Fuck off,” he snaps at Khonshu, resisting the coils that writhe around him.
It’s a grotesque parody of an embrace.
He’s unable to run, because the swirling loops have caught his legs together, hobbled like a dead man waiting for the next world.
He’s unable to fight, because his arms are pulled back, strung like a bow with all the tension of all his hurt in every sinew.
He’s unable to rest, because Khonshu pulls at every part of his body and mind and keeps him locked in this position, pulling his limbs until they judder and shake. Pulling his mind until he has to use all of his strength just to stay.
“I could always tell them that I’m still here.”
NO.
He screams it with all he has. NO.
The deal was to give them that freedom, or at least the semblance of it. The paradise Marc had thought he could offer Steven… but for real, this time. A ‘life’ free from Khonshu’s interference, without the blood staining their hands and the guilt that came with it.
Without the claw against their better natures, making them want to find someone that little bit too strong who could make it go away for good.
No.
This is Jake’s job. This is what he does. Jake keeps them safe, and does what needs to be done.
“Then admit that you like this. Admit that you need this. Admit that you wouldn’t know who you were without me.”
Jake closes his eyes, as if it would keep the echoing voice from out of his ribcage. As if ignoring him could count enough and let this go away.
Khonshu needs to hurt him. Needs to drag him into a rictus, into extremis. Make his belly flutter from the threat, and the knowledge that he could rip him limb from limb and bind the bloodied parts back together to do it. All over. Again.
There is no peace in pain, not for Jake. Not for Khonshu.
There is no point at which it stops. It just keeps going, and madness dances like the flame in the oil-lamp.
Why?
Why.
Why.
Jake is feeling faint as Khonshu’s boned fingers flick above him like a puppeteer pulling at strings. A tug here, a slide there. His toes graze the floor as he’s suspended in agony, and he knows his damned body will react. They both do.
Pain does things to him. Suffering.
The thoughts that swirl through his mind and make him want to beg. Things he’d dreamt about but knew they would end things, and now they are just another thing that could happen.
Smashed into the wall. Bones shattering. Arms ripped from his sockets. Nothing that anyone should ever get off on, and yet his traitorous dick strains. Strains, and wants, and needs.
Khonshu won’t do those things to him, but the people he sends him after might.
Glass puncturing a thigh. Sharp, bright blood in his mouth.
It’s wrong, and he can’t help it. It’s wrong and the harder Khonshu’s suit encloses him, the more his mind drifts and the more his arousal peaks.
“I do this because you need this.”
You need this too, Jake thinks, panting and trying to rut with nothing to use as leverage. Just the flex of his own muscles as he dangles like the worm-bait Khonshu thinks he is.
“I do this because you need me.”
No, no he doesn’t. He doesn’t.
Jake does this for Marc. For Steven. For Layla. He does this to keep them safe. He allows this.
He…
“If you truly did not want this, you would have cast me out. But you knew that if they were truly happy, they would never need you again.”
Not. TRUE. Things happened all the time. Things went wrong. They do need him, they just need to never know they do.
They do.
…don’t they?
A talon under his chin, lifting his dazed eyes and panting mouth to meet the abyss of every night the god has ever seen. All the way inside of him, more intimately than any lover ever could go.
He is seen. He is known. He is understood.
(He is wanted.)
“You would cease to exist, little worm. You can tell yourself all you want that you do this for them, but I know the real reason.”
Jake fights. Fights and kicks against a power that is stronger than him in the moment. He can’t be subdued, he can’t lose control because if he does… if he does he can’t maintain the wall and keep the others safe.
The god scrapes between the bandages that contain his fear and hate and love. Jake wishes it was kinder, and then hates himself for thinking it.
He does not deserve kind.
He does not deserve soft.
No rest for the wicked. No good deed goes unpunished.
“I am the only one who would ever accept you, Jake Lockley. I am the only one who understands the reasons why you hide.”
He wants to be known, and he can’t be. He wants to be seen, and he must not.
Khonshu must love him, after a sense. Maybe not ‘love’, but need? Need him for the body he yields, and for the witness he bears. Need him for the mind that can understand how anything can be acceptable if it saves the ones you love. Need him as the one who can take the pain and turn it into a gift, a delicacy. A power, and a passion.
He slakes across Jake’s chest like an angry, possessive cat, instead of a bird.
Khonshu needs someone who understands that he needs it to hurt, too. That every agony is part of him. That every act he does is for the greater good, even if it makes the world turn against him.
Khonshu needs Jake to love him, because no one else can. Jake needs Khonshu for the same reason. They can’t part, and it is wrong and it is right and oh fuck but the suit slinks tighter and slides over him and he’s sure he’s going to die. Going to die because the sharp pain and the terrible weight of knowledge beyond his ability to process. Because the love of this god is capricious and hungry, and the sacrifice he demands is nothing more than everything.
Jake worships in agony, giving Khonshu the last shred of resistance as his body yields to the ugly, malformed need. He spills inside the suit, and when the climax fades he’s dropped to the ground on his hands and knees.
He’s.
It’s wrong.
It’s so wrong.
But they do need each other, and Marc and Steven can never know. They can never know because they deserve to think they’re better than this.
Better than a god’s broken playtoy, face-down on all fours, wishing he could do this forever. Wishing he was right.
Wishing it would never, ever stop.
“You are mine, Jake Lockley. And you will always be mine.”
“Yes, Khonshu,” he chokes out, still swaying.
“Now: rise. I have work for you to do.”