Chapter 18 #2
He finishes the sketch and pulls Indrie closer to the desk to see it.
His hand on the younger man's wrist guides him forward, but the desk is close and the chair is in the way, and Indrie catches his boot on the chair leg and pitches forward with a startled sound and Eskil's free hand shoots out and grabs his waist and pulls him down before he can think about what he's doing.
And pulls Indrie into his lap.
Fuck.
The word detonates in Eskil's mind with the clarity of a signal fire.
He has, without conscious thought, pulled the healer directly into his lap.
Not steadied him. Not redirected him to the chair or the desk edge or any of the dozen other surfaces that would have been appropriate.
He has, with the instinct of a body that has been wanting this for weeks, taken the first available excuse to put Indrie exactly where the most undisciplined part of his brain has been imagining him.
You absolute fucking idiot.
He should correct it. Should stand, or shift, or move Indrie to his feet with an apology.
But the correction would require acknowledging what happened, and acknowledging it would require a conversation he is supremely unequipped to have while Indrie is warm and slight and sitting on his thighs with his hip against Eskil's stomach.
Indrie stiffens. The tension is immediate, and Eskil braces for the retreat, for the flinch, for the terrified scramble away that will confirm every fear he has about the damage he's doing by wanting this man.
But Indrie is distracted.
His eyes, which had gone wide with surprise, catch the drawing on the desk.
His gaze snags on it and holds, and the stiffness in his body doesn't disappear but it pauses, suspended, overridden by what he sees.
His hands go to either side of the parchment, palms flat on the desk, and his eyes stare at the drawing unblinking.
Eskil watches him and realizes he gets it immediately. Without explanation. Without gestures and awkward sentences. Without Eskil having to point at each element and fumble through vocabulary he doesn't share.
The drawing is a rendition of Valen. The coastline with its mountains and rivers and forests, the settlement near the shore with its great hall and its homes, the sprawling green landscape that Dagny has been describing and that Eskil has been carrying in his chest since they left shore.
And there is a group of crude figures drawn in a circle in the middle of it, rough shapes, some taller, some broader, one with wild scribbled hair that is obviously Dagny, one with an axe that is obviously Bohdi, with one smaller one in the center with a ponytail.
He doesn't have to point out that the figure is Indrie. The smaller shape, slender, with dark hair suggested by a few strokes of charcoal, standing in the middle of the circle. Not at the edge. Not outside it. Not below or behind or separate from. In the center. Surrounded. Included.
Indrie seems to gather instantly that Eskil has built him a map that says in any language, in any tongue, without any words at all: you are going home.
Indrie turns to look at him.
He's so close. He's turned his head and his face is right there, inches from Eskil's, and his dark eyes are wide and bright and surprised.
Not fearful surprise, not the startled flinch of a threat arriving, but raw, vulnerable surprise, the kind that comes from being given something you didn't dare hope for.
His lips are parted. His cheeks are warm with color, and his eyes are catching light from the inside.
Eskil remembers how he looked in his bed this morning, and the memory overlays the present, and pushing it away while Indrie is warm in his lap is an act of will that costs him something he'll never get back. But he's the king for a reason and it's not because he makes impulsive decisions.
He holds Indrie's gaze. Holds it steady and open and lets the younger man search his face for whatever he needs to find there.
"You're not mine," Eskil tells him. Again. Slowly and carefully. "You are yours."
Indrie breathes out. A soft exhale that Eskil feels against his chin.
"Oh," he says.
Eskil opens his mouth to say more, about Valen, about choice, about the fact that Indrie can stay or go and either way Eskil will make sure he's safe, when there's a perfunctory knock at the door and Bohdi comes in without hesitation.
Bohdi's relationship with doors is largely adversarial.
He views them as obstacles rather than boundaries, and his knock is a courtesy so brief it barely qualifies as notification.
It wouldn't be the first time Bohdi had walked in while someone was in Eskil's lap.
It has, in fact, happened on several memorable occasions over the course of their long friendship, each one met by Bohdi with a composure that suggests either supreme indifference or supreme amusement.
But the fact that that someone is Indrie…
Indrie stumbles out of Eskil's lap.
The movement is not graceful. It is, in fact, the least graceful thing Eskil has ever witnessed, and he has watched men fall off horses.
Indrie lurches sideways, his hip catches the corner of the desk, the parchment slides, and it's only Eskil's hands shooting out and catching him by the waist and the arm that keep him upright and prevent him from adding a concussion to the evening's events.