Page 57 of Tending the Ache

He cannot explain. Not tonight, not with Indrie in shock and his own restraint held together with spit and stubbornness. Anything he said would land on a man who cannot hear it clearly right now, and he will not take advantage of the confusion.

So he does what he can.

He eases Indrie back onto the couch. Indrie goes without resistance, which is worse than fighting, the boneless compliance of a body that has given up on the current interaction and is waiting for it to end. Eskil retrieves the blanket from the back of the armchair and draws it over him, tucking it around his shoulders, around the bare chest he is no longer allowing himself to look at.

Indrie lies on his side, facing the back of the couch, and does not look at him.

Eskil stands there. The silence in the room has a texture, thick and close, and it presses against his ears. He cannot leave him like this. He cannot walk out with Indrie curled away from him, glassy-eyed and ashamed, believing he has committed an offense when all he has done, all he ever does, is reach out and hope that somebody reaches back.

He lowers himself to the floor. Sits with his back against the side of the couch, legs stretched out in front of him, and reaches behind him until his hand finds Indrie's where it is clenched in the edge of the blanket.

He doesn't pull. Doesn't tug. He slides his fingers over Indrie's and rests them there, palm over knuckles, and waits.

A long moment passes. Long enough that Eskil begins to think Indrie will not respond, that the damage is done and the mask is sealed and whatever fragile opening existed between them has closed.

Then Indrie's hand turns beneath his. Slowly. His fingers uncurl from the blanket and thread between Eskil's, and the grip that closes is not tentative. It is tight. Almost fierce. He is holding on to something he is terrified to need and terrified to let go of.

Eskil holds on.

Indrie shifts on the couch. Eskil feels the movement through the cushions and then senses the weight of Indrie's gaze on the back of his head. He does not turn around. He sits on the floor and holds Indrie's hand and stares at the dead fireplace and lets himself be looked at, because that is the one thing he can give right now that costs Indrie nothing.

The silence changes. Loses its edges. Something in the room unclenches, not into comfort but into a truce, because neither of them has any ways left to make tonight worse.

Indrie's breathing slows. The grip loosens by fractions, not releasing but easing, the fierce clench softening into something that holds instead of clings. The rhythm of his exhales deepens. Evens. The small involuntary twitches of a body still processing adrenaline space further and further apart until they stop.

He falls asleep holding Eskil's hand.

Eskil sits on the floor. He does not move. The fire is dead and the room is cold and his back aches against the frame of the couch and his left leg has gone numb beneath him and the basin of pink water is cooling on the table and he does not move.

He tips his head back against the cushion. Stares at the ceiling. Feels the weight of Indrie's hand in his, the slow pulse at the base of those fingers, the warmth of his breath stirring the air above Eskil's shoulder.

And he is going to go mad.

Chapter 17

Indrie

Indrie wakes lying on the couch in Eskil's room with a blanket draped over him and his hand curled around nothing.

He knows it is nothing before he opens his eyes. The absence has a texture. A coolness where warmth was. An emptiness in the curl of his fingers that his sleeping mind catalogued before his waking mind could catch up. He had been holding something. Someone. The ghost of it is still in his palm.

The fire has burned to embers. The room is quiet. Grey morning light lies flat across the stone floor and the basin of water on the table has gone cold, a faint pink skin across its surface. He is alone.

He lies still for a moment. Then the memory arrives.

Not gradually. Not in pieces. It comes whole, cresting and breaking over him, and he is drowning in it before he can brace.

He kissed Eskil.

The recollection hits him like a fist. He remembers it with excruciating clarity. The way he leaned forward. The way his fists tightened in the fabric of Eskil's shirt. The way his mouth found Eskil's and pressed, and the whole of him trembled with the enormity of what he was doing. He remembers the tentative terrified quality of his own kiss, and for one blinding second, one second in which the world was rearranged and remade and nothing hurt, Eskil had kissed him back.

He remembers that too. The hand in his hair. The grip that tightened. The way Eskil's mouth opened against his and the low sound that came out of his chest, a sound Indrie had felt more than heard, and the hot devastating certainty that for one fractured moment the king wanted him.

And then he had pulled away.

Indrie presses his face into the couch cushion and makes a sound he is grateful nobody is present to hear. It is not a word. It is not a sob. It is the compressed exhalation of a man trying to force a memory back into whatever locked room it escaped from, because he cannot, he cannot, lie here in the king's quarters and think about the look on Eskil's face when he broke the kiss and held him at arm's length.

Indrie rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling.