Page 56 of Tending the Ache

Indrie's brow creases deeper. He does not believe it. Eskil can see him not believing it, and he knows from experience that guilt of that kind does not respond to reason. It responds to time, if anything. Sometimes not even that.

But something else is moving behind his eyes. Something that is not guilt and not grief and not the distant blankness of shock. Something urgent and reckless and afraid of itself.

Indrie's hands, still fisted in Eskil's shirt, tighten. Not pulling. Gathering.

And then he leans forward and kisses him.

It is tentative. Barely there. Indrie's mouth against his, dry and trembling and so uncertain that for a fraction of a heartbeat Eskil's mind does not register what is happening. He kisses him braced for rejection, giving everything and steeling himself to receive nothing.

Eskil's mind goes blank.

Not quiet. Not still. Blank. Every thought in his skull, the spy and the blood and the body in the street and the guards and the clinic, wiped off the slate in one stroke, and what is left is only sensation. The warmth of Indrie's mouth. The faint taste of copper where the blood on his jaw has smeared between them. The pressure of his hands in Eskil's shirt, knuckles against his sternum. The small sound Indrie makes against his lips, something between a breath and a plea, and it goes through Eskil like steel.

His hand is on the back of Indrie's neck before he knows it has moved. His fingers slide into the hair at the nape and grip, and his mouth opens against Indrie's, and Indrie gasps, and the sound undoes something structural in him. He feels Indrie's body arch toward him, the bare chest pressing flush against his, the narrow hips shifting closer, and every nerve he owns catches at once.

He tilts Indrie's head back with the hand in his hair, deepening the angle, and Indrie lets him. Goes pliable and willing and makes another sound, higher, breathier, and Eskil swallows it and wants more, wants every sound this man is capable of producing, wants to lay him back on this couch and press him into the cushions and find out what else that mouth can —

Stop.

He is in shock.

Eskil's hand stills in Indrie's hair. His mouth slows. The want fights back, clawing at the edges of his restraint, because Indrie is warm and half-dressed in his lap and kissing him, and every instinct he has is telling him to take what is being offered.

He feels indebted to you. The thought goes in between his ribs and stays there. You saved his life. Again. You carried him through the streets and cleaned the blood off him with your own hands, and he is frightened and grateful and confused, and he does not know the difference between what he feels and what he owes.

Eskil has been here before. Never with anyone who matters like this, but close enough to know the shape of it. The aftermath of violence makes people desperate for contact, for proof of living, for the animal reassurance of another body against theirs. He has seen soldiers fall into each other after a battle with an urgency that has nothing to do with desire.

And Indrie has never once in his life been allowed to want a thing for himself.

Eskil would sooner burn in the afterlife than add his name to the list of men who took from this man under the guise of something gentler.

He pulls away.

It takes everything he has. The breaking of the kiss tears something living, and the cool air that rushes in between their mouths is a cruelty he will remember for a long time. He eases his hand out of Indrie's hair and brings both hands to his shoulders and holds him at arm's length.

The mortification comes into Indrie's face and spreads through it. His lips are still parted, flushed and wet where Eskil's mouth has been, and his eyes are wide and horrified. Not at Eskil. At himself. The color drains and then rushes back in a violent tide of red, blotching across his cheeks and down his throat, and Eskil watches the shame crash through him and knows Indrie is reading this as rejection. As confirmation of every miserable thing he has ever believed about himself.

Indrie pulls back sharply, trying to withdraw, and Eskil does not let him go.

He catches Indrie's right hand before it can retreat. Holds it. The fingers are still trembling, fine and constant, and Eskil wraps both of his own around them and brings them to his mouth and presses his lips to the knuckles.

He did this once before, in the hold of a ship, and Indrie had looked at him then the way he is looking at him now.

He holds them there. Breathes against the skin. Feels the stutter in Indrie's pulse under his fingers.

"You're in shock," he says, quiet and rough, his lips moving against the knuckles as he speaks. "You nearly died tonight. Your body does not know what to do with itself and it is reaching for the nearest solid thing it can find." He swallows. "You need to sleep."

He kisses the knuckles again. Slower this time, and deliberate enough that it cannot be mistaken for pity.

He does not say and I cannot touch you while you are like this. He does not say and if you kiss me again I will not stop.

Indrie's eyes drop from his. His jaw clenches and he bites his lower lip hard enough to blanch the flesh, hard enough that Eskil has to stop himself from reaching out and pulling it free with his thumb, and he turns his face away. His eyes are glassy. Bright. Not quite spilling, and the effort of holding it is visible in every tendon of his neck.

The blade in Eskil's chest twists.

He knows what Indrie is doing. He is rearranging himself. Folding the hurt inward and putting it away somewhere with everything else. Eskil can see it happening, the slight straightening of the spine, the deliberate relaxation of the jaw, the careful blankness settling over his features. He has watched him do it before. On the ship, after you'll never belong to me. In the study, after yes, your majesty.

Eskil watches it and wants to take this whole city apart with his bare hands.