Thirty-Three #2
“You were leaving!”
“You told me you had to think about your future and not about distractions.”
“Yes, because—augh,” said Estiene, and let his forehead fall onto Jehan’s shoulder.
Five conflicting feelings fought for control.
He smushed his mouth against the heat of Jehan’s body as if he could use it as a filter.
“Tearing myself apart over how I’d gone and fallen in love with someone who thought we were just having a good casual time was very distracting. ”
There was a long pause. Estiene inhaled deeply. Cedar and honey and rum, and a body that he wanted to open his mouth and devour.
“Okay,” said Jehan, above him. “Okay. Fuck. Okay. I’ve royally fucked this up. So have you, by the way, this was a mutual fuckup—”
“I thought that was what we were supposed to be doing now,” said Estiene, and Jehan gave another of those laughs and got his hands on Estiene’s shoulders, pushing him away so they could make eye contact. Strands of reddish hair curled by his jaw. He grinned like a wolf.
“Estiene. You are an arsehole, and a pretentious little shit, and I’m completely obsessed with you. I fell in love with you forever ago. I really thought you knew.”
Estiene couldn’t have said anything even if he was given the space for it.
He wasn’t. Jehan tucked two fingers beneath Estiene’s collar of pearls, in the hollow of his throat, and yanked him close and kissed him like the rainstorm they’d most recently fucked this up in.
His long fingers moved to cup Estiene’s jaw, and he dragged Estiene’s lip slowly and thoroughly between his teeth.
“That’s my move,” said Estiene, indistinct.
“I know,” said Jehan. “It sends me out of my mind. I want revenge.”
Estiene tilted his head back and leaned into him, surrendering, but scratching his nails idly on Jehan’s wrists. A combination that he knew Jehan loved.
Loved. He tripped on the word and fell into a pool of incredulous joy.
After another few minutes Estiene’s mouth was hot and swollen, and he would smash his own chair into the wall if he didn’t get his hands on Jehan’s cock soon. He pulled away and raised his eyebrows.
“Adequately revenged?”
“Not even close. Fuck. I was ready to get through those three years and come back to you, to pick up exactly where we left off, and you—stood there and stomped on my heart.”
Estiene’s face blazed. He had a flash of standing in that healer’s bay in the warehouse, his palms flat on Jehan’s bare and bloodied chest, sending panicked magic through him.
And then another flash to the day when he wrenched himself free of Jehan and thought the only person he was crushing was himself.
“I wouldn’t,” he said wretchedly. “Not on purpose.”
Jehan combed fingers through Estiene’s hair, then undid one of Estiene’s two small braids where it was pinned at the back of his head. Unwound it. Then the other.
Estiene shifted his weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable with arousal.
He wanted to climb onto Jehan and rub. He wanted to have his face buried in the crease of Jehan’s thigh; he wanted Jehan to spend a torturous age teasing his nipples between his teeth; he wanted to redden Jehan’s pale skin with his nails and hear the way Jehan’s breath squeaked and burred when he was about to come.
Jehan’s fingernails brushed his cheek as the second braid fell loose. Estiene bit Jehan’s fingertip.
“Mathé’s bones,” Jehan breathed. “Why did we ever stop. You could have bribed me to study so much harder.”
Another memory. Estiene kissed Jehan’s neck and murmured, “Two more chapters and you can come down my throat. That sort of thing?”
“Aungfhkjh,” said Jehan.
Estiene was buoyant. Powerful. Tomorrow might well bring him crashing back to earth and destroy him, but right now he was alight and rising into the stars.
“Get used to it,” he said. “You won’t have me there to motivate you in Fenehaf.” He sighed into Jehan’s skin and busied his hands with Jehan’s clothes. “Fuck. Three years, at least.”
“At least Mostau’s by the ocean,” said Jehan, with the familiar breathy babble that meant he was distracting himself. “That’ll be nice. Even though apparently it’s all cold marshes and mud before you get to the ocean. There’s a thriving crab- and—fuck—cockle-selling economy.”
Estiene gave Jehan another squeeze through his chausses, then got the tie at the waist loose enough that his next touch was against skin. “Cockles, is it?”
“Fuck you, Estiene—”
“Sounds like it’ll be great.”
“It’s three years of certainty.” Jehan’s voice rose. His eyes were dark and his own hands still in Estiene’s hair as if glued there. He was thickening and hot in Estiene’s grip. “Then I’m free to come back. Being bonded is part of the game for most of us.”
“I know.” The old squirming awareness of his own status. He said, harsh against Jehan’s jaw, “I’ll miss you.”
Jehan kissed him again, off-centre, wet and savage. “Well. You’re not bonded, Estiene. If it all—ah-ah, fuck, please—works out tomorrow, there’s nothing stopping you from coming with me.”
Estiene’s hand stopped. All of him stopped, even his thoughts.
“Oh I will murder you if you don’t keep going,” said Jehan.
“You can come down my throat in a minute, hold on,” Estiene said absently. He felt like he’d walked into a wall.
Not stay in Sieuxerr? Not walk straight into the most prestigious diagnostics-track junior position at the Hospital, and start building his career?
A week ago he’d barely have been able to form the idea. But now he had a darker and more dangerous future hovering like a sword over his neck, and it had swept all his assumptions aside.
As had Jehan, in the last half hour. Estiene was allowed to want him. Was allowed to keep him.
He looked into Jehan’s desperate amber eyes and said, curious, “Do you think the cockle-fishers can afford me?”
Jehan made an outraged noise and extricated himself from Estiene’s hand.
But a smile was starting to grow on his face.
“Oh for— It’s not a backwater. It’s the second-largest city in Fenehaf.
Their hospitals are mostly staffed by medics and they’d be thrilled to have a new healer on top of their scholarship quota—or you could offer yourself to the Flotteschul and heal all those trainee air-mages of their boat-related injuries. ”
“Boat-related.”
“I don’t know! Are you— Would you really?” Jehan looked young and wild, flushed with the idea of having Estiene near. As if Estiene were worth it.
“I—I don’t know.” He might. He could.
“Tell them about how you were nearly Dux Scolaris. They’ll be so impressed.”
“Fuck you,” said Estiene fervently, “I’ve changed my mind, I’m not putting my mouth anywhere near—” and laughed, lantern-bright, as Jehan dragged him over to the bed and down.