Chapter 14 #3
He is not responding. His lips are closed.
His hands are flat against Torsten's chest, neither pushing nor pulling.
His body is rigid, every line of it telegraphing the opposite of desire, and he cannot make himself move.
The disconnect between what his mind knows he needs to do and what his body is willing to allow is absolute and unbridgeable, and he stands in the gap between them and feels the plan crumbling around him.
Torsten pulls back.
His face is close, his eyes searching Evran's, and there is a frown on his mouth, just the slightest downturn, barely perceptible, having expected one thing and received another.
Evran stares at him.
The self-recrimination is immediate and vicious. The man he is trying to win over has literally opened every door and Evran is standing in the doorway, frozen, useless, failing at the one task that matters because his body refuses to participate in the betrayal his mind has committed to.
He swallows, and the sound is audible in the silence between them.
His throat is tight and his chest is tight and his hands are still pressed flat against Torsten's chest, trembling almost imperceptibly, and when he speaks his voice comes out half-stuttering in a way that is real, not performed, not calculated, but genuine, raw, afraid and trying to use the fear as a tool.
"Sorry. I haven't... no one has ever kissed me that way before."
Torsten takes this as a compliment.
Evran watches it land, watches the frown smooth out, watches the ego reassert itself, watches the concern transform into satisfaction, and feels something bitter and cold settle in his stomach.
Of course Torsten takes it as a compliment.
Of course he hears no one has ever kissed me that way before and interprets it as you're the best I've ever had rather than what it actually means, which is no one has ever made me feel this sick with their mouth on mine.
The vanity is so complete that it functions as a filter, converting every input into confirmation of what Torsten already believes about himself, and Evran feels a flash of contempt so fierce it nearly reaches his face.
Torsten moves his hand from the front of Evran's tunic to his jaw, his fingers cupping the bone, tilting Evran's head up, his thumb pressing into the soft skin beneath Evran's ear.
The grip is possessive, certain, having decided the resistance was merely shyness and that permission to continue has been given.
"Then let me do it again," Torsten says.
He kisses Evran again.
This time Evran closes his eyes. He closes them because he cannot look at Torsten's face, because if he sees the hunger and the entitlement and the casual cruelty of taking without asking, he will lose his nerve.
He closes his eyes and he thinks about Vaike, about Vaike's mouth, warm and thorough, the mouth that kisses as though time is infinite and every second of it exists to make Evran feel cherished.
He holds the thought of Vaike in his mind, cups it there, protects it, uses it as a shield against the reality of what is happening to his body, and he lets Torsten kiss him, and he does not respond but he does not pull away, and the ambiguity is apparently enough.
Torsten pulls back a second time. His breathing is heavier. His eyes are dark.
"Tomorrow," he says. "Come find me tomorrow."
Evran nods. It is the only thing he can manage, his voice gone, swallowed by the lump in his throat that feels suspiciously as though his heart has climbed into it and lodged there.
Torsten releases him. He steps back, adjusts his tunic, runs a hand through his sweat-dampened hair.
The mask slides back into place, the easy smile, the casual confidence, and he gives Evran one last look that is equal parts promise and warning before turning and walking toward the path that leads back to the stronghold.
Evran stands against the stable wall and watches him go.
He does not move for a long time. The clearing is empty around him, the practice swords standing in their rack, the late afternoon light turning golden on the packed dirt. The air is cooling. Somewhere a bird calls, sharp and clear.
Evran's hands are shaking. He presses them flat against the rough wood of the wall behind him and focuses on the texture, the splinters, the grain, the solidness of it, and breathes.
He needs something real beneath his fingers, something that is not the heat of Torsten's body or the press of Torsten's mouth, something tangible and honest that belongs to the world he actually lives in and not the performance he has been trapped inside.
He can still feel Torsten's mouth on his, the pressure, the heat, the taste that was not Vaike and therefore wrong, fundamentally and cellularly wrong, in a way that his body understands even if his mind is trying to frame it as necessary and tactical and part of the plan.
His body is not interested in the plan. His body knows it was kissed by someone who had no right and no invitation, and it is responding accordingly, shaking, nauseated, the visceral, full-body rejection that comes not from physical danger but from the violation of something sacred, something that belongs to Vaike and to no one else, something that Torsten just put his hands on and his mouth on as though it were his to take.
He pushes off the wall. He picks up his cloak from where it fell on the log. He wraps it around his shoulders and walks back toward the stronghold on legs that feel as though they belong to someone else.
The walk back is long, and he barely sees it.
The town materializes around him in fragments, the noise of the market, the smell of the tanner's yard, the gate sentries nodding as he passes, and he moves through it present but separated, his body in the world and his mind somewhere else entirely, somewhere cold and quiet where it is trying to process what just happened and put it in a box and close the lid and never open it again.