Chapter 6 #2
Evran does his best to swallow. It is a lot more than he expected, thick and salt-bitter, and some escapes, running down his chin in a trail that he can feel but can't do anything about because both his hands are occupied and his mouth is full.
He swallows what he can and breathes through his nose and holds on, and when Vaike finally softens and pulls away, the withdrawal leaves Evran's lips swollen and wet and his jaw aching in a way that feels like an accomplishment.
Vaike looks at him.
His eyes are blown black, the irises swallowed by his pupils, and his expression is awed. Not the controlled, measured appreciation he usually wears, but something raw and unguarded and almost young, as though he has been given something he did not dare ask for and cannot quite believe he received.
Evran barely has time to catch his breath before Vaike is on him.
He is pressed back into the mattress. Not roughly, but inexorably, the weight of Vaike's body bearing him down into the furs and quilts.
Vaike's mouth finds his throat and then his collarbone and then his chest, pressing open-mouthed kisses to every inch of skin he can reach, hot and reverent and slightly desperate.
Evran laughs and it's a real laugh, bright and startled and helplessly happy.
Vaike's mouth finds the hollow of his throat and the laugh dissolves into a sigh.
"You—" Vaike says, between kisses, and doesn't finish the sentence. His lips move to the ridge of Evran's collarbone, then the center of his chest, then the soft skin beneath his ribs. Each kiss is a punctuation mark in a sentence Vaike can't seem to complete. "You are—"
"I am what?" Evran says, grinning, breathless.
Vaike lifts his head. His eyes are deep and full of a tenderness so vast it could swallow Evran whole.
"I love you," he says, with absolute certainty, meaning it in every language that exists and several that don't.
Evran reaches up and pushes Vaike's hair back from his face, tucking it behind his ear. His thumb traces the sharp line of Vaike's cheekbone, the strong jaw, the corner of his mouth.
"You missed a spot," Evran says, pointing to an unkissed patch of skin on his shoulder.
Vaike huffs an almost-laugh and drops his head and presses his mouth to the exact spot indicated. Evran closes his eyes and threads his fingers into Vaike's hair and holds him there and feels the rumble of Vaike's breathing against his skin.
Content. He is content. The word seems too small for the thing itself, too simple for the layered, complex, earned quality of this happiness.
He is lying in a bed in a borrowed room in a stronghold that is not his, with a man who rules a clan and leads armies and could crush him with one hand, and he is content in a way that reaches all the way down to the bottom of him and fills every empty space.
He laughs, softly. Happily. Just a sound, just a breath of air shaped by the smile he can't seem to stop.
Vaike lifts his head. "What?"
"Nothing. I just..." He traces the shell of Vaike's ear with his fingertip. "I love you too."
Vaike watches him for a long moment. Then he lowers his head and kisses him.
It is lazy. Unhurried. Not the desperate, consuming kisses of this morning, when Vaike's mouth was between his thighs and everything was urgent and shaking and too much. This is the other kind, less about building toward something and more about existing inside the moment itself.
Evran's mouth moves against Vaike's slowly, softly, tasting, and Vaike lets him set the pace, his hands still on Evran's hips, his mouth answering without demanding.
Evran pulls back. Not far. Just enough that their mouths are a breath apart and their noses are touching and he can see the individual striations of gray and silver in Vaike's eyes, close enough to map. Vaike's thumbs trace small circles on his hipbones, a slow, absent rhythm.
They are not ready for round two. The morning spent them both thoroughly, and Evran's body is still pleasantly loose and heavy with the aftermath of it, a deep-muscle satisfaction that makes him want to curl up rather than climb higher.
And Vaike, for all his stamina, has the look of someone content to simply hold rather than take, whose appetite has been sated enough to let tenderness fill the space where urgency usually lives.
So they stay like that. Trading kisses that go nowhere and need to go nowhere.
Vaike's hand drifts up from Evran's hip and finds the braid, fingers tracing the weave of it the way they always do, as though reassuring himself it's still there.
Evran lets his eyes close and breathes in and thinks that he could live inside this single hour for the rest of his life and never want for anything.
Then Vaike says, "Have you thought about going to see your siblings?"
Evran's eyes open.
For a moment the words don't land. They hover in the space between their mouths, strange and shapeless, and Evran stares at Vaike as though he has spoken in a language Evran doesn't know.
Then they settle, one by one, and the meaning assembles itself, and something cold moves through the warmth of his chest.
"My siblings," Evran repeats.
"Your brothers. Your sister." Vaike's voice is quiet, careful.
His hand has stilled on the braid. His eyes are on Evran's, steady and watchful, and Evran recognizes the expression, the one Vaike wears when he is approaching something delicate and knows the ground might give way beneath him.
"You've spoken of them. Not often. But enough for me to know you think of them. "