Chapter Text
Atem took Shimon’s scolding, because he couldn’t deny he deserved it. He had been coughing for days, but hadn’t let anyone do anything about it. He had tried to push through instead of taking a day to rest, and for that folly he’d nearly died. He collapsed, his breath still, and it was only some strange magic that saved him from his own stubbornness.
Magic, performed by Slave Aibou. The foreign man had performed a working that shared his own life’s breath with Atem and had something to do with the vitality of Atem’s heart. The priests were in an uproar about it, according to Set who witnessed it from the best angle. An ear on his chest, a murmured spell, a kiss of life, another cycle of heart and spell and breath, and after four cycles Atem had coughed and started breathing again.
He didn’t let himself think of Aibou’s actions until Shimon left the room. He’d prefer to wait until he was alone, but that was impossible. Madu sat watching Atem, a guard placed there on Aibou’s suggestion to prevent Atem from moving from a sitting position even in his sleep. He must be kept propped up, or the parasitic demon currently eating his lungs would drown him. While he was unconscious he'd been held up by one of his servants for fear of him shifting off the pillows in his sleep.
Some people thought Aibou made it all up, that this ‘high-nn’ or ‘hay-en’ was an explanation he invented to excuse his crime of touching the pharaoh so obscenely in the middle of a hallway. Most of Atem’s council, those who were there when his breath caught and stuttered and the world seemed to swirl and fade, thought that Aibou at the very least recognized the illness from some personal experience with it and accurately gave the name his people had for it. They were attempting to make a medicine Aibou’s people use to fight this particular demon, but the slave was ‘unsure it grows here’ and hopes were low.
Atem asked Karim to spread the gossip that Aibou knew this demon, so the whispers about Aibou enchanting the Pharaoh would fall aside as obviously false. The holder of the Millenium Scales had the presence of mind to hold them up to test Aibou’s words at the time, and the Scales showed the man spoke only his truth on the matter. Karim’s slaves and wife would ensure no person in the kingdom would suggest Atem’s corpse was being puppeted about by evil magic.
Then there was the kiss, and the news that Merishu seemed to have the same affliction. Atem felt… he wished he could have a moment alone for this, but he wouldn’t and if he went on distracting himself from the issue, he wouldn’t be able to rest properly.
“Madu,” Atem whispered. He couldn’t muster anything more, but the slave that had tended him since Atem turned six and moved into his own room had been staring at him with his full attention and it was deeply uncomfortable. “I will not be well within the hour, nor will I vanish if you look away of a moment. Busy yourself, tidy the room or have the guard send for some craft. I can hold myself up while awake.”
“Yes, Pharaoh,” Madu said, and stood with obvious reluctance to tidy Atem’s vanity. Given the lack of the sound of swift cleaning, Madu was now mostly watching the back of Atem’s head and only glancing away from his magic-touched red-on-black hair when he absolutely must to technically comply with Atem’s order to tidy the room.
Merishu, his half-brother, was suffering from the same parasitic demon. Aibou had pressed his ear to Meri’s chest and then to his back and said he could hear it. A summary of events had already been sent to the Temple of Neith in Sais, written by Healer Hrera. She sat listening carefully to Atem’s chest and back for much longer than Atem thought could possibly be necessary, and then went to Meri and did the same, and with all her expertise she couldn’t do much better than Aibou’s inelegant ‘it’s bubbles crackling and vanishing.’ Aibou used the words for the sound of fire and act of disappearing instead of wheezing and popping likely because he didn’t know the more precise terms, which made perfect sense given the man could hardly speak a word of either Egyptian tongue when he arrived here. She’d refused to speak directly to a slave who spoke like a simpleton, was insulted at the very idea, and it was only that Atem hadn’t been awake to hear her say it that spared them both a heated argument that would have likely only accomplished his own exhaustion. Even if ordered to do so, he didn’t think she would really listen to a slave.
Not that he wasn’t bone tired just sitting up in his own bed. He felt like he’d died and come back, for all that Aibou insisted that his heart had never stopped beating. There wasn’t a part of him that was comfortable, and he was sweating with fever to the point of risking dehydration.
Then there was the kiss. Atem finally let himself think of it and felt shame, sharp and heavy and embarrassing. He’d ordered Aibou into his bed, as he had with many male slaves. Some obliged his strange tastes, others begged off - and Atem had always let them go if they made any protest with some token punishment for appearances. None had served him in that way more than a week, before Slave Aibou. Aibou was intelligent, seemed to enjoy playing games with Atem in the evening instead of merely humoring him before they went to bed. He learned the rules quickly and played the games well. Atem had kept him as his evening servant for three moons and counting. He had thought, sometimes, that maybe some of the words that fell out of Aibou’s mouth might be protest, but the man never said them in Hieratic or Demotic so they shouldn’t count against Atem. Aibou absolutely knew the words for 'stop' and 'no.' That's how he'd gotten Atem's attention.
Their first kiss, and it was done out of necessity as part of a spell to share breath and save a dying man.
There had been one time Aibou mentioned that he took lessons in a way that could have meant he had a formal education, and Atem should have marked that, but chose to let it pass. He had invited the slave to swim in the pool of water meant for purification before certain rituals. The rituals were over, and the pool would be drained to water the palace garden the next day, so it was a bit of harmless fun in the fertile hours of the night after a feast that had them both drunk, and a treat for a man who said he came from a colder place where it rained half the days of the year. He’d been too busy spoiling his pet to understand properly, and then he'd started coughing three days later. It was only now that the words floated back to him, an offhand comment that was mostly a joke about how much better Aibou was at swimming than Atem.
He’d been selfish, ignoring the obvious to keep the man in his bed. Aibou not only allowed Atem his strange proclivities but seemed to find his own pleasure in Atem’s twisted lust. Atem delighted in inspiring Aibou to spill his seed, which the man did with adorable whimpers and masculine groans that lit a brighter fire in Atem than any other he’d had. The shared pleasure was so much better than a man who braced himself to withstand being fucked without any hesitance but felt no joy in the activity. Atem didn’t want to lose his pretty toy, but he couldn’t deny any longer that he was not, could not have possibly been, a commoner before he was brought to Atem as a gift. How had Aibou withstood the humiliation of being humbled so completely?
When Atem first saw the man, his skin was pale as moonlight. His eyes, as unique in color as Atem’s own ruby gaze, were a thin ring of vibrant purple surrounding the huge black centers indicating he’d been fed enough extract of poppy seed to drop a horse. It was no wonder that his steps had been halting and unsteady and that he seemed to hardly understand what was happening to him. At first the general consensus was that he was very slow, but not addled in a way that made him unreliable or made him react to phantoms. The few words he did know, all of them in the higher tongue, were pronounced in strange ways, but he took correction on that and most other things easily. He worked hard, and after a moon spoke well enough that opinions shifted to him being so foreign that even the most basic things like how to wrap a kilt or bathe with oils were strange to him when he arrived. He ate cooked pea pods as if that was a normal food for a man and not something to fatten caged birds before a festival.
Shemei, once his wet nurse who now ran the slave quarter as a free woman, could trust Aibou to work at a task for the entire day without his wandering off or making mischief. He tackled each task given to him, including being very clever about things when some essential supply or tool had not been mentioned or directly given to him by mistake. He once used the corner of a brick to help him break down reeds when he hadn’t been given a knife, which Atem had happened upon during his midday stroll.
According to Hebony, he learned the morning prayer and murmured along almost from the beginning. Later, when he was waking every morning in Atem’s bed, he started to sing it properly. Yet, he still didn’t know how to properly speak of the gods in a conversation. That was, in the end, Atem’s fault since Aibou was his slave and he had clearly not had the training he needed. Shemei was meant to teach him to speak, or delegate that task further, but responsibility ran uphill. Aibou should have been placed among the youngest children when they learned about the gods the day before festivals, but then Shemei needed every hand to prepare for the festivals and Aibou’s work ethic was too valuable to sacrifice on those days. Aibou had been denied the chance to integrate further into their culture due to his diligence, which wasn't right.
Mostly because Atem had been selfish and didn’t want to know that Aibou should not be a slave. He was not born to it, nor had he committed any crime worthy of being forced to the lowest station. Atem couldn’t even say that Aibou had come to him destitute and became a slave to avoid starvation and homelessness, because he had so obviously been taken against his will and stripped of any valuables. Found in the desert with his hair painted like mockery of the living Horus, in odd improper clothes that oh so conveniently had already been destroyed just the same as the supposedly offensive hair that had already been shaved off. Surely that had nothing to do with the richly dyed and gossamer thin ribbons of strange cloth and fine black leather that had appeared as ornaments among the city officials and their families that week. Even if the hair was painted red on the tips to mimic Atem's miraculously shimmery hair and yellow to mimic his crown, it would have been easily washed clean and sold to make a wig. Shemei said the loss of his hair was very distressing for Aibou, and she forbade anyone to offer cutting his hair or shaving his head unless the man himself mentioned it first. Aibou had not cut or trimmed his hair once since his arrival. The bouncy ringlet curls he grew were part of why Atem had not been able to stop looking at the man.
Atem knew Aibou wanted to leave. The man had said nothing about it, but it was a plain fact. Aibou was saving his wages with a frugality that beggared belief. Atem could not guess the cost a caravan might charge to take Aibou home, but that seemed the most obvious reason the man hadn’t touched a single coin of his wages since he came here. He asked for nothing, not even a second helping of food, and seemed to be kin to a granite statue when it came to enduring discomfort. His skin turned brilliant pink and red under the sun before his skin darkened, but Shemei insisted he didn’t complain about the sun’s burn and only apologized for needing to move slower and say out of the noon sun while he healed. Dust and ash colored him for a time, a rather unpleasant method of hiding from Re’s gaze both for Aibou and for those around him. Now his skin seemed protected by a light tan that never faded, which Isis called a blessing of welcome indicating he had been accepted by the gods of Egypt. Atem was reminded of bread, which began pale and baked up to a tan crust that protected the soft center. Well, except for his ass, which was still that gorgeous creamy color. Atem liked the way it contrasted with his own darker fingers…
Which was, again, the main reason why Atem didn’t want to face the truth of things. He didn’t want to give that up. He shouldn’t have to. He was Pharaoh, and he had every right, especially with the pleasure he gave in return for his own satisfaction. Aibou had never protested, though, sometimes… sometimes he seemed disappointed in Atem. Atem could usually cuddle him or suggest a game of dice to make the expression vanish, but even so.
It wasn’t often he felt any kind of guilt, he was a living god and therefore his wants were to be satisfied, and he’d turned being shameless into something of an art form with his bewildering behavior on slow days. It was calculated; a play to keep the city officials guessing about tgeir eccentric king. People revealed so much when startled. It was why he still wore earrings and acted like a child half the time instead of presenting himself as the grown man he was. He wouldn’t be able to use it for much longer, or not in the same way. He was seventeen now, and he really was stretching the ‘child king’ thing to the point it was going to snap on him.
There really wasn’t any way around it anymore. Shimon was right, at least about Atem being stubborn and childish, and not only about sitting on the throne all day every day he wasn't otgerwise engaged or at rest even when half the day’s business could be conducted better in meeting rooms. He had to change things, act more like a man.
He wished Shimon hadn’t brought up his lack of a wife as a possible solution to his restlessness. He didn’t want a wife. If he did the rest, could he skip that part? He had tolerated Akana enough to make children, and he did love the babies, but with any other woman he knew he could not. Any woman who he hadn’t known from childhood and was understanding about his strange inclinations. He tried, Hathor help him, but he had tried. It felt so wrong to him!
“You are fretting when you need rest,” the gentle voice snapped Atem’s eyes open. He seemed to still be in his bedroom, but the furniture was moved. The bed was turned the other way, and his vanity and shelves were swapped. His room hadn’t looked like this in a couple years. He looked around and saw Akana by the window. He blinked in surprise, then realized he didn’t feel feverish and the heavy weight in his chest was gone.
“An odd thing to say to someone who is sleeping,” Atem said, accepting the dream. Akana came over to sit next to him on the bed. He tried not to be disappointed she hadn’t brought their daughters with her.
“That doesn’t mean you are getting true rest,” Akana said. “What troubles you so?”
“I may have overstepped,” Atem said.
“How so? You are Pharaoh, your word is law.” Akana’s tone made it very clear how much she believed in that idea. She used to nag him so much on how to be a proper Pharaoh before her death. She was never so direct in dreams.
“If Aibou wasn’t a commoner, if he has studied medicine and knows magic enough to bring a man back from the brink of death, then I shouldn’t have kept him as a slave as I have. I ignored all the signs, deliberately.”
“I like him,” Akana said, then pitched her songbird voice to parody the harsher, tapping consonants and deeper tone Aibou used. “Your penalty is to remember.” Akana giggled for a moment. She was still fourteen. She would always be fourteen years and three hundred and forty-three days of age. She would never be older than him again. “He was one step ahead of you there.”
“That is exactly the moment I made the mistake,” Atem said, and put his face into his hands. A sound made him look up again. The dream had changed, as he watched his past self demanding that Rea sleep with him.
Aibou hadn’t known anything about Rea or her husband’s debts. He doesn’t involve himself in gossip at all, at least according to Hebony, who knew every rumor whispered in the slave quarters. He’d acted so out of turn in defense of a woman who was in no danger of being defiled because he hadn’t known any better. Shemei told Atem that Aibou had no idea Atem had ever been married or been a father, knew so little about Egypt he was totally unaware of the entire business including that Atem preferred the beauty of a man’s body until he was lying in a sickbed recovering from Atem’s displeasure. All he saw was a woman being harassed by a man without a wife who was using his power to ignore her refusal, and then he’d done the correct thing - provided Atem had been any other man in the world - and spoken up in her defense. It was exactly the sort of thing Atem wanted for his country: that it should not be considered right that the low could be so easily taken advantage of by the high. Even so, a slave could not publicly scold the Pharaoh.
Rea was supposed to be on Aibou’s own level, a year of servitude to help pay off her husband’s tax debt, and Atem was only trying to humble her because she treated her current peers so poorly. She ordered them around as if she were still in her own house and refused to do half the work assigned to her. Atem knew it was unfair for her new husband to send her to be a slave in the palace because of his money troubles. Thanks to the Millennium Pendant, he knew that the man had married a third wife only so he could take her dowry and then put her to work like this. If she had only humbled herself, Atem would have forgiven her and ensured her husband bore the brunt of it all, but she was as evil hearted as the man she married. She hadn’t thanked Aibou for standing up for her honor and refused to help tend him while he recovered despite being told to fetch aloe and a drink for him on two occasions.
Atem blinked, and the scene changed. Aibou was chained to a post with the key to his shackles hanging from another post twenty paces away, and all about dry brush was gathered into a circle. Even if Aibou had acted honorably, Atem still had to punish him. A slave could not speak to him that way. He’d given the man a chance to call off, to take the loss with grace so they could both be freed from the trap of formality and propriety. Aibou did not. The defiance made him angry, and when it seemed like the man had lost the key in the dirt he felt vindicated. At that time, he hadn’t known how clever Aibou was. He was just a distractingly interesting looking man with pretty hair and eyes of amethyst who also thought himself too good for his place. Atem made him endure flames as punishment for his arrogance, and when Aibou won the challenge, he demanded that Atem remember it all instead of using potions and magic to seal the embarrassment away and in the process forget everything that was so alluring about the strange foreign slave.
“Hmm,” Akana hummed thoughtfully. “You remember him beating you, and also why you were punishing him, and you’ve changed your mind about the punishment you gave him.”
“He isn’t arrogant,” Atem admitted. “I’m not even sure he knew how far out of line his interference was at the time. He thought he was fully in the right even knowing his station was beneath mine, the magic of the Pendant told me so, but perhaps in his country there are times even the lowest have a right to challenge the moral actions of the highest.”
“He never had etiquette lessons because you didn’t order any for him,” Akana said.
“What does a slave need with those?” Atem said with a dismissive wave.
“Knowing how to speak to his betters is still etiquette.” Alright, she may have a point. “His penalty was that you remember, and you thought that a bit silly of him because your pride could stand to know you punished an attractive but arrogant man even if he did beat your challenge. However, because you remember it all so clearly, you have come to understand how wrong you were.”
“He was smaller than me, and he escaped the fire,” Atem said quietly, hoping to change the subject. The chains had been the limit of what Atem himself could carry. Aibou was still smaller than him, but only a finger or so, and Atem himself was petite. At the time, Aibou had stood half a head shorter, perhaps a little more. The sight of a man so small tenaciously dragging the chains over and unlocking them by taking the black, sun-hot key in his mouth, then escaping the flames and choking smoke by jumping through the ring of fire had been so shocking.
Sekhmet refused to burn him in earnest, leaving him only about as pink as he had been the first week he was in Memphis, and then Aibou hadn’t tried to linger in bed recovering from the burns any longer than necessary. Honorable, tenacious, enduring, handsome… So many good qualities a man may have, and all of them built into this one exciting gift carelessly thrown at Atem’s feet by a villain of a man with just enough political power and utility to avoid being stripped of his position.
“A fox told me it wasn’t the first time he has walked through fire, but then he had been saving the life of a friend, and the building started to collapse. Then another friend carried them both to safety,” Akana said. A fox? Anubis? The ring of fire faded, and they were sitting in blackness. The bed and the pair of them were still well lit, but there were no walls or floor.
“Foolish, if he needed to be saved himself what was the point.”
“That he is devoted to those he cares for.” Atem decided he had had enough of talking around the problem.
“I want him. I want him like I have wanted no other. I want him like I want to eat food every day,” Atem complained. “I want him to be mine.”
“Then do it properly, if you are so serious,” Akana said.
“What does that even mean?” Atem shouted, and started coughing violently.
He felt the fever’s burning chills, Madu holding him as the coughing shook his body, the pain in his muscles and bones, and an unnatural heaviness in his lungs. The days slid past him and he was hardly aware of them. All he knew when awake was suffering. The dead visited his dreams when they could, Akana most frequently as always, but sometimes his daughters came. Maybe his mother, looking more like a painting than a person as she always did. Never his father. Not once in all the years since Atem took the throne. Shimon supposed that it was because he’d sacrificed himself he couldn’t visit the living, but Atem had always wondered if he was simply ashamed of his son. The fever didn’t help with those thoughts.
There was a parade of people in the room, and he was never alone even for a moment. Sometimes Aibou held him steady and fed him bits of plum or sips of water as the world swirled. Sometimes Madu sang to him. Then there was something horrid and bitter in his mouth, and Set telling him to stop being a baby and swallow his medicine.