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Malik/Altair AU
Feb. 16th, 2014 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cartographs[ Malik knows there's something wrong the instant the man with the white hood walks through the door.
For one, it's been almost a month since Malik's last seen him, during that weird three week period where he kept running into the stranger he'd since dubbed Hoodie Guy. They'd crashed into each other at a coffee shop on campus, sending both their purchases flying, and instead of apologizing like normal people they'd ended up trading cutting little remarks (who wore his hood up inside?) and storming off in separate directions, and then Hoodie Guy had stolen the last seat on the campus shuttle twice while Malik was trying to protect his messenger bag full of rolled maps, and then Malik had grimly pressed the Close Door button in Hoodie Guy's face once or four times. They'd never traded names, although Malik was starting to suspect that they must share professors or at least majors for the number of times he'd seen that stupid white jacket with the eagle on the back disappearing around the corners of the buildings he'd come to think of as his own territory.
(Malik always came away from these little encounters with a splitting migraine and a shattered attention span, for some reason, even his brother noticed and started teasing him about his reflexive reaction to the color white.)
Then Hoodie Guy had vanished as abruptly as he'd entered Malik's life, and he'd cheerfully convinced himself that the man had switched majors, or maybe gotten hit by a bus.
One thing about Hoodie Guy, though, is that Malik's never seen him with it down. Ever. Not in classes, not in the hallways, not enough to ever get more than the barest glimpse of his face and his eyes. Malik had chalked it up to the same syndrome that led some people to walk around campus with the huge noise-cancelling headphones on.
But when the bell above the door to the antique store chimes, and Malik comes out of the back where he'd been doing inventory with Kadar, arms full of carefully protected vintage maps and scrolls and intending to call a polite greeting, he sees Hoodie Guy standing before the glass case in the front, and the hood is down. It startles Malik enough that the 'welcome' dies in his throat, eyes darting despite himself, and Hoodie Guy actually seems to glower harder, shoulders tensed and looking horribly uncomfortable. He starts to say something.
The bell chimes again and five men in black suits and cross pins on their red ties filter in.
Seventy-two hours later, Malik is staring up at the ceiling of a white room, blinking out of the haze of heavy sedation, minus left arm and brother. Kadar may not be dead but the doctors here won't let him see him, only promise again and again that if he cooperates with their little project he'll be rewarded. ]
For one, it's been almost a month since Malik's last seen him, during that weird three week period where he kept running into the stranger he'd since dubbed Hoodie Guy. They'd crashed into each other at a coffee shop on campus, sending both their purchases flying, and instead of apologizing like normal people they'd ended up trading cutting little remarks (who wore his hood up inside?) and storming off in separate directions, and then Hoodie Guy had stolen the last seat on the campus shuttle twice while Malik was trying to protect his messenger bag full of rolled maps, and then Malik had grimly pressed the Close Door button in Hoodie Guy's face once or four times. They'd never traded names, although Malik was starting to suspect that they must share professors or at least majors for the number of times he'd seen that stupid white jacket with the eagle on the back disappearing around the corners of the buildings he'd come to think of as his own territory.
(Malik always came away from these little encounters with a splitting migraine and a shattered attention span, for some reason, even his brother noticed and started teasing him about his reflexive reaction to the color white.)
Then Hoodie Guy had vanished as abruptly as he'd entered Malik's life, and he'd cheerfully convinced himself that the man had switched majors, or maybe gotten hit by a bus.
One thing about Hoodie Guy, though, is that Malik's never seen him with it down. Ever. Not in classes, not in the hallways, not enough to ever get more than the barest glimpse of his face and his eyes. Malik had chalked it up to the same syndrome that led some people to walk around campus with the huge noise-cancelling headphones on.
But when the bell above the door to the antique store chimes, and Malik comes out of the back where he'd been doing inventory with Kadar, arms full of carefully protected vintage maps and scrolls and intending to call a polite greeting, he sees Hoodie Guy standing before the glass case in the front, and the hood is down. It startles Malik enough that the 'welcome' dies in his throat, eyes darting despite himself, and Hoodie Guy actually seems to glower harder, shoulders tensed and looking horribly uncomfortable. He starts to say something.
The bell chimes again and five men in black suits and cross pins on their red ties filter in.
Seventy-two hours later, Malik is staring up at the ceiling of a white room, blinking out of the haze of heavy sedation, minus left arm and brother. Kadar may not be dead but the doctors here won't let him see him, only promise again and again that if he cooperates with their little project he'll be rewarded. ]
