Disclaimer: I do not own any Magi characters (which I lament every day). Everything was created, written and drawn by Shinobu Ohtaka, and we are very grateful that she did.
Rating: T or M. Each chapter will be rated separately. Most of it is pretty tame. This one is T.
Warnings: Yaoi, yuri, het and (obviously) non-canon shippings. Duh.
First Cycle
I – 1: Ja'far / Sinbad
Ja'far held a huge amount of devotion for his king. In fact, both of them acknowledged that the ex-assassin would happily gouge out his own eyes with a dull knife before doing something that would harm Sinbad.
It did not mean that he could not find his king exceedingly frustrating, sometimes.
Like right now, Ja'far thought, as he was half-dragging, half-carrying a fully drunk monarch to his chambers, and contemplating just abandoning him in the hallways for the servants to find in the morning. But that would create more complications than anything, Ja'far argued to himself as he reached the bottom of the stairs leading to the king's rooms. He sighed and glared at his passed-out friend.
Sinbad just had to sleep at the top of a giant tower.
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Many steps and curses later, Ja'far finally dragged his king inside his chambers. From there, it took only a few more meters – and grunts – to reach Sinbad's bed, where he could at last let the taller and heavier man collapse from his shoulder to the plump mattress.
"When I decided to follow you," he drawled at the unconscious figure, "I did not expect to be doing freight lifting."
Sinbad's light snoring was his only answer and Ja'far weakly kicked the leg that was dangling from the bed.
"You could at least pretend to listen," he mumbled with a half-hearted glare.
He contemplated the untidy image that his king formed – drool, ruffled clothes and tangled jewelry – and just knew he was not going to leave Sinbad like that, no matter how much he wanted it to be a lesson for his king. He was not sure if it was because of his loyalty or of his slightly obsessive tendencies where tidiness was concerned. He sighed in aggravation and started removing the many rings, bracelets and pendants Sinbad wore on a daily basis.
"You know," he muttered between two grumbled insults at a necklace clasp that seemed determined to not budge, "this is exactly the kind of stupid moment that makes me reconsider my loyalties."
Take that, he thought.
Most of the time, Ja'far was a very restrained person. But right now, venting a bit of his annoyance at the oh-so-frustrating unconscious monarch seemed like a harmless – and stress relieving – activity. After winning his fight with the stubborn necklace, he discarded the last jewelries to a nearby night stand and shifted his attention to disrobing his king.
"I expected someone I could actually rely on, you know," he grumbled, fiddling with the sash's knot. "Not that you're unreliable," he corrected after few seconds of thought, "you just…" He sighed. "It's like you don't take it seriously, sometimes."
Sinbad mumbled a few incoherent syllables when Ja'far rolled him to the side to extract the fabric stuck underneath him
"And I know we're not supposed to be serious all the time, at least you, because I don't do silly."
His hands automatically folding the purple and white robes, Ja'far took a deep breath.
"But still," he added sternly. "You're my king. You're supposed to be regal." He dropped the folded robes on an armchair, knowing exactly what Sinbad would retort to that last bit. "And I don't care about your peasant birth; the fact that you weren't born noble doesn't mean that you don't have to act like one now that you wear a crown."
He crossed his arms over his chest, satisfied with his argument and made a mental note to slide it into a conversation when Sinbad would be awake and sober enough to comprehend his words. His gaze travelled around the room in search of his king's sleeping gown and he frowned in disapproval when his king released a particularly ill-timed burp.
"That was disgusting," he commented, stifling a yawn. "Also, you're an asshole for getting drunk at such an ungodly hour. I could be sleeping, but no, I'm still awake because I have to get you to your bed. Do you have any idea how much sleep I miss every week because of you?"
He abruptly cut off his rant – it was starting to sound too much like a whine – and grumbled a few new curses instead.
"I'll never understand what pleasure you find in alcohol," he berated the unconscious form of his king, his eyes trailing along the lines of Sinbad's muscles. "It fogs your mind, hinders your movements and gets you completely incapacitated and defenseless. A child could kill you, right now, never mind a trained assassin."
He paused and glared at the open window that any dedicated enemy of Sinbad could easily reach with a bit of persistence and creativity. He knew; he had done the climb many times to make Sinbad see his point, and had only gotten in return a few joked remarks about his insistence to get into his king's rooms, which was infuriating, because he had been serious and how could Sinbad not see the danger?
"We both know Sindria is not as safe as you claim it to be," he murmured, a bitter grimace marring his face.
Letting his training take over, he closed his palm around an imaginary knife and stalked to the bed in the perfect silence that had been drilled into him before he was old enough to walk. He crouched and placed the imaginary blade against his king's throat, mimicking a slashing movement.
Sinbad let out a small snore, curled to the side and Ja'far restrained the suddenly desperate urge to shake him awake. With a sigh, the ex-assassin straightened himself and went back to locating his king's night gown.
"But you don't care about any of that, do you?" he whispered softly, while searching a cupboard for the elusive garment. "You have your Solomon-forsaken luck to get you through adversity," he added, his voice rising to hide his anxiety, "so where's the problem in getting drunk, having fun and letting me deal with the fallout?"
Sinbad might find partying to be the height of entertainment but, to his advisor-turned-bodyguard, it was a nightmare. Try protecting a man with as many enemies as Sinbad had, when said man was frolicking in a crowd of countless potential assassins and utterly unable to defend himself should he be attacked.
"Hoy, Ja'far," he mocked, fists on his hips and impersonating his king's too-carefree tone rather successfully. "I'm going to town for a drink. Come with me, it'll be fun!"
The last word was more growled than it was said.
Ja'far exhaled a long, deep, breath and shook his head with a tired slump of his shoulders.
"Your idea of entertainment is more than seriously messed up."
Having finally found the night gown – Sinbad must be hiding them – he walked back to the bed and started the difficult process of putting the robe on his king. The fact that, even comatose, the man was still very much against clothes made his task a lot harder than it should have been.
"I hope that you're happy with yourself," he growled at an extremely aggravating sleeve, infuriated by his unconscious king's passive resistance, "because this is not fun."
"I could make it more fun," replied an all-too-awake voice.
Ja'far froze.
He closed his eyes for a few seconds – of course, of fucking course – and let out a deep breath. Fingers twitching, he looked up from the elbow he was currently trying to slide in a sleeve and stared at the completely awake – and eminently lucid – face of his king. He then closed his eyes again, pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a very long sigh.
"You heard everything, didn't you?" he asked, not even bothering to look at Sinbad's expression, because he already knew what kind of mischievous smirk he would find there and, really, he did not need more embarrassment than he was already drowning into. "Of course, you did." He looked down at the uncooperative sleeve and sighed again, and there was a bone-deep weariness in that sigh. "Great. Now let me get up, leave your rooms and pretend the last twenty minutes never happened."
Ja'far leaned away, but his attempt at getting up was halted by Sinbad's hand catching his wrist with an accuracy that spoke more than words about the man's real state of inebriation.
"You weren't drunk when I carried you up the stairs, were you?"
The question was asked in the blank, emotionless tone that Ja'far used when he could not decide whether he wanted to strangle someone with mild prejudice or go curl up in his room and wait for all the idiocy to just go away. He finally turned his face back to his king and the nuance of guilty glee in Sinbad's eyes was answer enough.
Ja'far's lower eyelid twitched.
"Ah," Sinbad retorted with a grin, dismissing the sign of his advisor's annoyance – and future revenge, "but I thought the last twenty minutes never happened, did they not?"
The twitch appeared again, this time more pronounced, and Sinbad ignored it.
"You're an asshole," Ja'far stated in what was supposed to be a dismissive tone but ended up being amused irritation.
"So I've been told," his king retorted with an unrepentant grin. "I'm also very sorry that you're losing that much sleep over me."
Sinbad's tone was pitched low enough to give the sentence a flirty vibe, which did not help Ja'far in taking the apology seriously. It rather gave the impression that, like most girl who met Sinbad – and subsequently failed to restrain their growing obsession with the man – Ja'far could not sleep for far different reasons than the ones invoked.
"Don't make it sound like that," he huffed back.
"Like what?" his king asked with fake innocence.
"You know very well what."
"Do I?"
"Yes," he hissed, a murderous glare flashing in his eyes, and Sinbad wisely dropped the subject.
His attention fell back to his wrist that was still firmly in his king's grasp and he glared at the offending hand holding him here and away from his ever-shortening night of sleep.
"I'm sorry that I make you that worried," Sinbad said more sincerely, "but you do know I can take care of myself, don't you?"
"Most of the time," Ja'far grumbled back. "I worry about the choices you make when you're actively avoiding relying on your brain."
"Ouch."
"And it's not like I can't sleep at night because I'm worried…" Well, most of the time. And when he could not sleep, he just got up, patrolled the palace until his anxiety had receded to bearable levels. He sighed. "Your antics just keep me up far past my bedtime."
It was not as if he could go to sleep before Sinbad, because there was no way he would just trust someone else with the reckless idiot's safety, not when he knew the kind of crazy shit that always happened around his king.
"Well, you could always sleep here;" Sinbad offered with a teasing smile. "You'd be the first to know if someone manages to sneak into my room…"
Ja'far stared at him with a deadpan expression.
"If you're trying to get me into your bed," he drawled, "that was the lamest excuse I've heard today."
"I must be losing my touch," his king joked.
Ja'far considered retorting that Sinbad did not have any 'touch' to speak of, but his friend seemed to suddenly process the last bit of his answer.
"Wait," Sinbad blurted out with a startled expression, "Today, I didn't… who else has been propositioning you?"
Ja'far raised an eyebrow at the affronted tone.
"People," he replied curtly and had to conceal his amusement at the indignant expression slowly creeping along his king's face. Sinbad seemed to hesitate between confused jealousy and outrage at what he knew must irritate his advisor to no end.
Eventually, his king composed himself and settled for a mostly neutral question:
"Does it… happen often?"
He shrugged with a casual disinterest that he knew would drive Sinbad up the wall and if that was not a so-very-appropriate revenge…
"Not really," he drawled, "I'd say four times, maybe five times a week."
"That's at least once a day!" Sinbad exclaimed, reaching otherwise unprecedented heights of puzzled outrage.
"Twice yesterday," Ja'far corrected with great calm.
There was a pause.
"And did you…" his king eventually started asking, only to trail off with uncertainty at the arctic stare the assassin-turned-advisor was sending his way.
"Sin'," Ja'far replied in a deceptively sweet voice, "with all due respect, that is none of your business."
Though what 'that' entailed did not amount to much. Mostly, Ja'far was too busy to pay attention to his sentimental – and physical – desires or those of the humans buzzing around him. However, it did not mean he could not take revenge on his amusingly possessive king, especially when said king's kicked puppy expression was turning into a rather ridiculous pout.
"Well," Sinbad declared with an expression hinting that he was decided to make it the sixth proposition of the week. "Sleep with me?"
"No."
"I meant just sleeping. In my bed."
Ja'far did not roll his eyes. But it was very close.
"Of course, you did." Had his words dripped more icy sarcasm, they would have left ice on the floor. "No."
"But you'll gain time on your sleep schedule," Sinbad argued, "And if you don't have to go back to your rooms, you can make sure I wake up early. Isn't it an even better reason than just guarding me in my sleep?"
"It's actually worse," he deadpanned. "Good job."
"Thank you. Seriously, though, you're welcome to stay…"
"If you somehow manage to convince me, I don't think we're going to be doing much sleeping…"
"True, true. But still…"
"Sinbad. We've already discussed this."
They had.
These arguments had never ended well, and Ja'far did not intend to lose more precious sleep time over another one.
"Ja'far… won't you give me a chance?"
For a few heartbeats, Ja'far just looked at him.
Then he raised his free hand to Sinbad's face, softly tracing the side of his jaw until the tip of his fingers rested on the pulse at the side of his neck.
He was close enough to hear the choked intake of breath and smiled. A small tug, and Sinbad let go of his arm, which Ja'far wrapped around his nape. Their chests were almost touching, and he could feel Sinbad's warmth from where he stood, half bent over his king.
Warm hands settled upon his hips, their touch surprisingly light, almost shy.
Ja'far smiled again, his hand stroked Sinbad's pulse, then trailed to a point, just above his left collarbone. He leaned toward Sinbad, his lips brushing the side of his king's ear.
"I would rather sleep," he whispered.
A sharp jab at the pressure point, and Sinbad was unconscious.
Ja'far rolled him to a vaguely appropriate sleeping position and covered him with the bedsheet.
He bent to the lying form and pressed his lips against Sinbad's in a chaste kiss.
"Sweet dreams, my king."
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This idea has been in the works for... at least 4 years. I've finally decided to post some of the less cringeworthy chapters here.
And yes, it did start because I wanted to try my hand at writing smut. This would be easier if I could type a sex scene without blushing every three words.
Anyway, enjoy.