A/N: I'm not so sure I'm happy with this but this fic was practically screaming 'Post me! Post me!' Probably the most graphic thing I've ever written. Which is funny, because it just suggests at stuff. Nothing actually happens... With that in mind...
WARNING: This is a fanfiction about a darksided romance between two men. That means homosexuality/slash. If you're not a fan, turn back now. I do not think this quite crosses over into 'M' territory, but it comes close, so just a bit of warning there.
Their relationship – were it truly able to be called that – was one of convenience. The exile needed someone to call his own; Jaq just needed a good frack.
It bothered Jaq that the exile was weak. Not physically, perhaps, – Gods, he knew not physically – but emotionally. The scars of Malachor ran deep within this man. With every ravenous bite on his neck, every deep scratch on his back and every unyielding thrust into his body, Jaq could feel the pain and hatred bottled up in his... lover? If it could be called that. The man could mercilessly slaughter dozens of people at a shot, yet on his own, he was a shattered, crippled dark jedi whose life seemed to be held together only by lust – for both power and sex – and hatred. On his own, he was afraid of his own shadow; drowning in the voices of the dead calling out to him, the pain and suffering.
And Jaq hated him for it.
Jaq had known that the exile would be a problem from the start. A no-strings-attached acquaintances-with-benefits 'relationship' rarely ever stayed that way, and emotional attachments were how this jedi thrived. But the man was attractive enough, and so he went along. He knew that he was going to have problems with the man when the exile suggested that Jaq be trained as a jedi. Earlier, even, when for some unknown reason Jaq had felt it necessary to reveal his entire life story, and the other man rewarded him for being a jedi killer with a nibble on the ear and whispers of dirty things that he could do to the younger man.
The jedi was needy. Probably needier than any hooker Jaq ever picked up on Nar Shaddaa. Jaq had fallen in too deep, but the exile could kill him with a twitch of his pinky toe, and he dare not suggest that they end their lust-filled romps. When the jedi came to him on quiet nights, tears falling silently from his eyes, begging to be held or kissed... that just wasn't Jaq's style; he was more of a quick, hard, and dirty kind of guy. But he would never tell that to the older man.
Jaq lived in fear, he just took it better than everyone else; cracking wise and hiding his emotions with an intense game of pazaak tended to shield his fear from everyone else's radar and after years of it he had become numb to its effects, mostly. He felt weak when people saw his weaknesses, and he hated feeling weak. And the exile was too busy wrapped up in his own weaknesses to deal with Jaq's.
Perhaps that was why they made such good lovers. When they slept together, all of their shields, their pain, their weaknesses didn't matter. All that mattered was the man with him, inside him. A man who didn't care enough to deal with the emotional baggage that came along with a relationship, but who did care enough to deal with Jaq's needs. The exile gave him that.
A man he hated enough to love.
But, Jaq thought, a man as shattered, weak, and dangerous as that has no room in his heart for love. The old hag was right about that, at least. So every time they had an encounter, every time that the exile said something that seemed as though he wasn't just concerned about his own weaknesses, Jaq could not get his hopes up. Hate, of course, was much stronger than love. Like he had been taught by the exile.
The exile may need him, but the exile could never love him. Which made his precarious perch on the exile's good side that much more dangerous. There was no love to hold the exile back from doing something reckless or psychotic. Jaq had already seen this with the Zabrak. He had broken the alien's spirit, and left him, alone, on some force-forsaken moon of some force-forsaken planet.
It was ruthless and cold. Unfeeling. Which is why, despite everything that he hated the exile for, every quirk or insecurity, Jaq loved him. Because they were the same: cold, unfeeling. Murderers, betrayers. They were the kind that tended to flock together. And after a while of mounting tensions, they would kill each other. And Jaq counted on that; for he could not live without the exile, and he believed that the exile could not live without him.