19. Chapter 19
Indrie
Indrie is not scared of Eskil.
The realization settles into him slowly, finding the bottom of something he has been trying not to look at for weeks.
He is standing in the library with Eskil's hand on his face and fury in the king's eyes, and the fury is not for him.
It has never been for him. He knows this the way he knows which herbs will heal and which will harm, not because somebody taught him but because his hands have learned the difference through years of touching.
He is scared of many things. The dark. Closed spaces.
The sound of boots on stone when they move too quickly.
Hands raised without warning. The silence that falls over a room just before somebody decides to hurt you, when the air itself holds its breath.
He carries these fears in his body the way he carries scar tissue, woven into muscle and sinew, and he does not think they will ever fully leave him.
But he is not scared of the man in front of him.
Eskil believes he has taken something from Indrie that cannot be given back.
And that could not be further from the truth.
Indrie places his hand over Eskil's, the one cupping his cheek, and presses it there.
He can feel Eskil's pulse against his palm, quick and hard, a counterpoint to the careful stillness of the rest of him.
He meets Eskil's eyes and holds them, and it is the bravest thing he has ever done.
Braver than boarding the ship. Braver than diving into the ocean of a new language and a new world.
Braver than lighting a lamp in a dark clinic and telling himself he would not run.
"But I did choose," he says. His voice is steady.
Eskil's brow creases, a furrow cutting between his eyes. His hand does not move from Indrie's face, but his thumb stills, and Indrie can see him trying to parse the words, trying to fit them into the shape of the guilt he has been carrying. The guilt does not want to let them in.
Indrie continues before he loses his nerve. The words have been living in him so long that they come out almost rehearsed, shaped by every sleepless night he spent turning them over.
"You never once asked me or commanded me to help you. You made it very clear that you did not– that you did not want me–" He breathes in, shaky but determined. "But I would have done anything to save your life. I chose to help you."
He realizes he has closed his eyes, and does not know when that happened, and forces them open. Eskil is watching him with an expression Indrie has never seen before. The fury has not left, but something else has joined it, raw and wondering.
"You make it sound like a burden," Indrie says, and he laughs — a small breathless thing with no humor in it, the sound a body makes when it can no longer contain what is inside it.
His eyes are burning and he blinks hard, because he will not cry.
Not here. Not in the middle of saying the thing he has needed to say since a storm-lit cabin on the open sea.
"But being yours is all I wanted. Even if it was just for a night. I just wanted—"
He does not finish the sentence.
He does not finish it because Eskil pulls him forward and kisses him, and every word Indrie has ever known in any language leaves his head at once.
The kiss is not careful. It is not the measured deliberate press of lips Eskil gave him on the ship, when he was burning with the Cara fruit and fighting his own body to be gentle.
It is not the three seconds on the couch two nights ago, either — the ones Indrie has been living inside ever since, the ones that ended with hands on his shoulders and you're in shock.
Eskil's hand slides from Indrie's cheek to the back of his neck, fingers threading into the braid at his nape, tilting Indrie's head back and opening his mouth with his own.
His other hand finds Indrie's hip and pulls him closer with a grip that leaves no room for ambiguity, and the sound Eskil makes against his lips is low and desperate and hungry in a way that makes Indrie's knees threaten to give.
Indrie has been aching for that mouth.
He is ashamed at how completely he fails to resist. He does not even try.
He leans into Eskil, pressing forward until Eskil's chest is solid and warm against his own and Eskil's hands are framing his face, and he is being kissed so thoroughly he can feel it in the soles of his feet.
He never thought he would have this again.
He had packed it away, the memory of Eskil's mouth and Eskil's hands and the weight of him, folded it small and tucked it into the place inside him where he keeps the things he is not allowed to want.
And now it is unfolding, and it is bigger than he remembered, and it fills every hollow space in him until there is no room left for the ache.
It is better than he remembers. Everything about the ship was colored by desperation and poison and the terrible knowledge that Eskil was dying if Indrie did not act.
That memory is precious and devastating in equal measure, but it was shadowed.
This is clear. Eskil opens him up with his tongue and his lips, delving into him, tasting him, and holds him as though he is the most precious thing he has ever touched.
As though Indrie is something that can be broken, and Eskil is learning, with the patience of a man who has never been patient about anything else in his life, exactly how much pressure constitutes tenderness.
There is an insistent voice in the back of Indrie's mind saying this does not make sense.
That Eskil told him, twice, that Indrie was not his.
That two nights ago he stopped and put him at arm's length.
But the voice is not louder than the need to get this man's skin under his hands, and Indrie's hands are already moving, sliding up Eskil's chest, gripping the fabric of his tunic, pulling him closer as though closer is a destination they can reach.
Eskil pulls away and Indrie almost chases his mouth before he catches himself, a broken sound escaping before he can trap it.
Then Eskil's lips find the curve of his neck and his teeth scrape the tendon there and Indrie gasps, sharp and involuntary, and hears it leave his own mouth and flushes violently.
Eskil's beard drags rough against his skin and his mouth moves lower, tracing the line of Indrie's throat with lips and tongue, and Indrie's fingers curl into the tunic hard enough that his knuckles ache.
Then Eskil's mouth finds the shallow line at Indrie's throat and he stops.
He presses his forehead to Indrie's shoulder. His breathing is uneven. His hands have stilled, one at Indrie's hip and one at the back of his neck, and he does not say anything, and Indrie feels him not saying it. Feels the weight of it behind his silence.
Indrie's breath catches. He braces his hands on Eskil's shoulders, half holding on and half preparing to let go, because if this is all he gets, if this is another night that ends with Eskil pulling back and telling him it did not mean anything, he needs to know now, before his heart is so far gone that the fall will kill him.
"I don't understand," he says, and his voice comes out breathless and ragged and he does not care.
Eskil does not pull away. His hands move instead, slowly, deliberately, down Indrie's back, tracing the line of his spine through the soft wool of his shirt, and the touch is so intimate it makes him shiver.
Eskil's palms settle on the curve of his backside and grip, firm and certain, and then he lifts, and Indrie makes a startled sound that is swallowed by the motion of being set on the desk behind him.
The wood is cool and solid beneath him and Eskil steps between his legs, close enough that Indrie's thighs bracket his hips, close enough that the heat of him is everywhere.
Eskil drags his mouth along the dip of Indrie's shoulder, teeth and tongue and heat, pulling the collar of his shirt aside to reach more skin, and Indrie tips his head back and cannot think.
His hands find Eskil's hair, gripping the braids at his scalp, and Eskil makes a sound against his skin that is deep and approving and sends a bolt of heat to the base of Indrie's spine.
He tries again, because he needs to understand even if his body has already made its decision, even if every nerve he possesses is singing yes and please and more.
"Eskil."
Eskil pulls back. His mouth is red and his eyes are blown dark, the blue reduced to a thin ring, and he looks at Indrie with an expression that is equal parts reverent and wrecked.
But he hears the hesitation. He hears the question buried inside his own name, and he waits.
His hands are still on Indrie's hips, warm and heavy and grounding, and they are still.
Indrie breathes in and almost cannot look at him, because looking at him like this — wanting and waiting, patient despite the hunger in his eyes, holding himself back with visible effort — is unbearable.
A man who solves problems with a blade, who takes what he wants with both hands and asks forgiveness of nobody, standing between Indrie's knees and waiting to be told what to do.
He is afraid that questioning this will remind Eskil of every reason he gave on the ship. He bites his lip, watches Eskil's eyes drop to his mouth and track the motion with an intensity that makes his stomach clench, and forces himself to speak.
"You don't have to do this," he says. The words are dry and terrible in his mouth but he pushes them out anyway, because he has spent his whole life being used for what he can provide, and if Eskil is kissing him out of guilt or obligation or some misplaced sense of cultural responsibility, Indrie would rather know now and carry the heartbreak cleanly than discover it later and shatter.
"I would never expect you to uphold customs that are not your own. "