MALIK
"As usual" I mutter. (The metal hose of the hookah between my lips makes my words unclear).
"...what?"
His voice is spleepy. I give out some ethereal clouds of smoke, which are levitating in an hypnotic choreography to the ceiling of the room, filled with the smell of tobacco and our fierce night together.
Altaïr is tangled in bed sheets, lying on his belly. Dancing flames are emerging and dying on his naked skin at the pace of the flickering light, from the oil lamp hanging under an alcove.
His father was a native of Syria, but Altaïr has inherited the white skin and the light brown hair from Westerners –actually the sole thing his mother left to him.
"Nothing".
I meant: as usual, you care about yourself before any other people. He almost threw himself on me when I came back from my mission, and barely waited we were alone. Without even ask me if my job is done well. And, instead of greeting me, making hasty advances in a heavy silence, showing how frustrating his abstinence was, and ending up as often by an ardent fusion of our bodies...
Our rough daily life is made of that kind of scene.
"...'you mad at me?"
I almost bolt up in the bed. His hand is upon my left arm. It goes up slowly along the skin and let on it a wake of shivers, as light as eagle feathers.
This hand has a missing finger; Altaïr cut it off himself in allegiance to the Brotherhood, in order to make a better use of his hidden blade.
Assassination is a path of pain. This place requires physical proof of it. Being able to kill more or less efficiently doesn't necessarily allow us to get the upper hand over other people... When we embrace this path, we let darkness and shadows go on our sides. Our curse is burned on our skin with a thousand of scars, cuts, scratches, grazes, wounds, scarifications and mutilations.
"Leave me the fuck alone and go to sleep. You never listen anyway" I grumble.
"Right now there are more interesting things to do than sleeping, if you see what I mean..."
I let out an irritated "tsss" when I hear the double entendre.
"Fuck you Altaïr"
"Yeah, that's what I just said" he sniggers; I was hoist by my own petard.
Altaïr is hardly talkative, but at the rare moments he opens his mouth, he is pretty annoying. I wonder how we ended up sharing the same bed like this, him and I. There was a time when he used to be a very different man.
But I can't think about it any longer; the caress of his hand fade away. They leave my arm, my chest, and fall down to my crotch.