Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/311248.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      X-Men_(Comicverse), Dark_Avengers_(Comic)
  Relationship:
      Daken_Akihiro/Romulus
  Character:
      Daken_Akihiro, Romulus, Logan_(X-Men)
  Additional Tags:
      Daddy_Issues, Mommy_Issues
  Series:
      Part 2 of They_Will_Lie:_Stories
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-01-03 Words: 4094
****** Cursed ******
by eva_roisin
Summary
     Daken spends his last night with Romulus.
                                    Cursed
Daken has forgotten what it’s like to travel with Romulus, how easily the large
man slips through crowds despite his size and shape, and how he loves to hear
himself talk. On the train through southern Turkey, Romulus sits next to him
and rubs his knuckles together, unafraid of drawing attention to his nails.
“There,” Romulus says, nodding to the window. “See that church? During the
genocide, thousands of people hid in that church, praying to be saved. But,
like everyone else, they choked on either their own bile or their own blood.”
Daken looks out the window in spite of himself. “During times of crisis, most
people die either at home or in church. Most churches are charnel houses in
disguise. Or they have been at sometime or another.”
Romulus chuckles softly. “Oh my boy. You truly are my boy.”
“Of course,” Daken says. “I’ve always been.”
“That nonsense back there with your father. You shouldn’t let him get to you.
You shouldn’t allow him to speak to you about such trivial matters as honor and
revenge. You let him distract you from your goal.” Romulus folds his hands. His
thumbnails rest against each other.
“I don’t let him distract me.”
“He’s really a very short-sighted individual. So weak. So particular, too, and
with such idiosyncrasies! I remember the days when men used to walk their
daughters over the fields to make the crops grow, and then sacrifice them the
night before the hunt. People back then—they understood the value of things.
Sacrifice. How to put aside their own interests to ensure the wellbeing of the
tribe.”
“It’s a shame,” Daken says, “that things have changed so much.” He wants to
laugh. Romulus is so ridiculous. Such a dinosaur. A twelfth-century Mongolian
dropped into the center of twenty-first-century Philadelphia or something.
“Back then, your father would not have been allowed to be so sentimental.” He
smiles. “He was my greatest disappointment. You have never disappointed me,
though. You never could. Even when we didn’t see eye to eye, I always counted
you among my greatest achievements. And my favorite confidant.”
The smell coming from Romulus is difficult to categorize. Daken wouldn’t call
it desire—not really. Not interest, either. Romulus is self-satisfied and
unsuspecting. Old, Daken thinks. Yes, that’s it. Romulus has the smell of an
old person, a person long past his prime. A person who’s never surprised and
never surprising. A person near death.
“I’m going to the food car,” Daken says. “Can I get you anything?”
 
                                      ***
 
Daken would be lying if he didn’t admit that there’s something strangely
disruptive—and infantilizing—about the two of them together once more, talking
about rulingthings. He knows that Romulus doesn’t intend for him to inherit
anything, but it’s like old times. It’s like he’s a kid again. No, he was never
a child. But he was once younger. Small. Weak-minded. Romulus was the one who
stifled the scent of his weakness, and though Daken hated him for it at the
time, he grew to understand the value of the great toughening-up.
Now he doesn't give a shit.
Daken was twelve when Romulus first introduced the idea of inheritance.
“Someday,” he said, “what I have will be yours. But first you must prove
yourself worthy. You must make sacrifices.”
That afternoon, Daken had watched a band of guerilla soldiers march out of the
jungle and kneel at the feet of an army regiment. Then the guerilla fighters
had been shot. Some fell backwards. Some forwards. One of them was left alive.
His eye had been blown out and he clutched his face with one hand, the blood
spilling through his fingers and over his knuckles. He leapt up and ran from
the group, but one soldier took aim and put a bullet in the back of his head.
Romulus had lurked in the shadows while Daken watched from the outskirts of the
village. He was still young enough to pass as another village boy even though
he didn’t look at all like the children in this country—he was light-skinned
and tall, and his nose was too prominent. “I did all this,” Romulus told him
afterwards. “I did this so that you could watch. This is war, my boy. My war.
Now that the French have left, there will be nothing but bloodshed. The worst
kind. The kind that the centuries have precluded because of the constraints of
colonization. Because of greedy men too self-obsessed to feed their gods.”
That evening Daken sat on the rug in the middle of the main room of the small
village hut and willed himself to stop sweating so much. At times like this, he
remembered his home in Japan—how nice and cool it had been, how he’d lain in
bed at night and felt the wind rustle the curtains. How he’d been able to read
whenever and whatever he wanted.
Now he had only one book. The Aeneid. He’d read it so many times that he’d
broken the book’s spine. This, he felt, was sacrifice. He wished he’d
appreciated what he’d had when he’d had it. Wealth. Comfort. Security. He
remembered the way his mother used to pad into his room when she thought he was
asleep to pry the books from his fingers and set them on the nightstand. He’d
known by then that she hated him, feared him—but nothing was ever so simple.
She still made his meals and set out his clothes. Her hypocrisy bothered him.
She was pregnant—quite pregnant, at that time—and she seemed to take special
care to appease him and to avoid him. He could smell her changes and her
happiness, and he knew that her happiness had nothing to do with him, and he
hated her for that—and hated the situation most of all. Of course she loved her
own baby more. Of course. What woman wouldn’t? They were all the same. Even if
he’d been the type of child she wanted—pure Japanese, and simple like the
servants’ children—she wouldn’t have loved him as much. He hadn’t been a part
of her.
“Sacrifices,” Romulus crooned from the corner of the room. “Tell me, Daken. How
many times have you read that book?”
Daken traced the pages with his fingers. “Several.”
“More than several, I’m guessing,” Romulus said. “I’ve seen you with it quite a
bit.”
“Yes. Probably more than several, Master.”
“How would you like new books?”
Daken looked up and over his shoulder at Romulus. He usually avoided staring
directly at Romulus out of respect. And fear. And something else he couldn’t
put his finger on.
Romulus was shirtless, his skin dewy with sweat. In the heat he seemed just
like everyone else: uncomfortable. “You’ll have many,” he said. “But first you
must be trained.”
Daken looked straight ahead again. As much as he wanted to view Romulus as just
a man—just a man with long hair and overgrown teeth who happened to be a little
bit bigger than most men—he knew that Romulus was different. He was the dragon.
Someday Daken would be the dragon too—but right now he couldn’t envision that.
He could not picture how his own body would change into something else—how he
would ever cease to be himself. “I know I must, Master.”
“You’re wondering how else you need to be trained, am I correct?”
Daken felt Romulus rise to his feet. Outside, the sounds of the nearby swamp
were starting to swoon. Daken wondered if it was cloudy outside, or if the moon
was shining.
“And you’re wondering,” Romulus said, drawing closer, “how much more you can
sacrifice. Daken, I always know what you’re feeling, and without much effort.
We have discussed this. You are still far too promiscuous with your emotions.
Angry. Sad. Unhappy. Resentful. You must learn not to indulge these feelings.
And, more importantly, not to project them onto others—not without reason. Not
without control.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Those feelings aren’t for me, are they?”
Daken looked down at his hands. “No, Master.”
“Then for what?”
Daken’s mind spun. Of course those feelings were for Romulus. He’d just lied.
And Romulus knew.
“It’s alright,” he said. He knelt behind Daken on the rug and touched his
shoulder, his nails lingering against his collar bone. “I want to tell you
about some of the things you’ll have in the future. But before you have these
things, you’ll go over the water. To Canada. To be trained.”
He looked down at his book. So Romulus was sending him away. Far away. He
wasn’t surprised. He felt a pang of disappointment. Even if he was miserable in
this strange country, and even if he spent his days indulging feelings of
sadness and resentment, he knew he’d rather be here with Romulus than anywhere
else.
He felt something for Romulus that wasn’t unlike the feeling he’d had for his
parents. He’d been beholden to them. They’d saved him after all, plucking him
out of the gutter rather than sending him along to the orphanage with the other
abandoned mongrel war babies. But as he’d grown older, his feelings of
gratefulness turned to a sour kind of entitlement. Everyone acted as though he
owed them. That they had done him some great favor—rather than the other way
around. Mongrel children, it was said, had no right to be so picky about their
adoptive parents.
It was the same when Romulus came to him. You’re an animal, Romulus said.
You’re not a man. You’ll never be a man. And after what you’ve done, no one
will look at you with anything other than hatred and horror. By killing your
family, you’ve done what most people consider unthinkable. You’ve severed the
most sacred of bonds between humans. But you and I are not humans, so we don’t
have to worry about such trivial matters. And you are nothing to anybody but
me.
“Canada,” Daken repeated to himself.
“I’ll be with you,” Romulus said. “I’ll never be far away. Tell me, Daken. Are
you nervous? How can we stop you from being so nervous?”
Daken didn’t know. He was always nervous when Romulus drew close to him. Didn’t
Romulus understand how intimidating he was? How big compared to a twelve-year-
old? He’d seen Romulus punch through a man’s chest with little effort, and turn
around and smile about it. Daken loved Romulus—admired him—but above all he
feared him.
“You can’t keep your secrets from me,” Romulus said. “You had a dream last
night.”
Daken closed his book and rested his hands against his knees. “It was about my
mother.”
“I thought you no longer thought about your parents. They were weak. They’re
not like us. You were never a part of them or a part of their world, and they
knew it. They tried to subjugate you by making you into a mere peasant with
dull, bourgeois aspirations. That’s not who you are.”
“No—not that mother,” Daken said. “My real mother. The one who—”
Romulus set his hand on the back of Daken’s neck. “You know what your mother
was.”
A slut, Daken acknowledged. A foolish girl who wanted her American soldier to
take her to California. (But that was not what he had dreamed.)
Daken’s muscles tightened. He felt a certain anticipatory twinge in his
stomach—a feeling that straddled the line between dread and eagerness.
“It’s time, Daken,” Romulus said. “Remember what we talked about? Control? This
is one test you must pass. Stand up and take off your clothes.”
Daken stood, his back still turned toward Romulus. He wanted to be outside
where the heat swelled. He didn’t want to be here anymore.
“Turn around and face me.”
Daken turned slowly. He felt limp. Romulus lay on his side on the rug, one
elbow propped beneath him. The light from the lamp reflected in his eyes, and
his lips were turned up into a slight, satisfied grin. He seemed very
patient—like a person who knows that he’s finally going to be rewarded after
years of slow, tedious work and doesn’t mind waiting a little longer.
Daken looked down and began undoing his shirt. He knew what sex was—he’d read
enough books and heard enough conversation (about his own origin, to be sure),
and he’d even seen a few things—but he didn’t know what to expect. He didn’t
know how this entire process might play out in terms of his own body, and why
Romulus wanted this from him. But as he undressed, he understood that Romulus
had always wanted this to happen, and that he’d simply been waiting for the
right time. And maybe Daken had been waiting, too. He’d always sensed that
something between them was going to culminate. He wondered if this sort of
thing was inevitable, if this was what people did to children they mentored or
looked after. (He didn’t consider himself a child—he never had—but he knew
people didn’t yet accept him as an adult, including Romulus.)
As he slipped out of his underwear, he noticed that Romulus had put his hand in
his crotch. He was stroking himself through his pants. He exhaled.
He gestured for Daken to lie down next to him. Daken did so, looking up at the
ceiling as Romulus touched him, running his fingers up and down his chest,
tracing his bellybutton with his nails. And doing other things, too. Daken
relaxed against Romulus, trying not to think about how Romulus’ hair tickled
him. Romulus was breathing heavily against his neck. Daken tried to match this.
He had an erection now. He closed his eyes, slightly embarrassed. It had
happened before, of course—but now he found it more unsettling. And then he
felt something probing his thigh, and he knew that this was Romulus’s, which
felt strange and yet predictable and sort of unreal, and he grasped his elbow,
hips twitching slightly. He didn’t quite know how this was going to work, but
he had the vague sense that it wouldn’t be simple.
“You know how when you kill someone,” Romulus said, panting, his voice weird
and low, “they hurt at first? They’re in pain. And they’re terrified. Then, in
that second before they die, they feel good. For you, this will be a little
like dying. There will be a bit of pain, but that will pass away. Then you will
feel nothing but pleasure, and you’ll always remember this pleasure, and it
will never leave you. Just as I will never leave you.” He rolled Daken onto his
stomach and clamped a hand over his mouth. His nails were pressed against
Daken’s cheek.
Romulus lied. There was so much pain. And it wasn’t a little like dying—it was
a lot like dying. It was death. He wished he could lose consciousness. Now he
knew everything. He knew how people felt when he stood over them, his claws
drawn. Nothing in this world would mystify him anymore.
 
                                      ***
 
The next morning Romulus sent him to the market to buy some food. He had healed
from what Romulus had done to him, but he still ached, and his head felt woozy
and detached from so much crying. Romulus’ stickiness and his own dried blood
clung to the back of his legs, to his thighs. He filled a basket with some
fruit and rice. Inspected a hangnail on his thumb while he waited to pay and
tried to practice his indifference. Life among people was hot and
miserable—children crying, people sweating. Men and women mingling together,
their stench so human and awful.
In line in front of him stood a woman with a little boy. The boy kept
scrambling away from her and she kept pulling him back, her hand wrapped around
his arm.
He left his basket in the marketplace and followed them—without really knowing
why.
As it turned out, they lived in the cluster of houses on the other side of the
path through a patch of jungle. He caught up to them on the path. “Excuse me,”
he said, waving his hand. “I need help.”
The woman turned and looked at him, shielding her eyes from the sun.
Daken wondered if he’d chosen the wrong words. He was still learning the
language. “I need help,” he repeated. “I’ve lost my mother.”
She squinted at him. “You’re not from around here.”
“My mother is. I went to the market for her today. When I went home, I couldn’t
find her. I do not know where she is.”
The woman reached down and picked up her son. She slowly backed away. She was
young. Probably only a few years older than he was. “Who is your mother?”
He paused. He had no answer.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
Daken’s breath caught in his throat. Without realizing it, he was casting out
all the wrong emotions—all those emotions Romulus told him were unbefitting of
him. So promiscuous with his thoughts. He didn’t know why. Everything was going
badly. Control—it stilleluded him. And right now he needed it. He needed her.
“Please. I need help. You don’t understand. Something has happened to me.”
The boy began to cry. To wail. His eyes were large and frightened and strangely
without hope.
“I can’t help,” she said. “I’m sorry, but the war. We have nothing to share.”
He stumbled toward her as though grasping. “All I need is a place to stay.”
“I told you that I can’t help,” the woman said, her hand cradling the back of
her son’s head. Women—always with their own children! Their sons, he thought.
They’re always turning away all the others. “You’re from the north, aren’t
you?”
“I’m—no.” Just let me go home with you, he thought. He took a step closer to
her. “I need your help.” He took another step toward her. Why won’t you help
me?
I can make you help me, he thought. I can make you feel what I want you to
feel. I can make you do what I want.
She stopped inching away from him but kept her hand on her child’s head. She
peered at him now. “What do you want?” she asked, breathless.
In his mind he was with her. He was in her hut, eating her food. Watching her
baby. Sleeping with all of them in the bed. It would happen if he wanted it to.
She wouldn’t even know why he was there—only that she didn’t want him to go.
Only that she couldn’t remember what life had been like without him, and she
wouldn’t know why she felt this way.
She stood still, her eyes glassy with tears. As if she couldn’t believe this
was really happening.
He drew closer to her. She didn’t run away.
 
                                      ***
 
Afterwards—when he arrived home without the basket, and without the
food—Romulus just looked at him, mildly amused. “Did you get distracted?” He
tapped his fingernails against the table.
“I—”
“It’s alright. A boy’s got to be a boy sometimes. Here.” He held out one arm.
“Here. Have a glass of water.”
Daken lingered in the corner. Then he moved to the center of the room and took
the glass of water from Romulus. Drank.
Romulus reached over stroked his hair, curling one strand around his
fingernails. “Daken? You must forget what you think you know about family.”
Daken stopped drinking. He held his glass in front of him.
“You and I are family,” Romulus said, touching him, continuing to stroke his
hair. “This is what family is. As I have told you, we are not men—we are a
class above ordinary mortals, and now we have no secrets from one another. We
live inside one another. We inhabit the same body. And everything I have will
one day be yours. You don’t have to worry about anything anymore, Daken.”
“I know.”
Romulus paused. “You’re nothing to look at right now. Nothing special. I myself
am not the type that people enjoy looking at. People fear me because of the way
I look, but they do not consider me an object of beauty. But someday you will
be beautiful. And this will be a great advantage—people will afford you a
different kind of power than they afford me. Not lesser. Different. Someday
you’ll have everything you want.” Romulus pushed his hair back from his
forehead. “Not by force. People will willingly lie down for you. It’ll be like
love. Now,” Romulus said, snaking an arm around Daken’s waist. “For right now,
you must work on being clean. You haven’t washed since yesterday.”
“No, Master.”
“Even in this country, you must keep yourself clean for me.” Romulus gestured
to the door. “Go to the stream and wash. When you return, I’ll be waiting for
you.”
Daken went down to the stream and stripped off his clothes. He sat in the
water, waiting for the current to wash away the traces of what had happened
last night. The water soothed him. It was cool. He lay down in it. People will
lie down for you, he thought. They will lie. They will lie.
 
                                      ***
 
After all these years, it is still always this: Romulus inside of him again. It
doesn’t have to be Damascus—it could be anywhere. He and Romulus have done this
tens of thousands of times. It’s nothing to him. Really. And Romulus is always
the same. He twists his fingers inside of him before entering him, and then he
thrusts into him and pumps rapidly until he comes with a small shout. He’s
actually a very boring lover—if you could call him that. He’s more like a
masturbation partner. Well, that’s fine. Daken laughs to himself when it’s
over. Romulus is so secure in the knowledge that Daken won’t harm him—so
confident that he wraps his arms around Daken and sleeps soundly, not
intimidated by the blades anchored to Daken’s forearm claws.
Still, there’s this: Daken knows Romulus like no one else. He knows his old-
person smell, the growl of his intestines, the wet warmth of his breath. It’s
going to be weird. Not having him here anymore.  
In the early morning light, Romulus nudges him awake. “Make some coffee.”
Daken considers telling Romulus to make it himself. He’s tired of taking orders
from Romulus—even now, in the last hours of the man’s life. Instead, he shrugs
off his dream. In the dim light, he sees the undershirt he cast aside the night
before. It has a large hole and it’s stained with blood. (He still can’t
believe that Logan pulled that shit. Unbelievable.)
But as he makes the coffee, he feels his crisp, upbeat mood wear off. He feels
he’s being watched. Perhaps it’s the thought of Logan. Logan is the surest
buzzkill he’s ever encountered.
He wonders what he’ll tell Logan about this moment. Now he knows what he’ll
throw in Logan’s face before he kills him: You’re right, Dad. It’s just as you
suspected. Romulus was my first. But I was his last. I was the last sexual
encounter he ever had.
You loved him, Logan will say. (And he’ll cry about it, too.)
Once, Daken will reply.
Still, Logan will say.
You assume the rationale for loyalty is love. Not restraint.
You, Logan will say, know nothing about restraint.
I know everything about restraint. Restraint is how I’ve allowed you to live
for so long.
About that, son, Logan will reply, you’re completely wrong.
Romulus stirs from the bedroom and lumbers into the kitchen. “What is there to
eat?”
“Nothing. Fruit,” Daken says and moves to the balcony.
He thinks again of Logan. (He is always conversing with Logan in his mind. It’s
something he can’t stop doing these days.)
You want to know why, Daken will say.
I know the whys, Logan will say. You don’t have to explain why you loved him.
Oh, you think you know everything, Dad.
Love between people is actually simple. It’s not your fault.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, Daken will say.
You could have killed him last night. You didn’t have to wait for the morning.
You didn’t have to fuck him again, son. Not this time.
Before Daken can think of a reply, a bird flutters onto the balcony. He draws
closer to it until they’re almost touching. He waits for it to fly away, but it
doesn’t. It stays.
 
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