9. Still Good Things #3
“Never.” It was the truth, and swift as an arrow.
Something else passed through Imalroc’s expression, but all he said was a faint, “Good.” He moved away abruptly, but not before Rerdas spotted the uncomfortable red bloom on his pale cheeks.
It had cost him to offer that small vulnerability, and Rerdas wanted to pull him close and whisper gratitude and reassurance against his skin all night.
Imalroc hauled open one of the two other doors to reveal a closet stocked with bedding. He tossed a stack of blankets to Rerdas and paced on.
“There’s another bed in here.” Imalroc’s voice echoed from behind the second door.
Blankets piled in one arm, Rerdas went to him.
He couldn’t help but rest his hand on the battleboxer’s shoulder as he looked into the attached room.
It was tiny, a cramped space with a single bed pressed up under the slanted ceiling that must have borne the weight of the gabled roof.
But it looked clean and dry. And big enough for two.
Rerdas set the extra blankets at the foot of the tiny room’s bed. “Etiana and my aunt can take the main room, and you and I can stay in here.”
Silence. Not a promising sound. Rerdas turned to read Imalroc’s face, but his expression was gods-be-damned impassive again.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Your cousin will be suspicious,” Imalroc said finally. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“We’ll say you woke up earlier and went off to practice sword forms, if Etiana notices you missing.” Rerdas studied him. “If it really worries you, you take the bed, and I’ll stay on the floor. Unless… there’s another reason you don’t want to share a bed?”
A muscle worked in Imalroc’s jaw. “I’m not fucking you with your family sleeping right there.”
Rerdas’s cheeks flamed, and he shot a guilty glance at his unconscious aunt on the bed behind Imalroc. “Eternals, that’s not—I’m not asking if I can ride you into the mattress! I’m just saying—Don’t look at me like that!”
Imalroc’s disapproving sharpness evaporated, and he appeared to be caught somewhere between shock and laughter. “Ride me into the mattress?” he repeated in a half-strangled whisper. He looked as though he were trying very hard not to grin, eyes sparkling despite his scandalized expression.
Rerdas couldn’t resist moving toward him. “Too much?”
“Or not nearly enough.” Imalroc cocked an eyebrow, lips curving. “I insist you show me what you mean. When we have more privacy, you idiot.”
It had never felt so good to be called an idiot.
Imalroc said it like a term of endearment, and Rerdas glowed.
Earthbound gods, but he could die happy with this laughter trapped in his chest and Imalroc grinning back at him, tilting toward him, his gaze dropping to Rerdas’s mouth.
They’d drawn close in the doorway of the little room.
Imalroc blinked and rocked back a step. “I’m sleeping on the floor.”
“Please don’t,” Rerdas said softly.
“We can’t try to… We can’t.”
“We won’t. I’ll be good.” He heard how it sounded a heartbeat too late, and it was already in the open. Rerdas tingled with embarrassment and hunger. “I meant… We both need to sleep. We’ll get better rest in bed.”
Imalroc looked deeply unconvinced.
Etiana came into the room backward, checking the door open with her hip. “Stroke of luck, there’s water already boiled downstairs. I’m so tired I could fall asleep standing.”
Rerdas jolted backwards and almost hit the bed at the same time as Imalroc spun rapidly away from him and crossed to slouch in the corner near the linen closet.
“Is there another place to sleep in there?” Etiana’s gaze skipped between Rerdas and Imalroc.
“Yes, but I think you and Aunt Uralta should take the larger bed.” He left the little space, studiously ignoring Imalroc, to unpack the ingredients for the purging tonic.
“I’ve no quarrel with that,” Etiana said, through a yawn.
Rerdas helped his cousin brew the tonic and spoon it into his aunt’s mouth.
It was a more unpleasant process than it had ever been, with Uralta thrashing and flopping her head away from every new spoonful, but he was so relieved she was reacting that he couldn’t be bothered by it. She would wake soon, he felt certain.
Etiana must have been thinking something similar, although she didn’t voice it. But when they were finished and both a bit tonic-splattered, she gave him the most hopeful smile he’d seen from her in ages.
His cousin borrowed the little room to change, emerged practically asleep on her feet in a long nightdress, and climbed under the blankets with her mother, mumbling something about putting out the light.
Rerdas picked up the lamp and moved toward the waiting door to the other bed. He stopped at the threshold and stared fiercely, silently, at Imalroc.
The battleboxer jutted his chin and arched an eyebrow at him. Apparently, only one of them had an effectively intimidating look.
Rerdas pressed his lips together, glanced back to check his cousin’s slack face, and whispered, “She snores.”
His cousin helpfully let out a rattling, sputtering breath.
Imalroc rolled his eyes skyward. “For fuck’s sake,” he mumbled. But he peeled himself off the wall and stalked toward Rerdas.
He didn’t want Imalroc to change his mind, so Rerdas kept his eyes averted and his motions efficient as he and the battleboxer undressed for bed. It helped that the room was brutally cold. Only once he had flipped back all the heavy layers of blankets and climbed in did he allow himself to look.
Imalroc, scooting gingerly onto the other side, wore only bed trousers. His torso was bare, a patchwork of pink and pearl scarring over skin that might otherwise have been delicate. Light lapped against the curving muscles of his chest and arms as he slid beneath the blankets.
He glanced at Rerdas from the corner of his eye. “What?” he asked.
“You don’t, uh…” Rerdas motioned jerkily at his own bedshirt. He left out the part about wanting to run his hands all over Imalroc’s broad, granite-hard shoulders.
“I don’t like bedshirts, if I can get away with sleeping without them,” Imalroc said. He put out the lamp without ceremony.
Rerdas was deprived of the sight of him, but he was left with the overwhelming sensation of Imalroc’s presence in the bed. His weight denting the mattress, the faint shift in the blankets when he breathed—nothing but air separated them.
They still hadn’t really talked about the night in Lakara. He wasn’t sure if they should. Before he could think better of it, Rerdas shifted onto his shoulder.
“Imalroc,” he murmured. “You should know… I want you to know that last night, I was—” He stopped, swallowed.
In the dark beside him, Imalroc seemed to be holding his breath.
“It was very good,” Rerdas whispered. “I haven’t felt that way in a long time.” I want more. But that thought died in his throat when he remembered Imalroc telling him he asked for too much.