Free Wolf's-own: Koan by Carole Cummings

ashy saucer out of the way and folded down on his side, facing Jacin. He propped himself up on his elbow. “What did you talk about?"
    There was no easy way to answer that, and anyway, Jacin didn't want to. So, again, he didn't.
    Malick waited for several silent moments before he said calmly, “Fen, these....” He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Caidi isn't there. You know that, don't you?"
    Jacin wasn't sure, he kept going back and forth on that one, so he still didn't have an answer. Except he knew how these conversations went, he knew what came next— it's only your own guilty conscience, you can't listen to what your “ghosts” tell you, blah-blah-blah —and he really didn't think he wanted to hear it. He didn't want Malick to voice a denial of the things Caidi said, even if Jacin was doing it himself the whole while, but it would be different coming from Malick, and Jacin didn't want to have to hear it in Malick's own voice. Cowardly, just as cowardly as pushing away the knowledge that one father had sold him to another and neither of them had seen him as anything but a means to an end, but this threat of knowledge was right here , and he... he just couldn't .
    Fuck , he was pathetic, he really did want to believe, wanted to pretend he was flying, even if he knew he was falling. A creeping pressure-fist closed around his heart, and it was abruptly hard to breathe.
    "She looked like my mother,” he blurted. He had no idea why, except that Malick usually didn't insist that Jacin talk actual sense, only that he respond, that he recognize reality, and Jacin thought maybe the shock of an answer—any answer—might forestall Malick from making any declarations Jacin didn't want to hear.
    "Oh?” was all Malick said, expectant. He laid himself fully to the mattress, peered at Jacin with those tawny, too-knowing eyes, and waited for more.
    Except Jacin didn't have more. He didn't have the excuse of the Ancestors anymore, but he hadn't forgotten the lesson about keeping as much of the crazy as he could locked behind his teeth.
    "Fen,” Malick pressed quietly, “was, um...?” He hesitated, shook his head, and then sucked in a long breath, like he was bracing himself. “You've been... seeing Asai too. Haven't you?"
    Turned from a statement to a question. Jacin didn't know what to make of that, except that he knew Malick said there were no ghosts hovering around Jacin, he'd checked, so Malick must know that it was all the result of craziness, but that had never seemed to bother Malick much before. Jacin could tell Malick no, because he hadn't actually been seeing Asai, just hearing him, but he knew that wasn't what Malick meant, so it would feel too much like a blatant lie, and Malick always saw right through those, so what would be the point?
    "I don't want to talk about it,” Jacin whispered, tossing back the rest of his liquor and dropping the cup to the bed. He turned to his side to face Malick, except he didn't look him in the eye. Slowly, Jacin snaked out his hand and ran the tip of his finger over the lines of Malick's open collar instead, keeping his eyes on his hand. He wished Malick would take it as an invitation, but he wouldn't, he never did, it always had to be Jacin's idea, Jacin's choice . Jacin thought Malick was making some kind of point, and Jacin sort of got it, but sometimes it just made him want to scream and beg, please just take it all away, I don't know what to do with it . Jacin had perhaps had little choice when he'd woken to reality one day and found himself in the middle of the ocean and bound for Tambalon, but he'd nonetheless made that choice—retroactively, granted, but he'd thought pretty clearly—when Malick had invited him to share his bed as well as his house and Jacin accepted. Wordlessly accepted, but still. He was here, wasn't he?
    Malick's hand came up and took Jacin's, stilled it, and settled it over his breastbone. Jacin could feel Malick's heart beating against