Chapter 16 #3
He catches Indrie's right hand before it can retreat. Holds it. The fingers are still trembling, fine and constant, and Eskil wraps both of his own around them and brings them to his mouth and presses his lips to the knuckles.
He did this once before, in the hold of a ship, and Indrie had looked at him then the way he is looking at him now.
He holds them there. Breathes against the skin. Feels the stutter in Indrie's pulse under his fingers.
"You're in shock," he says, quiet and rough, his lips moving against the knuckles as he speaks. "You nearly died tonight. Your body does not know what to do with itself and it is reaching for the nearest solid thing it can find." He swallows. "You need to sleep."
He kisses the knuckles again. Slower this time, and deliberate enough that it cannot be mistaken for pity.
He does not say and I cannot touch you while you are like this. He does not say and if you kiss me again I will not stop.
Indrie's eyes drop from his. His jaw clenches and he bites his lower lip hard enough to blanch the flesh, hard enough that Eskil has to stop himself from reaching out and pulling it free with his thumb, and he turns his face away.
His eyes are glassy. Bright. Not quite spilling, and the effort of holding it is visible in every tendon of his neck.
The blade in Eskil's chest twists.
He knows what Indrie is doing. He is rearranging himself.
Folding the hurt inward and putting it away somewhere with everything else.
Eskil can see it happening, the slight straightening of the spine, the deliberate relaxation of the jaw, the careful blankness settling over his features.
He has watched him do it before. On the ship, after you'll never belong to me. In the study, after yes, your majesty.
Eskil watches it and wants to take this whole city apart with his bare hands.
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.