Raison d'état
Alejandro never drank to get drunk. Just enough to pretend the sentimental words that seemed to just stumble from his lips were a fault of the liquor, and didn't in fact come in just the same frequency during a dry spell.
But they did tend to come more often in a foreign place, some jet lag or ennui coloring them as subtly as the amber tinge left on a cube of ice at the bottom of his drained glass.
How lucky I am to have found you.
My special angel.
Naturally charismatic, Alejandro had a way of speaking when he was completely sober that could disarm nations. Somehow, a little liquor only made those words richer, slicker, smoother.
They are their own kind of insect-trapped-in-amber inside Ribbons's mind, temporal head, thorax and abdomen preserved in eternity to which he can return at any moment he so wishes.
Or, as is more often the case, all on their own, whether he wishes or not.
It should have been easy, doing what he did.
Though to be fair, Alejandro Corner didn't make it any less easy. He just made it more complicated.
-o-
"What do you want?"
"You know what I want."
Ribbons sighed. The television news on just-above mute should have commanded Alejandro's attention, but instead his hands rubbed aimlessly up and down Ribbons's thighs. Hesitant to continue any further, but equally unwilling to let him go.
And impossible to ignore.
Same old song and dance. It would start all over again when they were left alone after a meeting. The more beneath Alejandro the matters being discussed, the less likely Ribbons was to make it through the night with only playful innuendo.
First he'd feel Alejandro's breath, just brushing the back of his neck, followed soon after by the long strokes down his arms to the tips of his fingers.
Then there was the hotel suite, waiting for them when they returned, and some attractive young concierge—almost always female—eager to please, who only ever just served to remind Alejandro of what he had by his side already, whenever he needed it. . . .
Yes, it was clear enough to Ribbons what he wanted.
Just as he knew Alejandro would never ask for it.
And not because he was too much of a gentleman. If Ribbons knew anything at all about Alejandro Corner, he knew asking was not in the man's vocabulary.
-o-
He smiled.
"It's no good, you know."
"Hm?"
"I said, it won't do you any good. I'm sorry, Mr Alejandro. You and I are completely incompatible."
That was all the nudge Alejandro needed to rise to the challenge.
"Why should we be? Because of the way we're made? Because if that's your only objection, I can honestly say that I really don't give a damn."
His hand slid up Ribbons's arm from wrist to bicep, heavy, an unmistakably possessive gesture. Alejandro followed it with his gaze. Waiting for a shiver, perhaps? He could watch all day, he wasn't going to get one.
"No, Ribbons, quite to the contrary, what makes you so unique is precisely what I find so fascinating about you. And I do believe that despite our . . . shall we say, respective differences, you and I are more alike than you want to admit. Kindred spirits, as they say. That's why fate brought us together."
He was right, of course, about fate. To a point. But he really had no idea.
"Alright, Mr Alejandro. I'm not the UN. You don't have to sell me a speech."
"Don't I?"
Ribbons's own hands went to the clasp of his belt just as soon as he was released. He would let Alejandro have this round.
But next time, he'd have to fight for it, fair and square.
"You're so stubborn," he muttered. "Even for a human."
Alejandro leaned back on the heels of his hands, triumphant. Pupils dilate, body restless between Ribbons's thighs. "There. You see? Another trait we have in common."
-o-
Just as it went against Ribbons's nature to be disloyal, it went against Alejandro's to be cruel.
But that didn't mean a glimmer of ill intent wouldn't flash across his dark eyes every once in a while. He tried so hard to deny that part of him perhaps most human—by making a public spectacle of his altruism, saying saccharinely sentimental things he couldn't possibly mean—: that irrational tendency towards irrational cruelty.
Ribbons might have been the only one who knew it. He took Alejandro's confessions like the devoutest priest, locking away all evidence of Mr Corner's flaws and failings under a code of loyal discretion; and in return Alejandro repaid him with his worship. If a twisted form of worship.
He couldn't even wait for Ribbons to finish undressing to get his hands on him. That was the form Alejandro's devotions took: the rake of his stare, a long intake of breath, his fingertips doing their best to commit every inch of Ribbons to memory.
Of course, Ribbons was a masterpiece. It satisfied him immensely to be stroked and admired like the superior being he knew he was.
Even if Alejandro's reason for staring the way he did was far, far removed from that young boy's all those years ago. And far less pure.
Even if it was Alejandro's envy for the lost youth he was constantly reminded of in Ribbons—still young in appearance himself, but now jealously aware of his own mortality in every shadowy premonition of a wrinkle—and his unflagging sense of entitlement that brought something . . . selfish, even sinister, to his grip on Ribbons's waist.
Behind the veneer of noblesse oblige, Alejandro Corner was nothing if not a vain man. If Alejandro despised in Ribbons the same traits he professed to adore, it would have come as no surprise. Ribbons was, after all, a physical reminder that, for all his godlike powers, Alejandro could not halt the onward flow of time.
But whatever Alejandro's motives were where Ribbons was concerned—and Ribbons was fairly confident he would find no new surprises there—he knew his place and accepted what he must be in Alejandro's eyes:
A toy. A very expensive, very exclusive, and very worthy toy.
He'd come to expect to be played with like one.
-o-
He let Alejandro roll the shorts down off his hips, stretching against the cool sheets under his belly. A soft, sharp exhale of a laugh escaped Ribbons, and he didn't have to see to know the effect it had on Alejandro.
Alejandro left a trail of famished kisses—if they could be called anything as cohesive as that—over the naked flesh of Ribbons's buttocks, the dip of the small of his back, the knots of his spine. His hair tickled Ribbons wherever he moved, sending little sparks of electricity skittering across his skin.
To think not too long ago Ribbons had thought it absurd, why anyone would want to do this.
-o-
"Because it's fun."
So Alejandro told him, before Ribbons ever had cause to suspect Alejandro might want to have that kind of fun with him.
"Fun?"
He must have made a face, because it earned him a snicker. "You do know what 'fun' means, don't you, Ribbons? Entertaining, pleasurable, stimulating. . . ."
Ribbons had frowned, secretly furious that he had allowed Alejandro an opportunity to make fun of him. He still had a lot to learn then. Back when he was just starting to discover he didn't know nearly as much as he thought he did.
Back before he ever saw the use of playing dumb.
Escaping Earth's gravity well like a meteor in reverse, riding that first queer wave of weightlessness through his gut, that was fun. As—he'd recently discovered—was bringing some idiot diplomat's aide to tears.
Beating Alejandro at that game of chess—in five more moves or fewer, if Ribbons understood the man's fighting style like he thought he did—was more stimulating than the other two combined. So what if he set his bishop down a little harder than he meant to? "Of course I know what 'fun' is—"
"Then what's the problem?"
"It just doesn't strike me as a very good reason."
Alejandro laughed. "My dear Ribbons. What other reason is there!"
That Ribbons could not answer. And right then he couldn't quite bring himself to meet Alejandro's stubborn stare either.
-o-
Fun, huh?
Could it really be as simple as that? Alejandro Corner—the man who brokered peace with words alone, who made it his raison d'être to end tyranny, and described the urge of nations to dominate one another as a savage vestige of human nature that needed to be purged—was fun really all he thought this was?
Because what could be more tyrannical and more savage than the invasion of another's body?
Naturally, that was the last thought on Alejandro's mind. Naturally, like the rest of his race, he wouldn't see the contradiction in his actions, if he could even be bothered to.
Ribbons couldn't expect him to be bothered to see beyond the end of his own cock, let alone that maybe the way Ribbons's fingers were twisting in the hotel sheets, or digging into his wrist like Alejandro's were digging into his side, and the shamefully human noises that slipped past his larynx, didn't come from the same place as Alejandro's own.
And naturally, no matter how many times they went through the motions, no matter how in control of this game Ribbons believed he was, he always failed to prepare himself for this.
The panic that arose like clockwork from the moment Alejandro first pressed into him. Completely irrational—he could overcome the discomfort soon enough—but completely incapacitating.
The fear that somehow, some part of Alejandro's nature would jump from host to host, replicating itself until it filled Ribbons completely. Corrupting him from the inside out.
The slap of Alejandro's skin against his, the hard, metronomic rhythm of his breathing—he couldn't have been less aware of how ugly a sound it was to a superior intellect like Ribbons's, how base and greedy, and—
Cruel. Yes. There was no more fitting way to describe it.
And it was exactly what he needed.
-o-
A smile slowly blossomed on Ribbons's lips as he felt the first familiar stirrings in the pit of his stomach.
It warmed him, like the bright center of a singularity. Turning, burning, sucking everything unpleasant into itself and leaving him hyperaware of every touch.
And wanting more.
Alejandro Corner.
Only when he was buried inside Ribbons, driving himself as deep as he could go, did Ribbons truly understand why he despised that man so much. He clung to that feeling tight and let it strip away his pride, let it consume all thought, and all sensation.
He sank against the mattress, cheek pressed against the inside of his elbow, as everything within him constricted deliciously, trying to shrink itself down into that pure, wonderful, heavy center.
And felt Alejandro lose it a few moments later.
He came with an embarrassingly guttural sound. His teeth sunk into Ribbons's shoulder, his nails into Ribbons's hip, leaving little white half-moons. But Ribbons hardly registered the sting. He was humming. Buzzing all over like a live wire with his own secret drive.
And unlike Alejandro's, his didn't enjoy the luxury of a physical outlet. That wasn't the nature of Ribbons's particular beast.
-o-
He nearly jumped when Alejandro's hand came to rest between his legs. Ribbons could sense his disappointment, the unspoken apology in his shaky exhale.
An apology was the last thing he wanted from Alejandro Corner.
He slurred against Ribbons's shoulder, "What do I have to do to satisfy you?"
"Like I said," Ribbons said, proud how unaffected his own voice was in comparison. "We're completely incompatible."
He felt Alejandro stir inside him all the same, even as spent as he was.
Something about that only made Ribbons smile wider. Though there was nothing humorous in the wetness between his legs, or the sharp odor of Alejandro's sweat that seemed to cling all around him. He needed a shower. A scalding one.
But even that would not wash away that buzzing feeling, nor did Ribbons want it to.
"Let me clean myself up, and I'll fix you a drink," he offered. "I know what you like."
It never ceased to amaze him how coy he could make those simple words sound.
And how powerful, and how big, they could make him feel.
How vulnerable the Corner family scion appeared as he leaned back on his elbows on the mussed sheets, flushed and in his awkward state of undress, unable or unwilling to take his eyes off of Ribbons for even a moment.
As if awaiting his next command.
Ribbons wondered if Alejandro was even aware of it.
The way he grinned, it was as if they were sharing some private joke.
Except Ribbons couldn't be sure they were as in agreement on the punchline as Alejandro thought.