Page 53 of Tending the Ache

Eskil's arms come around him.

One across his back, spanning the width of him, pulling him in with a force that says I have you in a language that does not require words. One cradling the back of his head, the large hand spanning the curve of his skull, fingers threading into blood-matted hair, holding him the way you hold something you are terrified of dropping.

Eskil holds him so tightly that Indrie's feet nearly leave the ground.

Indrie can breathe.

He presses his face into Eskil's chest and breathes, the first real breath since the man's hand closed in his hair in the clinic, the first that reaches the bottom of his lungs, the first that does not taste of blood and metal and fear. It comes out ragged. Shuddering. One wrong tremor from becoming a sob. But it comes. And the one after it comes. And the one after that.

He is alive. He is in Eskil's arms. The man who had him is dead on the stones and the scalpel is lying beside him and the alarm horns are still going, and Indrie cannot hear them, because the only sound that exists is the steady heavy thud of Eskil's heart against his ear.

He does not think about the blood soaking through both their shirts, or the body cooling behind them, or the fact that the man he is clinging to has just killed somebody for him.

He holds on.

Chapter 16

Eskil

Eskil takes Indrie to the keep because the clinic is not safe.

The thought loops through his skull as they move through the streets, the clinic is not safe, the clinic is not safe, and he holds onto it because it is the only thought in his head that is not about the blood soaking through the back of Indrie's shirt or the fine tremor running through the body pressed against his side.

He has his arm around Indrie's shoulders. Not his waist, not the small of his back. His shoulders, the whole of them gathered under one arm, because Indrie is shaking and Eskil's body decided before his brain could weigh in that the correct response was to pull him close and not let go. Indrie is tucked against him with one hand fisted in the front of Eskil's shirt. His face is turned into Eskil's chest and he has not looked up since they started walking.

The guards at the south gate are still dealing with the body. Eskil did not look at it when he stepped over it. He looked at Indrie. He is still looking at Indrie.

Focus.

They enter the keep through the west door and take the back stair, because the front hall means witnesses and Indrie has been looked at enough tonight. The passage is narrow and torch-lit and empty and their footsteps come back off the stone hard enough that Indrie presses closer, and Eskil tightens his arm.

He takes him to his own quarters. This is not a decision he makes consciously. His feet know the route and his brain does not catch up until they are at the door and he is reaching for the handle with his free hand.

His intention is to have a bath drawn. Get the blood off him. Clean the cut at his throat. Hand him over to somebody competent, a maid, a servant, anybody without another man's blood drying under his fingernails, and leave.

He pushes the door open and guides Indrie inside and sits him on the couch by the cold fireplace, and that is where the intention dies, because Indrie is not all right.

Eskil has seen this before. On the field, when the fighting stops and the body catches up with what the mind already knows. The delayed response. The moment a man's hands begin shaking ten minutes after the blade that nearly killed him is already in the dirt. He has watched hardened soldiers, men twice Indrie's size who have taken lives and lost friends and weathered things that would break most people, go blank-eyed and trembling in the aftermath of a fight they had already survived.

Indrie is sitting with his knees pressed together and his hands in his lap, staring at the far wall with an expression that is not quite present. Beneath the blood his skin is grey-white, the color of ash. And there is so much blood. On his neck, his shoulder, streaked across his collarbone where it soaked through the too-large shirt.

His hands are shaking. Not trembling. Shaking. A violent involuntary motion that starts in his fingers and runs up his wrists into his arms, and when Eskil kneels in front of him and takes those hands in his own they are ice-cold.

"Indrie."

No response. His eyes are fixed on a point behind Eskil's shoulder, seeing something that is not in this room.

"Indrie. Look at me."

He blinks. His eyes refocus slowly, surfacing from somewhere deep, and when they find Eskil's face there is a moment of terrible blankness before recognition floods in. His mouth opens.

"I'm — I'm fine. I should —" He starts to stand. "You shouldn't — I can go to Dagny's, I don't need to —"

Eskil puts a hand on his shoulder and presses him back down. Gently. Firmly. "You're not going anywhere."

"Eskil, I'm fine, you don't have to —"

"You are in shock. You are covered in blood. And you are going to sit on this couch until I have sorted you out."