Chapter 6 #3
Evran's throat tightens. He does think of them.
He thinks of them more than he admits, in the quiet moments between sleep and waking, in the garden when Eira hums beside him and the melody reminds him of the songs his sister used to sing through the wall of their shared room.
He thinks of his brothers laughing, which was rare enough with how they grew up.
He thinks of the last time he saw them, which was not a goodbye because his father would not allow him that balm, and the absence of them has calcified into a permanent ache that lives beneath his ribs and surfaces at the worst possible times.
He does not talk about them. Not because the memory is unwelcome but because the memory leads to other memories and those memories have teeth.
"I—" Evran starts, and stops. His fingers have tightened on the back of Vaike's neck without his permission. He makes himself loosen them. "I would be terrified to go home after what happened."
He says it plainly, without embellishment, because Vaike has always deserved the truth and because the truth is simple even when it is shameful.
He is afraid. The south is the place that broke him, the place where he learned that he was something to be used rather than loved, and the thought of walking back through those doors, any doors in that region, any road that leads toward the life he was pulled from, makes his stomach clench and his hands go cold.
Vaike doesn't flinch. He doesn't look surprised. He looks as though he expected this answer, prepared for it, and built his next words on its foundation.
"You would have nothing to fear," Vaike says. "With me there."
The words are simple. Vaike does not dress them up. He does not make promises he cannot keep or paint pictures of easy reunions and tearful embraces. He says it, and what he means is: I would stand between you and every shadow that place holds.
Evran is speechless.
He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. He closes it. Opens it again. The silence stretches, and Vaike waits inside it, patient as always, knowing that some truths take time to surface, never rushing Evran to feel or speak or decide faster than he is able.
"You—" Evran's voice catches. He swallows around it. "You seriously mean that? You would go with me?"
Vaike raises an eyebrow. The expression is so quintessentially him, as though Evran has said something mildly absurd and Vaike is choosing not to comment on the absurdity, that it almost makes Evran laugh despite the tightness in his chest.
"And you think I would let you go there alone?" Vaike says.
The question is not really a question. It is a statement wearing a question's clothes, the way Vaike's invitations are not really invitations and his suggestions are not really suggestions.
It is a fact of the universe, as immutable as the tide: Evran will not go to the place that hurt him without the man who would burn that place to the ground if it tried to hurt him again.
Something in Evran's chest cracks. He has spent so long thinking of the south as a place he escaped from that he has never allowed himself to think of it as a place he could return to.
Not as a victim. Not as a refugee. As a man with a husband at his side and a braid in his hair and the full authority of the Drakkari behind him.
His siblings are there. His brother and his sister, living whatever lives they have built in the years since Evran was taken from them, and he does not know if those lives are good or terrible or somewhere in between, and the not-knowing is its own kind of wound.
He could find out. He could see them. He could stand in front of them and let them see what he has become, not what was made of him by his father's cruelty, but what he made of himself after.
What Vaike helped him make. The garden and the loom and the table surrounded by people who love him and the braid woven into his hair by hands that have never asked for anything but the privilege of holding him.
He could go home. With Vaike.
Evran kisses him.
It is not lazy this time. It is not soft or slow or unhurried.
It is desperate and grateful, pressed into Vaike with the force of something Evran did not dare to want, and the force of it presses Vaike back into the mattress.
Evran's hands cup his jaw, fingers sliding into the rough warmth of his beard, and he kisses him deeply and thoroughly and with everything he has, pouring gratitude and disbelief and the terrified, exhilarating hope of it into the press of his mouth.
Vaike makes a low sound against his lips and his arms come around Evran's waist and pull him closer, and for a long moment the room is just the sound of their breathing and the fire popping in the hearth.
When Evran pulls back, his eyes are bright and his lashes are damp and his smile trembles at the edges.
"After the summit," Evran says. "Can we talk about it more? After?"
"After," Vaike agrees. His thumb traces the line of Evran's jaw, catching a tear that Evran didn't realize had fallen. "There is no rush. They will still be there when you are ready."
Evran nods. He presses his forehead to Vaike's and breathes, in and out, and the crack in his chest lets the light in, and it hurts and it heals and it is the same thing.