Chapter 10 #3
Eskil feels a pain in his chest that has nothing to do with the bruise from Bohdi's training bout.
Indrie is so forgiving. So generous. He took a man's body into his own to save a life and is now sitting here, bleeding, assuring the man whose life he saved that the saving was a kindness rather than a violation.
And Eskil cannot even let the selfless act stand without his desire for Indrie tainting it.
He should not remember that night with heat in his belly and fire in his veins.
He should not wake up dreaming of Indrie's skin under his mouth, of the sounds he made, of the way he trembled and gasped and came apart so completely that Eskil had to hold him together.
He should not long for a man who gave himself out of duty, out of the same duty that has governed his entire life, the duty to heal, the duty to save, the vow that does not come with exceptions even when the exception is a king who does not deserve what it costs.
He finishes cleaning the wound. It has stopped bleeding.
The gash is small, half an inch, maybe less, and the surrounding tissue is bruised but not dangerously swollen.
He asks Indrie questions to determine the severity, falling back on the field medicine he learned years ago, a practical refuge from the emotional terrain they have been navigating.
"What time is it?" Eskil asks.
"I'm not sure. After dusk?"
"How many fingers?" He holds up three.
"Three."
"Is your vision clear? Any blurring, doubling?"
"Clear." Indrie's mouth curves. A small, tentative thing, barely a smile but aiming in that direction. "I'm not usually on the receiving end of care."
Eskil grins at him. Cannot help it. The grin happens of its own accord, summoned by the quiet humor in Indrie's voice and the sight of him, disheveled and damp with a blue bruise forming at his temple, making a joke.
Making a joke while sitting on a king's couch after a night that should have been miserable, because Indrie's first instinct is always to make the person in front of him feel better, even when the person in front of him is the source of the problem.
"I've done enough field dressing in my days to be passable at basic medicine," Eskil says. "But I'm not claiming to be of your caliber."
Indrie's smile widens. He ducks his head and looks away, the habitual deflection, the inability to receive praise without flinching from it, and Eskil watches the smile happen and reminds himself, forcefully, with the grim discipline of a man holding a rope over a precipice, that he cannot have him.
He finishes up. Sets the towel aside. Stands, putting distance between them, between his hands and Indrie's skin, between his mouth and the curve of Indrie's neck, between the wanting and the having that the wanting will never become.
He keeps his back turned while Indrie dries off.
Busies himself at the washbasin, rinsing the blood from the small towel, wringing it out with more force than the task requires.
Behind him he hears the rustle of fabric as Indrie pulls on his trousers, a small grunt of effort as he cinches the waist, the whisper of wet linen shifting against skin, and it is a test of willpower he was not prepared for this evening.
"I'm decent," Indrie says, quietly.
Eskil turns. Indrie is standing by the couch, dressed now, trousers cinched, shirt still too big, hair damp and beginning to curl at the ends.
He looks better. The color has returned to his face and the bleeding has stopped and he is standing instead of sitting, which Eskil takes as a positive sign.
"I'll have some clothes sent to the clinic," Eskil says. "Since you're still wearing mine from the ship."
Indrie rubs his arm self-consciously, caught in something he did not realize was visible, and his voice drops. "Morgan already saw to my wardrobe. I just–"
He plucks at the hem of the oversized shirt. Eskil's shirt. The linen is worn soft from use and hangs to Indrie's mid-thighs and the collar slips off one shoulder no matter how many times he adjusts it. His voice drops further, into something almost inaudible.
"I wear this one sometimes."
A pause.
Heavy. The kind of heavy that has weight and density and takes up space in a room, displacing the air, making the walls feel closer.
"I can give it back," Indrie stammers. The words come out in a rush, tumbling over each other. "If that's, if that's what you desire, I can—"
"That's not necessary," Eskil cuts him off.
He says it evenly. Calmly. As though the words are simple and the sentiment behind them is equally simple and his heart is not trying to claw its way out of him.
Gods, what he does to me.
He does not say that the sight of Indrie in his shirt makes his skin feel tight, makes his fingers itch, makes something possessive and raw coil in him.
He does not say that if he could, he would dress Indrie in his clothes every day for the rest of his life, would wrap him in wool and linen and leather that smelled of Eskil's skin and marked him, to every eye that saw him, as his.
He does not say any of this.
"Let me walk you home," he says instead.
Indrie hesitates. Long enough that Eskil thinks he is trying to formulate a tactful refusal, trying to find the polite words that will decline the offer without offending his king, the verbal dance of a man who has spent years navigating the moods of powerful men and knows that a wrong step can cost him.
Then Indrie nods.
"I'd like to show you the clinic," he says. The words are shy. The tilt of his voice is shy. The way he looks up at Eskil through his damp eyelashes is shy, and Eskil is a grown man and a king and a killer of men and he is completely, irrevocably undone by it.
"Lead the way," Eskil says.