#Ikaris throws it down a chasm

[slothgiirl]

a rose by any other name vii

druig x reincarnating human! reader

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baghdad, abbasid caliphate 912 CE

Hasan and Druig stumble as they come to a stop. Fatima is still spinning, her hands like twin snakes, eyes closed. 

He likes this form of meditation.

The world spins on its axis and even an Eternal was not impervious to getting dizzy. 

Hasan’s expression is blissed out. “Its always strange after,” Hasan mutters softly, seeming to readjust to himself. “Isn’t it Druig?”

He quirks a grin. Oh, he understood perfectly. It was learning to control his telepathy all over again. 

It was nice, shutting his thoughts up, still being himself, and just spinning. He wondered if any ascetic got the same thing out of these practices. Where they all looking to fill that chasm between their heart and minds as Druig was? Was anyone’s search the same even when they believed in Allah?

Ajak and Ikaris were both firm adherents, but their actions were distinct. 

Where did that leave him?

“Give me a second,” he winces, really feeling all the qottabs he’d had for breakfast. It had been too easy to pop them into mouth while Gilgamesh turned his back. 

Hasan laughs at him.

It’s probably how Kingo and Ikaris feel when Druig utters jabs at them over dinner.

They were so easy to wind up.

“There’s a lady selling kubas down the street.”

Druig throws him a dirty look before laughing, “I’d risk it. Oh, or kanefah!” He had a sweet tooth more than anything.

“How are you always hungry,” the man claps him around the shoulder, shaking him lightly. 

Fatima falls onto the floor, eyes still closed, she manages to still rib at Druig, “plain rice is enough. A bowl, no more, a strip of meat, maybe a-”

“Honestly, I just get bored.”

“Pick up a hobby,” Hasan shakes his head, arm around Druig’s neck, ruffling his hair like a brother might.

He feels a rush of affection for the man. He didn’t want a circle of flattery like Kingo when he had friends like Hasan. 

“Read a book,” Fatima calls out, her face flush with exertion. “Get some sun! Ah-” she opens her eyes, dazed. Fatima begins reciting shahada like a chant to herself. 

Curious, he reads her thoughts. 

He doesn’t know what to make of them.

Like the Buddhists and their nila bindu. . .

“Are you okay Druig,” Hasan asks.

“Huh?”

“You’re crying.”

It takes him a moment, “I guess I am.” 

***

He runs into Kingo.

“Druig, you’ve got to try this! I don’t know what is up with this grain but the beer,” Kingo makes a face of approval.

“Um,” he pretends to consider it, “don’t trust your taste.”

“Ouch. This is what hanging out with those weirdos does to a man,” Kingo fires back, falling into step with him as they walk through the city. “I mean,” the other eternal looks Druig over. “Doesn’t the gold defeat the point?”

“Well it’s not like I bought it,” he smirks at Kingo. 

“Druig!” He puts a hand over his heart in mock offence, “you’ve got to support their businesses. But tell me,” he leans close, “do you think I could pull that chain off?”

Druig raises a brow, “You’d think not being able to commission portraits of yourself would knock your ego down a few pegs.”

“Oh please,” Kingo rolls his eyes, “not being able to see me in painting makes seeing me in real life all the more special.”

“Are you sure they’re not just relieved they don’t have to see your ugly mug in their house every day?”

“You suck Druig, you know that.”

*** 

“Why do you even need a banner,” Druig asks Hasan.

“My father thinks the verse is fitting for my sister’s wedding,” Hasan explains. 

Druig breaks off a piece of unleavened bread and hands it to his friend. 

Calligraphy was the ruling artform of the times.

The shop is one among many, in the shadow of a mosque. Nothing about the stall stands out to him. Recommendations from trusted friends are the only way to know what you’re commissioning will be any good. 

The shop is lined with books. Examples of beautifully decorated Qurans sit open from the simple gold inked large letters, still legible in their artistic form, to calligraphy so abstract in black ink against vegetal backgrounds of green and blues. Druig can see the appeal. 

Makkari has quite a few exquisite examples from over the last centuries since Mohammad preached. 

The materials are not the finest to be found in the city, but the work is good. Druig has a refined eye from being as old as he is. 

Hasan grabs the shopkeeper's attention. The man wipes dust from translated books. There’s little out of the far west, but the Byzantine empire and southwest asia continue to flourish if the prose is anything to go by. “I’m here to pick up the order for Mostafa Jassim?” 

“Ah,” the shopkeeper looks up, “should be around here somewhere. . .” The man sets his damp cloth aside and slips behind a linen curtain that cuts the shop in two.

Druig senses another presence behind the curtain.

“Do you really think all these things exist,” Hasan asks as he flips through an account of a trip of the Ganges river written by a merchant. The animals must sound fanciful and Druig fails to smother a laugh entirely when he peers into his friends thoughts of what a tiger might look like. 

“I’m sure half of it is exaggerated,” he shrugs, “but as for what half?”

Hasan sniggers. For all appearances a normal young man, before he goes morose, “animals must have some soul or else they wouldn’t care for their young,” he muses.  It’s a startling amount of empathy and Druig is once again reminded that even with their proto-civilization, the people here are really no different from any of them. Us. Them. 

His thoughts stray to the morose.

When Druig was with you, he forgot about eternals and humans; just a man. 

“What does Allah have to say about that,” he asks?

“Druig,” Hasan chides with a smirk of his own, “you must at least read the Quran.”

“I’m not much of a reader. It’s such a dull way to pass the time.” It felt too much like watching the world go by. 

Druig did enjoy the colors. 

Only Thena had real enjoyment of making art. Gilgamesh and her had their fun harvesting plants and minerals to make paint out of oils and egg. They could disappear for hours when they foraged. City or in nature, it made little difference.

He thinks back on the jewelry you had made in your first life, pieces salvaged from time safe on the Domo, amphorae that must lie in ruins in Athens. He should be better about that from now on. 

“Here you go,” the shopkeeper emerges again. The paper is large even when folded. “Come help me hold this up!”

The most beautiful woman in the world steps out from behind the curtain. Your veil covers everything except your eyes, but Druig would recognize even the shade of your hair. Recognizing your bright eyes was easy.

He’s overcome the same bubbly emotions he always is when it comes to you, his smile softening as he looks at you.

There was no hope of conversation here. Social norms frowned on it. 

You help unfold the paper. There’s ink stains on the cuffs of your sleeves. 

“Looks good,” Hasan says. 

The rest of the transaction happens far away. The thought of you blots out everything else. 

Druig wants to know your opinion on so much: the ascetics, Arishem, his internal turmoil at doing nothing. He wants to crack roasted chestnuts open for you as the sun rises over the horizon. The desert out here could be so beautiful. 

You feel his adoring gaze, looking over at him. There’s nothing demure about the scowl on your mouth. He knows that look in your eyes, it’s the Druig shut up stop being stupid right before you burst out laughing. Only you don’t laugh and he leaves. 

***

He comes in the next day to buy a book. Druig doesn’t even flip through it. He catches no glimpse of you.

*** 

Makkari raises a brow when he comes back to their current residence with yet another Quran. Druig’s learned you do a good chunk of the work in your uncle’s shop. The brush strokes are clean and even. There’s no place where you pressed down too hard, ink darker than the rest. 

“What,” he asks her, forming the word with his hands poorly because of the book in his hand.

She rolls her eyes for a moment before asking, pointer finger pointing up in the air as she moves her hand, Where? 

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” he lies even as Druig feels heat rise. At least Kingo wasn’t here to give him shit about this. 

She presses her lips together as she silently laughs at him. Unlike the women of this caliphate, Makkari made no effort to don a veil, more often than not, spending her days abroad. 

When I see you next it’ll be in prison for committing zina. 

“Please, like they would get that far,” Druig points out. He could make the city guards forget in an instant. 

Makkari side eyes him like she’s caught him, Ajak said to follow their laws.

“She also said to stay on the same continent,” he holds out his hand.

She pouts, but hands over mochi treats all the same. We have an understanding, she tilts her head up. 

He nods. “Of course.”

*** 

You set open a different set of Qurans for sale as your uncle discusses a commission with another customer. 

Druig listlessly flips through an untranslated collection of confucian sayings from China. The piety sounds exactly like what Ajak would agree with. All following without questions.

“If you want to marry me,” you comment quietly without looking up at him, “you would get further by talking to my grandfather.”

Druig starts. It takes all his willpower not to look over at you. The characters on the page blur together. For a second, he wonders if you’ve remembered, his instinct to peer into your thoughts-

He doesn’t. 

It feels wrong.

He’s never breached any of the Eternals' minds either.

“Would you like me to,” Druig asks, trying to figure out if you did remember. 

Evenly, you respond, “that’s not up to me.”

You didn’t. 

He clenches his jaw, taking a measured breath. “If it was. . .would you want me to?”

You turn to him then, surprise clear in your eyes. 

Druig meets your gaze. He wants to reach for you there, damn good manners or whoever saw (he’d make them forget). He wants to take you in his arms, pull the veil from your face-

That wouldn’t be fair to you.

Not when you don’t remember him.

“I don’t know,” you say honestly, concentrating back on the book in your hand.

***

“Your calligraphy is quite good,” Druig utters so that only you can hear. Your uncle is sleeping at his desk with some meddling on his part. 

“Only good,” you reply, arching a brow for a moment as you pretend to sort imported books. “And it’s not mine.”

“So the ink on your sleeves. . .” He smirks.

You laugh quietly, “I have been known to do a page or two-”

“How humble.”

“The work speaks for itself,” you shrug. Still, he hears the amusement in your voice. 

Druig takes a step towards you. He gives up on pretending not to be looking at you. 

You look over at him. 

You don’t move away. He takes it as unspoken permission, bringing his hand up to your covered cheek. It’s easy to pretend it was just you and him. 

Druig longs for more. 

If he spent the next five thousand years at your side, he’d still want more time.

You turn away from him, your attention on folding up a banner. “Calligraphy is easy. It’s the backgrounds that are tedious.”

Druig smiles crookedly. 

You were always you. 

***

Druig commissions a banner in sanskrit. Was it cheating to jog your memory? That was probably something he should have asked you about before: whether Druig should try and get you to remember on purpose or let it happen naturally. 

“Not large at all,” he explains to your uncle as he pushes the man’s mind along, hushing the questions of why sanskrit. “Simple really.”

Druig has amassed a collection from this shop all for being able to see you for mere seconds as you help your uncle round the shop. Mostly, you are behind the curtain, working. Only occasionally could he properly exchange a few words with you. 

Your calligraphy surpassed your uncle’s. He had been in the shop long enough to know the difference in your work and your uncle’s.

“Of course sir, and for my good customer, I will take payment at the end.”

*** 

“That’s for dinner,” Gilgamesh slaps Druig’s hand away as he reaches for dinner. 

“Well,” he moves quickly with his other hand grabbing a warm kleicha off the plate, “I’m hungry now. You’re food deserves to be eaten fresh out of the oven,” Druig smirks, popping the biscuit into his mouth.

He smiles with a nod, stirring a pot, “it does! It just takes forever for everyone to sit down! Makkari always hides a book in her lap, dragging Phastos away from his lab,” he takes the bait, letting Druig eat before dinner.

“Druig,” Sersi comes into the kitchen, excitement in her voice as she bounces on her heels. “Someone’s here to see you.”

He looks up, mid-chew. Crumbs fall onto his simple clothes, a solid black that had gone gray after years of washing. 

You're standing behind Sersi, looking around at the kitchen. Ajak has always had an inclination to live well, in palaces or sprawling complexes. It’s not different in Baghdad. 

Gilgamesh laughs. “Might want to close your mouth.”

Druig does, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, warm with embarrassment and the fragile hope that you’re here because you remember. “Kleicha?” He holds a biscuit out to you. 

“I guess,” your voice wavers, thoughts elsewhere. Druig isn’t sure what you know. . .why you’re here at all, but he’s glad all the same. 

You’ve never run from the connection between you both. Like a ritualized dance, you always confronted him. 

Druig loved that you came to him, trusted him as you came to terms with the complicated memories of lives gone by. It made him run hot to be so wanted by someone he loves as much as he did you.

Your hand lingers in his as you take the biscuit, warm from the oven and his own body warmth. Your skin is soft and supple this time around. 

Druig strokes your palm with his thumb playfully before he pulls away. “And what brings a beautiful lady such as yourself here?”

You avert your gaze, crushing the kleicha in your hand. “May we talk, plainly?”

It reminds him of how anguished you’d been in Athens, the first time you’d really remembered more than dreams. 

Druig nods.

Gilgamesh clears his throat, “Sersi, help me carry these to the table.”

“But-,”

He drags Sersi away.

“This is haram,” you point out lightly, like you weren’t sure you were teasing or not. 

“I can call Ajak or Thena if it would make you more comfortable.”

“Ajak doesn’t like me,” you blurt out, crossing your arms over your chest. You curl into yourself, “I don’t-”

Druig wonders if you could simply take control of your mind and let you remember what you unconsciously knew. “It’s okay. . .my lady. You still haven’t explained why you’re here?”

“I can leave?” You study the floor, clearly still wrestling with your own thoughts, what to say, how to say it. . .

He takes your hands in his, giving you a reassuring squeeze. “Whatever it is, I will help even if it’s just lending an ear.”

“What?” Your eyes sparkle with amusement, “No witty remark?”

“Only if you ask nicely.”

You giggle.

For a moment, it’s you and him and nothing else matters before you turn somber again.

“My grandfather is in marriage talks for me.”

“Oh.” Druig feels a muscle in his jaw tick. That was-he could make the man forget everything entirely.

“Why sanskrit?”

“What?” 

“Why,” you raise your hand to touch his cheek, “sanskrit? That is the language you commissioned. Is it not?” 

“I figured old arabic was too close to the current arabic we use,” Druig answers, his eyes closing as he lets himself give into your touch. “And I wasn’t sure you remember or read greek.”

“It’s perfectly normal not to read or write,” you say tartly, your hand stilling on his cheek. 

Druig smirks, opening his eyes, “Don’t tell me you can’t read the calligraphy you paint!”

You smack the back of his head lightly. “Maybe I should take my chances with some old awful man and his six other wives.” His hair sticks out to the side now. 

Druig leans into you, resting his forehead against yours. “Last time I checked, I didn’t have six wives,” he chuckles, “but I am awfully old.”

“You weren’t there...in Varanasi?”

He leans back, “I was. Just not with you, how much do you remember?”

“Some,” you admit, “I always thought it was all just dreams. It’s only recently that it’s become vivid.” You bite your bottom lip. “I don't always understand any of it. . .is it me? Are they some dead girl’s memories? Don’t-we’re supposed to reach Jannah if we’re good?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. “what’s happening or how you’re. . .” Druig takes a deep breath. “Our memories make us who we are. Maybe you’re not the exact same person you used to be, but who is after a decade let alone an entirely different childhood.”

You reach up, carefully pulling down the fabric that covered the lower half of your face, fingers trembling as you confess, “what if I don’t want them-any of it?”

He’s half expecting the scars that you had borne in Ghana. But there’s no trace of them. 

Your face has been imprinted onto his heart since Thebes. After two thousand years, your beauty still takes his breath away. 

Your words are a knife twisting into his heart. 

Druig’s mouth parts, but there’s no words.

“I just,” you sigh, pulling away from him entirely, hugging your arms to your chest. “You could make me forget, right?”

He’s never used his abilities on you. “I,” he swallows, “I could.” Clinically, it would work. 

“Would you, if I asked,” you whisper quietly, mirroring the turbulent emotions coursing through him. 

Druig wanted to break something. He wanted to scream and rage and leave the kitchen a mess. But he did none of those things, shoving aside heartbreak he had never known to answer you honestly, “I’d do anything for you.” His throat is tight and hot. 

“Oh,” you sniffle. Tears fall from your eyes faster than you can wipe them away. 

He reaches for you then. You bury your head against his chest. 

“I don’t want to be sold to some man,” you utter practically, “with you at least...I trust you.”

“You don’t have to-I’ll talk to your grandfather.” Even if you were never in love with him, Druig still loved you. He’d make sure you were happy, with or without him. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” he utters gently against your hair. “You don’t have to be with me.”

“Stop,” you look up at him, “stop saying such kind things.”

“My-” he cuts himself off.

“Just, hold me.”

He could manage that. 

*** 

“This doesn’t,” you poke your uncle with your brush, “it’s not bad for him is it,” you ask. “You’ve been putting him to sleep a lot.” 

“A lot,” Druig snorts, “it’s like two hours tops.”

“Every day,” you argue back, carefully sketching out the pattern for the latest commission. “I wish there were other places we could meet but it was hard enough convincing my grandfather to let me work in the shop instead of at home.” 

“I could,” he smirks, cracking open a pomegranate with his hands. The juice stained his hands. Spring in Baghdad was a lovely sight; the desert in bloom. The city smelled less like farm animals and so many crammed together as the scent of the first fruits filled the air. “You know,” he licks his fingers.

“If you stain my paper-,” you look at him crossly. 

“Is that a challenge?” 

“Druig,” you groan, scrunching your face as you look away from the paper, “you’re worse than a tick.”

He laughs. “A tick? My lady, you need to work on your insults.”

“I’m working,” you shake your head, laughing. Still, your hand remains steady, the charcoal barely visible and soon to be covered up entirely. “Or trying to anyway.” 

“I’m not doing anything,” he says with an easy grin that widens as your cheeks redden. “I’m just eating a pomegranate.” 

*** 

People pick apricots from the trees as Gilgamesh fills his own basket, “with plenty to make jam,” as Thena and you sit together drawing. 

The blonde eternal plays with color as she does landscape studies. You dip your brush in black ink, the height of your script mimicking the mountains in the far distance.

Druig lays on his back next to you, eyes closed. He’d kicked off his sandals long ago, enjoying the feel of the earth against his feet. 

It had been easy enough to convince your uncle to cover for you. The memory implanted easily into his thoughts. Druig had told him you were working in the back and not to look and so he wouldn’t. So long as you were back before the sun set, no one would ever know.

The sounds of your brushstrokes still. 

“These are so sweet,” you say, tearing an apricot in half. 

“Gilgamesh always knows which are ripest,” Thena says non-committedly. She doesn’t look up from her sketches. 

Druig opens his eyes. “He makes the best cakes.”

You laugh, “want half?”

He grins, “how could I say no,”  before opening his mouth. A dare, a challenge. 

You snort, obliging shamelessly placing the fruit half in his mouth. 

Druig runs his tongue over your fingers. 

“Do not expect me to give you CPR when you choke,” Thena speaks up evenly.

There was no way she didn’t know what she was doing. The woman was a menace. 

You blush, remembering the other Eternals was still present. You were in public.

Druig chews the fruit in his mouth, yearning to do more than just tease you.

You ask, “what’s CPR?”

***

The iman asks, “do you take this man to be your husband?”

Druig cannot see you, as he waits for the inevitable yes to go to you-

“No,” you say, adhering to tradition he was sure. The third time was the charm. 

The iman eepeats his question a second time.

Again you say, “no.”

He paces around the room. Despite Kingo’s insinuations, you hadn’t even kissed him. 

Then a third-

He holds his breath, suddenly nervous.

When you say no, Druig laughs. Even now, you were teasing him. He’d get you back later; he was experienced in making you squirm. 

The iman is exasperated by the eighth time as Druig fails to hold in a laugh, nudging the man to ask again.

“Yes,” you finally say. 

Druig goes to you then, lifting you off your feet and kissing you. 

You laugh, kissing him back just as needy.

*** 

“I was thinking,” you say, tracing shapes onto his bare chest.

“Mhm,” Druig nods, his hand resting on your bum. It felt so good to just lay here, your weight on him. 

“What if I pretended not to remember Ikaris?”

He snorts. “I love you.”

“You have mentioned that.”

“Well I do. I love you my beautiful lady,” Druig tells you, squeezing your bum with his hand. “Fuck, you’re so good to me.”

You smile sweetly, “Perhaps you can show me how much you mean that.” 

He smiles, rolling over so you both lay on your side. You shift, wrapping a leg over his waist. Druig kisses you tenderly before he trails kisses down your neck. He nips at the skin between your breasts before soothing the spot over with his tongue as your breath hitches.

Tomorrow, dressed to shade from the blaring sun and according to the current fashion, no one but he would know how debauched you were. His.

“That’s right, just like that.” You mumer. “You’re so good to me, such a good boy for me.”  Your fingers card through his hair before digging into his back as Druig pulls you onto his cock. 

“Fuck me Druig,” you whine.

He obliges.

notes: poor sersi just wants human friends and to help. this basically shows how interwoven the eternals have become with humans, kingo having his own circle of friends, so does druig and phastos. druig is witnessing the beginnings of sufi mystics btw. i think i may have mixed some iranian food w iraqi food? sorry about that.

i think there had to be at least one life where she askes druig, bc he can control minds, if hed make her forget. her history is a lot, especially on a human. idk maybe people just weren’t meant to live as long as the reader has ( about 2,300 years though not exactly if u go only by when she is reincarnated not just since egypt) still. . .but the choice is always love! druig!