Work Text:
i.
"Are you sure it's okay if I sleep here with you?" Caleb asks, setting his bags down over the table in her cramped guest quarters. "I'd rather be here than with Darem."
Anisha's eyes strip him with warmth, scorching against his skin. Her gaze is full of love, always full of love.
She's so, so beautiful. He'd burn for her. He has burned for her. He will burn for her. Caleb imagines his mother everywhere--at his wedding, walking him down the aisle; at his graduation ceremony; sending him off to his first ship. When they were together, she always slept with him close, singing him to sleep, quieting his worries. He knows, now, that she was trying to silence him to avoid being caught.
They deserve this. They deserve this trip, this life. Anisha will never have to worry about silence again.
"No, honey," she replies, placing a gentle hand over his shoulder. "Every night when I was in prison, I thought about falling asleep with you in my arms. I'm beyond lucky if I get to do it now."
Caleb feels heat grow in his cheeks, the manifestation of fifteen years of hunting, nearly two decades of yearning. He wants to--
He does cry. A tear slithers out, a wet betrayal, and when Anisha pulls him into a hug, he cannot stop his cries from bursting. He's missed her so, so much. She has missed out on so, so much.
"I love you, Caleb," Anisha whispers into his shoulders, standing high on her toes to reach his neck. "This feels like a dream."
Caleb pulls back, and she wipes the tears from his face with her thumb, her touch loving-hot.
"I love you too, mom."
ii.
The semester is over, now. Months and months and months ago, she was thinking of Caleb--wondering what he looked like now, if he was littered with scars, if he was violated, if he was even still alive at all. She taught her classes, advocated for her students, tried not to see Caleb's face reflected in the innocent eyes of every single one.
She shattered his innocence, and she can never truly put it back together.
Anisha is the glue. The bind that holds him in place, connects him to the world -- a ligament. She is the lost masterpiece, finally returned. A rarity rediscovered.
Nahla cannot stomach her jealousy.
She rocks back and forth on her feet. She knows exactly where he is, she doesn't even have to ask the computer; outside of Anisha's quarters, she hovers her fingers over the bell. It can't - she can't--
She tries to prepare her speech. I just want to say goodbye. I just want to tell you how proud I am. I just want you to know that I'm happy for you. I just want you to know that I am nothing, these days, without you.
God. This is going to be an awful summer. She won't know what to do with herself--
A loud wail from inside Anisha's quarters. It sounds agonized, as if someone is suffering. Situations flood through her mind, soaking Nahla in panic: the Venari Ral are here, they've found her, they're taking her, they're taking Caleb, they're taking everything Nahla has and wants and needs--
She overrides the lock with her command codes and walks in, cautious and snail-slow. The groans continue, deep grunts watercolor mixing with Anisha's breath. She approaches the partition to the bedroom, preparing to attack any assailant--
"Fuck, Caleb."
Nahla blinks and blinks. It takes her a moment to process what she's hearing; it's definitely Anisha's voice, and these are definitely not noises of pain. Her heart begins to hammer and then halts within her chest, her breath stopping as it rises. She feels an odd sickness grow in her stomach as she listens to Anisha's soft moans.
She supposes it makes sense. Anisha didn't raise him. Sometimes things like this just happen. It's not her business, at the end of the day.
But: a wet warmth is growing beneath the sickness. Nahla feels pangs of disgust drill in as she freezes in stasis at the sound, her pants growing soaked. The arousal she feels only reinforces her nausea; she's disgusting, abhorrent. This is a despicable, comfortable feeling.
Caleb is leaving her tomorrow. It will be months before she sees him again—-months of loneliness. Lura and Jett are going on vacation together, and Kelrec, while fun to pester, isn’t exactly long-term company material. She tries to swallow the memories down, but they cut like blades—the nights she’d circle her fingers over her clit at the thought of her mouth around Caleb’s cock, the nights where she fucked herself with her toys pretending it was Caleb deep inside.
A hand slides down her pants. She really should wear underwear. Beneath her waistband, her fingers touch down over each sensitive area, a frantic curling, but the waves of pleasure only make her nausea hit worse. If she doesn’t get out now, her sickness will spread all over the floor, self-hatred bare for all to see.
So: She turns to leave, pulls away. It almost works. She almost doesn’t notice Caleb’s shadow.
Unfortunately, Caleb is too hypervigilant, always scanning his surroundings for danger even at his most vulnerable. She had to have known.
"What the hell, Nahla?"
Nahla clears her throat, tries to compose herself. "I thought you were being attacked."
"And when you realized you were wrong, you decided to masturbate about it?"
Nahla's mouth opens, but she fails to produce words. Only an open jaw, only trembling lips. There is no explanation, there is no way out of this. She really fucked up.
"Caleb, I--"
"Don't."
"Explain this," she croaks out. Her voice is weak, her body is weak, and Nahla Ake, at her very core, is weak.
"You first."
"Fine. I have feelings for you I haven't quite figured out yet. Wrong and bad, yes, but I'm not the one having sex with my mother." She sighs. "How did this happen?"
"I don't owe you--"
"We were talking," interrupts Anisha. She appears from behind the partition, her pants unbuttoned and unzipped. "We realized we were both on the same planet at the same time once, met without knowing it. We.. we flirted back then."
"How did you not recognize each other?"
"It was… it was cold and loud. We were all bundled up, had masks covering our faces."
Nahla nods. She considers it, chews on it, dissects it in her mind.
"Makes sense. Guess I can't judge, anyway." Her voice breaks. "I'll leave you two alone. And… I never saw anything."
Nahla turns before her tears can show. She hopes - prays - that Caleb will return for another semester after this.
She bolts from the room, trying to cover the stains on her clothing, and she's almost down the hall, almost safely away, when--
"Wait."
iii.
At one point Nahla Ake had been the villain of his story--a face he'd think of in the buried depths of his dumpster-beds, a face that haunted his eyelids, a face that would creep in when he was older and discovering his own relationship to pleasure.
When he sold himself, he imagined every woman as Nahla Ake, just to make the hatred seep in further. Nahla Ake on top of him, around him, suffocating him. The burn of resentment like drugged alcohol in his throat. Now:
"You really feel that way for my son?" asks Anisha. He can read Nahla well by now; she's thinking the same thing he is, which is that Anisha's voice is too broken, too calm, to be appropriate for the situation.
"Yes," Nahla replies, without hesitation.
"Since---since when?"
"Since the day we reunited."
Reunited. The wording makes Caleb shiver. Reunification implies a willingness on both sides, and Caleb was never given a choice. He looks at Nahla, studies her expression. She looks like a terrified animal in its last seconds of life before succumbing to a predator's teeth. She looks like she just watched someone be cut open right in front of her. She looks like she will never be the same Nahla Ake again.
He loves his mother. He wants his mother. He is getting used to this, still - allowing himself to want. Wanting only turns into danger once you digest it, but--
Caleb hates her. Caleb can finally make a choice. Tarima had been furious with him for saying no when she was drunk, taking it as a personal offense; Nahla kept herself restrained, reigned-in, mostly professional, never going too far, never taking any risk at all. Did she think he was breakable?
He looks over at Anisha. Asks, with his eyes, a gaze that she can immediately decipher; even after decades apart, she still knows him to his core. And she gives a hesitant nod, careful permission.
"Nahla," he says.
She stares up at him, her eyes wide and pleading, her expression frozen like a corpse on shock. She isn't sure where to go, what to do, what to touch, who to touch. He can tell that this is a situation she never imagined herself in, a situation that she imagined every night during their semester here, a situation she thought would remain fantastical.
"Come here," he continues. Caleb moves to sit on the edge of Anisha's bed, allowing Nahla to approach him face-to-face instead of face-to-chest. Anisha watches as Nahla places a shaking hand on Caleb's cheek, almost terrified to touch him. All that she does is stare into his eyes with a stripping adoration that no one involved can bear. She won't move. She looks paralyzed by the moment.
So: Caleb pulls her closer, and initiates. Her lips against his feel warm and hot, fitting around him and into him in a way that feels prophetic, as if this is where there stories were always going to end up—Anisha climbing behind him on the bed to stroke his hair as Nahla kisses him deeper and harder and splitting, giving soft moans into his mouth.
She's trying not to lose herself, but her restraints shatter as Caleb's lips move down her jaw and over her neck. He wonders what his mother is thinking, if she feels betrayed, if she's only letting this happen to make sure Nahla doesn't hurt him. He wonders what Nahla is thinking, if things will ever be the same between them again. He wonders what he should be thinking--if he should be thinking about anything besides the moment, anything besides his mother behind him and Nahla on top of him. It feels horribly right, and utterly wrong.
Anisha places her hand over Nahla's hands when she reaches for the button of Caleb's pants. She's going too far—Anisha has been apart from Caleb for so, so long, and she deserves him.
"No," Anisha says. "You don't get to."
Nahla climbs off of Caleb, and the sudden lack of contact causes him to lurch forward. He watches as his mother undresses in front of them, studies her thin, worn body. The sight makes him ill: she's covered in scars and burns and half-healed gashes. Malnourished, trembling, but whole. Whole now, and whole forever.
Nahla takes Anisha's place behind him, and he relaxes into her embrace. Her touch carries an almost maternal warmth as she strokes the skin of his shoulders and kisses his temples, her breath hot against his flesh. If, last year, he knew that he would end up here---
Nahla pulls Caleb's boxers down, frees him for Anisha, runs her fingertips in circles over his hips as Anisha pulls her shirt off and moves forward to straddle her son. She looks behind Caleb with an indecipherable expression, and then she pulls him closer for another kiss, giving gentle grinds against his cock. She pants into his mouth, tries to move closer to him, tries to slide inside and merge their souls into one being so that they can never be separated again.
I love you, Caleb, whispers Anisha. I love you.
She sinks down slow onto his cock, fluttering warm around him. Behind Caleb, Nahla's right hand slips into her own pants, her other hand still stroking Caleb's arm to comfort him.
I love you too, mom, Caleb replies. He turns around to look at Nahla, and gives her only a nod of acknowledgement.
It's enough for all of them.
